So… I am not currently required to work from the office yet because plans keep changing. Going in IS though encouraged though, more enthusiastically now that at any other point during the pandemic. I used to go in periodically, but I have stopped because I don’t want to be around a bunch of people.
ETA I am expecting to be required to go in soon.
My workplace requires masks in common areas, but not when someone is seated at their own desk. I didn’t care when I was the only one there. But most of us are in cubicles, not offices. Is there anything simple but science based anyone can point me to (given what is being learned about Omicron) to either ease my concern about this OR give me something with some backing that I can push back on my employer? I sit next to a proud and loud anti-VAX and anti-MASK person and thought of sharing air for 8+ hours is not okay with me. I just don’t see how the cube wall will do much if anything over the course of that much time together.
OMG, did Biden really just say that people should just Google where to find a covid test?
If you do that here you end up with all the pop up sites with unmasked workers where you don’t get your results ever.
My work just today started requiring peoples’ vaccination status due to OSHA. They’re not requiring vaccinations specifically, just disclosure of status. Masking in common areas in the building has been in place for a while, that’s still required for everyone. They were always WFH friendly for years prepandemic though - we only have one office but people in three time zones - so lots of people are still using that option.
The shelter where I volunteer required vaccinations in November or you could not volunteer anymore. They’ve been more proactive than the governments and most businesses.
Not at all a coincidence to me because contagion control is a key part of running a shelter.
Google is a far better source for me than state; county doesn’t have a Covid website and doesn’t mention Covid on the health dept. website. I think Google was the safest thing he could tell everyone - for most people, it’ll pull up the state sources, and most people know how to find Google.
I ranted about this on my journal but gah I’m trying to process and OMG.
I have a family member who spent Christmas with a covid positive person. They didn’t bother isolating, since they were at a beach house on holidays and, the beach? Their baby was hospitalised earlier this week in respiratory distress (discharged pretty quickly, seems to be doing well right now). It turns out they unsurprisingly all have covid. Still not going to isolate because selfies at the beach with captions such as “vitamin-sea” and “the ocean cures all” are more important than public health?
Also posting publicly on social media about how they will never get tested so they don’t have to comply with RULES but privately they have all had multiple positive rapid tests within the last few days (AND THEIR KIDS ARE PLAYING WITH OTHER PEOPLE’S KIDS AT THE BEACH OMFG). I assume they refused covid testing on the baby in hospital.
Kids have already died here from our overloaded hospital system and we have almost no COVID. I bet there’s a lot more who have been near misses (and I know some who were near-misses).
I haven’t forgotten Italy from 2020. I don’t wish that for anywhere.
A croup presentation in toddler seems to tally with what a lot of my friends’ kids are experiencing. Because of the different site of proliferation (upper versus lower airways) it’s possible the same thing that makes it less severe in adults could make it a little more like RSV risk in little kids. Not gonna pull back on Latte exposure precautions until there’s a better picture of the data on this I think. (Good thing though is, like RSV, it’s still generally mild to moderate sounds like. But low % in high numbers… I’ll wait until our peds hospitals have more room)
Good to know a take away is- hydrate them! If they get sick, really stay on top of hydration for mucus clearing.
My poor 2-year old has to have ANOTHER covid test. We had him tested on the 3rd, and it was negative, but daycare has decided the return criteria is a test dated the 7th, 8th, or 9th. (He was last in school on the 29th, the test was 5 days after exposure). But a kid who tested negative on the 1st tested positive, so they are requiring all kids test again!!!
I feel like I am torturing him.
It really sucks though- all 4 teachers in that room, and now 5 kids are sick; though it sounds like everyone very mildly.
I bet a ton more teachers in the daycare are sick outside the room, they just aren’t testing.
Also, I now have a sore throat, so I am going to consider myself sick until I find out if my son is. He’s the only exposure I would have had though, so I’ll take his positive as a positive, and his negative as a “go get tested”.
Also weird- if I say he has symptoms (runny nose) he has to see a doctor first (which we have to pay for). If I say no symptoms, just exposure, they let him just take the test.
(He’s too young to test outside of our hospital system, no one takes under 3s)
Just learned that the local university is responding to positive COVID tests by students who live on campus by making them figure out their own off campus living arrangements for isolation. Basically kicking them out of the dorms.
According to comments on Reddit, this had led to several students decide not to get tested because they have nowhere to go if kicked out of dorms.
Today is symptomatic day 9, exposure could have been the 23rd, or household or the 27th. I am definitely too sick to do anything, but for the first time I feel like I might get better eventually
