Sigh. Fighting husbands low key but present desire to get omicron “out of the way” because he has something INCREDIBLY important career wise at the end of the month, and he’s worried we’ll get sick at the worst possible time since it feels inevitable. (Work thing is an in person, no possibility to reschedule, may be years before another opportunity like this type thing). I definitely get being exhausted, but I feel like if we haven’t gotten it yet with our current lifestyle (and our county doing BAAAAAD), then we may actually avoid it indefinitely until we change our behaviors?
I dunno. I’m just tired today. So sick of this. So sick of how isolated Latte is. And how much I have zero life/time/presence/existence outside of child care.
Ehhhhhhhhhhhh. Caveat on this reply is that my thumbs hurt and I’m using voice to text and it sucks. Sorry.
To me at best this seems like extremely early data and an extremely Broad swath that means we should look at it a little more. But it doesn’t say anything definitive, not even close, as far as I can tell. This article kind of seems to agree. Although also light on details.
I think the biggest thing to know is that type one diabetes functions as essentially an autoimmune condition, and we know that infections can trigger autoimmune conditions. But you still have to have the predisposition there. It’s something called the diathesis stress model. Where you have the predisposition and a trigger working in concert. I think more than anything this is just saying that Covid can function to trigger stuff like this, which really we knew already. Just like any other infection. We just have a lot of people getting infected at once. And this study doesn’t tell us whether or not these kids would have been triggered by a different infection at a different time. There’s just a lot being left out here and we really can’t make any useful conclusions from this I don’t think. The second thing to know is that getting sick messes with our blood sugar. Pretty substantially. So as far as type two diabetes is concerned, you have kids that are already prediabetic and then you have a significant illness that’s doing weird things to your blood sugar. You’re already in contact with the medical system because you had a positive test which indicates you probably have access to healthcare. So you’re than more likely to follow up with other symptoms. I don’t know, looking at it from a global view I don’t think we should dismiss it out of hand certainly, but I also really don’t think it tells us anything useful.
Ugh this long covid stuff. It makes me crazy. Do I keep my kid home? Do I send him to daycare? For sure, if he got covid and got better, I’d not be worrying about it because he’d MORE THAN LIKELY BE FINE. But right now, at this moment, it is again the age old question “Do you risk your kid getting this or hold out a little longer because you are probably, PROBABLY, at peak right now?” Fuck, guys.
Yeah, even if somebody who feels pretty comfortable with medicine and reading studies and pretty comfortable with my own evaluation of risks normally, this is absolute hot shit show that makes me miserable. You are not alone.
I’m not even in the camp that parents with kids under 5 are, but I’m absolutely exhausted by feeling like I need to understand complex science to know if it’s safe to leave my house. And the fact we have really limited data for people in my case (immunosuppressed, young and healthy, received J&J)
I gotta say, I’ve tipped pretty firmly into the “I’m just living my life with a mask on” category not based on any science, but because I’m exhausted of having to make any minute decisions or keep up to date with the ever changing sh*t anymore.
But my life includes a heck of a lot less people and places than it did 2 years ago, so
Oof, I so admire Captain Awkward for how she approaches these things.
One of the links from that piece led me to the “calm covid” newsletter which in turn links to a preprint study about same-household transmission. Seems possibly relevant since we were discussing same-household isolation here earlier - tldr; if someone in your household gets covid you are not doomed to get it too.
excerpt from "calm covid"
The “secondary household attack rate” for covid—a measure of how many people in a household end up getting covid after one person gets sick—isn’t anywhere near 100%, even with Omicron. In a recent Danish study, it averaged around 30% for Omicron across households with various vaccination situations. (This study’s a preprint, but it correlates pretty well with other studies on household attack rates and relies on official health data.) There are a bunch of potentially confounding factors—especially that lots of household members never get tested—so the main thing I think is interesting here isn’t the exact percentage of people who get sick, but the fact that it’s not everyone.
This is why I think frequent testing matters so much, especially if you have someone vulnerable in your home or immediate circle. If you can find an infection early, that person can isolate and seriously reduce the chances of everyone in the home getting covid.
anyway I would also like to toss my hat into the ring of “oh my god, I’m so tired of this bullshit”.
Thanks to everyone for all the links today, they’ve all been really interesting and helpful.
I too am deeply exhausted by all of this. Covid decision-making takes SO much mental energy on top of normal day-to-day life tasks that I’m so, so tired. I almost want to get covid again just so I can sit in my house, do nothing, and think about nothing for 10 days. (I don’t actually want covid again, knock on wood, etc.)
A positive test means the household going into strict isolation protocol for me. Scrubbing down high touch areas and setting myself up to hangout in the main bedroom for the next while or possibly joining up with my parents in their COVID nest (mom is still coming up positive and has symptoms). If Husband tests positive, his clinic would cut hours and the hourly workers would be shit out of luck.
Anyway, I ended up testing, it was negative, I will test again in a few days and might try to distance some with Husband/open windows/run HEPA filters.
I saw both articles yesterday, the Vox article was helpful. It reminded me that my plan for testing is no good because it turns out the place I figured we’d go for PCR, if we needed it, is one of the shady popup sites. So I have to figure out a plan B in case CVS and Walgreens have no appointments, which seems very likely. The urgent care down the street now will only test symptomatic people.
We do have 3 boxes of rapid tests at home.
I laughed, not in a funny way, at the line "The answer to some of these questions might be, ‘Well, I guess I’m screwed!’ which absolutely does not represent a moral failing on your part. " SURE, I will isolate from Boyfriend on our apartment’s separate FLOOR
YES. I know I’m less effective at my job because of it. I just don’t have the energy to be effective at work and also make all these decisions - and I don’t even have kids!
FUCK. Someone at work who was here Tues and Wed has tested positive. I think I know who it is and I may have drunk coffee while talking to her with my mask down.
