I don’t really know why anyone bothers with cloth masks at this point, if they have the means and ability to acquire something different.
I feel like I stay fairly up to date on COVID things, and I didn't know cloth was considered bad. All I had ever read was how the N95 needs to be properly fitted, and most people don't so it's useless blah blah blah.
Post by mrsukyankee on Jul 31, 2021 4:50:18 GMT -5
The English government is crowing that numbers are going down in terms of cases, while handily ignoring that hospitalisation is going up. I'm part of the Zoe app that shows that actually cases are going up - it's just that people are testing less (including the fact that kids/teachers are out of school and so aren't required to test as much). They are trying to use this to justify opening up and it's going to smack us all. The guy in the video, Tim Spector, helped to develop the app and is an epidemiologist. He's one of the scientists I follow in the UK.
Oh, and for more fun, I'm supposed to go on my first post-covid flying business trip in a couple weeks. To Canada. Which means I have to get tested about four times (before and after heading up and heading back south).
My biggest fear is catching covid now, and having that interrupt my plans. Or, catching covid while in Canada, and having to figure out how all that will work. Or, that one of my coworkers that is also traveling will have a positive test, complicating life for the rest of us.
For about a week after the border rules changed, I had a meeting on my calendar for Canada. I was so relieved that the higher up attendees looked at the rules and decided that we would postpone the meeting. I was so anxious about getting stuck in quarantine/beong ill while so far from home. Hoping everything goes smoothly for you add that maybe your company comes to their senses.
holy shit....i hope these numbers are wrong or the data is being skewed someway. The numbers on Houston in the last week are higher than they ever were at the peak?? I wish this had the trendline We were at 100-200 /day or so in Jun & early July. Just had days with reports of 2300 and 3500! covid-harriscounty.hub.arcgis.com/pages/cumulative-data#reported-cases-graph
Most places have ended Tbe work from home options and masks are almost non existent now so yes it makes sense. My hyper conservative company has suddenly realized that vaccines mean fewer absences so are pushing hard. However, they have also taken away the sick time related to COVID. So now people are coming to work with COVID unless they are completely incapacitated because our "generous" sick time is 3 days annually.
We bought plane tickets and reserved a hotel room for our 12 year anniversary in Las Vegas, and now I think we might have to cancel. All this Delta business is making DH nervous (me too, if I'm honest), and I'm just so disappointed. I know we're not alone and other people are having to rethink a bunch of things, I'm just all up in my feelings about it. I was so excited to go somewhere on a REAL vacation (even if it was just for a few days!). We're going to give it two more weeks and if things don't improve significantly (I'm not optimistic), we're cancelling.
UGH.
We’re supposed to go to Iceland at the end of August for our 10th anniversary. I don’t think we’re going to cancel (at least, we haven’t discussed doing so yet), but I am going to bring my work stuff in case one of us gets infected and we need to stay there longer.
More than 4.7 million newly vaccinated Americans have made similar calculations in the past two weeks, as misgivings about the shots based on ideology, apathy or fear have taken a back seat to the desire to protect themselves and their loved ones. More than 856,000 doses were administered Friday, the highest daily figure since July 3, according to The Washington Post’s vaccine tracker. This was the third week that states with the highest numbers of coronavirus cases also had the highest vaccination numbers, deputy White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said at a briefing Friday.
We bought plane tickets and reserved a hotel room for our 12 year anniversary in Las Vegas, and now I think we might have to cancel. All this Delta business is making DH nervous (me too, if I'm honest), and I'm just so disappointed. I know we're not alone and other people are having to rethink a bunch of things, I'm just all up in my feelings about it. I was so excited to go somewhere on a REAL vacation (even if it was just for a few days!). We're going to give it two more weeks and if things don't improve significantly (I'm not optimistic), we're cancelling.
UGH.
We’re supposed to go to Iceland at the end of August for our 10th anniversary. I don’t think we’re going to cancel (at least, we haven’t discussed doing so yet), but I am going to bring my work stuff in case one of us gets infected and we need to stay there longer.
I have friends in Iceland right now and had friends there last week too. It has gone smoothly for both except Iceland changed some COVID masking rules while they were there and businesses didn't post it so they didn't realize. They got chewed out by another American for not masking at a restaurant when they had no idea they were supposed to.
Oh, and for more fun, I'm supposed to go on my first post-covid flying business trip in a couple weeks. To Canada. Which means I have to get tested about four times (before and after heading up and heading back south).
My biggest fear is catching covid now, and having that interrupt my plans. Or, catching covid while in Canada, and having to figure out how all that will work. Or, that one of my coworkers that is also traveling will have a positive test, complicating life for the rest of us.
For about a week after the border rules changed, I had a meeting on my calendar for Canada. I was so relieved that the higher up attendees looked at the rules and decided that we would postpone the meeting. I was so anxious about getting stuck in quarantine/beong ill while so far from home. Hoping everything goes smoothly for you add that maybe your company comes to their senses.
Myself, I'm a bit torn - the trip is to a part of Canada near where I have immediate family I haven't seen in two years. So my plan has been to spend a week at the work site, and then a week visiting family. But... if the numbers keep climbing, I'm not sure what I'll do. And, I have no clue how the company will handle things if any of us pop positive with any of the tests. They have made it clear they want us all vaccinated (it makes crossing the border _much_ easier), but with delta the chances of being asymptomatic and positive seem worse, so we might end up with a positive test without any clue or indication that we had it...
I’ve been commenting lately that our new area is still roughly 80/20 masks/no masks in stores. I went to Home Depot by our old house (which closes on Wednesday!) and it was more like 20/80. Unsurprisingly, this afternoon, I saw a tweet that said could now qualifies as substantial spread (> 50 cases per 100,000 population).
I know we’ve said it a bazillion times, but the roll back combined with delta… bad.
Side note, working in the regulatory realm, I see this a lot. “We don’t have a problem with XYZ anymore, we should get rid of the requirements for XYZ.” And I have to bang my head on the desk to with industry that maybe, just maybe, we don’t have a problem because IT WORKS.
I’ve been commenting lately that our new area is still roughly 80/20 masks/no masks in stores. I went to Home Depot by our old house (which closes on Wednesday!) and it was more like 20/80. Unsurprisingly, this afternoon, I saw a tweet that said could now qualifies as substantial spread (> 50 cases per 100,000 population).
I know we’ve said it a bazillion times, but the roll back combined with delta… bad.
Side note, working in the regulatory realm, I see this a lot. “We don’t have a problem with XYZ anymore, we should get rid of the requirements for XYZ.” And I have to bang my head on the desk to with industry that maybe, just maybe, we don’t have a problem because IT WORKS.
I hadn’t been paying attention to the levels of spread definitions because I live in Florida, so I just assume “insane.”
When I saw the 50 per 100K in your post, I was like well, we were there last week and doubled that this week at over 100 per 100K per day. Yeah…it is 50 per 100K per WEEK. Sob.
Post by bookqueen15 on Jul 31, 2021 21:49:24 GMT -5
Add me to the boat of those who are so frustrated with where we're at right now. I had finally last month felt comfortable booking a flight for early September to visit my Dad (who has Alzheimer's) and now I am not sure about flying anymore. So upsetting because I haven't seen him in two years. I am not sure even remembers me now but I feel really need to see him. And my step-mom, who is having a hard time dealing with it all and I am hoping seeing her and talking about next steps in person with her will help, since she's not a great communicator otherwise. This just really sucks. And of course I'm in Florida, where it's only going to get worse.
Deja vu…. Last summer, all the crowded event = supershreader judgement. Then, the vaccination and such seemed to mean discomfort with crowds wasn’t really needed anymore. I know, when I was out for the 4th of July, I commented to my friends that a year ago we would have called this a super spreader event.
And, end of July, we are talking super spreader events again.
Tweet with picture from Lolapalooza, and comments: I am certain that #healthcareworkers look at this picture of #lalapalooza with utter shock, extreme frustration, exhaustion.
We are in a #COVID19 pandemic folks. Lots of letters left in Greek alphabet. #DeltaVariant is laughing at us. Microbe
Post by Velar Fricative on Aug 1, 2021 8:57:37 GMT -5
Yeesh. I’m not concerned at all about outdoor transmission but the exception was always super crowded outdoor crowds where people remain stationary and unmasked. Lollapalooza looks like it satisfies those criteria, not to mention add bar crawling and such that is inevitably occurring.
To get myself less anxious, I’m going to start calculating how many cases we see each day using the estimates from the CDC about how many FV people per day are getting infected. We have no other denominators, and recent numbers are more telling than anything else now that almost anyone who wanted to get vaccinated is FV. CDC said an average of 5K FV people have been getting infected each day lately. We are at over 75k cases per day right now sooooo that helps put things in perspective for me and makes me less worried. Not entirely unworried, but less so. I’m sticking with what I’m doing, the most important thing being not voluntarily hanging around with UV people.
I have tickets to 4 different concerts/shows over the next 2 months, and 3 football games this fall. I am also supposed to start ushering at a theater again soon. I wonder if any/all of that will change?
Lolla required either proof of vaccination or negative test within 72 hours. My concern with the testing requirements has always been, unless you strictly isolate between your test and the event, you could have caught it in the meantime and your negative test means nothing. We also know now that vaxxed people can spread Delta. The pictures of those crowds make me nervous. They did start requiring masks in indoor spaces at Lolla but frankly I think they should be required outdoors as well there for how crammed in everyone is.
Lolla required either proof of vaccination or negative test within 72 hours. My concern with the testing requirements has always been, unless you strictly isolate between your test and the event, you could have caught it in the meantime and your negative test means nothing. We also know now that vaxxed people can spread Delta. The pictures of those crowds make me nervous. They did start requiring masks in indoor spaces at Lolla but frankly I think they should be required outdoors as well there for how crammed in everyone is.
I thought I linked the thread from the public health person quote tweeting it. Oops…
but, apparently, it *was* going to be 24 hours but then they changed it to 72 hours. And there was music festival in Europe that used 40 hours, and that still led to 1000 cases. I would go so far as saying it’s not catching it in between, but testing before a test would be positive. Testing hours before you could spread, something like that.
“We cannot say that all these people were infected at the festival itself,” said Utrecht health board spokesperson, Lennart van Trigt. “It could also be possible that they’ve been infected while travelling to the festival or in the evening before going to the festival or having an after-party.”
Negative tests were accepted from as far back as 40 hours prior to the event, which health officials now recognise was too lengthy an interval. “We should have had a 24 hour [period],” said van Trigt. People were also granted COVID-safe entry passes for the festival as soon as they were vaccinated, neglecting the amount of time it takes to build immunity following a vaccine.
I really miss live music and festivals. So much. I want it to work, but it’s just not
I just so frustrated and unsure of what to do. Looks like my office is pushing back our return to the office date which I’m thankful for.
As a Fed we haven’t really heard anything from our agency about Biden’s announcement this week and I’m super interested in how this will work/play out.
As for masks I’ve just been wearing my cloth one for running to the store but will look for something else if I’m going to have to be inside more. A friend did recommend this co. for masks: www.armbrustusa.com/
These are the masks I use every day at work. I have been even more careful since I had COVID and decided to switch to disposable masks for my own peace of mind/paranoia. I find them very comfortable overall and I've tried that test, which I don't know actually means much, of trying to blow out a flame with it on and I could not. I like the colors and the fit, so I also recommend them to people.
wildrice, I have a few concerts coming up, too. 😬😬😬
A concert and four races between now and October 31. All outdoor, but two of the races require shuttle busses. 😬
At this point...if the event is still on, I'm still going. I think. But omg if my October race is canceled I'm going to cry so many goddamn salty angry tears.
I've noticed in our area there seems to be a racial component to the masking I'm seeing...white folks are largely not masking anymore, black people are. Obviously not universal, but noticable difference.
Edit- Doh, forgot I was catching up on last week's post. Go to the new week ppl!