@nebish Just an iteration that the virus ain't going away just yet.  I'm not aware of the vax stats here on the HTN site, but I meet people every day who need reminding and goading.  Our little county had more new cases this week than they had at this time last year.  6 month after the Presidential election, this remains a political ... football.  I know folks who are more interested in seeing Biden fail to reach his vaccine-quota target than their own health.  Southern obstinance at play here.  I have actually been attending small-scale outdoor events and dining in restaurants.  I'm about to shrink back into my lair for a while.

Posted by: @rusty

@nebish Just an iteration that the virus ain't going away just yet.  I'm not aware of the vax stats here on the HTN site, but I meet people every day who need reminding and goading.  Our little county had more new cases this week than they had at this time last year.  6 month after the Presidential election, this remains a political ... football.  I know folks who are more interested in seeing Biden fail to reach his vaccine-quota target than their own health.  Southern obstinance at play here.  I have actually been attending small-scale outdoor events and dining in restaurants.  I'm about to shrink back into my lair for a while.

All we really control is ourselves.

Humans...Americans...are funny creatures.  People are going to do what they want.  There are always going to be groups of people who won't do what maybe is right for them, is best for them, is best for all of us.  We can't control it.  I don't worry about things I can't control.  There are people who are not vaccinated that are at great risk, I take the position as that doctor in your AL article.  She's ultimately more compassionate than me, but these people who are getting sick and asking for vaccine while in a hospital, it's too late - tough.  Somebody made a bad choice and now they might have a bad outcome. 

I tell everyone I know who is not vaccinated that I think everyone should get the vaccine (unless they have natural immunity through prior infection).  But I also acknowledge, people will make their own decisions.  I'm not going to disown friends and family that have chosen not to get vaccinated.  I did what I thought was best, they can do their own thing.  I was just with a very good unvaccinated friend last night working in the garage together.  Never once did I think about covid or vaccination status of him or myself. 

I'm not going to tell people what to do because I don't want people telling me what to do.  I got vaccinated because I thought it was the best way to protect myself and live a closer to normal life.  And so far it has worked.  Those who aren't vaccinated, what will be will be.  I can't control it and don't think I should control it either.  People going to do what people going to do.

My "Health Department district" is my rural county and three other much smaller populated counties adjacent to here. Of that population base, 85% of people 65 and over are vaccinated, the overall under 65 number is 38%. Just waiting for Delta to start ripping through the entire district. We're a "rural Missouri" waiting to happen. 

I've said this before but if people are only gambling with their own lives and want to take their chances, more power to them. Do whatever you want. The problem is that you are endangering the lives of others if you choose not to be vaccinated. 

And to say this thing is over is pure folly. Here in Chicago they are already talking about reinstituting restrictions again. That is going to suck. I actually had to have my temperature taken today before I could enter a building.

And Lollapalooza is here next weekend. People coming from all over the country. Is this not a potential breeding ground?

We've certainly made progress since mid-2020, but the pandemic is definitely not behind us. Yes, those in ICUs are mostly unvaxxed, but other countries are still behind the US in distributing vaccines (I can't believe the Olympics are actually going to happen in Japan of all places). Even in here in south Florida, which was able to "re-open" sooner than a lot of other states, it's still very present. Cases are back up, there are still masks, even though they aren't mandated, and I'm certainly not seeing international travel back up. I have friend in other countries who haven't been able to cross borders. I was in NYC this past weekend and it's certainly present, and will be even more of a concern across northern regions as Fall and Winter hit and the vaxxes' longevity are put to the test.

Seems like the very people who were complaining about their liberties being infringed upon a year ago are the same people who are holding up the recovery. People can choose to not get a vaccine, but they should be surprised when that choice excludes them from certain places. It's ignorant stubbornness, not wanting to be told what to do even though someone influenced them to make an irrational decision.

It’s a darn shame - big crowds last wknd at Yankee Stadium as there always are for Sox - same thing tonite at Dodger Stadium for the SF finale, & at Fenway for 1st of 4 w/NY - they had 50G plus for the 1st 3 games in LA, the 4 NY games are sellouts, as always……

how great to have the return to normalcy - but yes, soon enough I suppose…..back to the shutdowns/restrictions, & cavernous empty stadiums & artificial crowd noise as we endure another round of vaccinations/masking/distancing efforts…..

Do you see the headlines? Pick one, 98.5%, 97%, 99%. Those are the percentages from this past week of the unvaccinated people currently hospitalized for covid. I am never going to worry if I have a 1.5% or 3% or 1% chance of having a breakthrough infection and getting hospitalized. Chances are way better that if I happen to have a breakthrough infection I won't even know it. 

The virus could further mutate as it has available hosts and perhaps our vaccines will be less effective against future mutations. We can't know. This thing is going to be with us, I just accept it for what it is just as I accept the fact that people are t always going to do what any of us want them to do. It is what it is. It's life. Things don't always work out the way we want. 

@nebish so you do still think about it 😉

Vaccines have certainly allowed many of us to get back to our lives without acting like everyone around us is radioactive, but I'm not planning a trip to Italy anytime soon. Life is more normal for the vaccinated, but COVID is still in my thoughts several times a day - even if it's just reflexive. I have very little sympathy for those who don't take care of themselves or have little regard for those around them. All we can do is continue to get accurate information to the ignorant.

@porkchopbob so you do read my posts 😉 

In my minute-to-minute / day-to-day life I really do not think about it.  But yes, I am aware of news because it is simply hard to escape even if one wants to narrow their scope on what to read and watch.

I make an flippant comment like that because that is how much confidence I have in the vaccines.  The vaccines are the answer!  I wish everyone saw it that way, but they don't...and won't, and on we go.

Meanwhile, in Savannah, GA - the Mayor has reinstated the mask mandate effective immediately.

If you haven't been vaccinated - and especially if you just refuse to do so - know that you are a willing and active spreader.

If you're okay with this at least have the human decency to stay out of society.

I just found out a good friend of mine who had told me she was vaccinated lied to me. Multiple times. She got a fake COVID card from a friend of hers. Never got a shot. I was livid. She's always been kinda flaky but to endanger the lives of your friends and people you care about?

It's a federal offense to use a fake covid card - turn her in ... 🤨 

@sang 

You may have seen this on the local news but the FBI is supposedly involved with this sort of thing at Lollapalooza. Anyone caught buying or selling a fake card will be prosecuted. 

Regarding my friend, I don't even know why she would do this. There is no place where she would need to prove anything anyway. I've had my card for almost five months and I've never had to show it to anyone. Been to four baseball games and they don't ask.

I was just pissed at my friend for taking such a cavalier attitude toward the whole thing. Interestingly, the people I know who of (or think I do) that won't get vaccinated all work in the service industry. As in, they are servers and bartenders working with the public. How the hell they can get away with it is beyond me.

My wife just told me her colleague refuses to get shots. The company said fine. We aren't firing you but until you get vaccinated you can't come into the building.

I'm with Rusty. You don't want a shot? Stay home.

@lee That sucks, and is kind of bizarre. Not sure what her motivations were. Maybe over-compensating her own lie.

I have a good friend who is a medical professional, was working in an ICU in NYC all last Spring until her next assignment in Montreal started last Summer. She was exhausted, watched people die as she and her colleagues traded long, exhausting, heart-breaking shifts. Now she is stuck across the border and misses her family.

Meanwhile, her idiot boyfriend was anti-vax, even though he has kids and works onsite. He revealed that he got into a car with my friend's sister after getting a positive COVID test (that later turned out to be a false positive, but he didn't know that at the time).

I just don't get the chances people are taking. The same people who didn't want to wear masks, which allowed people to go out in safety, are the same people who don't want to get vaxxed. This is how we move forward, it's selfishness. During WWII people at home in the US sacrificed all kind of things, but today people can't take a needle in the arm for the sake of their neighbors. And to what purpose? So they feel like aren't being told what to do? False sense of "liberty"? Someone told them not to take the vaxx, you can't get more "sheeple" than doing something against your own health and desire.

Posted by: @porkchopbob

@lee That sucks, and is kind of bizarre. Not sure what her motivations were. Maybe over-compensating her own lie.

selfishness. During WWII people at home in the US sacrificed all kind of things

This is totally off topic I guess but since you mentioned WWII I have War Ration Books from both sides of my family. There is even one for my mom who was just a toddler or little girl at the time. I guess they could get milk, sugar, coffee, etc. I asked my mom about it and she didn't recall. I still have unredeemed stamps that I guess people turned in. I can't imagine. 

I have just returned from taking my little old auntie to the grocery store.  She has a neighbor - almost as old, but one of those types who insist on spewing her personal political dogma and rhetoric - one of those who espouse personal responsibility - yet will not spring for her own automobile (and yes, she could afford to do so).  Out of kindness, we take her to the grocery store with us.  Locally, our numbers are jumping back up to where they were a year ago.  We had two deaths just yesterday.  I am near-digressing and I haven't even started my rant yet.

I have a dear old friend (I've written here about him many times) who still refuses to get the vaccine.  I told him (via telephone) yesterday that I hope he has politely removed himself from society (he has tickets for a King Crimson show in Atlanta - KC fans, beware!).  I told him that if his stoopidity and obstinance lead him to a ventilator - then, ultimately to death, that I will speak in very negative terms of him at his funeral.  I mean this.

At the grocery (jump back to paragraph #1), auntie and I wear masks, even though we are both vaccinated.  We do this as per the advice of SCIENTISTS.   We choose to ignore the bullshit that comes from so many politicians and uneducated/uncaring public who take their marching orders from FOX News.  We also do this out of respect to the staff at the grocery store and to set positive examples for anybody with an ounce of sense who might be watching.

Here's my rant:  Truth be told - I'm sick of those who simply will not take any action of their own to help eliminate this virus that has taken three of my friends.  From here on out I encourage all of those who will not vaccinate to please - PLEASE get together and have a big slobbering love-fest with each other.  Let's get this herd thinned out as soon as possible so that those of us who actually give a damn can get back to society as it once was.  

@rusty 

I understand your frustration, Rusty, and completely agree with the suggestion in your last paragraph.  

What I find most frustrating is the continued ignorance surrounding this vaccination and the misinformation people seem to gobble up by the spoonful simply because they're told this gibberish by their cell phone or some nut on Fox News.  

Fox News is not alone in skewed news reporting - for instance, a CNN story is headlined “UK covid rate is plummeting & no one knows why”

point being, what is accurate & inaccurate information, being reported by whom, taking what particular slant etc….

recently, a covid breakout was reported on Cape Cod - also, an MLB game was ppd b/c of covid

& finally, the end of normalcy is imminent b/c of reported surges of various variants/mutations etc

will say, the source of all this info is my  phone - so again, who knows….l’m sure it’s a difficult thing to pinpoint medically, making it hard to report on accurately….

😀😁sure enjoy the return to normalcy!! (while it’s here?😮🤷🏽🌅⛰🚴

I just found out something terrible yesterday morning. We went to breakfast at our normal Sunday place and our waitress Jean told us something awful. She asked if we knew Jose, the busboy guy. Yeah, we know him.

His 26-year old daughter just died because of COVID. AND she was 6 months pregnant and the baby couldn't be saved. She had refused to get vaccinated. I had a few thoughts on this. 

Some confusion, some anger. Why would you not get vaccinated? I think more importantly, if you were anti-vaccine, why the hell would you get pregnant and endanger the life of an unborn child? That's where the anger comes in. 

This poor guy. 😟 

@lee Such a sad story - so sorry to even read of this.  Most all of the "reasons" for not seeking and getting vaccinations are starting to sound like excuses.  Pretty lame excuses, at that.  I get the apprehension of having a substance or drug put into your body, but that fear is turning into more of a phobia.  Most all of the people in my circle have now been vaccinated.  I have yet to see any grow a tail, start speaking Chinese or develop any post-symptom more serious than a sniffle or sore arm.  In my own lifetime, I have seen several diseases virtually erased from human culture.  The world became a safer place following each.

Beating a dead horse here, but at least in the part of the world where I live the refusal to get vaccinated still falls hard on political party lines.  I'm talking about some folks whom I love when I say this - there are people more interested in making the current administration look bad -even at the risk of their own sickness or death.  People I know and love.

All of these types have somehow chosen to ignore the fact that their fearless leaders (Trump, McConnell, Graham, Paul - the entire GOP cast) pretty much knocked women and children out of their ways on the way to the life boats.  All of those people took the vaccine early on.

Not to pick on the Republicans (I am a fierce and loyal independent free-thinker) - but specific members of their flock (Governors DeSatan (FL) and Simp (GA) play masking mandates and vaccination as threats to their state's economies.  The actual truth is that Covid is KILLING our economy - state by state and nationally.  We will only heal and recover when we do so as a nation.

A pandemic should never be made into a political issue.  There are plenty of debatable issues and problems out there to fight and disagree over.  Wiping out Covid just should not be one of them.

Peace.

R

Edited:  changed FL/GA Gov's issues as seeing vaccination and masking mandates as threats to economies.  My boner.

That's a rough story for sure.  It's hard to understand other people's choices.  Lots of sad outcomes from this, over 600,000 actually.  And it goes on...

I still have very high confidence level in the vaccines.  Maybe someday the effectiveness will fade or a variant will be able to penetrate with more bad outcomes.

We're all just trying to live, some decisions are obviously better than others.

@rusty 

Unfortunately Rusty it is a political issue. And I don't necessarily mean the guy that used to live in The White House.

I saw some guy from California saying they will never close any of these things down. It might have been the governor. He was pretty much militant about it.

This hit too close to home and I didn't even know the young lady who died. I just know her dad. But an unborn baby? My God. Again, why get pregnant before (for the most part) vaccines were even available? I was one of the first people in Chicago to get one and that wasn't even until the first of March. She was pregnant by then. 

@lee To digress, pregnancy happens.  Condoms, IUDs, sponges - even pills fail on occasion.  If there is a group of people whom I could understand not getting the vaccine it would be pregnant women.  Without being a doctor or scientist, I still believe the vaccine to be safe ... but I am at no risk of becoming pregnant.  

Posted by: @rusty

@lee To digress, pregnancy happens.  Condoms, IUDs, sponges - even pills fail on occasion.  If there is a group of people whom I could understand not getting the vaccine it would be pregnant women.  Without being a doctor or scientist, I still believe the vaccine to be safe ... but I am at no risk of becoming pregnant.  

Well aware of that, I'm not 14 years old. 🙄 Still difficult if you try not to. 

Regarding you getting pregnant, who knows, Arnold Schwarzenegger got pregnant in a movie so don't sell yourself short. 😉 If Hollywood can make it happen...

I flew from Chicago to Detroit where I am from for the weekend. We went to a few places and I noticed a lot of people and nobody wore masks. In Illinois you have to wear them all the time. I can barely walk out my front door and you need one on. Buses, trains, stores, bars, restaurants. Pretty much everywhere. We went to a handful of restaurants and bars. None of the staff was masked. Went to a Tigers game, same thing. 

I guess I might think differently about this because they got strict again in Chicago specifically and all of Illinois now but I was surprised.

So in conversation, I asked my teenage nephew if he was eligible for his shot. He just shrugged and played on his phone (he is a teenager). I mentioned getting my booster shot soon. I asked my brother if they were going to get their booster shots. He's like, what booster shot? None of us are vaccinated. I was floored. They all got COVID. I just assumed they would have gotten shots and none of them have. 

I'm sure I have been exposed to a lot of people that won't get a vaccine. We probably all have. Had I known this I sure as hell wouldn't have gone there. Today I am just kind of pissed.  

Went to a clinic today to take a COVID test. They refused my health insurance and wanted $240. I was just doing this to help and be nice. $240 because you don't accept my insurance plan?

So you can get vaccinated pretty much anywhere for free but you have to pay to get tested. My wife had to get tested to go back to work or she couldn't work. She showed me the document showing negative. How on earth are poor people supposed to come up with $240 just so they can get back to work?

Yeah, that makes sense.

@lee

Health Insurance is messed up. My brother lives in Spain and tried explaining In-Network and Out-of-Network insurance plans or whatever and no one could believe it was true. But there are plenty of places you can still get a free test rather than go to a clinic, which is probably why clinics charge you for it and insurance won't pay for it.

You could shop that testing price.  I have seen prices advertised like $75 for rapid test and $125 for PCR. You may also find a place that accepts insurance for testing.  Or you should contact your insurance and make sure that covid testing is covered or is there a copay or does it go towards deductible and what not.  Just to know. 

That place you went might not accept insurance because insurance wouldn't give them full rate, insurance would give them some fraction of that and they must have enough "business" to refuse it and force cash/credit payment instead at full rate.

You said you were getting tested to "help and be nice", what does that mean?  I know you said that you were with unvaccinated family...are you feeling ill or do you have reason to believe you have been infected?

Out here in the burbs there are numerous drive thru testing sites, and Walgreens and CVS have offered free tests and vaccines.

Posted by: @nebish

 

You said you were getting tested to "help and be nice", what does that mean?  

Helping humanity is the quick answer. I wouldn't want to infect someone. Hope that makes sense. Help the situation we are all in. I guess be nice was kind of an odd comment.

Regarding the insurance comments, I know how it works. A lot of health care providers only accept (and don't accept) various insurance companies. Heck I had to switch hospitals a few years ago because they changed who they would accept. I had to switch hospitals, my own doctors, a different healthcare plan, etc.

Wasn't trying to start anything about our healthcare system.

I'm just shocked that this shouldn't be 100% free. I can afford the $240 but really. Not free?