Daily Check-in

[starwatcher]

 
This is your check-in post for today. The poll will be open from midnight Universal or Zulu Time (8pm Eastern Time) on Wednesday, February 9th, to midnight on Thursday, February 10th (8pm Eastern Time).

Poll #26633 Daily Check-in

This poll is closed.
Open to: Access List, detailed results viewable to: Access List, participants: 30

How are you doing?

I am OK.
24 (80.0%)

I am not OK, but don't need help right now.
6 (20.0%)

I could use some help.
0 (0.0%)

How many other humans live with you?

I am living single.
13 (44.8%)

One other person.
12 (41.4%)

More than one other person.
4 (13.8%)

Please, talk about how things are going for you in the comments, ask for advice or help if you need it, or just discuss whatever you feel like.
 

Comments

[ratcreature]

The good news is that my city has had falling cases for about a week, so it looks like we might be actually over the omicron peak, though the case numbers are still scarily high. And I'm so tired of the demand by some to drop restrictions (like masks and vaccination passes) already, because some people want it to be more "normal" again despite the fact that cases only just have begun to drop a little from the worst.

Even if some avoid activities because they now involve extra hassle, I bet the number of people like me, who only do anything because there are mitigations is as high or higher. So once those go, it's less normal for them.

It's really baffling that some still are at the "we'll just pretend there isn't an infectious disease and everything will be ok again" point. Even if you think that eventually more vulnerable or just risk-averse people won't keep up their caution either, you can't actually force anyone to get used to a new risk faster.

[starwatcher]

Agree 1000%. Why is on the sensible, vaxxed, mask-wearing people to make accommodations? "Freedom" does not mean "free from consequences". If they don't want to get vaxxed or masked, fine... but the consequence is that they don't get to mingle with the rest of us without proving they're safe. The old saying goes, "Your freedom to swing your fist ends at my nose," but they absolutely refuse to recognize the existence of anyone else's nose. Grrr...

[ratcreature]

And then they seem to get angry even when they "win" with the official measures, but it still won't feel normal because a lot of people remain afraid and cautious when infections are high. You can't force people to mingle in a plague miasma (well not outside the workplace anyway).

I mean, sure, eventually we habituate to pretty much everything, but not without changing our behaviors to cope. Like, if there were sudden ACME anvils falling regularly from the sky, rooftop flats sure would loose a lot of value unless their roofs were made anvil proof, and sturdy covered walkways would become a really desirable feature, even if every now and then you'd have to risk dashing about while looking out for sky anvils anyway. That would only stop once the whole anvil situation was back to a freak occurrence and you don't see falling anvils hitting stuff all the time. Though I guess there actually would be people who also would argue to just ignore the anvils anyway too.

[starwatcher]

Yes, yes, and "HELL, yes!" I always knew that common sense wasn't very common, but too many people seem to be deliberately shedding IQ points as a point of pride. I literally can't wrap my head around it. How can they not understand that this disease can [a] kill and/or [b] leave you with some sort of disability for years, if not life? I don't stand in the middle of a busy intersection if there's "only" a 0.1% chance of getting hit by a car... so why is it all good if there's "only" a 0.1% chance that Covid will get them. Truly, I'm baffled.

[ratcreature]

I kind of resigned myself that there now will be a new life risk from disease to calculate into activities, because we failed to stamp covid out early on. But that can be made more or less awful by the public health measures.

And people should be familiar with having to put up with mildly annoying things because of diseases. It's like having to think about tick bites with outside activities, particularly in certain areas and in certain seasons, and use repellant and check yourself etc. so you are less likely to overlook a lyme disease tick that could be fairly harmless or could lead to bad disease. And get the tick encephalitis vaccination if that's in your area. It's all annoying, but at least we don't make things worse by intentionally dropping bags of diseased ticks into backyards for tick feeding parties and letting them suck blood for long rather than pulling them out or demand that people don't put on insect repellent. Instead they do health campaigns about ticks and afaik nobody is in a culture war about ticks (except maybe about chronic lyme disease).

I get that airborne diseases are even more inconvenient than water or vector borne things, but the more infrastructure and public health measures you have to reduce the disease overall the less you have to do tedious personal stuff constantly, whether that's more air filters and ventilation and vaccines or sanitation or whatever.

I'm really angry with this kind of defeatist attitude of "well, diseases are always going to kill and disable some people", no matter that this is plainly something that we have worked against quite successfully or we still would have sky high child mortality and death by dysentery everywhere.

Only the completely unhinged conspiracy theorists are worse, but unfortunately there's apparently also a pandemic of internet brain worms.