Daily Check-In

[mecurtin]

This is your check-in post for today. The poll will be open from midnight Universal or Zulu Time (8pm Eastern Time) on Thursday, June 16th, to midnight on Friday, June 17th (8pm Eastern Time).

Poll #27141 Daily check-in poll

This poll is closed.
Open to: Access List, detailed results viewable to: Access List, participants: 33

How are you doing?

I am OK
25 (78.1%)

I am not OK, but don't need help right now
7 (21.9%)

I could use some help
0 (0.0%)

How many other humans live with you?

I am living single
12 (36.4%)

One other person
15 (45.5%)

More than one other person
6 (18.2%)

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]

I hate it so much that now all the risk evaluation has been pushed onto the individual. I really don't want to get sick and risk long covid, even though so many seem to be resigned that everyone will get it anyway, and get reinfected multiple times?? I have this small hope that maybe we'll get to a state of regular or better boosters (currently I'm not yet eligible for a second booster here, but hope they open that up towards autumn) with eventually declining prevalence or something, that would mean I could just not get sick at all with this thing.

But on the other hand, if it just stays like this indefinitely, then there's really not much point in postponing things. For example I would really like to go on vacation somewhere. The last time I went anywhere was 2018. And I could afford going somewhere (even taking more precautions at a higher expense -- like pre-plague I liked staying in youth hostels for travel both for company while traveling alone and for saving money, but clearly dorms are a really risky option now), but travel still feels quite risky to me.

[kathmandu]

Right there with you on the hating that risk evaluation has been pushed onto us each individually. Precautions ditto.

I'm putting some hope on the projects to develop nasal-spray vaccines. The experts say that nasal vaccines can get much closer to complete protection, because they cause the immune response to be more concentrated in the lining of the breathing passages, the exact place where the virus first touches down. If you can stamp it out there before it gets to invade any cells, then you don't get infected.

But mainly it's looking like masks everywhere I go for the foreseeable future, which as you say puts some severe limits on where we can go and under what circumstances we can stay overnight. Sigh.

ETA: "Indefinite" is a big part of what makes it so frustrating and hard to plan. But there is also lots of evidence that applying serious air filtration can clean a lot of the virus out of indoor air, greatly reducing the danger. Hospitals already have this kind of thing, especially in ICUs, and experiments with adding air cleaning devices in schools have significantly reduced contagion. So to the extent that gets adopted, we could have safer prospects for being in buildings with other people. I'm mentioning it because it's a prospect for improvement that's independent of vaccine research or individual precautions.

[ratcreature]

Yeah, fingers crossed for second generation vaccines. And here some places have been improving ventilation, like when I went to my dentist this week the reminder letter for my regular cleaning explained that they now have installed air filtration in all treatment rooms. And they improved the air conditioning in busses and the metro anti viral filters.

I'm also sticking with my mask indoors for now and try to resist the herd instinct. Even though for example this week in my language course I was the only one. Last week one other student was still wearing one too, but I guess he gave up. And the infection numbers have gotten worse this week compared to last. At least nobody yet complained about the open windows despite the street traffic noise.

One thing I worry about with travel is the food situation. I've been avoiding restaurants and such, because you can't mask when you eat, and eating outside isn't always an option. Then there's the risk of getting sick while away from home, and I'm traveling on my own too.

I sometimes wonder whether I'm too neurotic, but then I consider how hard it still is to judge the real risk of long term complications, and that nobody has good treatments fir long covid yet, and it feels prudent to try to avoid infection with this thing.

I think, I might risk a few day trips or such maybe, to help being fed up with my apartment, rather than taking a real vacation.

Mods: I will be going off-line for about a week.

[kathmandu]

I'm going to visit my mother, who had surgery recently. I won't be checking in again until about 6/28.

(This is a flying trip. Only one leg, and I plan to wear an N-95 mask the entire time, from leaving my house to arriving at hers. I'm a big fan of the 3M Aura 9205+ model because they have lots of padding across the nose and they're easy to breathe through. I use paper tape to hold the lower edge of the mask snug against my jaw, so it doesn't leak. Best I can do for making sure *all* my breath gets filtered through the mask.)

I'm scared about the travel risks. But Mom is really looking forward to seeing me.

Re: Mods: I will be going off-line for about a week.

[ratcreature]

Good luck for staying plague free while traveling!