(no subject)

[olivermoss]

My county is likely re-opening and losing almost all restrictions right around the time I am fully vaccinated, which is 2 weeks after the second shot. I keep reminding myself of the immunity timeline because part of my brain is all 'have had shot, can just shove by the asshole in the grocery store blocking the aisle?' The two closest grocery stores to me are a bit tight in places. Neither interior layout should have been approved per ADA rules, they both got exceptions.

Anyway, that is going to be weird. I am going to have a haircut and an appointment to see if there is a structural reason for my tinnitus!

We shouldn't be re-opening quite this soon. We'll re-open when we hit 70% of adults vaccinated when the herd immunity guideline is 70% of people, and kids count as people, too.

But fairly soon I could maybe go on a hike? Weird ...

Comments

[mistressofmuses]

My county is reopening in four days, and I think it's *way* too soon. And a bunch of places (like the "god, guns, and flags" bar/restaurant a couple doors down from my office) have just kind of decided that they don't want staff to wear masks anymore, so they don't.

Statewide we're under 50% who have gotten one dose, and under 40% who are fully vaccinated. I don't know our specific county numbers, but I imagine they're maybe slightly higher than that, but not likely by a lot. But the county is basing the decision on hospitalization rates alone. (It's good those are low, but I want them to stay that way!)

I will be considered fully protected the day after we reopen, so I'm not super worried for me. But I was absolutely stalking appointment sites to get the ones I did, and so even a lot of other people in the general population who were eager to get vaxxed couldn't get appointments until after that, so aren't fully protected yet.

It isn't that I'm not looking forward to being able to do things "normally"... I just really don't want to risk rushing it and having rates spike again.

[olivermoss]

I am also going to be fully done pretty much as soon as we re-open and I spent hours securing that appointment. And I don't have to worry about time off from work in case I am sick after. I should be set, but this is going to suck for a lot of people. But also a year of isolation is a lot.

We are in better shape, but it's too soon. Comcast... err... our governor is losing a lot of support over reclosing our small businesses while continuing to give churches an exemption. With the cultural divides here, that was a big deal.

The more I realize how much filming was done during the pandemic the more I think about how it would have been possible to carry one if we had better structure, organization, and, yanno, no fucking anti-maskers. None of this needed to be anywhere as bad as it was. I'm just sitting here with a vague memory of states securing PPE and some literally being stolen by the federal government and ... what happened with that? So many things need a follow up.

[mistressofmuses]

Honestly, I feel like even one extra week would be safer in terms of more people having full protection. But I guess the people who are concerned will still take precautions, and hopefully the people who are both anti-vax and anti-mask don't endanger too many others.

Right? I'm still SO frustrated every time I think about the ways in which things could have been... not fucked up. If we'd had useable infrastructure and a general willingness for people to NOT be assholes. But the shitheads who decided it was about politics and "owning the libs" made it fucking impossible. But right? Like... I remember the governor of CO obtaining PPE in secret from overseas, and it being a whole thing about him not revealing it until after the fact, because the federal government might have seized it... Like what the fuck WAS that shit?

[olivermoss]

Also, how many people know or even really care that it takes two weeks after the final jab to count as 'fully vaxxed'? I mean, I have a hard enough time reminding myself I'm not good to go yet, after tomorrow that'll be harder.

I pretty sure that in New Jersey or something that state's PPE purchase was stolen.

It's still weird to me. The demographic that is usually the most scared by SARS and the like really did not react the way I expected. From like Jan to ... March? April? A lot of things about this played out generally as I expected based on news, etc ... but then the sheer weirdness of the Trump era kicked in and just ... damn...

Also now I keep hearing 'no one saw this coming!' and I'm like ... lots of people saw this coming. We had an uncontrolled outbreak with confirmed travel to the whole world within certain time periods. I bought the biggest thing of toilet paper I ever had back in like mid-Jan. I was stocked on foods weeks before Escapade in Feb. I've never prepped my place for a pandemic before. Escapade also had measures in place for an oncoming pandemic. Large companies and events were clearly making moves.

I don't blame individuals for not realizing what was coming because the news is always 'end of the world', 'we all gunna die', 'are we dead and just don't know it'? But like the authority figures and organizations we should look to clearly did know and I feel like saying 'no one knew' is failing to address the problem that lead to this, anti-intellactualism, lack of news accountability, and a failure of trust in institutions. Even Fox news was doing serious, calm reports about Covid early on, not the usual alarmist stuff, but like actual calm voice 'this is coming stuff'.

[mistressofmuses]

For real! Very few people seem to remember that it takes two weeks post-vax to get there. And yes, your immunity is ramping up that whole time, so you're probably pretty good before that, but also... you're super close! Don't jeopardize the year+ of caution for a couple extra days!

I think you're right that it was New Jersey. Though I feel like somewhere in the south may have had a similar issue? Man, there was a lot of fucked up shit that I'd almost forgotten happened. What the fuck.

Agreed. The way that people reacted (spurred certainly by misinformation, but also just... weird shit) was somehow both unsurprising (though only because everything else was made so weird and polarized) and bizarre.

All the "no one could have predicted this" stuff kind of makes me want to scream. Yes, NO ONE... except all the people who did? It's a huge disservice to the people who *were* predicting it, and who *were* trying to warn people, and who *had* been talking about global vulnerability to a pandemic of this scale. Just because too many of them were ignored at the start doesn't mean it was unpredictable. The situation WAS predictable and avoidable! We just failed!

Desensitization to news reports when everything is so over-sensationalized is understandable for individuals. But also yes: the scientific illiteracy, the idea that "every opinion is equally valid, so the CDC and commenter 'newworldorderexposed88' should be treated with equal weight", the fact that there was no penalty for officials deliberately lying in order to manipulate the fucking stock market, etc...

[olivermoss]

Yeah, again I don't blame any individual person. I had multiple life experiences that made me more able to understand the context of the news stories. I remember at our sister cons in Seattle people moving in to remove specific people right from the floor because the CDC was directly contact tracing certain people. At Pax the actual con board had to go in and grab people from a list of names because the CDC couldn't coordinate with the local LEOs fast enough. Like, this is what we did for milder SARS,yo. Knowing we were past the window on that being effective was a big deal. At my cons we had 'what if we get the call and have to, ourselves, walk up to possible infected people and physically remove them?' type discussions.

Also, like, for other SARS, MERS and other things I never took a giant packing box, stuck in it my main living area and stocked it with TP, medicine, broth powder and egg noodles. I did this because of experts and agencies. This is not normal behavior for me. Like the corollary of 'no one saw this coming' is that 'people who prepped in January were reactionary' and I swear, I've only done that once in my life.

People need to face that we did see this coming, but we had large scale failures in terms of news and proper government functioning.

[mistressofmuses]

I realize that both media and scientific literacy *aren't* things that everyone is good at or has had experience with, but damn do I wish people were on average better at both.

But oof, yeah, I hadn't really thought about previous con experiences and such with potential contagions, though of course those are super dangerous transmission points.

Ugh, yes, I have seen both of those attitudes together. The same people who claimed that any amount prep at the start was alarmist or reactionary... then are the ones who turn around and say "gosh, no one could have predicted..."

Yup! We saw it coming, we just reacted badly and fucked up!

[olivermoss]

We should be able to rely on the news so we don't need to track stuff ourselves, but the news has been a shitshow for a while. We had to change US laws to allow Fox news here. People are busy. News should be an aid in a busy world not ... the mess it is.

Yeah, I find the implications that me having prepared was me being alarmist very annoying. I feel like I've had very good level of alarm. I limited myself to checking Covid news for just a few minutes each day, and only once a day. The only exception being if the latest Medlife Crisis video was Covid related. No doomscrolling, no nothing.

[mistressofmuses]

I deeply wish we had news media that we could reasonably trust.

I agree - you had a very reasonable level of alarm! And healthy boundaries and response to the information available!

[sperrywink]

I can't decide if we are too soon or not. We are at about 69% vaccinated, I think, but that might include the "only one dose" people. Thankfully I don't go to beaches or what-have-you, but I would love to go to Broadway in the fall.

[olivermoss]

Yeah, it's a mess. I just keep looking at the TV and Movie industry and thinking 'yeah, controlling the spread is possible if people just act right'.