Coronavirus

[mikechamp]

AW:

It's easy to get exhausted/exasperated/frustrated with this whole thing, but we're still talking about something that is life or death.

For example, I spoke with a work colleague yesterday that lives in FL. He has a neighbor who is a flight attendant. The flight attendant said she has lost 5 fellow crew members recently (meaning, they died). All 5 were vaccinated and wearing masks while on the job. When I heard that, it confirmed to me that there's no way I'm getting on a flight for the rest of this year.

So, to your question about whether it matters if we're exposed to it twice a year or 4 times a year, it might matter a whole lot. Because if getting it is like roulette, how will we know which time our number will be called?

[Arthur Dent]

For example, I spoke with a work colleague yesterday that lives in FL. He has a neighbor who is a flight attendant. The flight attendant said she has lost 5 fellow crew members recently (meaning, they died). All 5 were vaccinated and wearing masks while on the job. When I heard that, it confirmed to me that there's no way I'm getting on a flight for the rest of this year.

I think you should be suspicious of this story, which, as you describe, has passed through several people before getting to you and does not give context about what rate the supposed 5 represent.

A quick Google shows a story of 1 flight attendant from Las Vegas who died of an apparent breakthrough case recently. Is this perhaps the story that became five deaths of Florida colleagues? I will also note that in this story the source of the information that the flight attendant was vaccinated was the mother and a colleague not medical records.

It would be more reliable to look at data rather than random anecdotes of unknown accuracy. For example, the CDC's count of COVID breakthrough deaths is ~2,000 total, the vast majority of retirement age. Your risk of dying of COVID after vaccination because you got on a plane is very low.

[cardinalkarp]

Note to self:

Do not believe anyone unless they say the vaccine is safe and effective.

[GeddyWrox]

Because 5th hand anecdotal "evidence" is just as bad as peer reviewed multi-phase clinical trials.

Good god. My eyes just rolled so hard I strained my corneas.

[InvincibleCakeEater]

Note to self:

Do not believe anyone unless they say the vaccine is safe and effective.

Pretty much, yes. There is no data that suggests otherwise.

[AWvsCBsteeeerike3]

AW:

It's easy to get exhausted/exasperated/frustrated with this whole thing, but we're still talking about something that is life or death.

For example, I spoke with a work colleague yesterday that lives in FL. He has a neighbor who is a flight attendant. The flight attendant said she has lost 5 fellow crew members recently (meaning, they died). All 5 were vaccinated and wearing masks while on the job. When I heard that, it confirmed to me that there's no way I'm getting on a flight for the rest of this year.

So, to your question about whether it matters if we're exposed to it twice a year or 4 times a year, it might matter a whole lot. Because if getting it is like roulette, how will we know which time our number will be called?

I’d disagree getting it is like roulette. It’s not like your immune system is going to spin a wheel and if it lands on green you get to live and if it lands on red you die. Your body is either going to fight off the virus or it isn’t. You have a role in how your immune system functions. Namely, a vaccine will help. But there is a ton of other things you can do to help your immune system. We talked about them ad nauseum.

Regardless, if your immune system can’t fight off covid, even after a vaccination, and even in an environment that is using hepa filters where everyone is wearing a mask, sad as it is to say, you’re probably not long for this world because -as this anecdote suggests- there’s really no way to avoid the virus outside complete isolation.

[sighyoung]

Your body is either going to fight off the virus or it isn’t. You have a role in how your immune system functions. Namely, a vaccine will help. But there is a ton of other things you can do to help your immune system. We talked about them ad nauseum.

Regardless, if your immune system can’t fight off covid, even after a vaccination, and even in an environment that is using hepa filters where everyone is wearing a mask, sad as it is to say, you’re probably not long for this world because -as this anecdote suggests- there’s really no way to avoid the virus outside complete isolation.

This thinking pretty much influenced by decisions about flu vaccines for myself and my late mother, and ultimately the COVID-19 vaccines.

I do have a colleague who has had a side effect from the COVID-19 vaccine: he developed pronounced tinnitus almost immediately, and now needs to wear earphones when not teaching to reduce the noise. Hopefully, that effect will go away eventually.

Still, since he and his wife both teach, and with young children at home, and since he travels to Romania to deal with his late mother's legal affairs in a region with a high death rate from the coronavirus, he needed to get it.

Speaking only for myself, I've needed to be vaccinated (for the flu and COVID-19) for a variety of reasons. I regularly work in public settings with dozens of people in the same room, and most surfaces (from door knobs to light switches to urinal flush levers) have been handled by dozens, if not hundreds, of people every day. My windows don't open to allow the fresh circulation of air because my university fears increased heating costs if they're left open during the winter. I volunteer in ways that expose me to the public periodically. My wife and I are in our late 50's--in good health, but at an increased risk for adverse effects from the coronavirus.

When my mother was alive, I had to make many of the same vaccination calculations because she sometimes had minor reactions to flu shots, particularly, alarming swelling around the injection site.

So for a few years, I didn't have her vaccinated, although I needed to be vaccinated for her protection. And when she developed COPD, I ensured that she was vaccinated, too, and she had no problems. I didn't expect complete immunity, but just hoped for enough protection to stave off pneumonia, which would have killed her.

And yes, by the end of her life, she had so many co-morbidities that her co-morbidities had co-morbidities, but I knew that if she caught COVID-19 that she would die, and she did die from it. I didn't see her for nine months until days before she died. That isolation likely extended her life for that period of time, but it was probably a miserable existence because of her dementia and confusion.

So I do think we all make those calculations based on relative risk to ourselves and others. For my life, I needed to be vaccinated.

[cardsfantx]

Man sigh; that’s so tough to read and I’m so sorry about that…

I wonder, in your opinion, is the 9 month isolation that was miserable, better by extending it? Or would no isolation, and she could’ve gotten it and died from it after just a month or so, but no isolation have been better?

That’s what I’m wondering, and struggle with, for our kids. Just look at this thread. If this stuff is getting passed onto our younger generation, we’re basically telling them, and letting them live in a life of constant fear and isolation.

I just wonder, is that worse than COVID? Once this passes (and it will pass), will an entire generation base their lives around fear?

[MrCrowesGarden]

Man sigh; that’s so tough to read and I’m so sorry about that…

I wonder, in your opinion, is the 9 month isolation that was miserable, better by extending it? Or would no isolation, and she could’ve gotten it and died from it after just a month or so, but no isolation have been better?

That’s what I’m wondering, and struggle with, for our kids. Just look at this thread. If this stuff is getting passed onto our younger generation, we’re basically telling them, and letting them live in a life of constant fear and isolation.

I just wonder, is that worse than COVID? Once this passes (and it will pass), will an entire generation base their lives around fear?

I don't want to derail this politically too much, but I think I'd feel this way if I was a kid non-stop, and justifiably so. We watched kindergarteners get mowed down at school and the owners of the country decided it was fine.

[sighyoung]

Man sigh; that’s so tough to read and I’m so sorry about that…

I wonder, in your opinion, is the 9 month isolation that was miserable, better by extending it? Or would no isolation, and she could’ve gotten it and died from it after just a month or so, but no isolation have been better?

That’s what I’m wondering, and struggle with, for our kids. Just look at this thread. If this stuff is getting passed onto our younger generation, we’re basically telling them, and letting them live in a life of constant fear and isolation.

I just wonder, is that worse than COVID? Once this passes (and it will pass), will an entire generation base their lives around fear?

I don't want to derail this politically too much, but I think I'd feel this way if I was a kid non-stop, and justifiably so. We watched kindergarteners get mowed down at school and the owners of the country decided it was fine.

I think it's all related.

I'll answer the mom part first: in hindsight, it might have been better if I'd been able to see her. I certainly understand the decision for nursing homes to go into lockdown. Those places really were disease tinder boxes, and once the coronavirus spread through my mother's facility, everybody (staff and patients) got sick.

My mother had almost died the previous December--at first, it seemed that it was related to elevated sodium levels, but eventually it was clear that she was having a series of mini-strokes, and we already knew that she had breast cancer slowly spreading in her chest. She only had a few months left. I was surprised that she didn't catch COVID-19 until late October. She was twice taken to hospitals in 2020, and each time I was surprised that she was fine.

If my mother had been more lucid and able to pick up a phone to talk, much less dial out, things would have been better, but she just couldn't. I just couldn't conveniently communicate with her.

It was sad because she remembered me long after her memory unraveled. I visited every other day for nine years except for short vacations, did her laundry, and brought her candy and an occasional White Castle slider even after she'd forgotten where she was,what year it was, or even that she'd been married. But her core personality remained intact, and she was a delight to visit. She had a wicked, dry sense of humor, was devilishly funny, and her memory of music remained to the end. She knew every tempo change in a Count Basie song, all seven verses of a Methodist hymn--it was all there.

I tried to be as reliable as clockwork to someone who constantly worried if she was safe and if family knew where she was. Women of her generation growing up in the Depression were trained to let family know where they were. She was also a control freak and pack rat, and I also learned from a dentist that she was breaking her teeth from grinding them from worry.

Evidently, she would call out for me when she was confused, so it was a terrible loss to her to not see me anymore, and I felt awful about it. Still, her memory loss may have helped in other ways: in her final year, if I stepped out of her room and came right back, she was so happy because it was if I had just arrived. But she needed family to help her and even advocate for her, and I couldn't once she was quarantined.

The nursing home tried to arrange video calls, but it was all but impossible to schedule one. And I understood: they were understaffed with tremendous turnover, with staff often out because they were ill.

But when I last saw her, she didn't know who I was after I spent nine years reassuring her that family was near and would keep her safe. It was profoundly sad.

-----

As for the present generation, I guess it's just culturally different. You want people to wind up independent, confident, and decent human beings, regardless of upbringing, and people still can. But my children belong to a generation that's grown up with helmets and play dates and shooting drills. They've been taught to be prudent--at times, it's smart, and at times it's suffocating and stunting. At the same time, I didn't knock them into next week the way my parents did with me, and I should have died 30 different times from stupid things I and my friends did, from playing with fire to riding with drunk drivers to our own risky bike stunts and forays into strange neighborhoods.

I will say that I was proud that my son could make his way in China and Taiwan without much help from me, and I never tried to be a helicopter parent, either.

It's one reason I wanted my daughter to go off to college. And yes, I do worry about roofies and date rape, and whether some people will take her seriously because she's five feet tall, Black, and female. But I'm also hopeful that she can adjust and thrive in an often evil world, and she needs to be given the chance to grow.

Sorry to derail the discussion too much. I guess that was as much an emotional unburdening as anything, but it's been a difficult year-and-a-half.