[709]

Originally Posted by 709 Got my first jab a couple of days ago with my second scheduled for the 19th, and Anna's age/health group gets called up starting this Monday. So, yeah, starting to see that glimmer of light coming from the end of the tunnel.

All Pfizered up and ready to go. Anna's second dose is scheduled for end of month. Experiencing some small bits of hope recently, a feeling that really took a fucking beating these last years.

[Kickaha]

*nod* My wife (heavily immune compromised) gets her second Moderna next Monday, the boys and I four days later on Friday.

I don't have anything approaching 'hope' yet, but it's a slightly less constant state of belief that our species is determined to commit suicide.

I mean, I'm still certain our society is, but the species *might* make it.

[drewprops]

This morning somebody chided me for being in "Pandemic Menopause", a hilarious-yet-jarring assessment of the content I'm posting (unexpectedly entering into an argument with a menopausal mom I had a thing with 20 years ago).

Now, this guy hasn't know me for all that long, so I am pretty sure that he's assigned me FAR MORE COOL than I actually possess and may in fact may be transferring his own pandemic menopause onto me.

Thing is, it's a still a bit of a wake-up call.

How do we make it through pandemic menopause?



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[PB PM]

Enlighten me, what on earth is "Pandemic Menopause"?

I did manage to get the first step done for getting my vaccine, I was able to register for booking this week. Not sure when I'll actually be able to book for getting it though.

[Kickaha]

Moderna #2 yesterday.

Woke up feeling like I'd been a piñata at a MLB celebration party. Jesus. I've been less sore after a motorcycle wreck.

Mild fever (100+), the kids are running 101.4 and 102.1, but apparently my body decided I needed to age 30 years.

But HALLEFRICKINGLUJAH, assuming my wife's immune system catches the clue and she tests positive for antibodies in three weeks, I can finally let out this breath I've been holding since Jan 2020.

[Bryson]

In Canada, things are a little slow but my wife and I managed to get our first shot of AstraZeneca last week. It turned out that it was one of the batch that the US sent up here, so thanks America!

(Now please finish your people so you can ship us some more of that sweet, sweet vaccine. It's in your interest too...)

I had next to no side effects but my wife has a full-on "COVID arm" with a big red goose egg on her arm.

[Dr. Bobsky]

I had waves of fever the day after my first AZ shot... I also suspect I had the virus back in Dec 2019, so this might just be my immune system saying "oh, hell no."

[tomoe]

I received my second Pfizer shot yesterday morning and have felt normal since. Tiny bit of shoulder soreness but that’s it.

[drewprops]

Just saw this article claiming that researchers at Salk have confirmed that it's primarily a vascular disease.

https://scitechdaily.com/covid-19-is...ellular-level/

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[Kickaha]

Hello nurse, that's a big leap forward if it pans out.

So. Funny story. That 'day after update' down there? Sweet jesus, was I premature. The fever hit that night, 18 hrs after the boys. Theirs had already broken by the time mine set in. 102.4, but with the aches and pains from hell, and then, AND THEN, the septic rectal cherry on top of the spastic colon sundae... the lymph nodes in my armpit of the injection arm swelled up like golf balls. Seriously, several golf ball sized lumps, I couldn't lie on that side obviously, but I couldn't even lay on my other side, because the weight of the arm made them painful. Finally, after hours of sweating and shivering and not sleeping and tossing and turning and cursing everything from granola to god, (I'm sorry granola, I didn't mean it, we're good), it occurred to me to put a &*($@$ pillow between my arm and side to keep it from compressing Satan's own armpit, and sweet sweet oblivion took me. Sat was a few upright hours of confusion, woke up this morning mostly back to normal, with my armpit no longer trying to go all Tetsuo Shima on me.

Go go gadget immune function?

[Dr. Bobsky]

So the WHO and CDC finally, publically, acknowledge that Covid-19 is airborne, that this is its primary means of transmission, that hand washing and surface rinsing, while a good idea in general anyway, aren't really going to prevent you from getting the disease if you walk into a room where folks with it have been.

Ah well. Perhaps next time, we'll just start with this as the assumption and scale back the response if it turns out to be false...

[drewprops]

I've been fully vaxxed for nearly 2 months now and last night mom wanted to dine out for the first time in more than a year. Long story short, our squat, wheezy, cigarette-scented brand new not-very-good waitress didn't wear a mask. We stayed and ate, but that was a Covid-sharing moment and I think that mom's desire to return to normal has been tamped.


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[Frank777]

Originally Posted by Dr. Bobsky Ah well. Perhaps next time, we'll just start with this as the assumption and scale back the response if it turns out to be false...

Write this down somewhere those navigating the Great Pandemic of 2119 will remember to do that.

[PB PM]

Getting my first shot next Saturday morning. Pfizer or Moderna, guess I’ll find out which when I get it.

[drewprops]

Wired Magazine recently ran a story about a systemic problem inside of the WHO and CDC that delayed the verdict on how the virus was spread, hinging on the size of particulants that could carry a virus.

Both organizations used 5 microns as the threshold, but there was no documentation for the source of that guidance.

Over the course of 2020 a graduate student, working with other scientists, finally tracked the likely path of that measurement from 80 year old research that had become ossified into literature without challenge.

Science regularly bursts bubbles like this, but it's messy at the leading edge, and that messiness is leading to widespread distrust of organizations like the WHO and CDC.

Mask guidelines changed quickly to follow the science, but nation-sized groups of people need slower change - it's analogous to turning a cargo liner around.

Add it to the lessons learned list.



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[Kickaha]

The sad thing is, the people who are most distrustful tend to be those who want The Answer(tm), and if The Answer(tm) ever changes, then there was Lying and Deception(tm).

Science is a process of continually changing the answers to match a better understanding of reality.

Science is constantly updating messaging to reflect changes to what is understood.

When done correctly, there is no lying or deception, there is only a constant, unending bubbling of change that moves towards a clearer view of objective truth.

Unfortunately, that is so horribly misunderstood that it becomes fodder for games of "GOTCHA!" by the ignorant or those herding the ignorant for their own purposes.

That 5µm issue, for instance, is *REALLY* fascinating, because if you dive deep into the story, the actual threshold used by the physicist who originally developed the model was 100µm, not 5µm. When the studies crossed over into the epidemiology literature, it was embroiled in a ideological battle ("don't be silly, we abandoned the 'bad air' theory decades ago!") that seriously muddied the conveyance of the results.[*]

So for the past few decades, when the term 'aerosol' was used, epidemiologists have used a 5µm threshold, and physicists / engineers modeling air flow have used a 100µm threshold.

Same word. Two different sizes.

That grad student figured out what happened, and why, and THAT is why the WHO and CDC suddenly went "oh shit, it *IS* airborne!" The evidence was clear that it *was*, but they could not find any physical mechanism that fit the 5µm definition, so kept dismissing it.

100µm? Easy.

Considering that the last five decades of research into flu and other pathogen transmission has been driven by the 5µm 'impossible!' approach, I think we're about to see a HUGE shift in how we see airflow and sanitization of same in closed spaces, much like the 1920s shift. (Ever wonder why radiators are capable of heating a room or dwelling *way past* comfortable? So you can open the windows in winter and get fresh air. Most were installed after the 1919 flu pandemic, and fresh air was seen as a way of avoiding contracting it from 'miasma' or 'bad air'. Right action, wrong reason.)

Consider than in an average year, the US sees 25-30k deaths from flu.

This flu season this year has been less than 2300 *CASES*, and under 700 deaths. The masks and distancing work, and under the new 100µm guideline, flu is ABSOLUTELY an airborne pathogen. Expect masks to be normalized in rational, sane societies with guidance from rational thinking.

In other words, not us.


[*] If you're familiar with the story of J Harlen Bretz and the Channeled Scablands of the Columbia River Plateau, it's similar. He correctly deduced that the insane carving of the basalt landscape in E WA state was due to unbelievably massive flooding, but for 50 years was mocked by the geology 'established' academics as a throwback to the myths of Noah's floods that they had tried to shed the shackles of. (This was in the late 1920s, and 1930s, concurrent with the Scopes Trial, so a whole lot of geology and paleontology was trying to move out of the dark arges.) But he was right. It was just rejected because it was too similar to a theory (biblical global floods) they knew to be nonsense. But he was, indeed, right.

[drewprops]

Originally Posted by Kickaha [*] If you're familiar with the story of J Harlen Bretz and the Channeled Scablands of the Columbia River Plateau, it's similar. He correctly deduced that the insane carving of the basalt landscape in E WA state was due to unbelievably massive flooding, but for 50 years was mocked by the geology 'established' academics as a throwback to the myths of Noah's floods that they had tried to shed the shackles of. (This was in the late 1920s, and 1930s, concurrent with the Scopes Trial, so a whole lot of geology and paleontology was trying to move out of the dark arges.) But he was right. It was just rejected because it was too similar to a theory (biblical global floods) they knew to be nonsense. But he was, indeed, right.

I use this exact example often to demonstrate how it often takes a generation or two to push a branch of science out of the rut it has been stuck in.

Edit: and to that "lessons learned" list, it's going to be interesting to see how long it takes for the freedumb folks to quietly begin exhibiting more caution, for their own good. I think it will be faster that some expect, as several of my friends and family that I expected to be holdouts were in fact early to seek vaccination. The way that we civilians depict the benefit of wearing masks to our circles may prove less influential than built-in industry-wide changes at workplaces and public venues.

An improved understanding of the aerosol spread of illness will be the legacy of Covid-19.

Somebody buy that grad student a Nobel Prize.

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[Ryan]

I've been following one of the scientists from that story, Jose-Luis Jimenez, on Twitter since the start of the pandemic. He was very early to realize this disease is airborne. Fortunately for my community, he's a professor in town here and was able to work closely with the local school districts, city government, etc. to bring them up to speed on aerosol transmission well before the CDC and WHO got on board.

His tweets made a huge difference in how I approached my own precautions. HEPA filters and open windows anywhere I could. For travel, I picked up a small air filter to use in hotel rooms. He's posted a few informal documents about that: https://docs.google.com/document/d/e...0UUnpo1dZu/pub

The unending fights on Twitter between Jimenez and Popescu were illuminating—the epidemiology community just would not face fact

[drewprops]

Originally Posted by Ryan The unending fights on Twitter between Jimenez and Popescu were illuminating—the epidemiology community just would not face fact

Oh the changes that are a-comin'.


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[turtle]

This is a chat between Mrs T and a family friend about my mother-in-law who came to visit us Monday:


That was Monday and while she was here before she left everything seemed fine. She went to the hotel and decided she just couldn't come back for the rest of the visit. We shared close quarters as family would. Also, she had a fever too but that wasn't disclosed to us until after my father-in-law came by Tuesday morning to pick up things they left here before heading back to the hotel.

She got tested today, wanna guess the results of the test?

We all feel fine right now but are being super isolated now. Not going to leave the property for at least two weeks, everything gets delivered to us... that kind of thing. I really would hate to be one of those asymptomatic people out there that infects others even though I feel fine.

The most annoying part of this is my family worked hard to stay isolated and protected for this +1 year since lockdowns started.

[PB PM]

That sucks.

[drewprops]

Dammit T.

I hope that everyone fares well during this period - this is scary.

This thread is so long I can't remember who has been vaccinated and who has not - is it too forward of me to ask you if you and your folks have the vaccination?



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[turtle]

Not too forward, we aren't. We really fall into the not in public so didn't even start to get vaccinated. Heck, we aren't even in the local medical system here at all. Our docs are all in Tidewater still, even the VA. With everything being closed down and such shopping for a local doctor hasn't been a priority. While we could have likely made getting a vaccine happen, we never did perceive a threat so it was never pursued.

I did look a few times earlier in the month but then the only places with available shots were an hour away or at least two weeks out. Didn't look again after that.

[kieran]

Sorry to hear that.

My mother has been pushing for all of us to get together really the entire time. The whole rest of my family has been seeing each other regularly, even going on shared vacations. My wife, daughter, and I have stayed away from any gathering. Definitely got some shit from my family about it, but I'd rather be more cautious.

Wife & I are both fully vaccinated now, but since our 2 year old can't get it yet, we're still staying away from gatherings.

[drewprops]

I assume that your mom in law is north of 70? Hope that she only has a flu experience. I probably don't need to tell y'all to be vigilant with her condition; hours can make a difference.

I was lucky to have a friend invite me to a vaccination point for medical people back in February. My friend wasn't in the medical business, so they told him to beat it. They would have told me the same, but I wanted to know about getting mom vaccinated. They took both mom and me! I sent my friend a Starbucks gift certificate as a consolation prize.

Unfortunately, every person I personally know who caught Covid did so from a family member or a close friend.





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[Kickaha]

Damn turtle, that sucks. I hope the best for you.

My extended family has basically been ignoring any precautions that aren't required by law, got together regularly, with two infants, a toddler in daycare, two adults who can't work remotely, one who flies around the nation regularly, and two grandparents.

I *think* they may all be vaccinated now, but am not quite sure about two of the adults.

Yup, we get crap about it, but ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

My wife has a compromised immune system. She has major surgery coming up. I'm not taking any chances.

[chucker]

I'm so sorry, T.

[drewprops]

I am facing a Covid dilemma.

Tomorrow is a big day at our local renaissance festival and the weather will be sublime for late May in Georgia - low humidity, high temperature around 78ºF / 25.5ºC and I'm vaccinated.

Do I go? I really think I may.

Last week I had to attend a family funeral. After the service we met at a cousin's home, and all of our family there say they are vaccinated, so it was theoretically safe. It was really good to spend that time together. It emboldened me to consider attending the renaissance festival tomorrow.




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[709]

Same. A couple of weekends from now there's a 'Celebration of Life' thing for my uncle that passed from Covid, and I know for a fact that more than half of the people there won't be vaccinated. Even one of his daughters, whose husband passed last year from 'complications' (they won't say it was Covid), I'm 90% sure is still unvaxxed. Do I go and pay my respects? I want to, and we're both vaxxed obviously, but still. Am I the masked asshole? The no-hugger? I just hate being put in that position.

I got to hug my mum yesterday for the first time since the beginning of 2020, so that was nice.

[turtle]

Thanks guys. So far my family has been asymptomatic other than an occasional cough or such. Mrs T was hit with chills last night, but no fever.

My mother-in-law is in the 70's for sure. She "feels" so good that she's been out shopping and "enjoying" life... without a mask. Her and my father-in-law are big anti-maskers so they have been just living their life. Mrs T had a "strong" messaging session with her dad about it because he isn't letting others know they are positive and yet just going about breathing and hacking.

It is pretty infuriating really. He just blows off that people really are hit hard by this because it was less severe than a common cold. I know for a fact they went into a family's home to buy a pet and didn't tell them. One of the kids in that house is immunocompromised.

Because it is Mrs T's family I try to bite my tongue but really, he needs to be beaten. He's so rebellious and ...

I'm going to stop. He isn't worth my time.

Thankfully, my family is doing well. No real symptoms as I mentioned so it is just waiting it out for us at this point. I mean, we are only 4 days into exposure so hopefully it stays less than mild.