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Weekly coronavirus-related chat, questions, and minor updates - week of March 29
This thread is posted weekly, and is intended as a place for more-casual discussion of the coronavirus and questions/updates that may not warrant their own dedicated topics. Tell us about what the situation is like where you live!
I got my first vaccine! So, so very happy. Though I am worried that the more people get it, the more people will start to be more lax. Now is not the time to throw out CDC guidelines or get more blase about. It'll help to still be careful. I'll still be following them as best I can and wearing a mask around family until they're fully vaccinated. But I'm feeling pretty relieved to have gotten it, and will feel more sound when my SO is able to get his. I'm gonna have a milkshake when we're both fully inoculated.
I will say that remember, the vaccine isn't 100%. My mom was fully inoculated and still got covid, though she doesn't have symptoms. So be careful!
FYI - evidence is pointing more and more towards vaccines preventing transmission and infections altogether. https://twitter.com/rebeccaballhaus/status/1376564661840121860
(Not to say "don't be careful", but also if people become more lax as they get vaccinated I'm not going to blame them, especially if the prospect of being more lax drives vaccination rates up)
I'll keep wearing a mask for social reasons, but besides that I'll live like covid doesn't exist once I'm fully vaccinated.
That's good news! Thank you for sharing, I wasn't aware!
Remember that with COVID, we're dealing with something that is at the top of everybody's minds and whenever understanding evolves, the mainstream gets to know about it very quickly. You're not bombarded daily with news about eg. Malaria vaccine research.
There's just a great deal of uncertainty. Intuitiveness helps, but scientists won't tell you "vaccines reduce transmission" if they're not certain of it, and they can't be certain of it if it hasn't been researched properly yet. Of course, that research is happening.
But I agree with you that it's important to put weight on why the vaccine is important to people. Rand Paul I believe said something like "You want to drive people to get vaccinated? Tell them they'll be able to remove their masks". Now, Rand Paul says a lot of dumb shit, but this rings very true. In general: "Get vaccinated, end the lockdown". I would love to see countries set public targets such as "At 50% we'll remove all restrictions on bars and restaurants. At 75% we will remove all teleworking obligations. At 85% we will lift the mask mandate." (Numbers not necessarily correct, but you see what I mean)
That is true, but I would note that miraculously, all of the vaccines are actually 100% at (reducing) the number that really matters: severe symptoms, hospitalizations, and death.
Post vaccination, COVID19 truly is what Fox News said it was a year ago: less deadly than the flu. There are, of course, unknowns on what kind of symptoms vaccinated covid patients have, long term effects, and so forth, and you should respect those who have not been vaccinated, and those who cannot because of health conditions.
But you can at least feel fairly confident walking around that you are most certainly not going to die from COVID.
Oddly, there's an argument from last year that the flu is less deadly than the flu.
That is, flu deaths as reported in CDC estimates seem to be inflated compared to flu deaths seen by doctors.
Yes! Which is why I was relieved that my mom was fully inoculated before she got it. It's great that the vaccines help so much with lowering the number of severe cases and is definitely something worth mentioning!
Congrats!
I’m so happy that people keep posting vaccine updates to these threads. For a long time these threads were dark, bleak, and even at times devastating. It is so nice that the tone is slowly shifting to one of burgeoning optimism with hints of future joy.
Got my vaccine today! It was the J&J one. Got it by driving an hour south into the Toledo area, since Ohio is slightly ahead in their scheduling people in the general population, and they where openly inviting people from neighboring states.
I've had some friends and coworkers also report that the FEMA site at Ford Field in Detroit is ramping up rapidly, several have gotten their shots there.
Finally. Finally, that huge mental burden is lifted from my brain. It's been almost a year to the week that Michigan first locked down and everyone went home. I still have yet to see the inside of my office at the job that I started almost exactly a year ago. But now I'm here. I made it. I'm emerging from the other side of this slog of a year. I can see the light of day shining at the end of the tunnel.
The cherry on top, is that I shared the signup link I used with a bunch of friends, and a large portion of them are getting vaccinated today at the same place, or later this week. So in ~2 weeks, we can all start hanging out again!
You're the first person I "know" who's had the J&J vaccine. Have you had any side effects?
None so far, but I'll report back again tomorrow.
cc: @monarda
I had the J&J. I had fever and chills overnight on the first night, was unbelievably tired the following day, but was fine the following morning. I gave a bit more detail here if you're interested.
All told it wasn't too bad for me, and was over in about 36 hours. I hope it goes smoothly for you.
@monarda , similar to what @kfwyre described, about 9pm last night I suddenly felt achy all over, lightheaded, and warm. Took my temp and it was 98.8 (earlier in the day it was 96.4). So took some advil and laid down, proceeded to be simultaneously hot and shiver while mildly nauseated for a few hours then fell asleep. Woke up later feeling like I was baking (too many blankets).
This morning I feel better, but not great. Still aches all over, thermometer says 98.6, but I don't feel like I'm on fire like I did last night.
That's awesome! A trip well worth it, congrats. And I'm glad your friends jumped on it too! That's the kind of stuff that makes me feel so much better about the upcoming year.
And I definitely know what you mean with the mental burden. I almost cried in relief when I got home after I got the shot. I know I still have another one to get, but it's beyond relieving to have gotten even half of it!
I got choked up in the 15 minute waiting period after mine, and I outright cried when I went back to my car. The sense of relief was so profound and meaningful.
I anticipated that I might burst into years of relief during or after, but I didn't. The whole assembly line moved so efficiently, and everyone was professional and nice, that by the time I sat down and rolled up my sleeve all I felt was excitement.
During that 15min quiet sit down though, I let it hit me. My whole body un-tensed, I let out a hugely exaggerated sigh, and just smiled at nothing like I was high out of my mind. Pure contentment. I swear I couldn't stop grinning all the way home.
That's a really lovely image! You're making me excited for when I can get mine. :)
I'd really like to see Cuba pull this off.
Against the odds, Cuba could become a coronavirus vaccine powerhouse
I'm getting my 2nd dose of the Pfizer vaccine on Thursday. Those of you with young children, what is your protocol for after you're vaccinated but your children aren't? Seems like we'll be waiting until Q1 2022 for that. The ability to spread COVID despite being vaccinated is weighing on me, especially since my sister is determined to host a wedding of 50-100 people in July that was postponed from last year.
The CDC has released guidelines for vaccinated people interacting with the non-vaccinated, and it basically boils down to "wait two weeks after the final shot, and avoid them if you're showing symptoms."
I don't have kids, but some of my coworkers have talked about implementing ventilation and/or filtration at home as a best practice this summer -- lots of windows open with intake/exhaust fans if weather permits it; having HEPA filters on if not. That doesn't assist with events like weddings (which is a tough judgment call you'll have to make), but it can help yield some peace-of-mind during the day-to-day at home. It is a lot less likely for you to potentially spread it to your kids if the air in shared spaces is being regularly cleaned/replaced.
Why people keep asking which vaccine you got: Vaccine small talk has given America something to chat about again.
My boss is requiring that I get two negative covid tests before I come back to work because of, wait for it, seasonal allergies. I’m vaccinated. Can’t wait for life to go back to normal!
My mother is in her 60s and will be vaccinated this week. If the doses do not end, maybe I'll be vaccinated in July. Those are not even the best vaccines.
Deaths keep growing every day.
Eight mayors of large Brazilian cities recorded a video asking for international vaccine donations. I'm not sure if anyone noticed abroad.
Bolsonaro went on national TV to list everything he did to fight the pandemic (things that were too little and too late...). The consensus among his critics is that Bolsonaro is only acting now due to the political pressure of having Lula out of jail and eligible to the 2022 presidential election.
In short, Belgium failed to establish a pandemic law in time to appropriately justify the measures it is currently employing, with no input from the parliament. It lost in court again the League for Human Rights.
I've been volunteering at a distribution center in Monterey County and I just have to say I am so hopeful and impressed by our vaccination network here. In 2 months they have vaccinated 30% of the county. The center where I work is ramping up from 900 vaccinations a day to 2500 next week. It feels like the hysteria around the vaccine is experiencing a slow death and even those who were skeptics are finally getting comfortable with the idea. I know other countries are having a very different experience but I really am hopeful for the first time since this all started!!!
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Not gonna beat around the bush here: if I'm fully vaccinated, can I safely hook up with strangers who are also fully vaccinated? What about unvaccinated strangers?
BLUF: Yes and yes.
I want to dig in to this question much more deeply than necessary because I think it's interesting, and I also think it's important to recontextualize things. We've been fighting this fucking virus for over a year, and it's easy to forget the big picture.
So: what does "safely" mean, for you? Was it ever "safe"? To answer that, let's roll the clock back 6 months and assume nobody is vaccinated.
This virus is fairly mild overall. The reason it's a dangerous virus and causing a worldwide pandemic is not its potency, it's its transmissibility. A mix of its attributes that make it a bit of a perfect storm that can shut down countries.
Even if you do catch something, how affected you will be heavily depends on your age, body type, blood type, and so on. Most healthy people are fine. Some are not, but that is the case for a lot of other illnesses. Remember the context: COVID is much more dangerous to society as a whole, than it is dangerous to individuals.
The threat of the virus being in its transmissibility also means that, if you're practicing "unsafe" behaviour, you are likelier to become a transmission vector. If you hook up to someone who is also practicing unsafe behaviour, you're also likelier to catch it and become a carrier. And because the likelihood of damage to you is minimal, the problem then becomes your future behaviour: How likely are you to transmit it to someone else?
If you're hooking up with someone, HIV is much more of a concern than COVID. If hooking up during flu season didn't scare you before, hooking up with someone shouldn't scare you now. It's a game of chance; individual events are unlikely to cause transmission, but lots of events added together increase it. If either of the people in a hookup are practicing such unsafe behaviour, possibility of transmission becomes very high (kissing is obviously an extremely high transmission risk if either party is infected, although it's not 100%).
With all that in mind, let's answer for the unvaccinated first, for two definitions of "safely":
Now, vaccines. There's only good news here. Evidence now points to vaccines greatly reducing transmission risks. It makes intuitive sense, as they greatly reduce viral load, and viral load is what increases transmission risk. In other words, if you're vaccinated, you are reducing your personal risk to near-zero, and even if you do have it, you are also reducing your risk to cause damage to others via transmission.
In other words, you're less likely to catch it, and if you do catch it, it'll be harmless to you, and you're unlikely to keep transmitting it to others.
There's the asterisk here that variants are a bit more of an unknown, but to be honest, with the lack of evidence of their risk through vaccinations, I don't think there is cause to stop people from enjoying life a little once they're vaccinated. It's been a tough year. Just keep your mask on in crowded areas, and don't go licking door handles, it's gross.
Thanks for the in-depth reply!
(Just talking about the coronavirus) Yes, as long as neither of you have coughing, sneezing, or other symptoms.
Beyond that, the safety of your hookups is on you, your partner, and your safe sex choices. But that's as it always was.
Asking the right questions :P
I'm in the same boat, once I get jabbed I plan on making a picture of my vaccine card (with details edited out, of course) one of my tinder profile pics, and...uh...making up for lost time.
https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/vaccines/fully-vaccinated.html
So tl;dr - one-on-one sex with an unvaccinated partner is safe, as long as that partner is relatively low risk for Covid. If you wanted to have group sex, probably everyone should be fully vaccinated.
Good luck, go find some people to be much less than 6 feet apart from.
Good idea - might steal that for my tinder!
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