Coronavirus COVID-19 - Global Health Pandemic #104

[MimosaMornings]

Fauci: Removing masks on airplanes 'not something we should even be considering' — Fox News

 

[CharlestonGal]

Having different boundaries/views on this hasn't actually caused conflicts for me. I am very pro-vax with a few stray family members who are anti-vax. Our relationships are exactly the same as before the pandemic except that I mostly only talk with them outside. Other than a rabidly anti-vax co-worker who seeks out conflict with others, my relationships have not suffered. And even with her, I'm just sort of patiently waiting for her to come to her senses. Of course, some of these people may die before that happens.

A lot of these people have ALREADY died before they came to their senses. Unfortunately, they took out a lot of innocents along the way. And continue to do so. The anti-vax, anti-mask, anti-social distancing pandemic minimizers and deniers have not only died themselves, they took a lot of people with them. jmo

 

[MimosaMornings]

Our main health aide that works for numerous residents here...in and out of their apartments all day long, doesn't mask...she is going to Vegas for NYE weekend. Big gambler, Can't stay away.

I have a coworker who went about a week ago said it was dead. A lot of restaurants were closed or closed early. Especially during the week.

 

[pocketaccent]

Is this for real?????

Supply chain issues create a disposable mask shortage | KTLA

HUNTINGTON, WV (WOWK) – Supply chain shortages have negatively affected industries throughout the country. Now, there’s one shortage that leaves some health officials concerned.

Right as COVID-19 numbers are trickling up, the country is now experiencing a shortage of disposable face masks.
...

 

[CSIDreamer]

Whoa. She handles personal care, meds, etc and is paid under the table?

I'm dealing with this exact same fiasco with my mother and another person's caregiver. I cannot tell you how livid I am and there is a good reason. My mother needs to be in AL and I find out she's giving this person $200 a month to take her trash out (5 apartments away is the trash chute) maybe 3 times a week and get her mail the same. Why? To make it look like (to the wound care nurses and myself) that she's doing it herself.

I cannot express how much I loathe these people that see nothing wrong with "cash under the table" to the tune of "sure it will be $30 to run downstairs and get your mail".

It has zero to do with insurance because Medicare and medicaid will PAY for this stuff IF it's necessary. It has everything to do with tax evasion.

Plus, running in and out of who only knows how many elderly people's apartments daily breathing and sharing germs.

End rant.

 

[CharlestonGal]

I'm dealing with this exact same fiasco with my mother and another person's caregiver. I cannot tell you how livid I am and there is a good reason. My mother needs to be in AL and I find out she's giving this person $200 a month to take her trash out (5 apartments away is the trash chute) maybe 3 times a week and get her mail the same. Why? To make it look like (to the wound care nurses and myself) that she's doing it herself.

I cannot express how much I loathe these people that see nothing wrong with "cash under the table" to the tune of "sure it will be $30 to run downstairs and get your mail".

It has zero to do with insurance because Medicare and medicaid will PAY for this stuff IF it's necessary. It has everything to do with tax evasion.

End rant.

Agreed. I used to pay my maid and gardener under the table until I realized I was participating in actual tax evasion. I only hire licensed companies now. I know that has nothing to do covid per se, but the principle is the same. jmo

 

[CharlestonGal]

Is this for real?????

Supply chain issues create a disposable mask shortage | KTLA

HUNTINGTON, WV (WOWK) – Supply chain shortages have negatively affected industries throughout the country. Now, there’s one shortage that leaves some health officials concerned.

Right as COVID-19 numbers are trickling up, the country is now experiencing a shortage of disposable face masks.
...

N95's are still available on Amazon, but I'm noticing a price creep. Same with home tests. Delayed shipping and prices creeping up. jmo

 

[IceIce9]

N95's are still available on Amazon, but I'm noticing a price creep. Same with home tests. Delayed shipping and prices creeping up. jmo

Just a few months ago many of our stores had clearance tables of masks and hand sanitizer bottles. One of our Kroger stores had several carts full of small bottles of hand sanitizer at the store entrance. There were signs on the carts saying, “FREE NO LIMIT.”

 

[angelainwi]

I’ll have understanding for those who have bent a few rules....but I don’t know how I will every respect one of our adult children who first insisted Covid was a hoax, then refused to wear a mask,,,and still does, and who then refused to get vaccinated or to allow his kids ( our grandchildren ) to vaccinate..and who ghosts everyone who does these things. I/ we are so disgusted with him and dont understand what is wrong with him. ...or his conspiracy theories, which are bizarre. Meanwhile we have had a relative with Covid,,,have another grandchild working in hospital directly with Covid patients and so on...but nothing changes this one selfish sons attitude. I hope someday we can forgive, but I wonder.

I can empathize with you. My 19 year old daughter is pregnant and refuses to get vaccinated. She believes that Dr. Fauci invented Covid to take down Trump. She thinks that hospitals are coding deaths covid deaths for money. She saw the documentary Plandemic and believes it wholeheartedly. It has caused me many tears. I just do not understand.

 

[Arkay]

A thought experiment:

If the billions of people throughout the ages who have died from pandemics could rise from their graves and live now, what would their attitudes be towards getting vaccinated?

IMO those of us alive in the 20th and 21st centuries are the beneficiaries of the doctors and scientists who came before us, and enabled us to live longer than anyone could have expected in times past.

I think of the incremental discoveries made by the brilliant people who came before us, leading us to live in a time and place when we know so much more about disease and how to prevent or cure at least many of them.

When Jenner figured out that the cow maids were not developing smallpox because they’d had the less deadly cowpox, and he invented a vaccine (from the word for cow) from their pustules that protected the recipients from smallpox. When Lister determined that sterilization of surgical instruments, as well as getting doctors to wash their hands, would end the massive death rate that surgery caused due to bacterial infection. When John Snow observed that Londoners who lived near the Broad Street pump were dying of cholera at greater rates than others, and realized the water was actually killing them, he had the authorities break the pump handle and went on to prove that there were these things called “germs” that no one could see. When Alexander Fleming accidentally left the lid off a Petri dish and realized the mold spores had killed bacteria, which led to penicillin and all antibiotics. Whomever it was that discovered that malaria and yellow fever were actually being caused by parasites in mosquitos and that quinine could restore health to those who would die otherwise.

If the untold billions who’ve perished due to disease, most never having heard of germs and viruses, with no knowledge of a microscopic world——if they were here right now and knew what we know, would they reject a vaccine that could protect them?

IMO if they were here now and knew what we know, they would fall to their knees in gratitude and then race to protect themselves and their families.

I believe we have a miracle in our grasp.

We are not living in the times of ignorance. During the Black Plague people thought they could catch the buboes just by looking at someone, because they could see that people in contact with others would catch bubonic plague, but they didn’t know how. They didn’t know about hygiene and if they had, they didn’t have easily available soap and water, as we do. They couldn’t have conceived of an “antibiotic” or a “vaccine.”

Of course in many underdeveloped countries, clean water is still a problem. But we who live here and now, how can we be educated and yet so ignorant?

IMO

ETA: Louis Pasteur—-sorry, buddy, didn’t mean to leave you out! And all the others whose names are not coming to mind at the moment, but whose advances have rescued us in so many ways.

 

[RANCH]

I'm dealing with this exact same fiasco with my mother and another person's caregiver. I cannot tell you how livid I am and there is a good reason. My mother needs to be in AL and I find out she's giving this person $200 a month to take her trash out (5 apartments away is the trash chute) maybe 3 times a week and get her mail the same. Why? To make it look like (to the wound care nurses and myself) that she's doing it herself.

I cannot express how much I loathe these people that see nothing wrong with "cash under the table" to the tune of "sure it will be $30 to run downstairs and get your mail".

It has zero to do with insurance because Medicare and medicaid will PAY for this stuff IF it's necessary. It has everything to do with tax evasion.

Plus, running in and out of who only knows how many elderly people's apartments daily breathing and sharing germs.

End rant.

It's horrible that someone would use this pandemic to take advantage of an elderly person for financial gain while at the same time potentially exposing them to the virus.

Hopefully this person and others like them can be stopped soon. JMO.

 

[Lilibet]

A thought experiment:

If the billions of people throughout the ages who have died from pandemics could rise from their graves and live now, what would their attitudes be towards getting vaccinated?

IMO those of us alive in the 20th and 21st centuries are the beneficiaries of the doctors and scientists who came before us, and enabled us to live longer than anyone could have expected in times past.

I think of the incremental discoveries made by the brilliant people who came before us, leading us to live in a time and place when we know so much more about disease and how to prevent or cure at least many of them.

When Jenner figured out that the cow maids were not developing smallpox because they’d had the less deadly cowpox, and he invented a vaccine (from the word for cow) from their pustules that protected the recipients from smallpox. When Lister determined that sterilization of surgical instruments, as well as getting doctors to wash their hands, would end the massive death rate that surgery caused due to bacterial infection. When John Snow observed that Londoners who lived near the Broad Street pump were dying of cholera at greater rates than others, and realized the water was actually killing them, he had the authorities break the pump handle and went on to prove that there were these things called “germs” that no one could see. When Alexander Fleming accidentally left the lid off a Petri dish and realized the mold spores had killed bacteria, which led to penicillin and all antibiotics. Whomever it was that discovered that malaria and yellow fever were actually being caused by parasites in mosquitos and that quinine could restore health to those who would die otherwise.

If the untold billions who’ve perished due to disease, most never having heard of germs and viruses, with no knowledge of a microscopic world——if they were here right now and knew what we know, would they reject a vaccine that could protect them?

IMO if they were here now and knew what we know, they would fall to their knees in gratitude and then race to protect themselves and their families.

I believe we have a miracle in our grasp.

We are not living in the times of ignorance. During the Black Plague people thought they could catch the buboes just by looking at someone, because they could see that people in contact with others would catch bubonic plague, but they didn’t know how. They didn’t know about hygiene and if they had, they didn’t have easily available soap and water, as we do. They couldn’t have conceived of an “antibiotic” or a “vaccine.”

Of course in many underdeveloped countries, clean water is still a problem. But we who live here and now, how can we be educated and yet so ignorant?

IMO

Very interesting thought experiment. We may not be living in times of ignorance, @Arkay, but IMO we are living in times of willful ignorance. People are choosing to believe conspiracy garbage that causes them to act in an ignorant way. The heartbreaking post by @angelainwi is a case in point…

I can empathize with you. My 19 year old daughter is pregnant and refuses to get vaccinated. She believes that Dr. Fauci invented Covid to take down Trump. She thinks that hospitals are coding deaths covid deaths for money. She saw the documentary Plandemic and believes it wholeheartedly. It has caused me many tears. I just do not understand.

I’m so sorry @angelainwi! I don’t understand either. It doesn’t make sense and it must be so frightening for you as a Mom. It’s frightening to see so many in this country believing the unbelievable.

Not to make light of it, but it’s as if “pod people” have taken over a portion of the population…

”Pod people (also known as body snatchers) is the colloquial term for a species of plant-like aliens featured in the 1954 novel The Body Snatchers by Jack Finney”
Pod People (Invasion of the Body Snatchers) - Wikipedia

And I’m sure I’m not the only one to liken it to a “shared psychosis”:

Shared psychotic disorder can also appear as a group phenomenon, in which case it has been referred to as "folie a plusiers" or the "madness of many." The most obvious example of this is what happens in a cult, if the leader is living with a mental illness and transfers their delusions to the group. In a larger group setting, this might also be termed mass hysteria.
Get the Facts About Shared Psychotic Disorder

Scientists who have recently studied people who believe in conspiracy theories note these personality characteristics:

The personality features that were solidly linked to conspiracy beliefs included some usual suspects: entitlement, self-centered impulsivity, cold-heartedness (the confident injustice collector), elevated levels of depressive moods and anxiousness (the moody figure, confined by age or circumstance). Another one emerged from the questionnaire that aimed to assess personality disorders — a pattern of thinking called “psychoticism.”

Psychoticism is a core feature of so-called schizo-typal personality disorder, characterized in part by “odd beliefs and magical thinking” and “paranoid ideation.” In the language of psychiatry, it is a milder form of full-blown psychosis, the recurrent delusional state that characterizes schizophrenia. It’s a pattern of magical thinking that goes well beyond garden variety superstition and usually comes across socially as disjointed, uncanny or “off.”

A Theory About Conspiracy Theories (Published 2020)

None of this information helps us to reach those who believe conspiracy theories about covid or anything else. But articles like this may help:

How should you talk to friends and relatives who believe conspiracy theories?

 

[pocketaccent]

N95's are still available on Amazon, but I'm noticing a price creep. Same with home tests. Delayed shipping and prices creeping up. jmo

I am mentally prepared (as much as I can) to deal with Omicron, Delta, and the next variant. We have no choice but to do our best to fend off the stubborn virus and will patiently keep fighting to stay healthy.

But I'm not happy to hear about the shortage of test kits and now disposable masks. Why are we so unprepared?? It has been almost two years of hardship and massive deaths. Free test kits can be ordered sometime in January is not good enough. I wish we had several kits already mailed to each household in November. Oh also a pack of genuine N95 and surgical masks too.

 

[Teche]

Whoa. She handles personal care, meds, etc and is paid under the table?

I'm surprised that this worker has not been reported to the IRS and the State Treasury department for being paid under the table. Someone could drop a note telling her that she’s being reported to the IRS. This worker would quit her employment.

 

[musicaljoke]

California Becomes First State in Nation to Announce COVID-19 Vaccine Requirements for Schools | California Governor

 

[CoverMeCagney]

I’ve been wondering why the UK death rate hasn’t peaked recently as much
as it has in the USA and Europe. Perhaps there is something in the different structure of the vaccine that has reduced deaths? Certainly, if you compare case vs death graphs, there is a marked difference in the curves. Our death rate HAS to increase now in light of a huge case rise,
so hopefully the data will become clearer in the next few weeks.

AstraZeneca may explain Britain’s lower death rate | News | The Times

UK:



USA:

 

[JaneEyre]

A lot of these people have ALREADY died before they came to their senses. Unfortunately, they took out a lot of innocents along the way. And continue to do so. The anti-vax, anti-mask, anti-social distancing pandemic minimizers and deniers have not only died themselves, they took a lot of people with them. jmo

Yes, people I know and am related to have died. But not long ago, I read an article about conspiracy theorists and how it is impossible to reason with them. Presenting facts only makes them dig their heels in. So I don't attempt it anymore. If I'm at work, I inform people of the mask mandate and insist on it. But I do not engage in discussion about it. If it's family or friends I simply maintain my own boundaries, but again, I'm not bothering to engage in discussion or argument. As we've seen, they can't be reasoned with even on their deathbed.

Many are seeking attention, seeking argument, and I refuse to give them what they want. Presenting facts will not sway anyone, but it will probably raise my blood pressure and ruin my day. All I can do is protect myself and those around me as best as I can.

 

[tabitha111]

A few recent tweets and some thoughts:

Bernie Sanders
@SenSanders
·
11 u
As we face the rapidly spreading omicron variant, we should remember that not all face masks are created equal. Congress must demand the mass production and distribution of N-95 masks, the most effective way to stop the spread of the Covid virus.

me: I have had good luck ordering from this website. In fact my 3 boxes of masks are arriving today after ordering two days ago. I ordered the pink and the black KN95s (free shipping and reasonable prices) They also have Harley N95s (more expensive but great masks) Face Masks | PPE | Face Coverings | Bona Fide Masks


https://twitter.com/yaneerbaryam ; What will airlines do in a week when there are 10X as many Omicron cases? In two weeks? Airlines cancelations today driven by Omicron Total cancellations today: 3,006 Total cancellations within, into, or out of the United States today: 1,302

Sarah Mojarad
@Sarah_Mojarad
· 21 u
I deeply regret using the word “mild” to describe my #covid19 symptoms. I don’t know if others have experienced this, but it’s getting worse.

from me: Governments should have plans to protect essential services; healthcare (facilities), food/water, public safety. If a large proportion of the working people get ill it may effect societies...I wonder if governments are willing to see those risks...

 

[tabitha111]

As for the person working here for cash payments from residents....she was a dishwasher at one time in the kitchen here, but then saw a lucrative way to make more money by "helping" the residents. We have one other person working here doing the same.
They are not "hired" by the corporation and I imagine it is this way in a lot of retirement communites.
We have many early dementia residents that should NOT be here and should be in assisted living or memory care units- but this place is cheaper- so the families of these folks pay these "workers" to care for them! I can't stand it myself as I feel like I was lied to about how this was an independent community where they screen people before renting. I know of one family that has hired her for $5 per day to get thier mother up and dressed and to breakfast (this resident should not be here as she has advanced dementia and sits all day in the atrium doing nothing, then wanders the halls at night- nothing is ever done about it)

 

[GRT]

I can empathize with you. My 19 year old daughter is pregnant and refuses to get vaccinated. She believes that Dr. Fauci invented Covid to take down Trump. She thinks that hospitals are coding deaths covid deaths for money. She saw the documentary Plandemic and believes it wholeheartedly. It has caused me many tears. I just do not understand.

I hope you can convince her to get the jab. From what I've read, pregnancy and giving birth are so stressful on a woman's body that it leaves her with little energy left over to fight covid.

But, I understand why pregnant women are scared to take a shot they feel could affect their unborn child.

All those conspiracies going around now never should have happened. And, it's the fault of both sides. Even on this forum we see belittling of those who think differently--and not because they're trying to be mean--because they don't understand how the division grew.

I hold out very little hope we'll be able to smooth things over during this pandemic, but I sure hope we learn from what's happened and use that knowledge to develop a better plan in the future.

I know you must be worried sick about your daughter. I really hope she has a change of heart.