Muh Muh Muh My Corona (virus)

I would say a surprising number of people at the supermarket, the only large public place I've been to lately, are masked, about half, but given the aged nature of Cape Cod's population, maybe that's not surprising. At restaurants, nobody's masked of course. Major outbreak here in a nearby town at a nursing home, reminiscent of the early days of the pandemic. Will be flying to and from France next month. Will damn sure wear mask at Logan and at Charles de Gaulle. Will wear on the plane if required.

 

In flight, airplane ventilation is superb (more than 10 air changes per hour).

Sitting at the gate beforehand and waiting to disembark after landing . . . not so much.

 

I put my mask back on last week because I brought COVID home from vacation but also had no choice but to leave my house.

It didn’t even register to people that I’d be masking because I had COVID. Several people got right in my face to chat, offered their hands to shake, etc. I guess people still just assume you’d stay home if you’re positive.

Even when I took my daughter to taekwondo — I had a mask on and stayed outside by myself watching through a window (everything short of wearing a scarlet C), but people still didn’t care or notice that I might be trying to isolate as best I could.

 

I tested positive the day after we flew cross-country. I was showing mild symptoms the day before. Taking delays into account, my kids sat on either side of me, all of us unmasked, on a plane for nine hours. And they somehow didn’t get it.

 

I mean, it's all so random. When I went on my Alabama press trip last fall, I had breakfast and then shared a cart for nine holes with a guy who started feeling terrible and ended up testing positive. I didn't.

 

AFAIK, I've never had it, but as I believe I've posted before in the spring I have such bad pollen-related allergies that it's quite possible I had a very mild case of covid and just ignored it as part of my usual nasal miseries.

 

I'm in the same boat as Michael Gee. I had a rough day last spring that I chalked up to being in the woods during yellow pollen season. That's been it. No positive tests yet.

 

I’ve had four shots and two infections.

Thank my lucky stars I never got sick enough to even take a day off work.

 

I got it after four shots and then again a few months after I got my fifth.

I am the lifeline for two elderly individuals. One I'm working on getting placed in an age-in-place senior community, the other lives in their home and has dementia. I have 10 Wyze cameras inside and out the home. Those Wyze cameras are the shit as the kids used to say.

If I didn't have people who depend on me maybe I'd think differently, but I don't think so.

Had a friend of 40+ years who knows my situation tell me 'it's mostly old people who die from it and they're going to die anyway' recently.

That was great, tell me my family members are going to die anyway so get on with it.

Jackie and Shadow update:

https://www.vvdailypress.com/story/...andon-unhatched-eggs-in-big-bear/69979432007/

Still waiting on the oximeter.

 

The ladyfriend got either norovirus or food poisoning over the weekend. She wasn't right for 36 hours. It was one of those times where you really appreciated having the extra half bath. She went away for the weekend with three friends. One of them got sick, the others were fine.

She discovered a day after flying home from Ireland last year that she had COVID. Didn't mask on the fight because she thought she was fine. I sat next to her for seven hours and never got it. She never got it when I was sick last spring.

There's no rhyme or reason to this stuff.

 

Masking is taking a turn here. Hong Kong ditched its mask mandate on March 1, a mere 959 days after putting it into effect (HK$5,000 fine for getting caught without one in public), but despite the reaction in some corners of Expat Twitter there hasn't been a mass casting off of masks. It's about 90:10 masked to unmasked out in public, which is understandable as three years of habits takes time to unlearn. It'll come with time, though. I took a short business trip last week to Singapore -- which removed most of its mask mandate in August and stopped requiring masks on public transport last month -- and it was easily 70:30 unmasked there.

I still feel weird going out without a mask. It's not so much fear of Covid -- I'm triple-vaxxed and have caught it once (that I know of) -- as it is force of habit and lingering social pressure. Plus, anything that covers up my ugly mug is something to be welcomed.