How's Covid affecting your life lately?

[Brian Elfert]

You're welcome to eat all the un-masked breathed-on pizza you want. "In general" and "likely" aren't anywhere NEAR "absolute" enough for me. How many posts in this thread, and on the local and national news lately, have I heard/read the phrase "...have NO idea where I got it..." ... In general, while not highly likely, it COULD be you got it from some fast food.

Sorry if I take this godforsaken virus VERY seriously...

Do you eat stuff kept cold in the refrigerator without heating it first? Viruses are kept alive by storing them at cold temperatures so the virus could be active for a long time on cold food.

I don't blame you for not wanting to eat pizza when an unmasked worker handled it. I wash every grocery item I can in hot soapy dishwater before putting it away or eating it. I eat more chips than I should and every bag is washed before opening. (I don't use wipes on my groceries because they are bad for the environment and hard to get. Soapy water works just fine.)

[Jim Koepke]

Sorry if I take this godforsaken virus VERY seriously...

Many of us are glad that you do take it seriously Kev, only wish everyone did.

jtk

[Tom M King]

The reason it's so out of hand is that not enough people are taking it seriously. We have not transmitted it to anyone else, nor have we had it. The first is more important. We started taking it seriously in the middle of February.

As to how it's affecting us lately, my 104 year old Mother, who is mostly paralyzed on one side, from a stroke in August, is living with us, because she really doesn't have anywhere else to go. When she had the stroke, they tested her Negative before she was admitted in the hospital. While she was in the hospital, the Assisted Living place where she was living got an influx of Covid cases. Some of the attendants there believed it was a hoax, because of....you know.........

[Jim Becker]

As to how it's affecting us lately, my 104 year old Mother, who is mostly paralyzed on one side, from a stroke in August, is living with us, because she really doesn't have anywhere else to go. When she had the stroke, they tested her Negative before she was admitted in the hospital. While she was in the hospital, the Assisted Living place where she was living got an influx of Covid cases. Some of the attendants there believed it was a hoax, because of....you know.........

A close college friend of Professor Dr. SWMBO just lost her 95 year old mother this morning to COVID that was passed to her in her assisted living facility. That place also wasn't taking things as serious as they could have been...too lax on visitation, etc., and it only takes one infected visitor or staff member to start the ball rolling. The facility my mother was living in before she passed away this past June fortunately didn't have any cased...they locked the place down pretty hard which wasn't easy since it's a life-care community where most residents live independently and come/go as they please. But I know it would have taken my mother lickety-split with her pulmonary issues and imuno compromises from Crohn's.

The Professor and I were talking this morning and her opinion as an epidemiologist and public health expert is that we are all going to have to be really, really careful over the next month or so because of the level of Thanksgiving frolic that happened with travel and gatherings, etc. We are already pretty darn careful, but other than food shopping, we're planning pretty much on being hermits. Fortunately, our birds will keep us busy with all their orders and commands.

[Ken Fitzgerald]

Covid is raging locally. A month ago our county was #37 out of 44 for daily new cases /100,000. A week or so ago we had risen to #1. Now we are down to #13. A neighbor across the street from us with underlying conditions has an office and one of the workers there is his adult son from whom he caught Covid 19. So far he is doing well. We haven't been to the gym since last December as we began painting , buying furniture and redecorating our LR and FR. One of the women in my wife's senior fitness class passed away yesterday from Covid. Her husband is also infected and hospitalized.

Until I have been vaccinated and 8 weeks have past, my wife and I will continue keeping a low profile.

Stay safe!

[Charles Taylor]

My father-in-law was diagnosed with it Wednesday a week ago after not feeling well since that Monday. Felt better for a while but then had several days this week where he felt poorly again, which I understand is the common experience with this virus. He is on the mend, it seems, but he still has some distance to go in convalescing. My wife is a nurse practitioner, so he's under her watchful eye. No one in my house has been ill lately.

[Brian Elfert]

I was reading an article yesterday about a local health system that has opened a clinic specifically for those suffering long term affects from having COVID.

One patient was on a respirator for 58 days. He also suffered a stroke during treatment somehow. His memory was affected so much that he didn't remember his wife after getting off the respirator. It took days for his memory to start to clear up. He will be working with an occupational therapist long term to get back his motor skills. He worked as a respiratory therapist, but he probably can never go back to that job due to the risk of injury to his damaged lungs. He is looking at becoming an asthma educator instead. I don't recall the article mentioning if he got COVID at work or not.

[Kev Williams]

Do you eat stuff kept cold in the refrigerator without heating it first? Viruses are kept alive by storing them at cold temperatures so the virus could be active for a long time on cold food.

I don't blame you for not wanting to eat pizza when an unmasked worker handled it. I wash every grocery item I can in hot soapy dishwater before putting it away or eating it. I eat more chips than I should and every bag is washed before opening. (I don't use wipes on my groceries because they are bad for the environment and hard to get. Soapy water works just fine.)

Just outside our front door are two tables, a large towel, and a spray bottle of Clorox bleach sanitizer. Everything, and I mean EVERYTHING that comes past our front door gets disinfected-groceries, customer parts, the mail, shipped packages, cash, car parts, everything. I use nitrile gloves when shopping, and retrieving the groceries from the car or van. For groceries, the towel gets doused with with the Clorox all sides of everything packaged get toweled. I re-spray the towel often. All fresh veggies get a full washdown. Mail, small packages, cash, etc either gets spray disinfected (Lysol, Microban, etc.) or smeared with hand sanitizer and nitrile gloves. In my garage shop I have a 2' square sheet of copper on a table I'll put things like bananas, onions, small packages etc. on for good measure. I deal with customers outside whenever possible, masked and 6' away if indoors.

I saw a comedian recently (forget who) who made light of "isn't it a waste to put plexiglas in between you and the checker who just bagged all your groceries with bare hands?" --That's why we do all this sanitizing. Just getting the mail is scary. We're both 66 years old, overweight and self-employed- if I were unable to work for even a week, many of our customers would be forced to look elsewhere for engraving and may never come back. For these and many other reasons, we can't afford to drop our guard for a second...

[Brian Elfert]

I saw a comedian recently (forget who) who made light of "isn't it a waste to put plexiglas in between you and the checker who just bagged all your groceries with bare hands?" --That's why we do all this sanitizing. Just getting the mail is scary. We're both 66 years old, overweight and self-employed- if I were unable to work for even a week, many of our customers would be forced to look elsewhere for engraving and may never come back. For these and many other reasons, we can't afford to drop our guard for a second...

Surfaces are supposedly less of an issue than transmission through the air. Would it be any better if the cashier used gloved hands to handle items? Gloves still get dirty. The only way gloves would help is if a fresh pair was used for every customer and the cashier washed or sanitized hands before putting on the new gloves. Taking off the old gloves will contaminate the hands.

The plexiglass used at a lot of retailers is a joke. Two or three feet of plexiglass is not going to stop germs in the air. Costco did it right with plexiglass from one end of the checkout lane to the other end. Each lane has probably ten feet of plexiglass.

[Andrew Joiner]

We have a restaurant in town that had servers wearing only these at the beginning of the face covering requirements in April. Actually it was an inch higher, almost enough to cover the nose.

[Frank Pratt]

The plastic shields don't count as masks here. People with a medical condition that precludes mask use can use the shields.

[Julie Moriarty]

The best part of living in Florida is when the summer heat goes away and the snowbirds fly in. The block fills up and everybody comes out from 6+ months of being "quarantined" in air conditioning. During the summer, masks and social distancing wasn't a big deal.... for me. For my SO, who works, it was a struggle. Meeting all day with people who refused to heed medical advice while trying to keep COVID out of our house was exhausting.

But now that the cooler weather is here, I am beginning to feel the isolation even more. Our friends held the annual Christmas decorating party a couple of weeks ago but we didn't go for fear one or both of us could be carriers. I miss being with people.

[Jim Matthews]

Sorry if I take this godforsaken virus VERY seriously...

That's your "Common sense" superpower tingling.

There's not enough public viewing of suffering in Hospitals to convince the intractable.

https://www.newstatesman.com/interna...id-19-pandemic

[Michael Weber]

Deniers, and I live in an area full of such, are a primary reason that hospitals in my area will soon be lining up beds in hallways.

[Ronald Blue]

We used caution, wore masks, social distanced and I managed to get it somewhere. I've been in the hospital since Sunday the 29th with covid pneumonia. I'm improving but it's not been fun. There is so much variation in how people react to it. I was skeptical in the beginning of this. Then I started taking it more serious. Then after all these months I contracted it. I hope to have some ideas this morning how much longer I'm going to be here. They've treated very aggressively here. Remdesivir, 5th dose coming tonight. Convalescent plasma. And a plethora of other things. This has been kicking my butt. You just don't know what to expect. If you haven't had it do all you can to avoid it.