Japan is planning to open up more. More tourists will be allowed, they'll still need to sign up with some tour group (for tracking purposes) but won't need to actually do any specific tour. Japan has been high on my list to visit.

China is still doing lockdowns with their zero Covid policies. Still require quarantines etc. I had thought they were going to give it up after the Olympics but obviously not. I've also read possibility to proclaiming a win and giving up zero Covid policy after Xi is re-elected for third term, but who knows. I would like to visit China again also.

I think we are all in the "new normal" other than a few countries.

Looks like Omicron-specific boosters should be available in the next week or two.

https://www.cnn.com/2022/08/31/healt...zed/index.html

SI

Another one. Right on schedule.

I assume salaried employees are still paid. The hourly workers are getting hurt.

So my symptoms are vertigo and tiredness.

The vertigo really sucks, leads to nausea.

I called my doctor to call in a prescription. Nope, cant do that, have to have a phone appt. so I can pay her $25 for me to say I have covid and vertigo and then she will write a script. I hate our health care system.

My FIL has been pretty ill. Wife is going to a niece's wedding in same city, they'll do a live stream for the FIL.

Told the wife to make sure she does a Covid test before going to see her dad.

Interesting stat but think it's premature. Can't blame young adults continuing to parents right now ... sure we are pretty much over Covid (for now) but we have a (looming) recession that is worse than anything since 2008-2009.

Zoom In Icon

3,000 US covid deaths last week, just a fun fact for the "it's over" crowd

Any idea how many of those were vaccinated vs not?

I can tell you that one of them was a pilot from my company. It was complications from long covid that got him. Still covid, even though it wasn't a recent infection.

Getting my O-specific booster tomorrow (along with a flu shot)
Mrs. A getting hers on Thursday

I'll be interested to see flu shot numbers this year.

I suspect that the anti-vaxxers have made enough headway that less people will get flu shots than in pre-pandemic years. Hope I'm wrong.

Are those 2 separate shots?

Let's us know if you start experiencing any zombie side effects.

They are 2 separate shots. I'm going through Walgreens, and the online signup said "Hey, while you are here . . ." and that made a lot of sense to me, so I'm knocking them both out.

I'm getting my 2nd shingles vaccine on Friday afternoon. The first shot took me down for about 36-48 hours so I decided to get it on Friday to completely ruin my weekend so that I'm good for work on Monday. I figure I'll save the flu shot for another day.

I got shingles over the pandemic. It’s not a good time and I had a mild case. Do you still have to be 50 to get the vaccine?

I don't know if there's an age restriction but I'm over 50 so it was recommended.

Yeah, my first shingles shot really kicked my ass.

I've heard the 2nd one is worse.

The wife and I signed up for the updated booster since they started offering them today. We got an appt with Rite Aid on Friday.

Yeah, that's what the head doc at my wife's work said. Can't fuckin wait.

Those shots sucked.

"some idea" I guess:

United States: COVID-19 weekly death rate by vaccination status - Our World in Data

something like a 6:1 differential to scale

I continue to be sad for many families in this country and elsewhere still losing loved ones irrespective of what persuasive loudmouth they chose to listen to, as well as the many people who are immuno-compromised, disabled, or otherwise not a good fit for the societal consensus to "move on" ... and again confess that I don't really have a prescription for what we should be doing right now.

Something I don't understand:

I see some people wearing masks in areas where they are not required (most areas now, of course). And they are wearing them below their nose, which we all know by now is useless.

So why? I get wearing a mask. I get not wearing a mask. And I understood people wearing them incorrectly when they had to wear them but didn't want to.

But I just can't understand the mindset that goes through the trouble of wearing a non-required mask and then does it wrong.

I see the same thing, and while it's been going on since masks were mandatory, I can't help but think dumb shit like this, which essentially mocks the proper use of masks (note the below the nose picture says "yes" as if that's the correct way to wear it), is at least partly to blame.

Starting today, masks will be optional in some places where they had previously been required, including on mass transit. pic.twitter.com/5zTT4uRB6h

— Governor Kathy Hochul (@GovKathyHochul) September 7, 2022

I've seen grocery stockers at my local Krogers do that, and once in a while, older white males at Costco.

I still see a fair number of Asians at Kroger & Walmart wearing masks properly.

I don't see it anymore but at one time I saw drivers wearing masks in cars that had no one else. I thought that was really weird.

I've seen that quite a bit recently, actually. The car thing. I rarely see masks much, but I've noticed them hanging off of driver's faces, or under their chin, more than a few times in the past week. I can only assume they are medical workers, or came from a job or appointment where they needed to wear one, and instead of taking it off, they pulled it down reflexively.

I thought about Uber/Lyft drivers, and that probably makes sense in a lot of cities, but not around here. Maybe one of those I saw, but it wouldn't account for all of them.

FWIW, I have had both, and neither one affected me badly at all. So it could be one of those sometimes it's bad, sometimes it's nothing type of things.

I have done that because I will forget I even have the mask on. If you wear one for a long period of time, you just get used to it.

Wife will be getting the updated booster tomorrow for her trip. She wouldn't be getting one right now other than because of her dad is so ill.

So this is her 4th vaccination/booster, 5th shot in 1.5 years.

I'll be honest, not too worried because she is more fit & healthy than me, and she's hasn't had any negative side effects. But 5 shots in 1.5 years seems a lot to me. Is there precedence?

Interesting article about COVID "super-dodgers." I'm sure I've had it, maybe multiple times, but never had symptoms and only tested a couple times shortly after being exposed, each time negative. Who knows.

So you haven't yet caught COVID. Does that make you a superdodger? : Goats and Soda : NPR

Also, my 2nd shingles shot was no problem at all. Perhaps getting 3 vaccines at once back in June wasn't such a great idea... :D

Out of our family of four, only one of us has ever tested positive.

Every time I've gotten any COVID-like symptoms, I've at-home tested, and it has been negative.

I may have had it, but if so it was so mild that I either never got symptoms enough to test or never had enough virus that a test came back positive.

Me also. Of the 4 of us, only my daughter. But I don't think I have magical genes. The first year, everyone was indoors. In the second and current, I've gotten the 3/4 shots which reduced my chance of getting infected.

But yeah, if there were these true super-dodgers, it would be great to prick-and-prod them and figure it out.

The stuff about HIV research is amazing.

None of the 5 people in my house have gotten Covid, but we've all been pretty careful. Heck, my 17-year-old still wears a mask to school every day.

We have 4 in our household. None of us has ever had it. We were pretty careful until vaccines came out but have been largely 'life as before' lately. We have no common genetics in our house. Our 2 kids are adopted so we have 4 unique sets of genes.

As I've mentioned on here I'm 99% positive I got it before testing was available but no on in our house has ever tested positive. That's despite my son playing baseball year round and me working every day at a hospital. My coworker that I share an office with tested positive twice which I had to quarantine for.

My wife had the exact same symptoms a couple weeks ago a day before I did (very sore throat and general aches/pains) but cleared up after a day and never tested positive.

She's not immunocompromised, so I'm guessing that explains the difference in our test results and experience but still - it's clear there are a huge range of experiences and outcomes with this thing, and we still don't really have a great handle on it. It's kinda amazing with the number of people walking around who either have no idea or just think it's a mild cold that it's not a bigger restriction on our day to day life to be honest.

Meanwhile, my FIL has had covid 3 times.

(That increase in the 50s is Maos reign of terror and that comparatively tiny but noticeable one in the 60s was a flu pandemic)

Joe said it.

I agree.

https://www.cnn.com/2022/09/18/polit...tes/index.html

I don't quite understand this declaration.

Like the people who are never voting for him thought it was over a long time ago or never even existed. However, when we get our inevitable winter surge, they'll be bringing this back up like a "Mission Accomplished" banner.

The ones who voted for him aren't looking to the White House as to when the pandemic is over.

So is there some sort of mythical voter than can be woo'd for November that's low information but will listen to the President as for cues as to how things are going?

SI

I think it's important to keep trying to separate politics from health, even if it's not possible.

People are still dying, yet we've been on a trough for about six months now. One question is whether a new variant will emerge and inevitably produce a new spike this winter, like its distant cousin, the flu. Do the initial vaccines still provide protection? Will the yearly vaccination be changed and offer protection? Even on the lowest points of the trough, this still kills about 1 in every 2,000 people per year. The worst of the spikes amounted to about 1 in every 200. And people over 60 overwhelmingly are affected.

What that means is that this is still potentially deadly and seniors are still vulnerable. Plus, they're now going around without masks and returning to "normal" life.

I don't know what this means for me. I doubt I've had it. I am vaccinated and boosted, but the third shot was late last year. For my wife and I, it could be that a new strain this winter could be just as serious a threat as all of this ever was. I worry about her parents, who are 80 and returning to "normal" life (mine were two-pack-a-day smokers and unfortunately no longer with us a long time ago).

What's clear is that COVID didn't just kill the most vulnerable and stop. It's still killing, and many of the most vulnerable just haven't had it. It was important not to overreact at the height of this, and take reasonable precautions. We probably shouldn't underreact today.

There's hasn't been any alarm bells on a new mutation (not that I've heard of yet). So I think the bet is not a significant spike in deaths (but maybe infections) before mid-terms at least.

Biden is proclaiming this now because it'll be used for mid-terms in the next 1.5 months. If he's proven wrong, it'll probably be after elections anyway. He's covered by saying "it's over but we still have a problem and we'll continue working on it".

BF7. No info yet about severity but appears to be more transmissable than BA5 and is beginning to make its way to the US.

Just in time for fall, there's a brand new COVID variant making headway in the U.S. | Fortune

Right or wrong, until BF7 (or something else) is causing significant # of hospitalizations and deaths for vaccinated folks, I'm not going to worry that much about it.

Me neither. But there's always something mutating out there.

https://twitter.com/lauramiers/statu...ZjrUOwfAvhnBzA

Just alarmist stuff, I guess.

I think at this point there's just too much pandemic fatigue. To the point that the majority of Americans probably feel it's either get your vaccine or take the risk without thinking about the nuance surrounding those that are immuno-compromised.

IMO if they tried to move forward with masks, ect again there'd be a lot more pushback and ignoring the safety measures than we saw in the past, even by those that have previously followed them.

I agree that this is where "we" are, for better or for worse. Cases at one point was a number that really moved a lot of people, but not any longer.

Texas figured out how to deal with this a while ago. They did a lot of "if I don't see them, there aren't any cases" type number reporting last year so this year there aren't any dashboards (maybe a handful).

SI

Never bet against American selfishness in the long term.

Seems the UK may be our US canary warning system for the next wave.

Rising Covid-19 Cases in the UK may be a warning for the US | CNN

https://twitter.com/jamessurowiecki/...N6IiOSE6Zpmsxw

Interesting report and quick thread on “excess deaths” - unsurprising conclusions, though

Just read that and was coming here to post same thing. Deep state conspiracy of course.

Important note from that twitter thread that might get buried:


I continue to come across people who question the point of getting a vaccine, especially if they've had COVID themselves.

The deniers are very comfortable wrapping up in "from covid or with covid?????" stuff and the like... giving them the freedom, I suppose, to do whatever they like. I have the misfortune to spend a good deal of time with people with those beliefs, and it comes up a lot... people with these urban legends like the one about a guy killed in a car crash but because he tested covid+ he gets tallied up as a covid death by some deep state liberal hospital employee, or whatever. (I have literally heard that story, recited as evidence, twice more than 100 miles and a month apart)

It's right back to the power of psychological influences. We mostly underestimate the powerful effect of wanting to keep believing something, once we decided we believe it.

That story has been around for awhile. I swear it came out of an Orlando area report, although I have no clue whether it is credible or not.

There's a lot of overlap with election integrity where false information or conspiracy theories that are about supposed widespread issues are buttressed by isolated incidents backing up those claims.

I am genuinely fascinated by the psychology of all this, as I have gushed here from time to time.

I know that I have a professional reputation as "a serious person" so when I'm in a meeting with people who, in less formal settings, might talk super-dismissively about COVID or masking or vaccines -- with me, they prop up some semblance of thoughtful consideration. It's the "I did my own research" angle, but on a different note. That's where these stories, illustrations, anecdotes and so forth seem to come in handy... on a certain level, especially to someone who really wants to believe Side A. If the story is ludicrously paper thin, it doesn't seem to matter.

-I start by wanting to oppose all the policy things related to COVID
-I heard that a car crash guy got counted as a COVID death
-That's obviously preposterous
-Therefore the numbers on COVID deaths are fiction
-I also got it myself and I was fine after a couple of days of sniffles
-Therefore COVID isn't a big deal to anyone
-Therefore I oppose all the policy things related to COVID

That seems to be a license to just stop thinking about the topic, to many.

I think this also a close neighbor of what we were talking about in another thread, a Tweet that said:


Only, it's not "no evidence", it's two really flimsy pieces of evidence: an apocryphal story and a single sample size anecdote.

SI

Actually, in that specific instance, it's simply an overly-generalized supposition followed by an opinion.

How many of us have high-fived a stranger? I just did it a couple of weeks ago at a football game. It can be a gesture of familiarity, but it doesn't have to be. And "should be shared by equals" is just his opinion.

I guess Joe Elliott and I are buds because I high-fived him at a concert in Cincinnati back in 1996 or so.

I did it at a bar Sunday watching the Giants game with a bunch of strangers. Is it acceptable to high 5 a child if you are drunk or do you both need to be drunk?

If you're drunk and he's not, that could put you on the same level to make a high five acceptable if you're drunk enough.

Hey, remember monkey pox? Someone at work mentioned it in passing today and I looked up the current trends. It basically peaked in August and has gone down since.

U.S. Monkeypox Case Trends Reported to CDC | Monkeypox | Poxvirus | CDC

SI

Ultimately, I think this is the right call. We know what will happen if Moderna gives up the IP.

Moderna refuses COVID vaccine to China over intellectual property rights – The China Project

Recommend Off The Edge, by Kelly Weill. Lots and lots of historical echos from the flat earth history to today.

Meanwhile, derision. I get it.

The last of the Covidians - The Spectator World

It seems perfect that the free part of the article fades out right at "holy saint fauci" because that's where I would have stopped reading anyway.

we do?

It’s probably good that is locked behind a paywall for me, because I’m guessing that was going to make me unreasonably angry. The level of selfishness and lack of awareness to realize that there are still people out there for whom COVID could well be a death sentence for themselves or a loved one… yeah. I’ll go on with my day.

We don't?

It spends a lot of time saying the pandemic deniers "were right all along" while taking cheap shots at anyone who thought that a global pandemic that killed millions was serious like the aforementioned Holy Saint Fauci and tying in a bunch of right wing talking points about police violence and how the President is never right. Then it tries to pretend the situation now is the same as it's always been throughout the pandemic. It's lazy, sloppy grievance porn with a lot of caustic doublespeak.



Those are the last two paragraphs, the doublespeak conclusion:

• It's stupid to have actual concerns with the virus now and in the past
• It's some kind of warped kindness to tell people they are stupid

And that last paragraph is typical 2020s misinformation and gaslighting: Remember the early days of the pandemic when we had people trying to take over the Michigan statehouse and none of us were wearing masks, people were getting in fights in stores because they didn't want to wear masks, and we championed the governors and other politicians who ignored what was going on all at the top of our lungs? None of that happened! We all huddled weakly in darkness at home - we're going to simultaneously make your demands sound as absurdly extreme as possible while also pretending we went along with them, which we totally did not. But it makes us sound more reasonable when we try to pretend to tell you to "meet us halfway" now, our halfway being to call you a fool and encourage everyone else to do the same.

All I can think is that it's some kind of warped satire about how there were legit think pieces on the left for liberals trying to figure out how to reconcile the cognitive dissonance of "I believe people are inherently good and will work together" crashed into the selfish, self-destructive behavior they were seeing all around. But I don't think the author is nearly that gifted and the point didn't land. Or he could just be an old man, in age and/or spirit, angrily yelling at the cloud about just how persecuted he wasn't.



SI

Yeah. For two weeks in 2020, a guy had to get takeout from Fuddruckers instead of getting to sit at the bar, and he is still talking about it like he fought at Verdun. Annoying as hell.

The other lie that MAGA takes for granted is that liberals/moderates wanted lockdowns, masking, etc.

No! Of course not! Who wants those things? It is like saying that someone wants chemo when they have cancer. No! Of course not! Chemo sucks! But you make the mature choice to do it in order to prevent more serious problems.

The deployment of "the person wearing a mask alone in a car" is a special sort of device. I'm sure there's a proper in-Latin name for the fallacy...but you plant the flag with an everyone-agrees-that's-dumb example, but that person isn't your real target. It's a persuasion technique to find the first bit of agreement, however small, and to build up from there.

If you can get the reader nodding her head at the masked idiot in the car alone, it's a lot simpler to transfer that agreement to also mocking me - the guy who sporadically goes to the store, but wears a mask in doing so, and is still/again generally deliberately standoffish when out in public, which is a good deal less than it once was.

You can't effectively start your point by making fun of me, because you lose too many people. You start with the obvious strawman, and quietly peel away the difference between that absurd example and the more sympathetic one who is your real target.

This guy is, I'm sure, really proud of the writing he's doing on this subject. He also likely believes in the whole "pearly gate" setup as he approaches the afterlife... if that's true, I'd like him to gather some independent accounting that his efforts during the pandemic were ultimately responsible for 31.3 extra deaths among like-minded readers/followers, or somesuch.

Floridas Surgeon General now replicating the full Antivaxx playbook, using his office to order flimsy 'analysis' to 'show' dangers of vaccines and basing official state health department recommendations to not administer them on this. No review process and not even any indication of authorship. Just the SG using an anonymous piece of jumbled up science on the department server while ignoring even the authors (whoever they may be) stated limitations and warnings re: Interpretation, which they likely included to cover their ass should their names become public and they might want to work somewhere that is not under Ladapo.

It's not surprising (i think i posted about him and his views even pre covid before) but should still make people pause. Even Antivaxxers should consider that he or others could do the same to prevent, say, cancer screenings to cut costs. Then again, i guess they don't care considering the sheer overlap between antivaxx/'vaccine-sceptic' and other fringe positions (that example about cancer screenings actually is taken from a particular 'sceptical of theese vaccines' bubble spearheaded by the Great Barrington crowd who are all intertwined with Death Santis).

Aside from various other methodological issues it flat out excluded ... Deaths from Covid. And thus isolate the excess deaths due to heart issues they attribute to the vaccines by pretty much pretending people get the vaccine to get the vaccine. Not to prevent harm from COVID-19 (if you use the same data pool and reasonable assumptions from other studies you end up with 9 extra cardiac deaths vs 315 prevented COVID-19 deaths within the same timeframe for the same group of people under 40. Not so scary taking a vaccine anymore, is it?). Not including COVID-19 status here also confounds results since COVID-19 is known to affect the heart in some. In summary, as the reviewer below says, this stinks of p-hacking (massaging existing data until you get a result that at least kinda sorta supports your preconceived result).
Funny thing: their data also shows a reduction of all-cause death, even when excluding COVID-19 as they did. So, why isn't that Ladapos lead i wonder. Might he maybe not actually care about wether or not the vaccines are helping his constituents? Hmm...

Florida just announced the results of an analysis that they performed, saying the results show "an increased risk of cardiac-related death among men 18-39" for the mRNA vaccines, and recommend this group not receive these vaccines.

Is this justified? Let's look at the data... pic.twitter.com/hfHrg6CMNb

— Kristen Panthagani, MD, PhD (@kmpanthagani) October 9, 2022

Speaking as someone who works in the industry: yes, we do.

From 3/2


Now on 10/10

The CDC COVID Data Tracker shows

> 12 is at 76.3% (2 shots)
> 12 is at 88.9% (at least 1 dose)

It also has stats for 1st & 2nd booster. Nothing yet for the 3rd booster.

The charts/stats show 7 day moving is down for Deaths, Cases, Hospitalizations.

But I know UK has an uptick.

Good & timely article.

Biden administration scrambling to get more people boosted before winter - POLITICO

Sounds about right, me included. Unless there is a significant spike in hospitalizations & deaths, most won't pay attention. Another article somewhere said UK is experiencing a spike and what happens there will probably happen here. So definitely get ready to do mass vaccinations if needed, but otherwise maybe focus on the most vulnerable groups now.


Get a Change Management campaign going. Hire a good/different consultancy to lead the efforts. Whoever we have right now is worthless.


We shall see. I'll gauge one prediction of success if # of get vaccinated ads come close or exceed # of ED ads/messages on TV, periodicals, websites etc.


I like the idea of doing it at NASCAR but it's worthless unless you get the top drivers to buy in and be advocates. Article didn't mention any of that. If they are depending on "Healthy Trucking of America" to convince NASCAR fans to get vaccinated ... this is the problem.


I think this is a cop out. If WH really thought this is important enough, they will find a way to fund it even with Congressional inaction.

But whenever the Administration tries to do anything without full Congressional buy in, people jump up and down about executive overreach and eleventy-billion interest groups file lawsuits trying to enjoin the action.

We can't have it both ways. Either we want an executive that defers to Congress on matters of spending. Or we want an executive that "will find a way." But we can't really have both.

Sure we can have it both ways. It's been happening under Dem/GOP Administrations for a while now. Presidential Executive Orders is a way to bypass Congress one way or another.

Executive Orders | The American Presidency Project

It's true that Congress controls spending but Presidents have found a way to fund their pet project through contingency/related budgets. People (of the other party) may complain, but think this is a "normal" option if Presidents want to pay the political price.

Fact check: Presidential spending through executive order is allowed

Thoughtful piece on COVID and Long COVID from a good writer, though a confessed non-expert:

https://fallows.substack.com/p/dont-get-covid

There's been a ton of stuff on my Twitter feed about a Pfizer executive admitting in an EU Covid hearing that the vaccines were never tested to determine whether they stopped the spread and this is being used to show that we were all duped into getting a vaccine that did nothing but line Big Pharma pockets and allow the government to control us because the "get vaccinated for others" mantra was a lie (or at best, unknown).

Now, that definitely was part of the selling point, but it seems to me that what also goes hand-in-hand with this is effectiveness in preventing Covid or limiting severe Covid. And if I don't get it, then I can't spread it.

Not exactly sure what I think of this development fully, if it's in fact true, but the over-reactions are expected.

Have seen much the same chatter, and am in much the same place.

I had read the latest 3rd booster was not really "tested" in human trials, and that scientists didn't think it needed to be for whatever reason (e.g. does annual flu shot need to be tested).

If referring to the 3rd booster, it's not a surprise and don't think it was being kept a secret. I read about this 2-3 months ago.

No, I believe this goes back to the original vaccine. The commentary was that they were "working at the speed of science" and understood the importance of getting something out to the public ASAP.

Here's the video widely making rounds:

�� BREAKING:

In COVID hearing, #Pfizer director admits: #vaccine was never tested on preventing transmission.

"Get vaccinated for others" was always a lie.

The only purpose of the #COVID passport: forcing people to get vaccinated.

The world needs to know. Share this video! ⤵️ pic.twitter.com/su1WqgB4dO

— Rob Roos MEP ���� (@Rob_Roos) October 11, 2022

Eh, a nothing burger. He's an idiot.

Below was published Dec 30, 2020 before (if I remember correctly) it was widely available to the public. It shows Moderna (at least wasn't trying to hide it).

Peer-reviewed report on Moderna COVID-19 vaccine publishes | National Institutes of Health (NIH)

Below is from July 2021.

ScienceDirect

The clinical trial protocols and data are all right there on clinicaltrials.gov. This is like denying that rain comes from the sky.

As for the boosters, IIRC, they just did safety trials, which is basically what they do for flu vaccines, and honestly a lot of other medicines that are incrementally updated. Safety trials are a lot shorter than efficacy ones.

I'm very surprised he's so uncompromising even after getting his 3rd term. But it hurts China economically so not going to complain (other than it doesn't look like China will reopen up widely for tourism). Wish I had visited Xian when I had the chance.

Xi Jinping's Party Congress speech: yes to zero-Covid, no to market reforms? | CNN Business

Apparently, researchers at Boston University have combined the original COVID with Omicron and created a strain that kills about 80% of their mice.

Yay! No problem at all with having this around. Perfectly safe.

I'm nervous now about the boosters. My wife just had numbness in her hands and feet for a week immediately following one - after talking to her doctor, monitored it very closely. If it got any worse, we were to check into a hospital immediately for treatment of Guillain-Barre. Which scared the hell out of us. Fortunately, it went away. It's a rare reaction to the vaccine, but it happens.

I work with a girl that cited Floridas attorney general as the opinion she’s leaning on to not get a booster

I smiled and said the CDC feels differently…

Then it boiled down to anyone can find a source to support their cause and we left it at that.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

I saw that article and my initial thought was WTF, why are they doing this? But then, I'm pretty sure they're doing it to learn from it and develop better vaccines (and yeah, maybe weaponize it but don't think that was primary objective). Like you say, the key is to make sure it's in Level X containment and never gets to see the light of the day.

And then I wondered, how did this news leak. You'd think it would be hush hush.

I'm getting my booster and my flu shot on Friday at 5:00 PM. If I haven't posted by Monday it's because I'm still asleep.

Thanks for the reminder. I should get my flu shot now.

(Going to wait till Dec for my 3rd booster)

This is semi related and completely anecdotal though I am curious if there is evidence one way or the other. There probably needs to be an adjustment to the ADA to allow for more handicapped parking spots businesses and other places of public accommodation are required to have. I feel like I am seeing an increase of people leaving their cars with oxygen tanks and bags specifically and disabled decals in general since COVID-19 became a thing. There were generally not enough parking spots available for those that need them before and the problem has worsened with those that are now disabled due to COVID.

I haven't gotten the latest booster because I had COVID in late August (ending my undefeated streak), and I'm not going anywhere anytime soon. Is there a sweet spot to get the booster after COVID? I figure I'll double up with the flu vaccine shortly, unless I decide I should hold off and try to stretch out the COVID vaccine protections until after my own antibodies retreat.

I got through a 5-day Disney park excursion without getting COVID. A trip to Amsterdam finally did me in though. Almost no symptoms though, I thought I was just tired. Only tested because my girlfriend needed to to go back to work.

We got ours about a month ago because of travel. We're going to get our son his in about a month so he should be at max immunity after people come back from Thanksgiving through the inevitable surge in January and February.

SI

I got my booster along with a flu shot a couple weeks ago. My armpit hurt for a couple of days. That was it.