In our family, everyone who was eligible got their COVID-19 vaccine shots at the earliest possible moment. We moved from cloth masks to KN95s very early on. My 10-11 year-old son did remote school. We avoided crowds, had food delivered, and hunkered down. As far as I know, none of has been infected or infected anyone else. There was a brief period after I’d received my second vaccine shot and before the Delta variant took over that I let my guard down a bit and did some unmasked shopping. It felt liberating, like maybe things could soon return to normal, but also kind of stupid because I knew that was naive. The biggest risk we took was sending my son back to school in late-August when he wasn’t yet vaccinated. All throughout, we also let him play outdoor sports, assessing I think correctly, that it was fairly safe. Now everyone is vaccinated and all the adults are boosted.
I still wear a KN95 mask whenever I leave the house and go inside, but in truth I know my greatest risk is at home. That’s because Omicron is so infectious that it’s probably just a matter of time before my son gets a breakthrough case at school. What this means is that I no longer believe there’s a possibility that we’ll avoid infection, because we’re not masking up in our own house. We’re going to have to rely on the protection the vaccines and boosters provide, as well as emerging therapeutics that show promise. There’s only so much we can sacrifice and still live a life worth living.
It is recommended that everyone wear a KN95 or N95 mask to prevent Omicron infection, and that seems like a no-brainer to me. If health care workers rely on them, I think I can rely on them too. Omicron may get us all in the end, but there’s no reason to make its job easy.
My hope is that Omicron is truly less lethal and that it will lead to other even less dangerous variants. Somewhere down the line, I may determine that the risk of getting or spreading COVID-19 is roughly the same as typical influenza viruses. At that point, I’ll put the masks away and take my chances.
Until then, nothing will change even though I am boosted for the next six months.
This could have been a very short post. “Because I listen to the experts and I’m not stupid.”
There is no reason why the next variant that takes over the globe would be more or less virulent. The only thing that “matters to the virus” is ability to infect and spread, and anything that helps it do that will be selected for. A really really virulent form with rapid onset of symptoms in most of the infected would be selected AGAINST, just as SARS-CoV1 was readily eliminated simply because it was so easy to find. My biggest fear is more infectious than omicron (which would be off all known infectiousness charts) and much more virulent in half those infected and asymptomatic but contagious in the other half.
My company is still moving forward with our national meeting in Florida the week of January 10. People flying in from all over the country for a week long meeting. When it was announced several weeks ago that it was going on as planned, they gave all of us the option of participating virtually, which is what everyone did last January during the first peak of Covid. I, along with about 30-35% of the rest of the participants elected the virtual route. It seems a no-brainer, but a lot of people felt like it was expected they should show in person. So they are. I have no idea how this will all work out in the end. They are taking precautions, but spending 8 hours a day in full conference rooms seems really dumb to me. I have elderly parents who I have to be around on a very regular basis, and the thought of me carrying something in to them as a result of this meeting would just be devastating to me. Not to mention, I’m in my 60’s, and though vaxxed and boosted, I’m in a risky demographic.
My dad’s family gathered at noon today for their Christmas get together, but I’m not there. My cousin’s husband, who normally attends, was diagnosed with Covid two days ago. He had the J&J many months ago, but has not been boosted. He posted on FB yesterday that he now has bacterial pneumonia. They’re telling him that there is a shortage of the monoclonal antibodies, so they don’t know when they might be available for him. Of course, there are people in his FB feed telling him to get some Ivermectin.
Most of my immediate family is not vaccinated at all. We would normally host Christmas at our house, but we are not doing it. We’re cooking some food and dropping it off to my parents. We also normally do a New Years Day “Good Luck” dinner. Not this year. I have little doubt my unvaxxed family thinks we’re being ridiculously paranoid about this, but at this point I don’t give a fuck. My dad almost died from Covid in late 2020, and he is a long-hauler who will never fully recover. I’m just done even talking to any them about any of this. It has been exhausting dealing with the insanity and misinformation. They can live their lives the way they want to, and I’ll do my thing.
I was wearing a medical mask early March 2020, but also quickly switched to KN95’s. However, I’ve moved to a 3M Aura N95 earlier in the fall.
Europe is ordering Omicron vaccines. Seems like that’s a definitive and at least pushes the manufacturers to do it rather than “waiting” for if we truly need them (we definitely do; don’t want Omicron to recombine with something worse).
My heuristic after being disappointed in Fall 2020 for having false hope (and doom-pilling me) has been “follow Israel’s lead on vaccines, follow Japan and Taiwan for how to control and suppress, this is the new normal until we see evidence otherwise.”