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Just read that parents in one part of Texas are having to walk their elementary children to school to protect them from being scared of the anti-vaxer protesters along the way. Scaring kids because they are wearing a mask. Idiots!

My daughter is an elementary school principal and she's had to BEG (yes BEG!) for an additional security officer to protect her teachers as they go from their car into the school, wearing masks.

What. The. Hell. And of course NONE of the protesters are wearing masks and they are spitting raging words. I'm ALL for the first amendment, that's for sure. But in this case, THEIR FREEDOMS END WHERE MY NOSE BEGINS. They need to be put in a bubble zone, away from the masked kids and teachers. Then they can scream their lungs out and infect each other.

That is absolutely crazy.

My friend's family lives in Texas and the 9-year-old niece was diagnosed last week. She and her sister are now out of school and isolating. Hopefully they will come through it as the adults are vaccinated. A pox on anyone who protests outside schools and hospitals, especially terrorizing the littles.

Lost another high school friend last night. I'm angry. He was the healthiest of our lot - very active fire fighter. His WIFE, who not a part of our class, posted on the class page that 'he got to meet Jesus face to face at 9:30 last night.' He would still be alive, we feel, if they had the vaccine - but wife was opposed to it so they didn't get it. Two days on a vent and he's gone.

I will not attend the funeral because I am angry. He was the blue-eyed handsome guy that all the girls had a crush on from 9th grade on. Still athletic with no health problems, I feel he would still be with us if he'd had the vaccine.

(((((Jeanie)))))
That sucks. It truly does. What a damn shame.

Yes it is a shame. A disgrace. Make me angry.

My neighbor's 25 yr old son just died of COVID. On ECMO for 9 weeks. So awful and sad. No pre existing health conditions, but not vaccinated. Devastated.

OMG 9 weeks on ECMO. Yikes. What a horrible horrible way to die.

My (fully vaccinated) sister just got a positive test - after returning from caring for our elderly parent for a week. Our (fully vaccinated) cousin, who is recovering from throat cancer/chemo/radiation drove her the 2 hrs to the airport and let her crash on his couch for what ended up being 2 nights (thank you pilots, TSA, or whatever for cancelling everything last week). Now he's positive too (the old "I helped my cousin by spending a day in the car driving her around and then let her stay at my home and all I got was this lousy Covid" problem). I'm worried about him, as he's pretty bad. My sister is doing ok (not hospital bad, but basically slept for more than a week and still can barely get to the bathroom and back to bed).

We are lucky our elderly parent didn't get it - there was def crossover between sister being exposed and leaving parent's house, but looks like she left before she was contagious and that time on the cousin's couch (coupled with weak immunity from cancer treatment) that got him.

Today a coworker told me of her good firefighter friend, mid-30s, excellent health, no underlying conditions, is on a vent. Has little babies at home and getting his last rites. didn't believe in the vaccine.

Today I had TWO separate people tell me of yard signs popping up that say something like "respect the science, refuse to mask", like it's a badge of honor or some such thing. I just don't know what's happened to our world. This "so long as it's not ME that's sick/dying, it doesn't count and didn't happen and I don't believe you" kind of attitude just astounds me. People giving up million dollar jobs to make some political statement or whatever. sigh.

[This message edited by gmc94 at 6:59 AM, Wednesday, October 20th]

I’m a stat freak. A lot of European countries have excellent statistics on Covid and vaccinations. In some of the Nordic countries, Spain and Portugal they have around 70-75% of the total population vaccinated. Yet those not vaccinated are generally 45-50% of those that are diagnosed with Covid, and 50-60% of those that are hospitalized. Comparable ratios can be found in countries with a lower vaccination rate.

There are often footnotes on the stat-sites about how many of those vaccinated are only diagnosed because they were tested due to a connected person getting Covid (for ex parents being diagnosed after their kids get sick at school, or a work-colleague getting diagnosed leading to your test). The symptoms being so mild that the person didn’t realize they had Covid.

OK – so what do those numbers really mean?
About 25% of the population (non-vaxed) is causing half the problem and over half the hospitalization. One could deduct that if we got 100% vaccination rate the number of new cases would drop by 40%, and hospitalization by half.

I am fairly certain health insurers are looking at stats like this and thinking non-vaxed are a high-risk group. Have already heard of several companies that have raised the premiums for non-vaxed.

I don’t get it… We accepted the "loss of freedom" with seat-belt laws because they made sense. I remember people shouting that we would all be trapped in our vehicles and burn to death…

Bigger, great info.

ALL these people need to DO is look at the recent past and see measles. smallpox, mumps and polio have all been almost completely done away with - due to VACCINE. No one made those diseases political.

I would imagine scientist like Jonas Salk are spinning in their graves right about now.

This one isn't going away with a vaccine. Too big of spread and too many reservoirs outside of humans at this point. Plus corona viruses are a different beast more like the flu and other coronavirus strains than smallpox or polio. What will happen is the impact will become similar to other corona/flu viruses. Most will get exposed in their youth and acquire enough of an immune response that catching a variant later in life will be not be as big of deal. It's that it is novel that is causing the issue. The vaccine helps confer that acquired immunity to older age groups without a prior infection. You can see this in the cdc data. Both the case rate and death rate by age group shows significant improvements for being vaccinated. The idea is to get your immune system responding before you get sick enough to trigger the cytokine storm. covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#rates-by-vaccine-status The only real debate is whether or not vaccination of younger children should be pursued. I guess you can throw in those who have proven prior infection. The issue there is did that person get sick enough to generate a permanent immune response and how to test for antibodies more than a month later.
I did see an article yesterday that this isn't likely to need yearly boosters like I had assumed. I had figured on this becoming a flu like issue with different boosters every year.

Jeaniegirl,

I'm sorry about your friend.

Personally, I'm surprised about how political Covid has become for certain people I know. It didn't start as a political issue to them. It became one.

My older brother is in law enforcement with DNR and has been for 30-something years since he graduated college with a BS in Chemistry and a minor in Biology. He has always fully accepted Covid as valid and concerning. He was in the first group in his state to become vaccinated because they identified him as a first responder. He is in a rural area and often a first responder to a variety of legal and medical events. Early on, I asked my brother if he was careful with masks and interaction with people. He laughed and told me he always has been and that I have no idea about the type of people he interacts with regularly.

A few weeks ago, he told me that he and his partner were called out to bring in a man who killed multiple people, including family members, because he believed they were involved in a Covid conspiracy. They approached with weapons drawn, but after talking to the man extensively my brother put away his weapon. His partner is new and asked if he was scared and about the procedure. My brother told her it was like talking to another one of our brothers who is a conspiracy theorist on multiple issues. My brother fully believes the conspiracy theories are invalid.

Last week, my brother said if his state invokes a vaccine mandate, he will resign or retire from his job. I was confused because he has been vaccinated. In fact, he got it early because of his job. My brother said it's about personal choice, and he won't show his vaccine card. I'm still confused of his thought process.

I work at a large university. We've been testing everyone who goes on campus at least weekly since around this time last year. The university went remote for classes sometime last fall until this fall. There's no vaccine mandate but about 90% of faculty and a smaller percentage of students have reported that they are vaccinated. We still have a mask mandate and weekly testing if you want access to any university building.

Last spring, I was speaking to a colleague who was vaccinated and did so at the earliest opportunity. They mentioned that they wouldn't notify the university that they were vaccinated. Their belief was that the university and state were anxious to get back to in-person classes, and they believed the political and financial climate would try to force in-person teaching even if it wasn't safe. They felt they would be able to opt-out on medical reasons if they didn't state that they were vaccinated. I don't know that they were wrong. There were many faculty who committed to teaching in-person before everything was known about Delta.

Humantrampoline, thank you for your insight.

From the beginning of the pandemic, I have never viewed the vaccine or masks or even social distancing as a personal choice. I've seen these suggestions as acts we must do to STOP the pandemic. For instance, wearing a mask really doesn't protect me -- it protects YOU 'from" me so wearing a mask is the least we can do, an unselfish act to try to protect others.

Our lives are filled with mandates. Our children must be vaccinated to attend public schools; we must wear a seat belt under penalty of law. We must stop at stop signs or red lights - to save OUR lives and the lives of others.

It's simple really because to enjoy our lives and freedoms - we must be alive to enjoy them.

[This message edited by Jeaniegirl at 6:21 PM, Wednesday, October 20th]

I decided, since we already have several Covid threads, I would post this here instead of starting a new thread.

OTHER WAYS COVID IS KILLING ---

I have several wonderful Canadian friends. I've lost two of them due to Covid. I knew another friend was really ill as he got sick around the time I had surgery in June. Raspy voice, real problems swallowing food. HUGE weight loss. He and his wife have been trying to get him in for tests since June. They were unable to get medical attention due to Covid.

Finally in mid-October, after two ZOOM calls with a physician, an appointment was made for him for tests. His Uncle passed from cancer of the esophagus. He was very concerned.

They contacted me last night to tell me the bad news.

Cancer of the Esophagus.

He has lost 41 pounds since June.

The cancer has spread to his lymph nodes, his inner chest wall and his pancreas.

They were going for two more tests this morning to see if it's spreading to his brain.

STAGE FOUR in all the cancerous areas.

They have told him he's terminal and has a few weeks to live.

I'm so sorry about your friend Jeannie.

That was an unbelievably long time to wait for an appointment, especially while having symptoms. How very sad.

Thank you. Yesterday at 5:30 he received a treatment of chemo and radiation at the same time. His wife said they were told that one week of treatment equals one week of extra life for him. But she says he's questioning the 'quality' of life if the treatments make him really ill -- and he will decide in the next few days if the sickness of the treatment is worth it. He has four young grandchildren and would like to be around for the last holidays with them.

Just read that parents in one part of Texas are having to walk their elementary children to school to protect them from being scared of the anti-vaxer protesters along the way. Scaring kids because they are wearing a mask.

I think that it's HORRIBLE that anyone would scare kids about this, whether the kids are wearing masks or not wearing masks.

Idiots!

Well, there are idiots on all sides of this stupid pandemic. Most people complain on the anti-mask, anti-vaccine, anti-do-anything crowd. Those folks are the easiest to pick on, but there is plenty of blame to go around.

The powers that be began the pandemic with "we don't know much" and they assumed that this virus spread by all sorts of factors that turned out to be wrong (remember sanitizing everything?).

By June 2020, though, we knew that SARS-CoV-2 spreads almost exclusively via aerosols, which means... sanitizing surfaces is unnecessary and 6-ft of social distancing is not very protective. Yet, to my knowledge, government agencies like the CDC have yet to spread the word of "Whoops! We were wrong, you can stop doing that!" Similarly, the protection that masks offer is really good but it's been poorly explained.

Cheap cloth and/or paper masks basically prevent you from spreading COVID to others; they provide very little person protection. Meaning, we all need to wear masks to protect everyone.

To be honest, I think that the vaccines have made the problem worse, in general. In my immediate urban area, the vaccine rate is pretty high (~70%) but I see very crowded indoor spaces with few if any masks (except in places that aggressively require masks). COVID fatigue is the real problem here, in my opinion.

Basically, people have assumed that vaccines will save us, but with relatively low vaccination rates... we basically have COVID running unchecked among half of our population.

I just received my government letter reminding me about getting my cancer screening done. I hadn't gotten those girly screenings in years even before the pandemic so i was already getting letters.

[This message edited by DragnHeart at 12:18 PM, November 17th (Wednesday)]

I tried to post image in new site. Disnt work.

Came to legacy site to edit and try again, lost my entire message. Had to back space it to get back to my post. Omg. Image still wont post.

The image was the one explaining masks using the example of peeing yourself...