Yeah I'm sorry but since it's not affecting me personally 2+ years of being inconvenienced is enough, and now that omicron is a mild cold at best I've cared about as much as I can.
Like I get it, but, nobody is catering to my needs either you know.
I'm as indifferent as I was when the mask mandate was instated.
Posted by: syncro
They're a recent kindey transplant so they are immunocompromised due to the anti-rejection meds, which they'll be on for the rest of their life. I think flu is less of a concern tho, but don't quote me on that.
I don't know the numbers but I would guess that it's a very small percentage of the population that is in similar circumstances. It's a question of how de we let the majority of people live their lives while still trying to provide a reasonable level of protection to those who need it.
Not sure of numbers in Canada, but assume that they are pretty similar to US...
"Close to 3 percent of U.S. adults take immunosuppressive drugs, either to treat cancers or autoimmune disorders or to stop their body from rejecting transplanted organs or stem cells. That makes at least 7 million immunocompromised people—a number that’s already larger than the populations of 36 states, without even including the millions more who have diseases that also hamper immunity, such as AIDS and at least 450 genetic disorders."
Many autoimmune disorders are treated with drugs that knock out the B cells or T cells of the immune system. This means that even if these folks get vaccinated, the immunity conferred by the vaccine will not be as strong because they can't produce the antibodies etc needed.
"At one extreme, about half of organ-transplant recipients produce no antibodies at all after two vaccine doses. Compared with the general vaccinated public, they are 82 times more likely to get breakthrough infections and 485 times more likely to be severely ill. Should they get infected, their risk of hospitalization is a coin flip. Their risk of death is one in 10. “Imagine walking around and being in society and thinking, If you give me COVID, I might have a 10 percent risk of dying,”"
Posted by: Couch_Surfer
Fair point. I get that this person is uncomfortable with a changed set of conditions, and will have to adjust. I guess I’m just not buying that our current mishmash of (mostly cloth) masking is the thing de-risking life. Life cannot be completely de-risked, and this person unfortunately lives with higher day to day risk than others. I don’t know how to solve for that, but there are many activities we all choose to accept even though they add risk for everyone.
We have vaccinated everyone that will get it. We don’t have overrun hospitals. Omicron variant is significantly less dangerous than original Covid. We have anti-virals to treat it. We have a hospital staff that have had a 2 year course on how to treat this disease. It’s here to stay, we need to get comfortable with that.
It's not just that immunocompromised and other vulnerable folks are "uncomfortable" with the lifting of mask mandates, or that they "feel at risk" (to quote DBH), they ARE at increased risk. While wearing a mask themselves will help protect them, it's not as effective as having the majority of us wearing masks too. IMO, wearing a mask is a pretty minor inconvenience compared to the risk of dying. I will continue masking in public indoor spaces to protect more vulnerable folks.
Having anti-virals available helps, but there are a number of contraindications for taking them (e.g. many of the most vulnerable can't, such as folks with kidney or liver disease). They need to be taken within five days of onset of symptoms, and with BC's very restrictive testing, good luck with that.
Oh, and kids under 5 aren't vaccinated yet.
Learning to "live with it" should not mean giving up & removing protections.
Things like increasing health care capacity, making testing easy & accessible, wearing masks (or better yet, providing N95 or equivalent for free), improving ventilation/air filtration in public spaces & monitoring, and working to distribute vaccines world-wide are what we need to "live with it".
This is worth a read... https://leavingevidence.wordpress.com/2022/01/16/you-are-not-entitled-to-our-deaths-covid-abled-supremacy-interdependence/
I’m out. I’ll follow the guidelines as I have for two years.
We got vaccinated as the way out of this. If people want to stay in it, go for it. Everyone can choose their path on that
So today being the first day without masks required indoors, I noted that the mask required signs were gone from the superstore doors. But rough estimate, over 75% of shoppers were masked.
Then I went outside and stepped into the aftermath of a shooting scene.
The one by the holiday Inn?
Posted by: KenN
So today being the first day without masks required indoors, I noted that the mask required signs were gone from the superstore doors. But rough estimate, over 75% of shoppers were masked.
Then I went outside and stepped into the aftermath of a shooting scene.
Wife said the same, she was at a few stores in Vancouver and here in Coquitlam and at least 80% were masked still. I never really go anywhere so it'll probably be a while before I notice a change :)
Scary about that shooting, at least your timing put you in the aftermath, not before.
Posted by: Adam-West
The one by the holiday Inn?
Yup
Posted by: Adam-West
Yeah I'm sorry but since it's not affecting me personally 2+ years of being inconvenienced is enough, and now that omicron is a mild cold at best I've cared about as much as I can.
The text I bolded above is not accurate. Omicron kills people. You are odds are better if you are fully vaxed, but the chances of ending up with a serious case of COVID is non-zero. Additionally you can have a mild case of the acute disease and then end up dealing with a life altering case of Long COVID.
As someone whose quality of life has a lot to do with my lung function and energy levels so I can ride my bike I'm not taking COVID lightly. That doesn't mean I'm wearing a mask outside alone in a park, but I'll evaluate risks on a case by case basis and I won't hesitate to wear a mask or just skip an event/activity depending how I come down on the risk levels.
Posted by: Vikb
Posted by: Adam-West
Yeah I'm sorry but since it's not affecting me personally 2+ years of being inconvenienced is enough, and now that omicron is a mild cold at best I've cared about as much as I can.
The text I bolded above is not accurate. Omicron kills people. You are odds are better if you are fully vaxed, but the chances of ending up with a serious case of COVID is non-zero. Additionally you can have a mild case of the acute disease and then end up dealing with a life altering case of Long COVID.
As someone whose quality of life has a lot to do with my lung function and energy levels so I can ride my bike I'm not taking COVID lightly. That doesn't mean I'm wearing a mask outside alone in a park, but I'll evaluate risks on a case by case basis and I won't hesitate to wear a mask or just skip an event/activity depending how I come down on the risk levels.
Yeah, well everyone's gunna do what they're comfortable with. I've thought the way people wear masks in restaurants and at my work setting has been nothing but pointless for the last 6 months.
From everything I have seen from me and my peers that have had the rona they were all fine after 4 days. sure anecdotal evidence, but at some point we're gunna have to move on from protecting everyone at all costs, seems to me this is the time for that.
COVID has always been a numbers game. Most people had low-ish risk for a life altering outcome, but that risk was/is non-zero. How you choose to look that is personal. But, if we are talking anecdotes there are tons of stories of folks who didn't take COVID seriously until they or a loved one were seriously affected. In that aftermath they of course wished they had done more to protect themselves. It's not shocking as I'd expect only a small % of the Canadian adult population could pass a high school level statistics course. If you don't have a good grasp on statistics you can't really evaluate your COVID risk properly.
Now I agree that some global public health policies had specific situations that weren't terribly logical or the logic wasn't clearly expressed. Your example of masks in restaurants would be a good example. Strictly speaking you can argue the limited amount of mask wearing [to/from your table] wouldn't do much. However, you could also argue having to wear a mask away from the table was a constant reminder about COVID and would help keep people from doing other things like wander from table to table or congregate. I can appreciate that later reasoning so it didn't bother me to wear a mask away from my table.
I also agree we can't continue massive restrictions forever like people not able to work/run their businesses, but we can certainly continue masking or vax passports for months more without really stopping people from doing stuff. If you can work, socialize, go to the gym/hockey game/concert/etc... and just have to scan a QR code to show you are fully vaxed that's a pretty limited impact with a significant safety outcome for the population.
Personally I'd be much more likely to go to some optional event [indoor sports/entertainment/social] if a vax passport was used and I knew everyone was fully vaxed or if everyone was masked. The vax passport allows the most "normal" interaction so I would be happy with that. The majority of people in BC are fully vaxed so the impact would be low and the unavxed can either decide to get vaxed or decide that they would prefer to deal with the negative outcomes of that decision.
On FB a writer i took skiing up here, picked up covid on an amtrack, now he has long covid.
Buddy is the epitome of fitness ski touring xc skiing, biking, not old triple vaxed and I recieved a vid of him only capable of one step a second to the end of his driveway and back in the house
so it might be cold or it might be way more
Posted by: KenN
Then I went outside and stepped into the aftermath of a shooting scene.
Gangsters. Great.
https://vancouversun.com/news/crime/shooting-superstore-north-vancouver
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