Year Three

In early 2021, everyone started talking about how it had been a year since the pandemic started. Then last fall, everything referred to how it had been 18 months. Now we're in the "it's been two years" period, and already I'm seeing references to the fact that we're entering year three.

Lots of countries and communities are now considering COVID endemic, "a constant presence in a particular area of the world or in a particular population. ...It’s not necessarily present at the ideal level, but it’s expected and somewhat predictable." What does that mean? A lot of places are just doing away with vaccine and mask requirements all together, including restaurants, schools, and entire cities. The UK, which had provided home rapid tests to anyone who wanted them so they could test in advance of socializing, is now ending that program. It seems like a ploy just to appease people who think there's been too many restrictions, especially with elections and such upcoming in some places.

But infection rates aren't really at a low level or even their lowest level in the past year. I can't help but wonder if people had just been a little more patient and waited a few weeks for things to get even better, would this have a better outcome. I've probably said it here a bunch of times, but I keep going back to the parachute analogy: "The parachute has slowed our descent, we can take it off now" 😕

Ukraine & Plateau

Obviously this is my COVID diary but I have documented a couple times other major world/political events, so I feel I should mention that at 10 PM tonight, after weeks of threatening, Russia has invaded Ukraine. Are we witnessing the beginning of WWIII? (There were some military things happening at the beginning of 2020 that I know people were saying might spark another world war, but clearly that didn't pan out...) The US seems to have taken more of a hands-off, non-military position, instead imposing sanctions on certain people in Russian government, but I heard there is more that could be done that would be very bad for Russia's economy. But also Russia has been doing cyber attacks and other online/societal meddling for years, could they just shut down US infrastructure or something? They also provide a lot of gas, mostly to Europe, so this will probably cause already high gas prices to go up, right? And, if it gets to this point, who all has the nuclear weapons these days..?

Anyway, besides current political events, my husband got his first real haircut in two years tonight. I've been begging him to do it probably since last summer. He was going to have to do something for work tomorrow and wanted a trim before then, but then that project was postponed for a couple weeks because one of his colleagues got COVID.

I've otherwise been feeling pretty good about going out and interacting and such lately - masked of course, but maybe just a surgical mask, not KN95. We had been joking that we weren't planning on going anywhere until March and for a while that looked like a pretty good estimate, but it seems like mid-February was actually the timeframe. We ate at a restaurant (outdoors) last week, I've gone back to doing my own grocery shopping and a lot of other errands, I visited a family member (both masked), and we have another family event coming up this weekend (where we'll probably be the only people in masks). I had seen headlines that COVID cases globally dropped ~20%, and in the US there's been a very sharp drop to levels like what we were seeing late last summer, but I'm already seeing that curve is starting to plateau...

Almost Normal

The spike of omicron infections has fallen just as rapidly as it rose, dropping infections levels to where they were last summer when things were low, and all of a sudden it feels like everyone's just flipping a switch and going "back to normal," which leaves a lot of people in this weird limbo where we don't know what to do.

Lots of schools have announced they're ending or about to end their mask mandates for students. Many businesses have also announced they're dropping their mask requirements for employees (though for places like retail stores, there hadn't been a requirement for patrons for a long time). 

However, my own employer, although trying to do little things to encourage people to slowly start coming back to the office, is not only mandating that people wear masks while there, but even discouraging the use of cloth masks and providing approved 3-ply masks at the entrances. 

Yesterday my husband and I took the day off work to do an errand together (and because we both have a lot of PTO to use up). First we went to a business where we and the other customers were the only people wearing masks, and the employees were maskless and carefree. (I visibly saw spit come out of the mouth of the guy we were working with as he spoke, which made me appreciate the purpose of masks...) Then we went to Costco, where not only was everyone masked up but most people had brought out their strongest N95s. Then we took advantage of the unseasonably warm weather by going out for lunch where they had outdoor seating. (My third experience dining at a restaurant since March 2020, if you're keeping track.) While we wore masks on our way through the restaurant to our outdoor table, I only saw one masked employee, and obviously the patrons weren't wearing masks, including ourselves once we were seated. Finally, we went to the mall (just to a specific store near the entrance), and most people were masked, but there were a lot of exposed noses.

Going out yesterday felt almost normal, though. Tonight my husband's band is playing a show at a bar, probably the most "indoor" performance they've given since the pandemic started. Of course he'll be masked, but I don't know about the rest of the band, and I'm sure the patrons won't be... But I don't feel worried?

Freebies

Oh hello, just checking in. January was a pretty quiet month for us. We got a little snow, but when you're not worried about driving to work, it doesn't matter. (I know our school district did take a snow day but held virtual learning online instead.) We went with friends to this outdoor light show exhibit at a sculpture garden - most of us wore masks the whole time, just for warmth. I've been doing grocery pick-up just to avoid spending time in stores as much as possible, but I have had to do a few things in person, and pretty much everyone is wearing masks these days - and good medical masks or better, you see fewer cloth masks now. 

The US government is sending every household 4 free COVID tests. You had to request them online, which leaves out households that aren't online, and it's just 4 per address, which doesn't really make sense for households with more than 4 people (like my family growing up, multigenerational families, families with 3+ kids, or roommate situations, etc.), but it's a start. They're also releasing N95 masks from the national stockpile, but those will be distributed at pharmacies and community health centers.

Gustavo Fring for Pexels

Supply chain is still very messed up. I put off placing a grocery order until most of the things I needed were in stock, but I still had to make some substitutions, and some stuff is just not available - like sea salt? The last time I was at Target, some of the items I picked up were the last ones on the shelf.

Although the omicron spike is coming down just as quickly as it went up, people are acting like it's totally over now ... No, we are just in the middle of the decline - as of this week, we're basically at the level we were at in December as cases started to climb, or the very top of the last bad peak in December 2020. This is still not a great place to be and one of the highest case counts we've been at, so I don't see why people are acting once again like COVID is over? (I go back again to the analogy of, "the parachute has slowed our decent, so we can now take it off.") 

The Moderna vaccine just received full FDA approval for ages 18+, and there's also talk that the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine may be approved soon for kids age 2-5, which my friends with young kids are very excited and relieved about.