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.