Wrong time, locked in, locked out

[the_siobhan]

We are firmly in the 4th Wave and Ontario continues to open up. My big bosses are bringing people back into the office in October.

The denizens of the Gin Palace are convinced that The Rich People Who Run The Stock Market have just decided that covid is now a normal part of the landscape and a portion of the peon classs will die of it and so all they have to do is make sympathetic noises and just get on with business. Like you know, what they have been doing all along with stress diseases and homelessness and climate disasters.

(I personally am firmly of the opinion that this will NOT be over until we've vaccinated all the people who live in all those poor countries that nobody gives two shits about because they don't have an Olympics team. When the virus no longer has population pools to mutate in, it will stop spitting out new versions that leap-frog over over our available vaccines. So in other words, we might be here for a while.)

For my part I am... I am tired. I am still masking, even just walking down the street. I am avoiding places where there might be crowds.

But I am also taking my mother's husband out for lunch on Saturday, onto a patio, because the man has literally not been outside of his bedroom for anything non-medical for well over year. And if this is risky behaviour, well, he is vaccinated and also 85 and may not fucking live long enough to see a proper end to this bullshit. I have made the unilateral decision that the small amount of pleasure he gets from an afternoon outing is worth the risk to both of us.

I am also making a point of doing this before the anti-vax crowd hits the public school system in September. Because that's going to be ugly.


[EDIT] Is there already a protocol in place for telling servers WARN ME BEFORE YOU ARE MOVING IN TO CLEAR PLATES OR SUMTHIN SO I CAN MASK UP AND NOT CONTAMINATE YOU HOLY SHIT. Or is it just assumed that they are happy to inhale our contamination? I have no idea how things work in the new fuck-the-working-poor regime.

Comments

[doggiesushi]

This is where I struggle at times, and I have a weird view on it. Now I'm vaccinated, I kinda want to get COVID just to get ALL the antibodies I can. But, of course, I want to get it on my terms... know when I'm going to get it so I don't spread it, make sure I get a low viral load so I'll just feel lousy for a few days, etc. Why can't I just have what I want? So not fair.

I'm with you on how this is going to play out over the long term, and it's super frustrating. We're about to start the school year, and I feel bad for the teachers and the kids on this. The kids end up in the middle of a political thing between their parents and the government, and the teachers just want to do their job safely.

[zulu]

Ugh, entirely. Our two provinces, so alike in conservatives, so utterly fucked once schools open. I am so looking forward to sending the unvaxxed child into that den of plague mutants. At least the schools are requiring masks. But they're not going to tell us if there are positive cases! Because why not. Ugh ugh ugh.

I hope you have a lovely patio lunch.

[houseof9cats]

Sub "University of Guelph" and "my kid", and we're in a similar situation. I'm pretty sure he doesn't lose his income if we pull him out of fall semester at the last minute, but he won't progress in his degree, either. Columbia U is in a lot of shit for actually *saying* they were going to leverage gig professors back into the classroom bc gig professors don't have any bargaining power. Meanwhile, G is all eff it, Grade 12 entirely online, please. They will have done only 1 1/2 years total in a brick-and-mortar high school. (This is fine.)

The blue bank is keeping fintech home until at least January, but AFAIK the branches are coming back.

[kalmn]

I have been eating on patios (in Minnesota) and have mostly been trying to sit where I can see servers coming. Okay, wait, it's me, I try to sit with my back to the wall so no one can sneak up on me. But it serves me well in this situation.

[greylock]

We are firmly in the 4th Wave and Ontario continues to open up.

There are those I am aware of here, who think Ontario is *exactly* the strategy we should be pursuing in New South Wales, and the rest of Australia. [I can't tell you who these people are, or what motivates them, or even where they are from, but I have noticed they are all over the reddit since NoNewNormal was shuttered - I don't think it's just down to mockdown/lockdown fatigue].

I personally am firmly of the opinion that this will NOT be over until we've vaccinated all the people who live in all those poor countries that nobody gives two shits about because they don't have an Olympics team.

That is exactly what the experts say, so you're not alone. That's why we have COVAX (which apparently Australia raided?), and why I am a little baffled that we're not making more of a thing of getting AZ out into the Pacific.

For my part I am... I am tired. I am still masking, even just walking down the street.

But masks don't work (the WHO said once, two years ago), and are a symbol of oppression!!!!!

We don't have to mask, because we don't have COVID. At all... except in hospital, and on tankers. But I'm lucky to be WFH, and able to avoid crowded places, and I have masks ready to go at all times.

(No COVID, but anti-lockdown protests, go figure. Do they wear MAGA hats? Yes.)

But I am also taking my mother's husband out for lunch on Saturday, onto a patio, because the man has literally not been outside of his bedroom for anything non-medical for well over year. And if this is risky behaviour, well, he is vaccinated and also 85 and may not fucking live long enough to see a proper end to this bullshit.

I think, if he's comfortable, it's a risk worth taking. As the Covidiots say, you can't always live in fear, but you can limit the risks, Double-vaxxed and a patio seems reasonable. As far as I can seek, while the risks aren't high, they are concentrated by things like toilets and choke points.

Is there already a protocol in place for telling servers
Asking?