Coronavirus

Before the pandemic I was a regular Hobbit who just wanted to stay home and enjoy good food, ale, pipeweed, and the occasional visitors. Now I go out every weekend looking for adventure and fellowship. I think a lot of us are starting a new normal on our own terms and years from now we'll be referring to B.P. and A.P. periods of our lives.

Since there appears to be an outbreak of COVID in Guangzhou we get to experience a Chinese reaction again. There are six confirmed cases, which most of us assume are six family unit outbreaks.

As a result there are several districts in lockdown. That means public transportation will not pickup in those districts only drop off. If you have your cell phone ping off one of those towers you get a red code on your health app. Our housing unit got notified that we will report to the testing location at 8PM with our phones and ID cards. It's already 9PM and since we can see the testing location from our window we are going to wait. We have a neighbor in line and they say the line hasn't moved at all in an hour. Perhaps the kids will get to bed by midnight (their bedtime is 8PM). School is cancelled for tomorrow so everyone else in the school can test.

The assumption is if you miss your test they will actually lock your door from the outside. Perhaps we will end up with a two week vacation inside our apartment. Got internet, got a treadmill, got enough food, and am hiding a copy of Descent 2nd edition we pickup up off eBay for the boy's end of school year present (to keep them occupied since there is no summer activities).

Locked from the outside!? Wow, I have never heard that one before.

Got the kids in bed at 10:45. That hour outside required a shower. Tons of bug bites too. It was taking so long they swapped to throat swabs instead of nasal. At 11PM they called it and told people to come back tomorrow.

www.washingtonpost.com/health/interactiv...unvaccinated-people/

This is pretty sobering about what the anti vaxxers are experiencing atm

Got this off Google just now which says its 2 days old. Cool that New England is the top 6 for % fully vaccinated but there's still a lot of room among the 40%-50% unvaccinated for the virus to spread and mutate even here.

Location % of population fully vaccinated
Vermont 56.4%
Maine 54.4%
Massachusetts 53.8%
Connecticut 53.7%
Rhode Island 51.8%
New Hampshire 49.2%

I have committed to attending my friend's birthday party this Saturday. 45 people have confirmed, and there are another 37 maybes plus 102 that haven't responded. So possibly 60 people will show up. Checking Zillow, the house has 1136 square feet, 3 bedrooms, and 2 bathrooms, so it will be a bit crowded. The host said that people are also welcome to hang out in the yard, but the high temp will be 96F that day. If I start feeling twitchy, I will just bail early, via the Irish goodbye. It's only a 10 minute drive from my house.

I just hope that the vaccine actually works as advertised, otherwise I'm taking way too many chances and spending way too much time in places where the fun is marginal at best. I played bingo. I'm not old enough to enjoy bingo.

Ohio's mask mandate expired today, and there are videos of jackass GQP politicians burning their masks. The state is only 45% vaccinated. My state is full of idiots.

So I had my second mandatory COVID test yesterday. Two weekends, two tests, I anticipate this to continue for two full months or until they decide to lockdown our district. This time was much smoother than the first. The testers were much more organized, they changed the online form to allow non-native Chinese readers to fill it out and everyone had it filled out ahead of time. When we got there they were letting groups of ten people in and sticking all the throat swabs in a single vial. So if anyone in your batch tests positive all of the ten will be called back for a nasal swab. This time it was only a 45 minute disruption.

Meanwhile at the office I have to deal with local staff leaving abruptly to test and not returning for a full 24 hours (that's our policy, we don't want to have the Chinese government shut the whole place down because a positive test result returned to work). Since the Facilities manager left I am covering his section and there are a bunch of folks in that section who are locked in their apartment for a minimum of two weeks. I really don't know when they will be released. That means they can order food and the delivery drivers will drop it off at the front door, then a guy in full hazmat will spray the bag and drop it off at the specific door. Cars and planes are not allowed to leave the city, well except for International flights people are free to infect those in other countries. This will be going on for quite a while.

The really bizarre and infuriating thing is there is someone in a position of power who is insisting on holding public events. They claim this outbreak is a hoax (or maybe the entire virus) and are using their authority to force everyone to put efforts into events that aren't going to happen. Since my local staff do event support (videos, presentations, etc) and they are disappearing randomly (I have a guy who has been tested three times, likely to lose him to a lockdown) it impacting their morale at a time when we don't need this.

So I went to that fully-vaccinated party, and had a nice time. The high temperature that day was a dry, windy 99F, and it was still in the '90s when I went to the party. I showed up right at the start, so there were only a handful of people at first, which was a good way for me to ease back into social interactions. The house did have central air, but eventually it got warm inside anyway due to the number of people. By midnight, half the people were outside in the yard, so there was plenty of breathing room inside. I was quieter than usual, but was a good listener in some interesting conversations. I left at 1:00 AM, feeling more normal than I had for many months.

Not sure if this is pandemic-related, but I have noticed a significant increase in flaky behavior lately. Due to my own issues, I have been reluctant to make plans lately. But once I do make plans, my word is my bond. I will complete the mission. But other people around me have been the opposite lately. Making plans and then not following through. Maybe they are over-committing themselves to activities to make up for lost time during lockdown? Or maybe they are dealing with their own anxieties and it plays out in the form of flaking?

Shellhead wrote: Not sure if this is pandemic-related, but I have noticed a significant increase in flaky behavior lately. Due to my own issues, I have been reluctant to make plans lately. But once I do make plans, my word is my bond. I will complete the mission. But other people around me have been the opposite lately. Making plans and then not following through. Maybe they are over-committing themselves to activities to make up for lost time during lockdown? Or maybe they are dealing with their own anxieties and it plays out in the form of flaking?

Based on what I have experienced, it is easy for people to make the plans and be excited about them.....then the nervousness sets in as the deadline approaches.

So I'm starting to consider that I may be having a side effect from the vaccine.

In the past I've had hip issues, muscle and ligature, not bone. I did physical therapy about five years back and it got much better, to the point where I wouldn't feel any pain at all unless I really overdid it. And I could bend down and pick something up which was a nice thing to get back.

All had been well until a month back or so when I overdid it, helping my wife moving bricks in the yard to re-landscape a couple of gardens that we hadn't redone since we bought the house. Both hips let me know their displeasure, when it really had been the left hip hurting me years back. So I went into my usual recovery routine (in spite of still moving heavy stuff around the yard every doggone weekend since) and the hips just would not heal. Some real pain, and just non-stop. Had a devil of a time sleeping.

Long story short -- I've managed to get back to a place where I can take tylenol to sleep at night and as long as I stay relatively mobile the pain doesn't settle in too badly. But it's definitely worse than it's been for years and not fully healing even with 14 days of easy-going use. A wrong step can kick it off. I've scheduled PT again.

Talked with my boss yesterday who also has hip pain, and he asked, "maybe a side-effect of the vaccine? Joint pain is one of the ones listed for Pfizer, but it's rare."

So . . . don't get me wrong, I'm all for the vaccine and not killing old people with my breath is a solid trade-off for the hip issue. I'd do it again in a heartbeat. But the timing is mostly right for this potential side effect, which tends to hit on second shot more than first. This would have started the weekend after a Monday shot, and the side effect even mentions increased joint pain on already existing conditions. I'll never know of course.

I'll have the boys lift the rocks from now on. Too old for this stuff anyway.