Is the new variant of covid going to change your Christmas plans this year?

No.

My daughter works in a clinic and tests multiple COVID patients daily. Business as usual for us. .

Nope. So far so good and healthy.

No, nothing has changed for me.

Interesting article about my city in the NY Times. In early December (and maybe still) we had the most cases in the U.S. – six. They were able to be tracked to a person who had recently traveled to Nigeria and was believed to have passed the virus on to the five others in the same household after returning to Nebraska. None of the patients has had severe symptoms; only one had been vaccinated.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/03/us/coronavirus-omicron-sequencing.html

Nope everyone is vacinated; the older ones are boosted.

No, but just in case yesterdy I received my Booster shot ( Pfizer)

Possibly. I’ve been sick for three days. I need to get tested for Covid. I’ve been in bed for 56 hours.

Sorry to hear that @Jonsblond hope it’s not and you make speedy recovery.

^Thank you <3

Yes, in so far that we are in strict lockdown again, as of today.
So Christmas dinner is off for this year.

No. I was hoping to have a safe Christmas at home, because it has been OBVIOUS to me for months that Thanksgiving would start an uptick in cases where I live and that covid would likely be exploding around Christmas and for several weeks afterwards, but it looks like I might be going to my inlaws for Christmas.

The new variant doesn’t change anything. New variant or Delta, both had the potential to make millions of people sick over the holidays while they are busy traveling and congregating. I might be one of the they against my better judgement. If my husband wasn’t leaving town in January I don’t think we would be going to his parents house, but I figure he feels he needs to see them before he leaves.

I was going to have a quiet Christmas anyway as the family members who celebrate it are far away. I am going to Christmas lunch at a friend’s house where they are fully vaccinated and to services where strict protocols are maintained.

Some plans for my birthday later in the month may have to be curtailed.

My Christmas plans for Christmas day are not any different than previously, but for the week of Christmas vacation, I was planning to either take a trip to Boston, which would be two or three nights in a hotel, or do some day trips, maybe take the train to NYC. We were just in NYC last weekend, and were considering going again. Now, with case numbers going up, even though we’re both vaccinated, I’ll be content to stay home that week. I’m not sure.

In the County I used to work in before I retired, the County Executive was just diagnosed with Covid. It makes me leery.

I looked at a NY Times interactive article yesterday where you can put in your city or County and see the Covid numbers, and it was quite alarming. Numbers in my county are up over 90%.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/us/covid-cases-deaths-tracker.html

My plans changed this morning when my daughter’s train was cancelled due to drivers falling sick with Covid. It looks like it will be another Zoom Christmas.

@flutherother Sad!

Nope, so far all the plans are still on. Everyone in my family and close friend circle is fully vaccinated (as of the current definition of that, though I know it will change). I’m not concerned.

Nope. They might be changed because the sister who always has dinner has been ill
(not Covid), but not due to Covid.

You mean the new variant that is mild and has so far killed one person.

No.

Of course it will. Anybody who is not apprehensive about this is delusional.

I feel like people who say it’s not are either delusional or being flippant just for the sake of busting chops.

Don’t have a severe car accident or heart attack next month. There may not be room in your local hospital.

The “bad cold” (omicron) will kill others indirectly.

People who think covid is of no concern are incredibly frustrating. I’m not talking about only Omicron, I’m talking covid19 is still a real threat that is hospitalizing and killing people. Get real.

I wish the US government would just figure out the obvious pattern of increased travel being the big problem and put in more warnings and rules. Of course Omicron is growing like crazy. More than likely we already had thousands of cases when the media was saying we had 5. We weren’t testing variants, we had no idea how many cases were here in the US until they decided to start testing for it.

It looks like Omicron isn’t killing as many people as Alpha and Delta (I’m not sure if that is really the case, is it actually a lower death rate among the unvaccinated?) but Delta is still out there and new variants can develop, and it’s still something to take seriously.

I heard the flu vaccine doesn’t have a good guess for the strains this year either, I fully expect flu to start seriously surging in the next two weeks. Not that it’s as deadly, but it can cause a lot of misery. Last year I didn’t worry about flu at all, because most people were still wearing masks, but that’s not the case anymore. So, this winter we will have both covid and flu outbreaks at once. That’s my prediction anyway.

Just found out that one of the public school systems in the next town over went all remote. I have been suspecting that our school will do the same very soon. My guess is that our school is trying to hold on until Christmas break and then may not reopen after that. We’ll see.