How do you feel about the current state of the pandemic?

Really truly? On the one hand, I am getting used to it, and I am stunning at hermitting. On the other hand, I have enormous difficulty reading, eating, watching, even contemplating anything new. My life is about comforting things, I cry easily, and for someone who has been fearless most of my life, this constant fear thing is a new and unpleasant sensation.

Sad, frustrated and fighting anxiety. I’m laying low a lot right now after being out and about more in the late summer and Fall and hoping it’s not for too much longer. Even with the vaccination and boosting, Omicron seems to hit some people hard and I don’t really want to chance it but I hate to put my life on hold. Like @canidmajor, I’m good at hermiting and talks with friends and neighbors and walking lifts my spirits but I am sad.

My job is one that cannot be done from home. I have been out in public since the beginning. I had Covid a year ago and have had to be tested several times since then because I was in close proximity for a period of time with someone that later tested positive. Being a part of this pandemic has been in my wheelhouse since the start.

I’ll be honest, I don’t get emotional about all that is going on, I get annoyed. I am a bit more fatalistic than most on these pages, I guess. I recognize that diseases spread. I am not scared of Covid-19 and even less scared of Omicron. I am annoyed because I believe the ones “in charge” are clueless or, even worse, making decisions based on what is best for themselves or even big Pharma…NOT on what is in the best interest of the people. I am annoyed because the story keeps changing and now we are starting to get back to what I was saying when it first came out. When I heard “Cloth Masks don’t do anything to stop the spread of the new variant” the first question I asked, and one that I have yet to find an answer for, is What is different in size or transmission between the virus particles of Covid-19 and Omicron? I get annoyed at what isn’t being said and at how often the story changes.

I go through a lot of feelings in just one day. I see how many people we have in our very small hospital with covid. I see the medical records and see how otherwise healthy people are barely hanging on to life. And it’s ages 18 and up, so at this point in the virus, young adults seem to be having the worse side effects. It makes my anxiety level go up. At times I can block it out of my thoughts, but then I get on Facebook and see people mocking the vaccines. It really angers me because I don’t get on Facebook and shout out my thoughts on non-vaxxers.
My SIL’s father is 87 and very sick with failing kidneys. He was having problems breathing 2 weeks ago so she took him to the emergency room. They said because the hospital was overflowing with covid patients, they couldn’t see him for 8 to 10 hours. He started crying and wanting to go home. He was scared. My SIL took him home. I’m crying as I write this because he is a good man and doesn’t deserve this treatment, but because people aren’t vaccinated they are taking up hospital space.
I can’t see an end to this, and probably should just accept it, but I can’t.

@chyna Thank you for sharing. Hugs

I am concerned.

I am even a little bit more concerned about the folly and politics that have been revealed by so many people.

I was working from home for a decade or more before the pandemic, and am not a person who needs lots of social contact, so I’m actually mostly doing pretty well otherwise.

My husband has to take a Covid test tomorrow, CDC called him today. And our hospitals are breaking Covid records in new cases.
So I’m concerned.

@KNOWITALL I hope his outcome is ok!

It’s a lot of emotions.

Feeling like you failed. Exhaustion. Wary of implications of long covid. And strangely almost relief. But not a good kind of relief.

I was joking that it feels like the season finale of a zombie apocalypse. All those characters you’ve watched tirelessly hacking at the undead and scrounging for canned goods episode after episode are just falling one by one.

On one hand, it’s over for them finally. They didn’t make it out the other side. All of those months fighting the undead seems all for naught.

But there’s some twisted relief that comes with having your brain eaten. You don’t have to worry about having your brain eaten anymore.

And you’re even more scared for the characters that are still fighting the good fight. Because their comrades are falling and becoming part of the horde. The people who have gotten omicron seem to have given up and just DGAF anymore.

If getting vaccines and boosters got their guard down. Getting through omicron makes them feel even more invincible.

The zombie fight just got a little more grim. But this is just a season finale and not the show finale, so I’m still rooting for the holdouts and all the kids under five.

Hugs to @Hawaii_Jake and @chyna.

Fingers crossed for @KNOWITALL.

GQ.

If I were sick right now I’d be emotional about it. I’ve been careful for a long time and still want to be, but I do take some risks. I’d probably punish myself a little about it. Why did I do this or that. Tonight I went dancing, covid cases are much much higher than ever where I live. I didn’t have my mask on the whole time. I just cross my fingers.

A day ago I said to my mom, “I feel like covid19 is now in the stage of the chicken pox party in America.”

Call me a conspiracy theorist, but if I didn’t know better it’s like the majority of the most vulnerable are vaccinated and still taking at least some extra measures to protect themselves. Then we have the unvaccinated, who at this point if an adult isn’t vaccinated that means they are very hesitant and hard to push over the line. Enter Omicron, seemingly not as deadly as Alpha and Delta. So, what the hell, go ahead and get the unvaccinated infected and we will finally have over 90% of the population having at least some immunity and maybe slow the transmission way down by the end of 2022.

I really miss being with my friends. I do see them outside, but it’s not the same. I want to travel, but I’m hesitant. I miss my indoor activities, I stopped my indoor activities again a month ago.

I’m grateful I live in a place that I can do so many activities outside.

I’m annoyed that so many people don’t still distance. Stand the hell back! If I step back don’t step forward towards me. WTF is wrong with people?

I worry if I became very sick or died that it would be horrible for my parents.

I don’t feel much except despair and some degree of anger at the insane stupidity, greed, and ineptitude of the politicians around the world who have mishandled the pandemic. At every step, they’ve taken half-measures too late, making the situation more prolonged and worse than it could have been.

Lobbied by the pharmaceutical companies, whose CEOs are scumsucking bastards, they protected vaccine patents, meaning entire continents—Africa in particular—has barely been vaccinated at all. The virus is a global problem, and yet the fucking idiots in power are treating it like a national problem. And now we get an extremely transmissive variant that’s come out of Africa.

More personally, it’s like my life is on indefinite hold. I’m in close contact with someone immunocompromised, meaning I have to be careful. Indoor socialising has been rare. Every day feels the same.

I think the scientific response has been excellent and the rapid discovery and roll out of effective vaccines and anti-viral drugs has prevented a much greater catastrophe. The political response on the other hand has not been so good. Some politicians have been telling people what they want to hear rather than what they need to hear. This has caused confusion and has made the response to the pandemic less effective than it should have been.

The scientific advice is clear. We are in a global health crisis and the best way to get out of it is to vaccinate as many people as possible across the world. Until that is done people are going to continue dying unpleasant and premature deaths and the possibility of new variants like omicron emerging will remain high.

I am personally quite optimistic at this point. Covid cases are very high here but they are peaking and the hospitalisation and death rates are suppressed due to a high uptake of vaccination. There is a good chance we will be out of this by the summer. Unless that is a new Covid mutation sweeps the world.

I gave up long ago. Living in Texas it’s pretty much pointless to even worry about it. We take the necessary precautions and hope for the best. Greg Abbot and the Legislature aren’t going to do anything, that’s a given.

In NY, cases are slightly (ever so slightly) starting to level off (as of 1/11/22).

I’m tired of the whole thing. Tired of Summer #3 coming up that will probably be ruined as far as a nice trip to Europe.

I’ve never gotten the booster, just got both vaccines as did my daughter. I’m kind of feeling like why get the booster when people are getting sick anyway. Now they’re talking about a possible booster specifically for Omicron that might come out in a few months. I guess there are going to be boosters every few months now for the variants. I’m not getting boosters every few months.

@jca2 I agree, we are in the same boat. And this is why I can sort of see the point of (some) of the anti vax types. My DILs parents are like that, they are not “anti vax” per se, they have had all the other vaccinations that we have all always gotten, but they are leery of the Covid vax. They were over visiting a few weeks back, and I asked them point blank what their issue was with the Covid vax. They said what got them concerned, was that some people get sick with it even after getting the shots, as well as the fact that there seems to be no end in sight. You get a poke, then another poke, then a booster, then a booster for the booster, on and on. Too late for me, I already had two pokes. But no more. I think they have a legit concern there. I will not spend the rest of my life getting a vax every two to three months. Get a handle on this already. And then they wonder why some people are so paranoid.

^ I get what you are saying. The whole world is sick of it. But I’m thinking that if enough people had received the vaccine early on, that maybe we wouldn’t still be worried about it. Maybe some people would still be getting Covid after getting vaccinated, but milder cases.

I tested negative.

@Hawaii_Jake Great news! Stay safe!!