Tag: COVID

Siri, What’s a Liberal Maskhole??

I’ve encountered a new phenomenon this week: people on the leftier side of the spectrum who may be fully vaccinated but won’t give up wearing masks or demanding that other people wear them, even when the CDC says it’s safe. They not only want to wear masks themselves, but want to be able to tell people around them to wear them, so they (who don’t want to give up their masks) will feel more comfortable.

I don’t get this. The place where I work (that still doesn’t pay me directly) is easing into bringing people back to the office in a “pilot program” they’re clearly still trying to figure out as they go.

I’m fully vaccinated and quite tired of spending ALL of my time in this office of farting dogs, so I was happy to join the group that will be in the office 2 days a week, socially distanced on staggered schedules, while still working from home the rest of the week. Of course I still wear a mask in places that require them, but I am comfortable with the CDC guidelines that say fully vaccinated people are safe. Wasn’t that the whole point of getting vaccinated? Did I miss something ?

So, apparently people in my work group volunteered to be part of this return to the office program, but suddenly had a million questions about how the company will enforce mask wearing for those who don’t “feel comfortable,” with the idea of being around other people.

A very long and very stupid discussion ensued, and I could feel the group’s managers biting their tongues and getting frustrated. The core of the argument was “I don’t feel comfortable.” They want to be able to tell their coworkers that they have to wear masks around them, no matter what.

And lest you think this was coming from the usual suspects, nope. All of the vocal “I don’t feel comfortable,” issues were raised by the men. Educated men, who can read and comprehend information. The managers are not allowed to say, “So if you’re not vaccinated, go get vaccinated and quit whining!” because this is such a politicized and “sensitive” topic, they’re forbidden to ask anyone’s vaccination status. Me, I cheerfully volunteer mine. I might buy one of these to wear at the office.

I wrote this yesterday, and today I saw this article in the New York Times.

UPDATE: This could get interesting, because the company released its new mask policy and it follows CDC guidelines: the fully vaccinated are safe to go maskless. So, let’s see: We are not allowed to ask vaccination status, thanks to a misunderstanding of the law, but we have co-workers who want to be able to tell everybody they must still be masked? I’m so glad I’m not in management.

I swear to GOD, if we’d acted like this with smallpox or polio, humanity would have died out by now.

Which leads me to a woman on Facebook. I’m not going to name her but she has a significant following, especially among crafty women of a certain age. She announced with great drama (she’s greatly dramatic at times) that though she is fully vaccinated, she’s not leaving her house yet, because “even the fully vaccinated are getting COVID and dying!”

I saw the Likes piling up, so I asked her for her source for that information. She told me to Google it, so I did. I didn’t find any dramatic stories of fully vaccinated people dying in droves, so I asked for her source again.

She linked to an article that said…the opposite of her dire drama. It accurately stated that the few breakthrough infections were to be expected as with any vaccination, the vaccines are working. I am more worried about being struck by lightning, for real.

On a far happier note, now that the first rush of vaccines by appointment only has slowed, I was in Publix yesterday and saw a small but steady stream of people lining up for their shots. The media makes it sound like we have this huge population of anti-vaxxers, but I really don’t believe that’s true. We have a huge population of apathetic people, who finally noticed it’s really easy to get vaccinated now and you can do it while grocery shopping.

President Biden made this happen. He mobilized the resources, beat on the drug companies, forced the hands of Governors who were playing Evil Vaccine Concierge, like mine, by ordering the vaccination of the teachers and first responders, which was the wedge to lower the vaccination age, and the dominoes fell, and now we are maybe near to normal.

It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like F*ck This….

We are now back to “peak of summer” levels of daily COVID cases, hospitalizations, and deaths. Reported new cases hit over 13k two days in a row, and Governor Florida Man is getting sued for hiding reports on how bad it really is. I didn’t do Thanksgiving with my nearby family (not a big deal as I’m not a huge turkey fan), and now I’m thinking maybe Christmas should be a drive-by brunch with opening gifts on the balcony and finger foods, and then send them on their way. They can do their own big holiday dinner. I’ll take a nice long walk and binge on something on Netflix, or maybe the new season of The Mandelorian. Nothing says Christmas like a Space Western.

My daughter’s school has had a number of COVID cases among both staff and students, and we’re waiting for the mid-January spike when all these idiots planning big Christmas get togethers get back to school and infect each other. And we know these idiots are going to do this, we’ve heard them planning. I stopped in at Publix this evening and saw people pushing groaning grocery carts, obviously preparing for a huge event.

I hope they’re stocked up on dog worm medicine. (I still can’t wrap my brain around that one.)

So, what am I doing to stay sane lately? Besides wine, I mean?

I am late to the Her Royal Spyness series by Rhys Bowen. In fact, I’m late to Rhys Bowen’s books entirely, and I’m really, really enjoying devouring her work. I’m halfway through the Her Royal Spyness books and OMG, they’re just a blast! They’re not “serious” books, but very well written, and that’s hard to find.

I had never read any of Rhys Bowen’s work and for years was put off by the cover art, if you can believe it. It made me think of those gawdawful “cozy mysteries” that make me feel brain cells dying if I try to read them.

I was so very wrong. I’ve read two of her more serious stand alone novels, The Tuscan Child and In Farleigh Field, and 2020 has been basically the year of Rhys Bowen. I’m a huge fan now.

Sophie is doing better, but – there’s always a but. I can see she’s losing weight, though she’s also more perky and her appetite is great. We have a 9 a.m. blood test on Monday, to see if her protein level has come up and her platelets have come down. Basically, I’m in maintenance mode with her; if we can keep her feeling good with these basic meds and the special diet, yay! I can’t afford to do the specialists and stuff just to put a specific label on it. It’s a protein-losing enteropathy, there is no cure, you just treat symptoms, and there are a variety of causes, including basic human-like IBS. She’ll probably have to stay on a steroid and a special diet, and it may shorten her life expectancy, but who can say?

Murphy was diagnosed with lymphangiectasia at 9 years old. I remember reading the pathologist’s report and crying for hours, because his prognosis was “poor.” He battled it for the next six years, and finally lost his fight at 15.5, which is a respectable Yorkie lifespan.

I can see that while Sophie’s condition is similar, it’s not the same: her blood protein is very low, her platelets are high, while Murphy’s blood never got too out of whack through the course of his disease. So while there’s a sort of “You’ve got to be kidding me!” aspect to having two small dogs with similar intestinal conditions, one after the other, it’s not the same.

Sophie’s seems more serious, because it’s having an impact on her blood in a major way. Murphy’s never did.

And as I’m writing this, she’s dancing at my side, begging me to get OFF the COMPUTER NOW, MOM! A girl needs her bedtime treats and some couch time! I must obey.

More this weekend, I swear.

Nearly August.

I’m sorry about my failure to keep up with this blog; every day is just so boring, redundant, and depressing. Florida is in deep trouble, thanks to the Fucking Republican governor and Fucking Republican legislature. If anyone ever, ever, “Oh, but it’s both sides” at me again EVER, I may choke the living shit out of that person. And that’s all I have to say about that.

So, it’s almost August. I will be working from home at least until after Labor Day, and at the rate Florida is imploding, I’m wondering when we’ll ever see normal.

I set some August Goals for myself, and then got depressed AF because the goals are all chores and drudgery. Yes, I really do need to clean out the closets and clean the baseboards, but when that is ALL you have for weekend plans, it’s incredibly depressing.

Disney World has reopened, and the people whose opinions I trust are very happy with the way they are handling social distancing, cleaning, and enforcing masks. I would feel more comfortable there than I sometimes do in Publix, especially when a Maskhole performance artist shows up.

I was in Publix a few days ago when a couple entered – in their 50s, he’s in a HeManGunzEagleFlag t-shirt – no masks, and they’re walking slowly through the store, sashaying, really, eyes sliding side to side, waiting for someone to say something. Nobody did, so their performative freedumb shit was wasted. We generally have a very high level of mask compliance in the few places I go, so performative mask defiance stands out as the childish crap it is.

I also play this private game on Facebook, where when someone in one of the boards I follow gets all outraged/whiny/claims they can’t wear a mask for medical reasons/shares “true stories” about the danger of masks, etc., I click through to their main profile, and yep: Flag, Eagle, Jesus, GOP. Every. Fucking. Time. These people are plague rats at this point.

So that’s a very sweary way of saying I would not be afraid to visit Disney World, because Disney knows how to do is crowd control and sanitation, and they don’t hesitate to eject miscreants. Even before this, their cleaning game was above and beyond, and they’ve stepped it up from there.

They’ve also instituted a “park reservation” system to restrict access to a limited number of guests each day, and changed a lot of other experiences to make them socially distanced.

I definitely would not make a special trip from out of state to visit Disney right now, especially if it’s your first visit or a once in a blue moon trip, because things are different and limited, but all the reports back from my trusted sources say they felt perfectly safe with the distancing and masks and hand sanitizer, and had a good time. I still won’t visit until it’s not this blazingly hot, but Disney also extended all the annual passes very generously and my family all got what added up to an extra five months.

And hell, for those of us who already live in a disastrously failed state led by Gov. Delusional, Disney would be the safest place we go all week.

So, in other utterly mundane news, I am finally wearing my new glasses, which took over two weeks to come in, and my breezy young Doctor of Optometry with her magenta-streaked hair was correct: I am wearing my new glasses as I write this, no computer glasses needed. My sunglasses are equally perfect. As they should be, because they cost an arm and a leg – not the frame, my prescription.

I went with the same frame for both my regular glasses and my sunglasses, classic ladies Ray-Ban frames. I did this because Facebook shared an old picture of a trip to the beach, and I realized that the Ray-Ban prescription sunglasses I was STILL using were SIX years old, and had survived the ocean, swimming pools, theme parks, etc. I’ve had three more expensive frames turn to crap on me in the last six years, while these remained like new (except the prescription did need updating). As the optician who fitted me said, they’re the Timex of frames.

My old glasses were total crap and aren’t even fit to keep as an emergency backup pair, as they are on the brink of falling apart, so now that I have a new, GOOD prescription, I’m going to try buying glasses online, just because. I’ve ordered some try-on frames from Warby Parker. I should get my five free try-on frames on Monday. I’ll share that experience, because I’m definitely intrigued. I’m blind as a bat, and emergency backup glasses are a basic survival thing. I don’t have any old glasses that I could wear to identify my granddaughter, let alone drive or work, so let’s see what Warby Parker can do. They say they can do progressives; I’ll give them a shot.

That was quite a lengthy, sweary babble, and I didn’t even tell you about Gidget’s agoraphobia. I’ll have to tell that this weekend.