Random Thread ~Usagi-Chan ☮ Tūsurī~

[Celedam]

[The Omicron variant is] just mild.

It is. It really is. When people say it’s like the common cold, they are not downplaying it at all. Indeed, people who say it’s not like the common cold are overplaying it. So unless you’re over 80 or immunocompromised, you shouldn’t fear it any more than you would fear the common cold, regardless of your vaccination status.

And yes, I speak from experience. I had it (last December), my friends had it, my friends’ families had it, my lawyer and her assistant had it, even my elderly mother with Parkinson’s and diabetes had it. We’re all fine.

The point is, it’s time to put all of that behind us. We have other things to worry about now.

[esm]

Honestly, what affected me the most was having to stay home from work (with very little I could or had to do from home) because I just lost the structure to my daily life and I ended up not sleeping very well overall, plus it confused my older cat, who kept waking me up randomly. By around Wednesday I was bored out of my mind. I mean, it’s also not so socially accepted to just go out when you have Covid so I also didn’t do so much of that (minus errands).

I think losing my appetite was also weird (this was basically the longest lasting symptom). It wasn’t like I couldn’t eat. I just lost the motivation to really put the effort into feeding myself so I ordered takeout more often than I usually would, and when I went grocery shopping nothing seemed appealing. It was just a psychologically weird thing because I usually eat a lot and love food.

[Zunu]

Vaccinated people can easily get the omicron variant. It's just mild.

I guess I had a rare breakthrough case because I'm triple vaxxed, but it's still kicking my ass. Not enough for me to be really worried or anything, but definitely far worse and more persistent than a typical cold. I'll be happy to join the rest of the free world in returning to a blissful lack of concern about viruses, but in the meantime I feel like I'm stuck in last year's meme, like I'm the guy still humming Backyardigans songs.

[boinsie]

Yeah, I mean, if we're going off of anecdotal evidence, my uncle died of omicron in January, and my 38 year-old triple-vaxxed, active, and healthy brother got it mid-Jan, tested positive for three weeks and had symptoms until a week ago. I have several friends who got covid and still experience lack of smell, heart palpitations, etc. Sure, it seems to very much vary from person-to-person, but I certainly don't think that that means we should all just decide to throw caution to the wind.
And to say that it only poses a real risk to 80+ and people with comorbidities is to say that those people don't matter. Checking vaccination status at indoor venues and wearing masks indoors was all worked out and people were used to it. Even if omicron tends to be less aggressive, why drop those precautions? It just seems like such an unnecessary danger to the community.

[Nayoko-Kihara]

^ Some of the family members of mine that have had it haven't fared especially well either. I also personally don't want to test the waters with the possibility of long covid; my sister doesn't live in the state anymore so I'm the only one here to help my parents out, last thing we need is them stuck trying to nurse me (while I go into medical debt). Between them there's disability and pre-existing illnesses so we stay in the house 90% of the time. In general it's disheartening seeing simple protections and cautions slip away and makes trips out more stressful.

[esm]

I’m all for keeping masks and checking vaccination status for the good of the population, especially since I personally like wearing a mask in public to feel a bit more protected from people seeing my face and facial expressions. I like being able to mouth lyrics to songs while I’m listening to music on my commutes without looking like I’m singing. Basically, I don’t like catching unnecessary attention and I hate random men bothering me.

But I’m not just going to keep myself at home all the time even though I love being home. I’ve personally become desensitized to worrying so much about Covid safety given that I take public transportation to work and I teach at an urban school where distance learning really didn’t work for the community and I’m seeing the effects of the pandemic on the community every day (like more fights, disrespect for adults, unhealthy relationships with technology while we’re trying to use technology more and more to teach). It’s also tiring hearing non-educators/parents/students try to have an opinion on the issue when they’re not the ones dealing with it every day. I don’t insert my pointless opinions on other people’s jobs. We had in-person school at the height of omicron in January. We do Covid tests every week. We still have kids and teachers being out all the time, and we have to work around that, especially with how it’s hard to get substitutes. Not saying it means we don’t have to worry since we’re thrown in front of it and face more risk, but we can’t all just stay home and be extra cautious. And if I’m doing all this for work anyway then I’ll go out as I please, though I don’t mind masks and vaccine status check.

FYI I check updates on Covid on a regular basis. I should have said that omicron was milder than delta and overall it’s also not the same as 2020 Covid when we didn’t have the vaccine. But I’m not just basing it off anecdotes. That’s based on statistics out there, and of course what’s common doesn’t always apply to every one. Omicron is milder but more contagious.

[erilaz]

It will be interesting to see how this works at the Vintage Paper Fair this weekend, where they will be checking vaccination status but apparently not turning unvaxxed people away.

As a matter of fact, they didn't have anyone checking fax status. They had signs saying that you must wear a mask if you're not vaccinated, but that was all. Masked and unmasked people at the show were about 50-50.

I had a productive day, rummaging through the postcard boxes at the show. I spent a total of $35 on 46 postcards, some used, some not. Most are for my collection, but the 25¢ postcard guy had lots of multiples of celebrity postcards from the 1980s, so I bought quite a few extras to use for correspondence.

Here's the oldest used card that I bought, a beauty from 1905:

[Nayoko-Kihara]

That card is gorgeous. I've never even heard of the Vintage Paper Fair, now I'm very interested.

[erilaz]

^ It's a San Francisco event, but similar postcard and ephemera shows take place all around the country. Some dealers at stamp shows also sell postcards; I expect to add more to my collection when I go to WESTPEX later this month.

https://www.vintagepaperfair.com
https://postcardhistory.net/2018/12/shows-and-events/
http://www.postal-history.com/showpage.html

[Shoujo Q]

One of my mother's friends is going to give me a box full of old letters he inherited from a relative. Mainly because he's got no one to give them too and I expressed interest. (It was more like, OO old letters from 1800s? THAT sounds cool. Oh? You like that? HERE, let me show you! *proceeds to amend his will as I look through box*) It's a fascinating box full of letters, old memorabilia and a heckin' ton of used stamp books. I'm not sure what I'll do with it all to properly care for it, but I'll figure out something, I'm sure. I'm also getting a whole lot of salt and pepper shakers that for some reason my god mother left me but ended up at a friends house before she passed away years ago. And they weren't even her salt and pepper shakers, they belonged to one of her family members.

Which brings me to the realization that I need to do something about my H!P collection, weed it down to a more manageable level. The thought of someone else eventually taking my stuff and not really knowing what to do with it is a little daunting for me to even think about it. I just know I don't want it to end up in a trash bin somewhere. That would make me so sad.