(no subject)

[seekingferret]

cw: covid

I've had an annoying allergy thing this whole past week, the kind of thing that often hits me in the summer, though usually not this late in the summer. Itchy eyes, runny nose, scratchy throat, an overall unpleasant time. It feels like allergies and I wrote it off as allergies and resolved to suffer through it, but since we're in pandemic times I took a COVID PCR test as a just in case- Negative. I didn't think it was very likely to be COVID- no fever, none of the other most commonly listed symptoms, and also I'm vaccinated- but it's a relief anyway.



I'm curious in general how everyone is feeling about COVID risk assessment/management right now. Incidence of COVID in New Jersey remains low, but has crept up a bit in the past week. Vaccination rates are fairly high, though not high enough to stop the spread, and they are not growing much anymore- the vaccine is readily available and anyone who was going to get it has had opportunity for the past several months.

The medical evidence seems to say that I am well protected from the serious consequences of COVID, which feels like it ought to suggest that I should feel fine going about life more or less as I did before COVID. In practice, I am still avoiding eating indoors at restaurants and I am still masking anytime I go inside a public building, though I have stopped wearing a mask at work. Also I am not avoiding public buildings as much as I was before. Most of my still-limited social time with friends and family in person has been outdoors, still, but when we go inside one of our homes I don't feel the need to mask unless they want me to. This feels to me like a reasonable balance of moving back toward pre-COVID behavior while minimizing risks in ways that don't impose too much of a comfort penalty.

But I've seen a wide variety of discussions of risk assessment from friends on social media, so I'm just generally curious how you're assessing things. A vaccinated friend just posted that they had decided not to go to an outdoor renaissance fair because of concern about the Delta variant, and to my mind that seems needlessly risk averse given the low risk of outdoor transmission and the low risk to vaccinated people, but a) I don't judge people who make different risk decisions than me, risk decisions are personal and hard and b) maybe there's information they have that I don't, it's so hard to keep on top of all the latest information. And the situation is specific enough to regions that it's hard to look to national experts for guidance.

baranduin linked to an interesting Slate article about how to think about the risks right now, and apparently they came out of it with the conclusion "If you've stopped wearing masks indoors, get them back on."... Meanwhile I read the same article and came out of it thinking maybe I'm wearing my mask too much, maybe I'm fine going into a grocery store unmasked.

All of these things ought to be basically rational calculations, made difficult only by uncertainty in the data, but of course they're not, they're extremely emotional decisions about our safety, and also they're needlessly entangled with identity questions like am I a Republican or a Democrat.

I'm curious if there are any milestones you're considering, either timewise or casewise. Are you at "I'll be fine to start eating indoors in September once temperatures cool, but right now with the weather being so warm there's no real reason to insist on not eating outdoors?" Are you at "I need local cases to be below a certain threshold for a month before I relax my guard on public gatherings over a hundred people?" Are you planning to keep turtling until there's zero cases in your area?

There's no wrong answers, I'm just curious.

Comments

[primeideal]

I've gone back to normal as much as I can--a lot of my social commuting is done on busses and trains, which require masks, so I bring them when I'm going out.

A board game friend who's a medical student has suggested further masking at large-group events, but I haven't felt the need to do so. (I also live alone and don't spend much time around young kids.)

If this were still predominantly a case of "I need to wear a mask to protect others" I would understand the emotive appeals, but it's not, and the "wear a mask to show you are a good person!!! signalling!!!11!" from people on "my side" of the aisle wore out its welcome some time ago.

[princessofgeeks]

Thanks so much for this post. I am struggling with the same concerns and was about to post this same type of thing! So I will be looking at the answers here.

Is it okay if I link to this on my journal?

I live in an area where cases are still pretty low but we are next door to two states where the Delta variant is causing a new surge among the unvaccinated.

I have been teaching online for over a year now but will be back in the classroom come September. I teach at the college level.

I am trying to decide if I should wear a mask in the classroom, but I am coming to think that it really wouldn't be necessary because I have been vaccinated.

I am going to restaurants again. I have not gone to bars, dance bars or indoor concerts or movies and don't feel like I want to do that.

In small groups of friends or family at their homes, I do not mask because we are all vaccinated.

I went to a baseball game at our minor league park and felt fine about that because it was outdoors and not crowded.

I am masking at the grocery store but I think I might as well stop now. My liquor store is still asking for masks and I am happy to comply.

It's such a strange time where I feel kind of adrift and that we are all having to make our own risk assessments. That Slate article was really good; I read it too and was reassured like you were.

[seekingferret]

I don't mind if you link this post.

[princessofgeeks]

tnx

[ambyr]

I started to open up some a few weeks ago, when numbers were dropping; now that they're back where they were last fall, I'm feeling more cautious again. I'd like to see a local daily case load of 2 per hundred thousand or lower; I'd like to see a local vaccination rate of 80% or higher. I don't think I'm likely to get either of these things.

What's more likely to actually happen and will cause some reevaluation of my behavior is vaccines being approved for kids 2-12. My main concern is less getting sick myself, and more picking up an asymptotic infection and passing it to my niece or others before my vaccinated immune system clears it. I'll feel more comfortable once kids have access to protection.

In the meantime, I'm shopping for groceries in person while masked (from the end of November to the end of May I was working strictly off delivery); I also feel comfortable going into other stores for more frivolous reasons, like to grab a pastry, while masked. I do not find wearing a mask any burden on my comfort (actually, I kind of prefer it; no one tells me to smile, it's great), and I like not getting colds and other viruses, so it seems likely I will continue wearing a mask in crowded indoor public settings indefinitely. I've been doing outdoor public events like plays and movies, sometimes with a mask and sometimes without depending on how crowded it is and how many kids are present. I'm happy to hang out in my house with friends unmasked (or in other friends' houses although that doesn't come up as much). I'm still avoiding transit as much as I can, because I can; if I had to use it, I'd use it, but the weather is nice and I like walking and biking.

If I'm honest, a lot of things I'm avoiding now are things I actively don't like anyway. I don't like eating in restaurants (inside or outside), so unless I perceive the level of risk as zero, why would I do it? I'm actually sort of dreading the resumption of the Restaurant As Default Social Destination; being able to suggest hanging out in the park as a social activity without it being perceived as a personal weirdness has been great. Airports freaked me out pre-pandemic, so I'm in no particular rush to resume flying again.

I miss museums, and I kind of wish I'd gone to some while case levels were lower and entrance was still restricted by timed passes. Right now I'm not missing them enough to make it worth going in my personal risk-assessment calculus, but that's likely to change long before I'm willing to eat at a restaurant or fly. But also, I really love being outside while the weather is nice, and there's so much I can be doing and would be COVID-comfortable doing but haven't gotten around to yet: renting kayaks on the river, doing minigolf at the public course. I will probably feel more museum-inclined in winter--just as the COVID surge likely gets worse again, sigh.

[aurumcalendula]

I’m vaccinated, but considering how many people I come into contact at work (and the fact that I take public transportation), I’m planning on wearing my mask until at least next year.

I’m kinda freaked out that that while less than half my state’s fully vaccinated (my county’s better, but not by that much) but I only see maybe 10 - 20% of people in the grocery store wearing masks. Not to mention the cases per 100,000 numbers jumped again.

[liv]

Yeah, very similar experience here: I always get a bit of hayfever / rhinitis / misc allergies, but rarely this late and rarely this intensely, I've had a couple of days of actually feeling ill rather than it being just annoying. Worried slightly, tested negative by PCR. Double vaccinated so with no additional risk factors I should be fine even if I do get Covid.

As you know I'm in the UK where, well, we have the highest recorded number of cases in the world right now. Not proportion, absolute number, more than the US or Indonesia and we only have 70M people. It's all delta by now, complete population replacement as of a month ago. We're highly vaccinated and have no serious anti-vax movement, but it's over 18s only and we're doing a long dosing schedule (was 12 weeks, now 8) and in strict age order, so anyone under about 35 can't be double vaxxed yet, and no teens are vaccinated.

So my thinking is that my vaccination status makes me probably 10, maybe 20 times safer than I was last summer, but cases are more than 100X higher, delta is at least twice as infectious as original, and I'm really not sure how to balance that. I'm roughly making the same trade-offs as you. I don't mask outdoors ( I would in theory if someone I was with asked me to, but nobody ever has so far, outdoor masks have never been widespread in the UK). I don't completely avoid all public buildings, I've been much more willing to go into shops or whatever since I was vaccinated, and I do wear a mask when I do so. I socialize mostly outdoors, but if there's a reason to go indoors (torrential rain, bathroom etc) I will do so without much hesitation and won't put on a mask just for that. I'm hugging vaccinated friends and relatives instead of maintaining that (probably outdated) 6' distance. I don't eat indoors in restaurants and I don't intend to start until things are looking a lot less scary.

My employer is still being cautious, so office workers like me are still remote. I think when they do ask me to return to in person working I'll do so without much hesitation. It will involve taking a coach to the somewhat out of the way campus, but also my employers are PCR testing everybody regularly and have not seen a single transmission event in a year and a half, so I think it's as safe an environment as I'm going to find anywhere.

Milestones: I don't know. I was saying 20 cases per 100K per week locally (not nationally, I agree the national picture is too mixed for a useful risk judgement). But given that our government have "surrendered to the virus" I am not sure we're going to dip that low again on a timescale of years, so at some point I'm going to have to relax anyway. I think within a few weeks we're either going to experience a mass death event like we saw in India earlier in the year, or we're going to reimpose restrictions despite the political winds being very much against that currently, or things are going to in fact be ok through a combination of high vaccination rates and self-restriction. If it's the third, if the terrifying case rate just peaks and then starts to fall again with only (!) a few thousand deaths, well, I might consider in person services for the High Holy Days.

[sophia_sol]

tbh that slate article felt very....binary in its approach to the results of catching covid. Either you have a mild case and everything's basically fine, or you have a severe case and will be a burden on the medical system and might die. The prospect of developing long covid scares me, and you can get that from a case mild enough that you don't need hospitalization. One of my coworkers, who got covid in March 2020, is still suffering severe complications that affect her everyday life.

So I don't want to risk getting even a mild case of covid, because either I or the people I might pass it to might end up having their entire lives derailed by a resulting disability.

I am less cautious now than I was before I was vaccinated, but I haven't raised the bar a whole bunch. My current risk levels are at "willing to enter a store for non-urgent reasons, with a mask on, on occasion, at non-busy hours" and "will be less worried at outdoor distanced unmasked gatherings" and the like.

If/when my region reaches high enough vaccination rates for herd immunity, that's what feels like it'll really change the equation of what behaviours I feel safe engaging in! But I think that's unlikely to happen until there's a vaccine approved as safe for children under 12.

Edit: also, nearly all cases in my region are Delta variant, which is known to be more highly contagious and more likely to be serious, which is definitely affecting my risk assessment

[sanguinity]

We're basically in a wait-and-see sort of mode. Oregon just ditched all coronavirus restrictions at the beginning of the month and cases have been climbing; I've been waiting to see how high they climb, and what the fallout is re hospitalizations and death. I'm also waiting to see if vaccination protects from long COVID; as I understand it, the data isn't in on that yet. I also think there's an argument for continued masking out of consideration for unvaccinated minors, immunocompromised adults who may not have had a robust vaccination response, and underserved communities who have had vaccine access issues (language, informational, or physical).

In the meanwhile, we're masking up in public buildings, and mostly only going into public buildings for errands -- although we're no longer minimizing errands, nor sending only one of us in. We're fine hanging out indoors and unmasked in small groups with people who we know have all been vaccinated. We haven't yet been asked to make a decision about hanging out indoors with unvaccinated people -- all the unvaxed people we know are children with protective parents.

Re giving up this level of precaution (that is, masks in public buildings, plus avoiding recreational indoor spaces)... Eh. I want to see how the winter goes re cases/hospitalizations/deaths (last winter was a shitshow), and I want to see kids getting access to the vaccine. Who knows what the vaccination rate will be in underserved communities by then, but at least people doing outreach will have had more time to do their work.

[pauraque]

I live in Vermont, which has the highest vaccination rate in the US (over 80%). Nonetheless, our daily cases are slowly starting to tick up again and we have had a handful of confirmed Delta variant cases. So far I'm continuing to do what I've been doing, which is to mask only when required (e.g. medical facilities, public transit) and keep unnecessary trips into crowded indoor spaces to a minimum. I haven't been eating in restaurants or anything like that. I've noticed more people masking at the grocery store again, and I've considered joining them. If cases keep going up, I probably will.

[snippy]

I am fully vaccinated but I wear a mask whenever I'm around other people. Not ready to eat at a restaurant yet. Still wearing a mask at work where for now, I'm in an office with a door I can close, but in September they are moving me back to what is essentially a desk in a hallway and I am struggling with the idea of keeping the mask on all day but also afraid to take it off all day.

I'm afraid of long covid. I'm much less likely to get covid because vaccinated, but if I get it, the risk of long covid is very frightening.

[starlady]

My conclusion from that article was that even if we're vaccinated we're all going to get covid eventually. That said, I am not out here trying to become a one-person pox party, and indoor masking never really went away here so I haven't really stopped. I have gotten much more casual about masking outdoors (though I have started again this week because my allergies have also been bad!) and I have eaten indoors, though not without some unease. I have a friend who has long covid and it's not a fun time.

I kind of think we're going to keep staggering along like this until next spring, when everyone will either be vaccinated or have antibodies from surviving it as an unvaccinated person and children under 12 can be vaccinated. I'm not going to a con in October that I had tickets for, and I'm probably not going to Worldcon in December (alas! next year in Chicago?), but I do have tickets to see my dad and stepmother in Jersey and go to a family wedding (outdoors) in Milwaukee at the beginning of September. And that's the last planned travel I have for 2021.

[redstapler]

I'm in Texas, so I never stopped masking indoors.

Also because I'm in Texas, I'm not sure what my threshold for any milestones will be. Governor Abbott seems hellbent on endangering or outright killing so many people, the best I can really do is make it as hard for him as possible.

[cahn]

Yeah, I wish I knew what long covid odds are once vaccinated, because that definitely has the potential to change my risk assessment. I'm assuming that the odds are signficantly lower once vaccinated (since my non-immunologist-understanding is that the two potential pathways are either immune system overreacting or covid doing something weird, and seems like having antibodies already would kind of help with both of those, but it seems like no one actually knows), and I'm also assuming that odds of either long covid or death remain pretty low for my kids (because I think I'd have heard about it if delta variant put more kids in the hospital, the same way I've heard from at least ten news articles now that it puts more people in their 20's/30's/40's in the hospital).

-I do not own N95 masks and I therefore assume that any masking I do is protecting other people much more than it is protecting myself (while still acknowledging that it is protecting me at least a little). I do mask when in public indoor places like a grocery store etc. but that's a combo of (a) I don't want to spread anything if I happen to get a breakthrough case and (b) most public indoor places around here do still ask for masks.

-My area has relatively low case rates and hospitalization rates (though it's increasing, like everywhere else), and vax rates are relatively high (it's hard to tell exactly because they do the numbers by county, and my part of the county has far higher vaccine uptake). So that informs some of what I'm about to say; I might make different choices if I lived in, say, Missouri (where my family lives now).

-I go to church, where no one is masked except under-12's (in theory unvaccinated people are supposed to mask; in practice I don't think that really holds). Most people there are vaccinated (which I know because they had a vax drive a couple of months ago) but definitely not all. This is the one thing I do which I consider relatively high risk (though I still think I would be at more risk from the flu, see below), and I would not be doing it if I were unvaccinated and at all at risk. I take my kids; they mask because they are under 12 and have not been vaccinated.

-I work non-masked in a company where unvaccinated people DO mask (it's a requirement of work, and also I get the distinct impression the people who mask are sort of flaunting their identity as Too Cool For Vax).

-I don't eat at restaurants indoors. This is inconsistent of me given everything I've said above, but it still freaks me out. And also it's so easy to eat outside here, and all the restaurants have changed around to have outside seating. Also I don't go to public gatherings over a hundred people that are inside (aside from church, which is just about a hundred people). (I guess I haven't been to any like that outside either, though I've been to outside parties.)

-I am comfortable with other people whom I know are vaccinated visiting in my house without masking. If non-vaccinated I ask them to wear a mask and make sure the fans are on.

I generally think, how do I feel this relates to my risk assessment for the flu? I think my chances of dying or being seriously disabled from covid are now probably less than they were for the flu before the pandemic, in a low-rate area and now that I'm vaccinated, but I'm not sure, particularly about the disabled part.

[scintilla72]

I'm in New Jersey as you know, and cyanna and I have been fully vaccinated for a few months now, and I've basically stopped thinking about masks except where required (which so far for me has only been medical facilities; if I start taking the train to work in September when they finally let us back in the office, I suppose that might change). I wore one randomly in a Target the other week, but I can't remember what drove me to do so.

I hadn't even considered the question of not eating out indoors, as (1) I very rarely eat out and (2) it hadn't occurred to me that the risk was materially higher than with eating outdoors. I suppose I should mention at this point that I don't watch or read any news.

and I find it an interesting coincidence that every single sentence in this comment (before this one) began with "I", effectively masking my practice of not actually capitalizing sentences properly when I'm on DW/LJ.

[melannen]

My county was down to single-digit cases for awhile, and has one of the higher vax rates in the country, and if we'd stayed level there I probably would have been fine going basically back to normal. But they're back up to where we were when the mask mandates were dropped already, and with fewer tests happening, so possibly even higher, and doubling fast. (It's also scary to watch the "fully vaccinated" numbers creep up to match the "at least one dose" numbers. We are giving almost no first doses now, with still a lot of people unvaccinated.)

I'm vaccinated and it's still low enough that I'm, for now, still okay with eating in restaurants, taking transit, travelling interstate, and visiting trusted friends unmasked, and not too nervous for my own sake about going to work around unmasked people. But I work in a public-facing job with a lot of strangers and people who can't vaccinate even if they want to (kids, medically fragile people), and evidence is that vaxed people can still spread Delta (not as easily as unmasked, but still more easily than pre-Delta spread.) And it's harder on kids. I don't want to kill a child any more than I want to catch covid, you know? So I'm masked at work and keeping a close eye on numbers.

I am still not happy about large indoor gatherings. My work is still planning on going back to providing public event space for groups of 100+ people in September and I think that's a very, very bad idea and becoming moreso. We're also supposed to have our big all-locations all-staff attendance-required in-person meeting in October, and a lot of us are already low-key planning some kind of mass action if cases keep going up and they don't change their mind on that, because 500 unmasked people nonconsensually crammed into a too-small room at the start of flu season for six hours for no reason except the top management patting backs would be a really stupid idea even without Covid.

I am wobbling about outdoors and especially outdoor gatherings? I've been pretty laid-back about outdoor for pretty much the last year because we've had really good evidence that there's basically zero spread outdoors, between sunlight and air moving around, and the main spreader was enclosed spaces with bad ventilation. But I'm not sure we've got good data there on Delta yet and there's been some scary anecdata about outdoor spread. So I think I still wouldn't go to a renfair or musical festival or anything until I know more about Delta and outdoor spread.

[lirazel]

I had the same exact situation with allergies but getting a test just in case. Mine was also blessedly negative.

Being in a red state, almost no one here is wearing masks at all anywhere anymore. I, on the other hand, stubbornly continue to wear mine indoors when I'm in public. I don't wear it in the office where I work with only people I know have been vaccinated, but anywhere else? Mask on. I am frequently one of the only or THE only person wearing a mask. But I'm just furious about how low the vaccination rate is here and I will keep wearing my damn mask until I feel like the pandemic is actually over. Which it isn't. Being fully vaccinated myself, I think that if I were to catch even the Delta variant, I probably wouldn't be in danger, but that doesn't matter. I don't want to pick it up and pass it on to someone more vulnerable.

I just feel like most people are acting like everything is behind us, but I don't believe that for one second. Our university is still insisting that everything will go "back to normal" this fall, and I just think that's stupidstupidstupid.

[chestnut_pod]

I am absolutely still avoiding eating indoors at restaurants -- I think I am like your friends who concluded that it's best to put those masks back on for inside activities. (Also, like hell am I contracting a common cold again from the library; I intend to mask in crowded indoor areas generally going forward.)

My county is having a huge spike, and I do not intend to do anything risky until cases lower. The exception would be, for example, a theater or something that only allows vaccinated people in after checking their cards or some such thing, and I might still wear a mask, because again, I've really enjoyed not having a single cold or flu for a year and a half.

[lokifan]

I'm fully vaccinated and at 'masks indoors, no eating indoors, but mostly not worrying about masks outside unless it's lots of people standing in place.' Distanced outdoor theatre = no mask, distanced indoor cinema = mask. We're seeing a massive rise in cases atm, but I work from home and my flatmates are fully & partly vaccinated respectively and the stats show fully vaccinated people are much less likely to pass it on, so I'm definitely less worried.

[ghost_lingering]

I'm wearing masks when grocery shopping/running errands/on public transit. Partially because of transmission, partially because a lot of places still require them, but also because it's a mental load off to not think about what the right call is every single time. But I'm more relaxed about running errands / going places / taking the train than I was pre-vaccine.

I've been to the office twice in the past few months. (Still working from home, because the office isn't fully open yet.) I mask up in the building and in the common areas at work, but not at my desk. Most of the office is an open office, but I work in a room w/ four desks & a door that shuts.

I did, once, a month ago, eat indoors with a friend, but with the Delta variant + it being summer, I'd mostly rather sit outside at restaurants/bars, just because then I don't have to worry about risk analysis.

I've also gone over to a couple of friends' places & cat sat/apartment sat for someone, all sans mask, since everyone in those situations was vaccinated.

I have stopped wearing a mask outside entirely. Before I was vaccinated, I did wear it outside in crowded areas (of which Prospect Park has many) out of inertia & a mix of other things. If I was at a super crowded outdoor event I might wear one again outside, but I don't see that in my future anytime soon.

I do wear a mask in/around the common areas of my apartment building, but that's mostly because I want to avoid long drawn out conversations with a couple of my neighbors.

[rosefox]

Fully vaccinated since April, no one immunocompromised in my house... but I see my mom and my MIL a lot, and my mom is the only caregiver for my 94-year-old stepfather with COPD, so I'm masking everywhere indoors (usually double-layered tightly woven cotton), not dining indoors in NYC (I'll do it up in Ulster County when we're visiting my MIL, as long as there are big windows open with a lot of air flow, but I'd still prefer outdoors), and still ordering groceries whenever possible. I go into Manhattan twice a week for PT and therapy in person, but if the uptick keeps upticking, I might go back to doing both of those remotely.

I got to daven outdoors once, when the numbers were very low this summer, and it was wonderful. I was hoping to do it a second time, but that got canceled because of weather. Now I'm just trying to figure out what's going to be feasible for High Holidays—probably Zoom services, or getting together outdoors with a handful of vaccinated known-to-me people.

I have no idea what to do about sending my five-year-old to school in the fall.