My husband’s family is from upstate NY and his mom is a stickler for opening windows. By that I mean like the teeny tiniest crack, and she leaves it like that all day. You could feel a cool breeze, but just barely. That’s what I mean by opening windows at this time of year; we’re in a sort of cold, sort of warmer place, but I wouldn’t go all out with opening them this time of year either. I did this when I isolated in my MBR during a 4 day wait for a covid test to come back in Nov weather. It was actually refreshing to have the fresh air smell. If it got too cold I just closed it awhile.
It’s been below freezing here for most of January, at night into the teens and single digits. Right now, it is 17 degrees. It is bitterly cold. The heating bill has been higher and would be much worse even with a window cracked, especially since our thermostat is in the area of the bedrooms.
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People’s perception is going to often be their reality. Think about all of the BS that has been thrown about by all parties. For example, 2 weeks to flatten the curve, vaccines will prevent you from getting covid, Ivermectin will cure you, etc. There is also a huge financial component layered into which muddies the water even further. When you combine this all together people are going to fall back on what they know for sure which is often their own personal experiences.
There isn’t a grand fix to this. Statistics in this case isn’t so easy to explain. There are far to many caveats to accurately depict the reality. I have trouble explaining data sets in an engineering field where there are absolutes due to the laws of physics. When trying to do that with the medical field it becomes all but impossible. The study you shared had caveats in a data set of only 26.
Social media platforms can try and censor content but content will still get out there. This is 2022 not 1990 (weird it’s 2022). The ability to access information, right or wrong, is to easy. At the end of the day maybe we just come to terms with we all are going to have different risk tolerances; and you know what that’s okay.
Edited to add: I forgot about drinking you’re own bodily fluids if you have covid! Although that might not be BS.
It is important to keep things simple, then. As of December, the case rate in the unvaccinated is twice as high. The hospitalization rate is 20 times as high for the unvaccinated. The unvaccinated are 90 times as likely to die. Not sure how much easier we can make it.
And sorry, the pee thing is hilarious.
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Final reminder.
You may post studies/data and ask for clarification. You may ask for advice on risk levels.
We do not want to see debates. That’s not what this thread is for. We will lock it if people don’t stick to the rules.
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I just got a shipping notice! It took almost a month, but at least the masks are on their way now.
And a shout out to @jleh, @magical_jo, and @BoilerMomPharmD for helping me find other options in the meantime.
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If I ever build my dream house (very unlikely) I totally want an energy recovery ventilator in my HVAC system. At least, I think that is what it’s called. It uses a heat exchanger to put the heat from the inside air and put it into air pulled in from outdoors. You can get that fresh air without losing all of your heat! (General “you,” not you specifically.) It’ll be interesting if HVAC designs change as we move forwards.
I remember reading a while back about how HVAC was affected by the flu pandemic of 1918. I thought it was really interesting. I don’t recall exactly where I found the article, but this post seems to have the same basic info.
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Understood. I take this to mean limiting our personal commentary on things and stick to the sharing of facts and constructive general discussion, with the understanding there may be some gray area with someone asking a specific question that may lead to multiple opinions or if someone finds something questionable about a study or how data is being presented, etc? Just no intentional head to head arguing about opinions. Correct me if I’m wrong.
I know there’s been a few reminders lately, and I’ll do my best. If I don’t, you have every right to banish me to the “What’s for Dinner” thread. 
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Correct. Giving your opinion when someone asks for advice is fine. What we don’t want to see is then a debate about who is right.
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We have a heat pump, which is kind of how that works. There is also back up electric heat to help in temperatures we have been having.
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As the parent of a 4 year old, I am happy to hear this news, but there is a question that I would like answered and I can’t find any articles that discuss it.
If a child gets the first two doses in March/April, then what happens if the Pfizer trial results expected in late April on the third dose show that the 3rd dose isn’t enough to generate enough sufficient antibodies? What is Pfizer’s plan for that possibility? My layperson’s mind says that the right course would be to then trial a larger 3rd dose on top of the initial 2 smaller doses, but I would like to know the plan.
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Yikes. That can get quite expensive!
That’s what the heat pump is for. It lowers the cost for us. We pay a lot less than our old house, which had a gas boiler.
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My hunch is that the new data around the protection that the vaccines provide against MIS-C may be a factor in this new push. While the official data is still coming in on MIS-C during the Omicron surge, it’s a small enough data set that they likely have a strong sense of what’s happening at children’s hospitals around the country based on informal reporting.
If they are seeing similar results in the vaccinated 5-11 age group as in the below 12-18 study, that could have shifted the scales on the benefits of vaccination. (Since MIS-C is not strongly correlated to severity of acute Covid infection and it can lag the initial infection by a month, we may not now if it’s more or less or equally prevalent with Omicron for a bit.)
AMA article:
https://www.ama-assn.org/delivering-care/population-care/unvaccinated-kids-much-higher-risk-severe-mis-c-outcomes#:~:text=“MIS-C%20is%20a%20nightmare,effective%20at%20preventing%20MIS-C.
Note: The above article also has an update on myocarditis monitoring, which is encouraging in that the prevalence of myocarditis is NOT increasing with booster doses, it’s decreasing.
“We also know that myocarditis rates among 12-to-15-year-olds who received a primary series are lower than rates among 16- and 17-year-olds. In older age groups, rates of myocarditis after a third dose are lower than after a second dose,” she said.
CDC study:
Note the data in the grey area is incomplete, Notice the delay between case surges and MIS-C surges.
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I had planned a mental health solo staycation for MLK weekend, but canceled it due to omicron and then it snowed then anyway. But I still feel like I need it so now I am eyeing Presidents Day weekend. I’ve done this many times before, b/c I’m an extreme introvert and I just need some me time away from my family with all this weird stuff going on (esp holidays and a bout of vitrual learning that happened in Jan). The problem is, I feel guilty to do this right now with the covid #s so high and omicron cutting through the vaccines. I did take a similar staycation in late June, but at that time the 7 day avg for my county was 8. That was when we really thought all this was on the way out. At the moment the 7 day avg is in the high 200s, but it’s plummeting every day; for comparison, the high was around New Year at about 4,300 a day. Overall I think I know how to stay safe and I mostly just want to be alone in my hotel room. I want to be able to hear myself think. I would eat in my room and mostly do outdoor things, although with the winter weather that might change. I realize that I shouldn’t feel guilty, but I suspect that my kids will judge me for being selfish. They will wonder why I was willing to do this for myself when I’ve been saying no to other fun things (although we did a ton of fun things, risky ones, in Dec…). Plus with my June cruise, long postponed, up in the air, it’s nice to have something to look forward to. Our Jan has been full of depressing, time consuming dr appts. Nothing serious, just everything that got put off when DH had surgery in fall, plus all the standard routine stuff. I seem to have gotten in a “post holiday” routine dr appt schedule, sort of by accident. In the furture I’ll move some of this stuff b/c it’s making for “blue January.” Or something.
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I completely understand. There is that boundary when a precaution is just not worth it. You live in a much colder climate than I do.
I suspect that them seeing that you think you are worthy of self-care is good modeling. You know how to do a low risk getaway. It may feel odd when others are going through stuff, but you denying yourself some TLC doesn’t help anyone.
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YLE breaks down what’s known about the <5 vaccines and path forward…
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