I found the comments from YLE about the concert kinda gross. I don’t know, but it kinda rubbed me the wrong way.
For ease of reference for others, I’m assuming we’re discussing this bit:
Yeah, I can see why it might be off putting. But I think the point she was making is that she is willing to make occasional higher risk expenditures from her “risk budget” in ways that are meaningful to her. For a lot of people here, it is going to Disney or whatnot. For her, it’s fitting in at a country music concert, I guess.
But she puts it in the context of doing it in a thoughtful way 1) Thinking about how to keep it from negatively impacting others 2) Realizing there is a very real risk she could be infected at such an event and not just do it willy-nilly without thinking about how it will impact other areas of her life.
At this point, it is extremely hard to ensure one will never get infected, but one can very realistically reduce the number of times and the severity. So being thoughtful in spending one’s risk budget.
Some people might take a lot of small risks. Some people might take fewer larger ones. But putting some thought into which risks are worth it to you is worthwhile, I think.
It’s the “I’m just ignoring all the risks because I’m done dealing with it” crowd that’s going to have regrets, I think. Well, either that or if things go sideways they’ll adopt a “well, there was nothing I could have done to prevent this” position. Which is a little self-deluding because we actually do have many ways to significantly reduce our risk of multiples of infections if we choose to do so.
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It was more the part about yielding to social pressure that made me go hmmmm.
Basically she’s no longer worried about catching the virus herself, just the impact to others that may come of it. I just find that hard to reconcile after all this time.
Different people will want to spend their risk budget on different things.
I won’t spend much on “fitting in” - I don’t care much what strangers think of my N95 and if it makes me stand out, I kinda like it - but DW doesn’t like to stand out. So, we find a middle ground, and I bring all the research and data I can muster, to maximize the social benefit for a given amount of risk.
I do care what people close to me think, though. I visited my mother this past weekend, and I was mostly unmasked, bc she likes to see my face. I don’t know how many (lucid) years she’s got left, and seeing me unmasked makes her happy and mentally engage more, so there is that to consider. On the other hand, I brought her 2 Winix C545 air purifiers and we used them when we were together, and I gave instructions on using them whenever she has visitors. So I feel like my visit was still a long term net improvement on COVID risk for her 
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I think her current personal risk assessment is that she sees day-to-day disruptions as a high probability event from a Covid infection. Given her household demographics, she sees the risk of severe health consequences during an acute Covid infection as being extremely low. Those both seem reasonable assessments.
Long Covid risks are TBD and I don’t think she minimizes them like I’ve seen some others do, but as they are less likely than the day-to-day disruptions, it seems she is using the day-to-day disruptions as a key component in her decision making.
She said this earlier this month:
I’m not sure how she decides when to wear a mask into Target (crowd level and community transmission rates perhaps?), but it sounds like she’s not typically going to crowded events unmasked either. I think the concert was more a one-off example of a risk she might choose to take, not her normal mode of operation. (There are a few things my DH has said he’d rather skip completely than go to masked just because it’s not worth the friction.)
However, this also happened earlier this month, and I’m wondering how this may impact her thinking and messaging:
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I feel that’s all extremely reasonable!
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I still think the “I care except when it’s culturally unwelcome” is effed up messaging. Especially in light of her new relationship.
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I’m still scared to get on a plane b/c of covid. I know that’s probably kind of weenie of me. I was supposed to fly last June but a family emergency postponed it. But I have a flight credit I have to use. Oh dear…going to plan it for a non popular time of year, probably…
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I have some data that may help. On my flight to Montreal last week I was sitting in an Air Canada ER-175 in business class seat 2A which is a single seat (business is a 2-1 seat config on that plane). I got both overhead ventilation nozzles to myself, and steady state CO2 reading was ~890, which is quite decent. Add in the HEPA air filtration, my N95, and other pax all 3’+ away, and I feel the incremental Covid risk was minimal.
Coming back I was in a United ER-175 in Economy Plus 7C, just outside business class. Seat config was 2-2 so I had 1 seatmate in 7D. CO2 reading was ~960. There was some risk from the person next to me but that can happen on my train commute to NYC as well. CO2 readings on the train can be over 1000 and on the plane there is the additional benefit of HEPA filtration which the CO2 reading doesn’t consider.
So overall I feel plane travel risk is reasonable, although I would try to fill an entire row with household members and/or book seats in a less dense section of the plane.
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That is not a good message, but I don’t think that is what she meant. I interpreted it as “occasionally I’ll take higher risks, when it’s important to me to do so. I’m human, so I’ll admit that social pressure effects me and is part of that calculation.”
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That’s how I read it too.
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Was looking forward to Thanksgiving at relatives. Just heard one person, who will definitely be there and will have been there for at least 24 hrs before the event, has a fever. We have no idea if we should go now. We’ve been so sick with one cold after another all school year and 2 of us are not 100% well. We can’t really afford to get sick, as far as not wanting to miss things for being sick; I have concert tix in a week and we really don’t want to miss all the kids’ Dec events. The 2 roommates of my relative were sick with it before her and they claim it’s not covid and probably not flu or RSV but nobody was tested except one covid test probably too early.
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Ugh. I’m sorry. Sending hugs!
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Twitter thread on anticipated kids under 5 bivalent boosters coming soon:
https://twitter.com/alexander_tin/status/1595143959373787136?s=46&t=z4FlqEQL8KQUrmo5yWkK8Q
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I think it’s okay to bow out. That has always been a pet peeve of mine, even before Covid. My mil used to come over at thanksgiving and Christmas with various colds, etc , and I always caught it and developed bronchitis—for weeks. At least you can control you going or not. Instead of said person coming over to your place.
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Ok, no that’s not right. If you are sick, stay home. One year, before Covid, my mom called Christmas Day wanting to see if we would come if my sister and her kids sick with the stomach bug came. We said no. Why on earth would I want to expose everyone to that? My sister’s family didn’t end up coming, so we went. I think my dad put his foot down to that.
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This is wrong. They should stay home. How do they even feel like traveling with a fever?
My son is just getting over a cold. Slight runny nose really at this point really and a cough every hour or so. Came down with it last Tuesday. We told everyone to be transparent and we’re prepared not to go anywhere. Everyone is fine with us coming though.
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It looks like we are going to postpone until next weekend. Gregg’s aunt and uncle and my mom were going to come over, but Gregg and I seem to be coming down with Aneira’s cold. I don’t want to spread it.
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The person in question is the college age child of the house we’re supposed to go to, coming home for Thanksgiving break, so them coming home really wasn’t really negotiable. They only figured out they were sick on the drive home.
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That makes sense of course but the family should cancel.
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