So, within an hour of writing my last post about how booster side effects hadn’t been so bad, I started feeling worse. MUCH worse. In the end, I had fever and chills for about 12 hours, followed by another day of feeling moderately lousy. I’m not sure whether to believe my immune system is super awesome and will eviscerate any Covid germs that come my way, or that clearly I’m vulnerable to Covid and will have a truly miserable experience when I contract it (it’s inevitable, right?), vaccinated or not.
The apparent ineffectiveness of the vaccine, even with a booster, is disheartening. The prospect of getting endless boosters every six months is disheartening. The ongoing “restrictions” at my kids’ school are disheartening. In general, I am very disheartened by Covid.
Also, no one in my little blog reading club, nor any of hour family members have had it, right? Given something like 50% of Americans have had it at this point, I find this interesting. I guess we lead low risk lives.
We found out this morning that a former colleague and friend of Jonathan’s, about his age, committed suicide. They had been close a couple decades ago when they worked a startup together. This guy had been telling Jonathan he was having physical health problems. This turned out not to be true. They were mental health problems. It seems very likely the Covid-induced isolation played a role. He’s an engineer like J and had been working remotely since this started. He’s unmarried and really just wasn’t seeing people. Whatever the reason, it’s incredibly sad and depressing. All I can say is, reach out to your friends who might be hurting.
I have been contemplating perhaps running the Houston marathon, and so I’ve been following the Houston weather. It is truly, really, not great. I mean – it is HOT. 80 degrees in January? Is this normal for Houston? I had no idea it was so hot there in the winter.
80 degrees is not normal for Houston in January, but it is possible. January, at least in my mind, is a drizzly/rainy month and 60s, sometimes a humid 60s, but sometimes a cold front will come through and it will be blue skies and 30s. Or it may snow. Usually the last freeze of the season (if there is a freeze at all) is around Valentines Day.
Sorry about your friend. The mental health toll of the pandemic is pretty terrible.
As for covid cases, I would say most of my coworkers with kids have had covid now – a lot got it during delta. Neither B or I had it that we know of. Several of my cousins have had it (one in the very first wave at the very start of the pandemic in NYC). I do think my lifestyle is pretty low risk. I really hated shopping before the pandemic and I use covid as an excuse to completely eliminate it from my life; I barely have had to go into the office; almost all social events are outdoors (which is lovely, I love that DC is such an outdoor friendly city compared to Houston which is uninhabitable for over half the year)… i mean, risk wise, I’ve dined inside some restaurants and took a few vacations to Montana. I think now that Byron is flying again our household risk is probably increasing, but he wasn’t flying for the first 1.5 years of the pandemic. Also DC has consistently been a lower transmission rate location than a lot of the country, so chances of exposure are lower. I assume people who go into offices more or work in busy indoor settings or who’s kids are mixing in school are far more likely to be exposed.
(Relatedly, my new job requires me to get covid tested at least once a week. I do wonder about the rate of asymptomatic cases… i guess I am going to find out!)
We had a kid test positive yesterday at the kids school through screening. They sent the entire class home to quarantine and then did a PCR and the child doesn’t have Covid after all.
I also have pretty much completely stopped shopping in person, other than groceries. Do you do groceries in person? But maybe I will shop more when S is older.
We dined “out” like literally outside all last winter (and both Covid summers) or just did takeout. But we are back to eating out again.
Have you seen the UK Omicron curve? It’s unbelievable. They are either going to all be immune or dead in a couple of weeks.
Check out the Houston forecast – 79 on 12/24, 79 on 12/25, and 82 on 12/26.
Was Byron furloughed?
admin announced recently something about pushing test-to-stay —- eg keeping schools open after an exposure via testing. I think it’s pretty smart.
Byron was not furloughed thanks to covid bailout money. But when the pandemic started, he was in the middle of qualifying for a new plane as a captain. He didn’t finish his qualification and since flights were dramatically reduced, UA didn’t bother to requalify him and he just stayed home getting paid (there were some ups and downs and furlough prospects in there so it’s a little more complicated). They only really re-trained him about 5 months ago and he’s really only been flying a regular schedule the last 2ish months. It was a pretty good gig though pretty absurd it was funded by a covid bailout.
Oh as for grocery shopping we were using Whole Foods delivery for a long time, with just a few quick runs to the store to supplement. But now they are charging a $10 delivery fee! Anyway, it was weird grocery prices got so high, and we kind of live in a grocery store desert, Whole Foods was an economical way to shop. Which says something about the current state of grocery prices. We also use Blue Apron for meals, and eat out (either take out or at restaurants) more than we should, so we can stretch a pretty long time between grocery trips.
Also that Houston forecast is crazy. Twice while I lived there it snowed on Christmas eve (which is unusual) so the weather is quite variable.
Oh that’s lame! I didn’t see the $10 fee. That really adds up if you shop a couple of times per week, when you consider the tip as well. I switched from QFC to Whole Foods when I was ordering groceries BECAUSE there was no delivery fee. When S was a baby, it was super handy getting delivery. Now, I would just do pickup I guess. I actually found Whole Foods was fairly “economical” as well compared to QFC. But shopping in person at QFC or Safeway is definitely more economical than either option since it’s easier to shop sales.
It doesn’t seem crazy to me that the Covid bailout paid an airline pilot. I mean, Covid has been a debacle for air travel, right?
So here’s my thing about the airline pilots… the bailout required airlines to continue to pay all employees and not furlough. This makes a lot of sense for rampers or gate agents who make very little money and would end up on unemployment if furloughed and be in serious financial difficulty. To a certain degree it make sense to do something about flight crews because by keeping them on staff it allowed the airlines to rapidly ramp up once demand returns (if you furlough most airlines only have training capability to recall about 200-300 pilots per month, which means it could take years to bring them back online plus while bringing furloughed pilots back you can’t hire… and all airlines are not just back at full capacity but hiring now). But on the other hand, the airlines likely would have had to keep pilots to keep their business afloat anyways. I guess my view is salary supported by bailout should have been capped at some reasonable sub-6 figure number. Especially when not working. I mean basically pilots – already in a privileged income class and should have substantial savings – received an “unemployment” check 5-10x higher than others thanks to the airline bailout. Why should they deserve more unemployment than restaurant workers?
I will say I am super offended by all the pilots refusing vaccine mandates (let alone the ones opposed to social welfare programs generally.). After shamelessly taking all that government money, they should be asking what they can do to give something back to this effort.
“I mean basically pilots – already in a privileged income class and should have substantial savings – received an “unemployment” check 5-10x higher than others thanks to the airline bailout. Why should they deserve more unemployment than restaurant workers?”
Yeah, that doesn’t seem fair.
And pilots should definitely get vaccinated, for goodness sakes. For so many reasons.
Also, I was super annoyed when Whole Foods started adding the $10 delivery fee last month… I tip well and am a prime member, and had been using it fairly regularly for groceries and I just completely stopped.
Yeah, I guess it was too good to be true. I usually tipped 5%, but our grocery bills (for a family of 5) are pricey. That usually worked out to be a $10 tip, so adding a $10 delivery fee is too expensive for me, unless Covid goes completely insane again. Which is a legitimate possility.