Covid 19 - Updates from your zones

[Róisín]

*sends sympathetic hugs to Yastreb* I hope things improve there soon. At least having no new infections here today is a comfort! Good luck to you all. I’m worried, since I have friends and family in Sydney and Melbourne.

[Yastreb]

The latest news is that the Victorian Government is considering a slight easing of restrictions in three weeks' time; travel to be permitted out to 10 kilometres, playgrounds to be opened, and some other small measures.

[ohnosir]

Update from Oklahoma! It's all going exactly as really anyone would stereotypically expect here

[Opaque]

Yeah, the bible belt is not doing so great. There have been a lot of people refusing to get vaccinated (including some members of my own family) but for some reason they're perfectly fine taking horse dewormer to fight off the ye olde plague. I went over to my local feed store to pick up more horse dewormer (for... you know... horses!) but they were completely out. Makes me wonder why these people are so adamant about not wanting to put "poison" in their bodies when that's exactly what they're doing.
Ohnosir please stay safe!

[Róisín]

Finally got my first Covid shot today, Astrazeneca. Let’s hope the reaction isn’t too bad, so far just a sore arm and a fever. I had been a bit worried because, while I don’t have the severe reactions to flu shots that my cousin and some of my kids have, I have had a few nasty ones. One can only hope.

[Yastreb]

Róisín, you have my fondest hopes for the best outcome.

[thorny]

Róisín, I'm so glad you've been able to start getting vaccinated!

Here's hoping for a mild reaction.

[Opaque]

I hope the vaccine won't be too bad for you. Just kick your feet up and rest a bit.

[tehta]

Oh wow, congratulations and all the best!

[Jitter]

Wishing you all the best, Róisín!

Three out of four of my family members are fully vaccinated as of this week, the youngest has had one shot too. So, we are getting there! I’m actually contemplating going to the office! I’ve been there twice since early March 2020. I’m sure it will be very exotic.

Spoiler: show

Link to a silly video related to returning to the office

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[ohnosir]

Opaque geeze yeah the de-wormer, I mean I know it's easy access here but WTF.... We are well below 50% vaxxed here, but HEY, at least we're not Texas
Roisin, I hope you're doing alright, I'm happy to hear you got your shot though! I have chronic pain, so it was a b**** for me in terms of aches...I am also very high risk (thanks Marfan's) so I got mine super early

[Róisín]

No anaphylaxis so far, touch wood! Still very sore after a hard day’s work, but surviving. And yeah, it is a pest on top of the usual ‘chronic intractable pain’ thing. Ah well, can’t be helped.

[ohnosir]

Yuuuup it don't help that chronic pain, boy do I know...but it only lasted a day for me, so I bet tomorrow will be much better!

[wavewright62]

NZ has just entered a snap complete lockdown as at tonight, for a (likely delta variant) case in the community.  While that seems draconian for a single case, we have the example of Australia to persuade our government to "go hard, go early" and order direct to Level 4, for the whole country.  This one was not isolated to Auckland because we just had a major rugby match over the weekend, with people from all over NZ flying in to Auckland to attend.  Yee haaa

As at Wednesday at midnight, all of NZ barring Auckland stepped down an alert level - adding contactless takeaways and deliveries, and expansion of 'bubbles' to allow child custody arrangements, funerals with up to 10 attendees, and schooling of essential workers.  Auckland will remain in the strictest level at least until 13 September.  The one case, confirmed delta variant, has spawned over 750 cases and counting in the last 3 weeks.  The lockdown restriction seems to be doing its work, though, with only 20 new cases today.

Some are calling for building of purpose-built quarantine and managed isolation facilities instead of the repurposed hotels we are using now, but I personally think that's nonsense.  From my job with a quantity surveying firm, I see that building anything like a school or hotel takes years of planning and estimates before construction, and a year or two of construction, if it all goes smoothly and you have no hiccups with your funding (which so many projects do).  Our construction sector is going absolutely bananas at the moment (barring lockdown), developing critical shortages of personnel and materials to actually do the work, in all stages of the process.  Good luck getting your precast concrete to make your floors (for instance) anytime in the next three years if you haven't booked it already. 
In the meantime, hotels are standing empty while our borders are closed, why not utilise them?  The security and ventilation requirements are an ongoing challenge, but a lot less challenging than building new. </rant>
My firm is working harder than ever working from home during lockdown, with the estimators not missing a beat with the projects in the pipeline, and the teams servicing construction scrambling to sort out the mess further delays and shortage of materials are causing.

[deadrose]

(Poking my head up as I occasionally do...)

By US standards, we're doing very well in Washington State. Compared to the rest of the world, the whole US is a hideous plague pit though. Seattle is one of the more-vaccinated areas of the country, but as soon as you move out to the suburbs, the rate drops sharply (except for one suburb to be mentioned below). On the other side of the mountain range that divides our state, the numbers are very bad. They tend towards the crazy-conservative side over there and are running the feed stores out of ivermectin. Calls to the state Poison Control Center have tripled since people started taking livestock dewormer.

The big outlier I mentioned above is the town I consider my home, Vashon Island. It's long been known, nationally and internationally, as a hotbed of antivax parents, although it's gotten somewhat better since they had a whooping cough epidemic (nothing like hearing your kid struggle for breath to make you realize the reason for immunizations). They have one of the best Covid vax uptake rates in the entire country, with something like 86% fully vaccinated and another 10% in the process. It's been helped in recent months by one of the island bigwigs pleading with everyone to get vaccinated, shortly before he died of Covid early this month. He'd been one of the political holdouts.

Today the president has announced some new mandates to require vaccines. I really hope people will get with it - we already have entire police departments threatening to quit rather than get vaccinated, shops in some areas refusing to let people enter if they're wearing masks, and other general contrariness.

I haven't been able to see either of my daughters since the pandemic started, because they live in Canada. The two governments still aren't cooperating on border crossings, so I could get into Canada, and then be refused entry back to the US, depending on the day, the border agent, the wind direction, and other random factors. I'm so frustrated!

Oh, and to bring this back to the personal, 3 relatives have gotten it so far. One survived.