I haven’t had a cold, a flu or even bad allergies in the last year. I kind of want to keep wearing a mask in public forever. That said, I should get my first shot next week. That thing about going to a Red county, it seems to be true. That’s where I live, and getting the appointment only took a couple minutes on the hospital system website.
In my state, it’s not technically open for everyone to get the shot, until next week, but the hospital is setting appointments for anyone over 16 (so lucky group-3 me!)
My husband and I predicted when the surge in Minnesota would take off, and when people would start writing about it when our Governor caved to pressure and started re-opening everything, and voila, we were exactly correct. If an art teacher and an asset manager with access only to the data in news articles could accurately predict the surge…
Got the second Pfizer shot yesterday. There’s definitely more arm soreness the second time around, but I haven’t noticed any other issues. A friend of mine who also had it the same time got hit hard by both shots.
I’m not throwing away the masks anytime soon. Things have been spiking in Illinois as well. I’m seeing more maskholes at gas stations, but not in big stores.
Yeah; everyone who wasn’t required to be onsite bounced and management has been very firm about keeping them out so the folks who have to be are safer. I’ve been pretty happy with leadership re: this whole situation.
In regards to the vaccine shortages; I don’t know how much the other states are doing, but WA is really aggressive about opening vaccination sites and that’s been a big plus, so I suspect you’re right and it’s a capacity for distribution problem. The MSFT Vaccine site at Overlake says they’re doing 2000 shots a day but could scale to 6000 without much trouble if the vaccines are available.
Now that Biden’s in office and states are actually starting to get vaccine resources, I’m pretty positive about the WA future, even as I’m depressed about other states.
Indeed. Vaccine rollout here in the US has been maddeningly spotty as well, and I managed to get an early shot because a cancellation opened up a last-second “throwaway” for me, like a bolt from the blue. Then there are oversupplies in some places, so we have people from Chicago going across the state to Quincy to get shots.
I’m fully expecting one or more boosters to follow, but at least the mRNA vaccines can be tuned to new variants relatively quickly.
NIOSH was testing standard, disposable filtering face respirators, not ones with replacable filters. Their findings might not apply to your mask.
I’m a little unclear on what your mask is. If you have an elastomeric half mask with replaceable cartridges and separate inhalation and exhalation valves, then the findings do not apply to your mask. It’s about FFRs, not elastomeric masks. The exhalation valve on elastormeric masks is larger and the double valves are designed so that all of the air that is exhausted is unfiltered. That is different than how single valved filtering face piece respirator N95s work, where half the exhaust air goes through the filter media rather than through the exhalation valve.
You may have some sort of hybrid, so I don’t know how your mask fits in with the study’s findings.
Read the linked NIOSH study for more detailed information.
I use the Envomask… it was the only product I could get my hands on a few months into the pandemic, made by a company that originally produced sleep apnea equipment. It’s an FFR with replaceable filters (finally running low on the 100-pack, since I work from home and only needed them for outings, but I just scheduled Shot #1 for Monday!). Revolutionary reusable respirator masks | envo masks
I was really suspect, since it seemed to be a fairly new website, and the scammers wanting those sweet, sweet government contracts handed out like candy by Kushner were making the news. But I found a few reviews external that didn’t seem to be paid shills, and I didn’t have many other options (I’d been heat-sanitizing my two n95 FFRs I’d kept around for dealing with a mold situation, but they were definitely beyond the reuse guidelines).
I’ve been pretty happy with it, though pricy. Creates an amazingly good seal with minimal moisture buildup (in my experience). Support has been rapid to answer my questions, and most importantly of all: I actually received purchases in a timely fashion throughout the last year.
I haven’t the google-fu today to find it: early in the pandemic when it dawned on (many, not all) folks that the main reason for masks was to protect other people not oneself, George Takei posted words to the effect of “Admit it: you thought Asians in masks were kinda funny-looking. Now you know: we were taking care of each other, including you.”
I’m a security consultant with healthcare contractor photo ID; this gives me the opportunity to get my jab appointment with the remaining healthcare workers. Hopefully I’ll get in within a week or two.
In the meantime and after both doses I’ll keep wearing my Gill respirator.
Here in South Korea, one child on our local school turned out to be a case, the school shut down for one day, and the whole classroom and everyone that was in contact with the student got tested. A week in, no new cases have been found. Stories like this are common across the country. When there is good mask compliance, there are no other cases.
School is at 2/3 capacity, masked all day and students are told not to speak during school (but they still do), but definitely instructed not to chat during lunch with reduced eating times (eerily quiet, everyone eats fast).
When there is non-compliance about masks for whatever reason (cults, churches, call-centers) then there is a cluster of infections. Traceable vectors by airflow also in restaurants.
We are currently at around 500 cases per day for the entire country so a matter of time before we go back to level 2 or 2.5 distancing, because the authorities have been unsuccessful for a while to get that number down below 100 again.
I have been very even keeled about lockdown as long as it affected everyone the same way. But the more I see other countries and other groups of people emerge while I am currently scheduled for a July or August vaccination the harder it becomes not to become frustrated.
Not that that means I would be one of those idiots just flouting the rules because of that. I still follow them, just increasingly bad-temperedly.
Knowing what we know about masks protecting others, not oneself I would assume that that plan might not work unless it’s an N95 mask. I also wonder how much the constant use of hand sanitisers has contributed to that lack of other infections. That’s something that’s probably not healthy to keep up long term.
Ridiculously over priced by industrial half masks standards, but dirt cheap by CPAP mask standards - CPAP masks are a racket, so if the company makes CPAP masks the pricing is understandable. Glad it’s worked out well- the seal is so important to getting the most out of N95 rated filter media.
