Myself, I'm going to get a test today. I have been hoping I'm not sick and that this is just my anemia problem. I could add to Utah's numbers, but I'm vaccinated and I had my booster a month or so ago and I had monoclonal antibodies, 3-1/2 months since I had COVID. I don't want to go get another test. I hope they have the sputum test at the clinic 5 miles away that I don't have to see people. If I have it--then????? I'm not so thrilled.



https://www.newsweek.com/utah-newspaper-pushes-national-guard-block-unvaccinated-socializing-1670051

Sorry to hear, cl2. You'd think you'd paid your dues already. Hopefully, between the vax & booster & antibodies you are well protected.

There's a lot of talk here lately about obtaining tests. I haven't thought about it for myself. I work from home and don't have to go out and about much. It sounds boring but I'm enjoying the change from previous hectic activity, and thankfully have a good stock of books in to last me a while. I'd get the test, though, if I had symptoms, although it can be hard to tell seasonal colds & flu apart from CV, depending on type and severity of symptoms.

We also have the advice here to consider oneself infected with Omicron if respiratory symptoms develop, more to encourage us to be careful around others I think. Just as we wouldn't want to share our cold/flu germs around, for sure we wouldn't want to spread the coronavirus, obviously. You'd think. Because sometimes I do wonder how much some people care about spreading around their germs. That's the group that's causing a lot of the current issues: those who (unbelievably) demonstrate utter indifference to how their decisions and activities may negatively impact others.

The concept of the global village is sure highlighted when it comes to this virulence we're battling. One individual can help or hurt, each in big ways.

Anyway, here's hoping for good news for you in terms of diagnosis, as well as wishes for a speedy recovery back to better and longer-lasting health.

I was just listening to an interview with a mom in Nebraska whose 1-yr old son has been severely ill with COVID, needing to be on a ventilator for a month, and is still in serious condition in hospital.

The little one has underlying conditions (I didn't hear details) and also has Down Syndrome.

A month on a ventilator is tough on anyone - imagine a 1-yr-old. What a nightmare.

When asked if she knows how he became infected, the mom said there was "a 15-minute window" with an unvaxxed relative and she thinks that may be the source, although she can't be sure.

That is one of the crucial pieces of the pandemic response that is being missed by all too many people - our actions affect others we may or may not know and, in turn, so does that contact and so on and so on. I would hope that every single person feels responsibility to avoid harming others. If you don't want to be vaxxed, stay away from others, especially those who are more vulnerable, or at least take extreme precautions to keep your breath to yourself. That would include seniors, who are more vulnerable to risks, and children under 5 who cannot be vaccinated against CV.

This sweet little child has had a tough battle to get through a grave challenge and who knows how it may affect him for the rest of his life. Like he needs more problems, that didn't need to happen.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/17/2022 01:59PM by Nightingale.

A top tennis player was put into detention there because he arrived for a tournament there unvaccinated. He was detained while his status was checked and has since been deported. Australian rules. Agree with them or don't go there.

As kids we always used the phrase "Australian Rules" to indicate something rough-and-tumble. Fear-inspiring.

Still is. :)

then stay away from a "Mexican Stand-off" !!

Absolutely EOD!

Interesting, NG. Australian Rules Football ("footy") is actually a very exciting, quick, skilful but hair-raising form of football.

I'm still on Cloud 9 because my team won the AFL premiership this year, in September, after a break of 57 years and I got to attend the Grand Final. It's normally held in Melbourne, but was switched to Perth this year, due to Covid.

The stars lined up, and I can now die happy....

oldpobot Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Interesting, NG. Australian Rules Football
> ("footy") is actually a very exciting, quick,
> skilful but hair-raising form of football.

My brother was a great footy player as a kid. A fast winger. We had wonderful weekends watching him for years. It's exhilarating. I love the fast pace of the game.

Our interpretation of Australian Rules was "anything goes". We weren't all that rough though but the phrase made us laugh. Of course, it didn't apply in formal games because rules and refs!


> I'm still on Cloud 9 because my team won the AFL
> premiership this year, in September, after a break
> of 57 years and I got to attend the Grand Final.

Wow. Fabulous!


> The stars lined up, and I can now die happy....

Yes indeed. We can all only hope to have an experience that evokes this sentiment. :)

Yep. They rescinded it when they discovered that he'd lied on his application.

I think the Q-tip up the nose is easier than trying to get enough sputum to fill the tube to where they want you to. I just sat there and listened to the radio while I was waiting for more spit. If I have it, then all this does nothing I guess. I have a lot of co-morbidities, so I'm sure that is it.

I also work at home and I hadn't been out much since Christmas. I needed to go shopping for groceries last week. Oh, I had to get tires, too, and I wandered around Walmart for 1-1/2 hours. I wonder if I got it then. I did that on Wednesday and I was sick by Thursday night.

I had more exposure than I usually do as I had to go to Brigham to my brother's a few times. He is disabled and his right side is his good side. He had a stroke when born. He had 2 surgeries. He cut the top of his index finger on his right hand off above the first knuckle and he wouldn't leave it alone, so then he had to have it amputated just below the top knuckle. So I've been over there a few times. Luckily, I didn't have to go to the surgery centers with him. One of his coworkers did. He is doing odd jobs for a little extra money. So I could have had many exposures from others.

My boyfriend is on Cortes Island and has been for 6 weeks. He said it is all over up there. Kind of like Utah.

Waiting 5 days for results is a big problem when it comes to accessing benefits from the new pill that apparently minimizes symptoms and risks if one is indeed infected. You have to take the pill right away or asap after diagnosis as there's a small window in which the pill can be effective (actually, it's 2 pills). It follows that the diagnosis must be more immediate to quickly verify if you're infected or not.

So many challenges...

Hope all goes well, cl2. You have a lot to handle.

2 nurses caring for 36 covid patients at Brooklyn E.R. Some staff there from 8 AM to after 11 PM. Hallways jammed with beds containing mostly unvaccinated.

"Today, nurses are vaccinated, and conditions are far safer than before. But many, in interviews at hospitals across the city, described feeling abandoned, left to care for a crushing number of patients whose needs they cannot meet."

When asked how she keeps going under such conditions, one nurse said she thinks 'well that could be me in that bed. Or. my mom.'

Numbers suggest that had the unvaccinated been vaccinated, only a small percentage would require hospitalization.


The unvaccinated clearly care about nothing but themselves.

>
> The unvaccinated clearly care
> about nothing but themselves.
>


Maybe the rugged individualists of this board can flesh out this image we're trying to form of the unvaxxed...

It's not out of the ordinary to "...care about nothing but themselves."   This is why people get trampled when a crowd feels the need to exit a BIG place via little passage ways.

I will admit that I routinely put myself, and my interests, ahead of others.   And in fact, I'll admit that when I SEEM to be putting others' interests ahead of mine, mostly I'm not: I'm just doing good deeds to make MYSELF feel better.

Ayn Rand says that the mother rushes into the burning building to save her baby not as a heroine, but as a selfish, greedy mother wanting to continue to be a mother.


I got all my vaccinations to protect MYSELF!   Not you!   ME!

So what's the story with the people who find a reason, any reason, to put of getting vaxxed? Enough time has gone by so that armless, legless 'thalidomide-like' babies have been ruled out.   And every year, for a number of years, there's a gear-up and rolling out of "this year's" flu shot...

I don't really give a crap what your responses might be.   I got the shots, I'll get other recommended shots and I'll feel sorry for all those who are "put upon" by the unvaccinateds of the world: they'll always be with us.

There's a reasonable, sustainable argument that there are "too many" people in the world.   Maybe Covid, and especially how one reacts to it, is an attempt by <spooky noises> something <more spooky noises> to ameliorate the condition?

Thanks, D&D.   I feel better!

I'm glad you feel better, but, you make too much sense there so now I feel worse.

I guess it is selfish of me to dislike the unvaxxed's selfishness?

elderolddog Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Ayn Rand says that the mother rushes into the
> burning building to save her baby not as a
> heroine, but as a selfish, greedy mother wanting
> to continue to be a mother.

Far be it from me to question the wisdom of the esteemed Ms. Rand, but how does she account for the woman who jumps into a river to save her child knowing full well that she herself, unable to swim, will be swept away to her eternal reward? How about the man who, a week or two ago, jumped onto the subway tracks to rescue someone he had never met and was then struck by the train himself? What of the soldier who leaps onto a hand grenade to save his comrades?

Is it not true that some people act on altruistic impulse and without considering the possibility, or in some cases the certainty, of personal injury or death? That they do militates against both the water-thin philosophy of objectivism and the insistence by the faithful that religious indoctrination is the source of ethical behavior and in favor of the observation that evolution endowed humans, like other social animals, with an innate concern for others.

>
> Far be it from me to question
> the wisdom of the esteemed Ms.
> Rand, but how does she account
> for the woman who jumps into a
> river to save her child knowing
> full well that she herself, un-
> able to swim, will be swept away
> to her eternal reward?  How about
> the man who, a week or two ago,
> jumped onto the subway tracks to
> rescue someone he had never met
> and was then struck by the train
> himself?  What of the soldier who
> leaps onto a hand grenade to save
> his comrades?

She accounts for these types of acts by speculating that such individuals have trained themselves to selfishly seek adulation.

The phrase, "I couldn't live with myself if I didn't try to save them!" may have at its base, 'I've determined that doing good deeds makes me feel better and makes people like me and so I seek out such opportunities.'

They probably don't expect to die; who would do it when there was a certainty of death, other than a Dickens' hero...

Is Ms. Rand correct or incorrect?  I don't know, but I enjoy believing she is because I can see her point about how selfish humans can be.

And then there's is the possibility that to some extent TV and the online media are and have been training humans to "do the right thing".  Many of us are aware that there are cameras almost everywhere.  At some point in time, anyone wearing a hoodie may be considered a pariah.

Occam would say that if you observe altruistic behavior in all social animals, and humans are social animals, there's no need to reach for alternative explanations--unless, of course, one is offended by the notion that she is just a primate with an abnormally enlarged brain.

If animals have PR people working for either themselves or their breed then I can see word filtering down to 'make us look good!'

But again, who's to say that the "altruism" we may witness isn't the selfishness of "I'd rather he/she/it lived than died"?

I think that's all Ms. Rand is speculating; the altruism of remaining pleased with life and with oneself by taking a risk.

Does your life experience indicate that humans are more rational than they are impulsive?

When I look in the mirror, I see a stalwart practitioner of the Art of Rational Impulsiveness on even days and a staunch Impulsive Rationalist on odd days.


But at night, I give in to the Foreordination of Sleep, perchance to dream; aye, there's the rub...

Where's the SL Tribune op ed? The link was to Newsweek article.

Right here. Generally, I like the Tribune, but this editorial was just spiteful. Suggesting that the Utah National Guard should lock the unvaccinated up isn’t really very helpful.



https://www.sltrib.com/news/politics/2022/01/16/how-did-utah-get-this/

It's this kind of thinking that leads to things like the Mỹ Lai massacre. Should we lead the unvaccinated into irrigation ditches at gunpoint and murder them with machine guns?

Because that seems to be where this is going.

There's a lot of things you can do short of genocide. The reason why America is in such big trouble is because most of the country doesn't want to do anything because "if we force people to wear a mask at the mall, we are all going to die in concentration camps!"

And since you mentioned Vietnam, locking up people who didn't follow lockdown rules is precisely how the world's third country to have people catch Covid-19 managed to have zero Covid deaths until USA and EU both had tens of thousands.

Are you still in VN? Don't answer if the question is too intrusive.

I hope that your test comes up negative, cl2. I know people who have taken the spit test, and they complain that it's very difficult to come up with enough sputum. I've only ever done the nasal swab.

I'd rather have to produce a gallon of spittle than get the stick up my nose.

I've done both. The stick is dramatically faster, and not that big a deal. It's not like they poke it into the back of your eyeball. Spit is apparently more accurate for early detection, for what that's worth.

Probably just for the current antigens that are out there. I'm going to ask for an antibody test, to see which variant I had.

" 2022 is going be a very ugly year with Covid still spreading in dense populations. That is why I’m staying away from dense people this year." -- Frank Pedraza

Will the pearl clutchers please calm down. While suggesting that the National Guard be called out to enforce vaccination requirements was a boneheaded thing to say, in reality, the cashier (or any employee) in a grocery store can call in a complaint to have you arrested if the store has a mask mandate and you violate it.

Nobody is forced to get vaccinated, but decisions have consequences, and you do have to live with the consequences. Ask Novak Djokovic about that.

Yep. Now the genius can't play in the French Open either.

but I can't get the link without the site popping up with their having to pay to purchase reading their newspaper, so I gave up.

I haven't been too sick. Like they said, like a cold or something. Chills, fever, fatigue, some shortness of breath. It comes and goes. I do think 5 days is too long to wait for a test. By the time you get the test results, you are probably close to over it. I think I'll survive without any other medication or antibodies.

And you're one tough broad!

cl2 get your free tests! Then put them away so they don't turn up missing so YOU have them when you need them :)

We need to rename Covid ‘Darwin’s Revenge’ in honor of the 99% of those it killed, who were unvaccinated.