Just before things locked down I traveled to the home office. A colleague in sales took 3 of us to the airport. People were already using hand sanitizer a lot and many were elbow bumping rather than shaking hands and the 4 of us are standing at the curb and he is talking to a fellow female sale manager and when they finished their convo he gave her a big ol bear hug. Then he was talking to another colleague who was in management and when they finished there was another hug. Then he started telling me good bye and I was kinda freaking out because of beginning of the COVID stuff (I had considered buying a face mask for the trip when they were telling us we didn’t need face masks) and the fact that I’m not a hugger and I’ll skip the handshake if I’m not almost forced into it, and he gives me a hug as well.
I will not be going back to that regardless of how this all works out.
I contracted the virus in early January and had a very mild experience. I had a fever one or 2 nights and aches and body pain and general sluggishness that lasted about a week. I had very mild shortness of breath with a cough if I took to deep of a breath that lasted about 2-3 weeks. I’m now not eligible for the vaccine and probably won’t attempt to get the shot until June or July at the earliest. I’ll keep watching for how the natural immunity looks.
As for what I do, I act pretty much like everyone else now. I wear a mask whenever I go out among the public but I’m more willing to go into places like eat in restaurants and getting my hair cut and church of course wearing a mask like everyone else even though I don’t feel the need.
Also, I saw an article or video of an explanation of the efficacy rate of the vaccines. It said the number that is quoted can be looked at as the probability that you will contract the virus if exposed after having had all the shots and them going into full effect.
However, what they said that was extremely good about the vaccine was that of those who were shown to have been infected, no one was hospitalized or died. So while you are not 100% protected from contracting the virus, you are almost 100% protected from getting super sick and dying. And they are not sure if you do contract the virus whether you can still infect others. The current expectation is that you might be less able but that you probably still can even if you are asymptomatic.
So I will probably continue to wear a mask in public until most people quit wearing theirs. I’ll keep washing my hands more often than before.
I wish we would keep the masks, or at least adopt the Asian practice of wearing masks under certain circumstances.
I hate it when people have even minor communicable illnesses and share their germs. We’ve established that there are a lot of folks who have no problems with / perceive a need to go into the office with a cold. And while a cold isn’t a life-threatening illness under most circumstances…it’s still an illness I don’t want to have.
I wish we would normalize – even subsidize – staying home when sick.
Unfortunately, there are decades of quality studies & plenty of contemporary observational data that tell us masks (at least the type I think you’re talking about) simply don’t stop respiratory viruses & they give the wearer a false sense of security to where they’re more likely to go into crowds, or work or school, thinking they’re keeping themselves or others safe when they’re not.
Amen! The trend is the opposite though. Kill sick leave and give people more vacation to compensate. Which rewards people for working while sick or put another way, punishes them for taking time off when sick.
Hopefully Covid will result in greater acceptance of saying “I’m feeling a little under the weather so I’m going to work from home. I’ll participate in the meeting via Zoom.”
I will be fully back to normal once my wife is vaccinated. We have started eating out again now that my mother and father and all the old people at our church have been vaccinated of they want to be. I am not worried about those who don’t want to get vaccinated. Covid is their problem now not mine.
Like many here though I will stay home when sick and when I have a runny nose orncough in the future I am going to wear masks in public when I have to go out moving forward. I think it’s a good conscientious practice.
I’ve been doing that for the last 3-4 years. Our virtual tools have been good enough for that to work for at least that long, and I never got any pushback. I just said, “I think I might have a cold, and I don’t want to share it with you. I’m selfish that way.”
I will feel pretty safe once vaccinated. Will definitely mean a return to mostly normal, like visiting indoors with friends/family and dining indoors. I’ll feel very safe once the vast majority of Americans are vaccinated. I’ll probably avoid large crowds until we have herd immunity, but otherwise behave as I normally would
Post-covid, people should wear a mask when they have cold symptoms. Or, if you don’t like masks, do curbside pickup and WFH until the symptoms go away, if your circumstances allow it. Compared to Covid, the cold is just a nuisance, but it’s a preventable nuisance. I would usually get 2 colds a year, and now, with the increased focus on public health, I realize that I probably caught the cold because somebody had symptoms and went about their normal life, and, when I got symptoms, I did the same. That isn’t going to be part of my new normal.
I thought that such studies had the limitation of having focused on masks as a “protect yourself from others” tool, but when viewed from a “protect others from you” angle the results were more promising. Not foolproof, by any means, but not valueless either.
One of the reasons I had switched to grocery delivery pre-pandemic was that I was tired of being grossed out by being exposed to literal snot-nosed kids that parents had dragged to the store. I can empathize with the child-care complications that can make that seem a necessity…but I don’t want to receive the spawn’s germs.
Similarly, one of the frustrations I had with pre-pandemic travel (I was on the road about 50% of the time) was how frequently I seemed to pick up sniffles and the like after being confined in spaces with folks who were coughing/sneezing. While there are obviously ways that one can reduce the risk to themselves, I wouldn’t hate there being cultural acceptability for additional means of risk reduction post-pandemic.
I don’t expect that to actually happen…but I can still hope.
My company’s policy pre-COVID was you were not allowed to use a WFH day if you were sick, you were required to use PTO. I would be extremely surprised if they didn’t change that policy.
Since both my parents are vaccinated and it’ll be (almost) 2 weeks since their last shot, I’m going down for a visit this weekend. We discussed maybe going to a restaurant, but they’re not quite ready for that yet. So take out and at-home cocktails instead. Baby steps.
Sheesh, there’s a range from “might be coming down with something” through “I need to spend the day in bed”. I decided retroactively (and told my boss) whether I worked a full day, a half day, or not enough to count as work when I stayed home with a bug.
We don’t have a strict company policy AFAIK. My company always made it easy to WFH and gave us all the tools to do that. But different managers w/in our company had different expectations.
I have always been on the side of WFH is ok, be it if it was snowing, you are feeling under the weather, or you have a furniture delivery that day. I will treat you like an adult and assume you are actually working and not playing on the XBox all day.
On the other side I know peers in different departments that do not allow working from home. If you were sick, it was either come into the office and sniffle/cough all day or you had to stay home and take PTO. If it is snowing 6", you still had come in and fight a commute that was 3x longer than normal or stay home and take PTO.
