Monday, January 10, 2022

CoViD-19: San Diego Surpasses 5M Total Cases, Nearly 50K Weekend Cases | Working While Sars-CoV-2+ | Newsom Releases Proposed Budget Blueprint | Cops Continue To Refuse Vax | A Birder's Big Year |

After essentially losing our backyard for a year due to construction next door, we finally have a fence again, a step toward normality. (Taken 1.9.22)

I would say that in general, I've been okay throughout this pandemic. I've long been a work-from-home employee, so that wasn't so different for me, and we've visited with family and had birthdays and holidays and shopping and trips to the Zoo and walks and hikes and all that kinda stuff, but I have to say that isolation is really isolating. I'm totally fine and have had three negative rapid tests since my positive PCR back in December, but there's this awful guilt that I could have spread it because I was completely asymptomatic and didn't actually know my result until 11 days later. We've been mostly laying low, but Nova's in school and resumed derby today after a holiday break, and whereas she was getting free weekly tests at school since the beginning of the school year, now we can no longer get her an appointment on campus. I'm seriously considering buying a pack of 25 home tests, but they'd set me back about $375 and that seems insane -- I feel like with toilet paper, the supply will level out in a few weeks, between the insurance reimbursements and the free tests from the Federal government and hopefully some ramped up distribution by the State, at least to schools, but then at that point, have we all already been infected? 

But all that to say that this still really sucks. I was looking through upcoming Casbah shows and we have amazing artists coming through. I haven't been to the San Diego Zoo or Safari Park yet this year. Then there's guilt about COVID, a middle aged woman's menstrual cycle, dashes of seasonal affective disorder, watching far too much news, and then just Mondays in general and today was a whole lot of ho-hum. 

And it is infuriating. If you're going to let nurses nurse while positive but asymptomatic, then say it's because we will cripple our health care systems if we don't. If you want kids in school because funding counts on it or because people can't work if they don't have free day care, say so, but please stop saying "schools are safe" when districts blew pandemic money on football fields and salaries instead of upgrading ventilation, procuring weekly tests for all, and not being able to truly and universally mandate vaccinations for all students and staff where it is authorized under EUA. In many ways, 2020 was the easiest year of the pandemic because while there was derision and divisiveness, you knew where everyone stood and we were all on the same boat with no vaccines. Now you have vaccinated, boosted, unvaccinated, partially vaccinated, previously infected, medically exempted and a host of other combinations and each should be following nuanced guidance. 

I promise I won't be so grumpy tomorrow. We're going to help my mom with my dad so he can get out of the bed and into his chair. In an ideal world it would be amazing to have been able to test daily, to have verified my PCR since my test was lost, to test for anti-bodies and t-cells and all that, but I'm just going to have to trust that 18 days after a positive has me in the clear and that I can protect everyone with an N-95. Then maybe I'll go to the San Diego Zoo. Because this couch life ain't doing it for me no more. Though on a bright note, over the weekend the next door project finally replaced our fence, so we have our yard and some privacy again, something we haven't had in a year. I can't wait to expand the garden. 

Stay safe out there.           

Posted by Rosemary Bystrak at Monday, January 10, 2022
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