Covid Support Thread
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My office is small and we’ve all readily admitted we’ve all been vaccinated.
I also live in a City with a high vaccination rate.
Honestly, I’d be comfortable going back, pretty much normally (no masks, no social distancing), right now. I’d feel pretty comfortable around my colleagues and would feel safe to assume most of my clients are vaccinated too (and if they’re not, I am, so you know, moot point).
We initially set a return date of September at the earliest, but that was before vaccines were widely available. We may up it, which frankly, seeing as I’ll be hugely pregnant by the original return date, would be happy to go in nowish to see people and socialize a bit before going into baby lockdown.
We were already really flexible on remote work – so “open” really will mean you can continue to work from home whenever you want, but you are also now allowed to go to the office if you want.
People have been clamoring to go back to work at my place of employment, because you can’t do lab work/cell culture/microscopy imaging at home! People’s career development has been set back so much, and they are really wanting to make up for lost time. We are still at 50% capacity, fully masked. Close to 70% of NIH staff have been fully vaccinated (including everyone in my lab, I think). I think they’ll increase capacity before dropping masks – I don’t see us being unmasked at work before the end of the year. Which is fine. I would love to have more than 1.5 days/week to do work on site, because there is so much I can’t do from home either! We will have a little more child care starting in July (camp) and then hopefully schools will be able to fully reopen in the fall. My husband will probably be 90% WFH for the rest of his career if he gets any choice in the matter!
I started work remotely for a firm in NY in April so I’ll be remote for the forseeable future. Same with the Bride of Fyodor, who runs a national team that isn’t located locally.
I would kind of like to go back into an office, to be honest, but it is what it is. We are giving some thought to maybe moving to the suburbs if neither of us is working in the city.
I’m fine working remotely. I do not miss getting up at 4:30 am on Mondays to catch the first flight out to wherever. I do not miss rush hour traffic to get back to the rental car place before they close. I do not miss hotel beds and dinners from the grocery store.
But I do miss taking my team to get some coffee and getting baked goods from some of our more kind and talented clients.
That said – we’re going to hit the point when people who aren’t vaccinated want the same privileges as vaccinated and don’t give a squat about the risk to those who can’t get vaccinated. As far as I’m concerned, if you medically can not be vaccinated then your health needs surpass those who can, but choose not to, be vaccinated. If I had to set policy, I’d be insisting that those who can not be vaccinated must wear a mask and those who choose not to be vaccinated are not permitted to be on site or in person business meetings or get togethers. We can not be sure they are not carriers and can not be guaranteed that they are not spending their evenings sitting in an enclosed room with other people who are not vaccinated and not protecting themselves. I have to protect my most vulnerable, and they should not be penalized for having health issues.
They are not requiring upload of a vaccination card. However, if they say they are vaccinated and aren’t there is disciplinary action that can include termination. It also says, if for any reason it is speculated they aren’t vaccinated, proof of vaccination could be required. We typically have 8,000 employees at my location, and currently have only about 2,500 on site full time. 3,000 have been changed to permanently telecommute and another 1,500 or so are will be in office 50% of the time, work from home 50% of the time…
Ugh… that twitter feed, Fyodor.
Damn. I’m so tired of dumb people everywhere. It’s like why didn’t more of these dipsticks simply get Covid19 and die already…. the world right now feels like such a grim joke.
Someone pointed out that the same people that more than happy to fake a vaccination document are the same people that get all up in arms about making sure other people are “documented”.
Racism is a hell of a drug. So is privilege.
In Canada, and the west coast here, we are getting some short term phasing plans to ‘get back to normal’ (whatever that means nowadays). We plan to be fully opened if a certain percentage of the population in BC gets their first dose, and if cases and hospitalizations continue to decline (we have a 4 phase step that would realistically open completely for Sept 1st most of our previously restricted/closed accessibilities).
As much as I am excited, there is nothing in that phased step plan for 2nd/full vaccination percentage, which worries me. Are we just not giving people an incentive to get a second dose? At 80% protection or so (depending on what you received) you may feel inclined to just be happy with the first and not get the second, especially if just having a first dose means all these things open up again.
A doctor in Alberta has chastised the Alberta Premier for their phased approach which is timed for Canada Day and the Calgary Stampede (a massive cowboy event that is held). The aptly timed phasing plan seems to be appealing to those who want to get back to business and not actually considering a longer stretch of phasing to properly reach those numbers and appropriate numbers to open again.
I also worry that we won’t reach the 70% because again, we have so many people enjoying the benefits of what 60-65% dosage in BC gets us with one vaccination, and just not pushing for the higher percentage to truly protect and give ourselves a shield against the min dosage.
We have reduced the timespan between dosages to now 8 weeks (was 16 weeks before) so many people are being contacted in the older age categories to get their 2nd, I should be fully vaccinated by end of Aug with my first dose this weekend. But man, I hate that the openings are based around getting ourselves a summer, and not getting a healthy summer.
I didn’t realize BC didn’t also account for second doses. I am pretty jealous of you guys, lol, that there is an end goal. I can’t believe Calgary open for the Stampede. So far our step 3 only goes up to 70-80% first dose and 25% for both. Not sure what happens after that because even Step 3 still has restrictions.
I have always been risk averse but I wish we could enter step 1 since we have reached the 60% vaccination target. There are “other factors”. Step 1 would allow 10 people for an outdoor gathering.
Americans, when did things start opening up for you? After first dose or second dose?
It varied a lot. In Massachusetts everything was closed up pretty tight until suddenly 2 days ago they lifted all restrictions. So a week ago you couldn’t sit at the bar in a restaurant, restaurants were at I think max 50% capacity, masks always worn indoors, extremely low capacity at Fenway Park, not sure if anyone was allowed in for hockey or basketball, but if so it was low capacity with masks. Then this weekend everything suddenly opened up, including night clubs, and there’s no more mask mandate. You can go in Dunkin Donuts mask-free. You can go to a packed Bruins game.
We are one of 10 states I think that has enough people vaccinated for herd immunity: Vermont, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Maine, Rhode Island, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, New Mexico and Hawaii have reached the 70 percent vaccinated threshold. But other states like Florida and Texas are lower and had all but removed restrictions a while ago I think.
Is that 70% fully vaccinated or first dose?
Omg packed Bruins game. Tonight we can have 550 fully vaccinated health care workers at the Game 7 Leafs/Habs game.
