A good use of an Air Tag:
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Thank them for me will you? Seriously. 
Guess what’s on my Hanukkah wish list this year!
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Yes, thanks, we are grateful our kids take masking seriously and are doing their best to stay Covid-free. They don’t want to get sick or potentially sicken me, H or my 92 year old mom.
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I definitely agree with you about people not caring about others, but what was it about Toledo’s post that made you comment? Just curious.
@Toledo, did your friends on the Baltic cruise isolate until they tested negative until they (presumably) flew home? Do airlines anywhere require a negative test before flying?
Also, did your friends on The Rhine River cruise test positive? If so, did they find a room?
It was these statements…edited for emphasis…and it wasn’t specifically directed at Toledo…just that I read these kinds of posts almost daily on other travel boards I’m a member of…and those posts make me sad and unable to decide if people just don’t give a damn about others, or if they’re so delusional that they aren’t taking precautions, or what…
“bronchitis” - sheesh we live in Covid days, at the first sign of anything even similar to Covid symptoms, isolate and test.
He was sick during the cruise, but she didn’t get sick until the end of the cruise. They didn’t think it was covid, believing it was “bronchitis”.
So many sick at the end, that implies there were folks who simply didn’t care enough about their fellow travelers…it was their vacation, and no one is going to stop that fun!
Another friend was on a Rhine river cruise, where so many people were sick at the end
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It’s not that people don’t care about protecting others. They also don’t care about protecting themselves. In many peoples minds, covid has turned into an inconvenient short term illness. You’d rather not get it because you get sick for a day or two and have to stay in for 5. But, most people don’t fear it anymore. If they consider covid to be not a big deal, then they aren’t going to inconvenience themselves to protect themselves or others. To me, this is the big disconnect. There is a small percentage of the population, which seems to be over represented on this board, who still think covid is a big deal and people should take precautions. Most people don’t think that way anymore.
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Well, when you have lost family members with no underlying conditions, and know others who have been struggling with after effects from this inconvenient thing that isn’t going away any time soon, your personal perspective changes. Kind of like driving while intoxicated - maybe you’ll get home safely or maybe you’ll cause great bodily harm (or death) to self and/or others, but hey, it’s inconvenient to call a cab/Uber/friend, and hey, I’ve done it before and nothing happened so…
yeah, sorry, I don’t drive intoxicated either.
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One thing with COVID is that it’s simply NOT the same disease it was 2.5 yrs ago. The alpha variant which was tougher to contract but much nastier, is essentially non-existent. The delta variant from last fall/winter isn’t around either. As someone said, they are so glad they got COVID now as opposed to 2 yrs ago----without vaccines and treatments, and a more virulent strain, results could have been very different.
As such, we did not travel in 2020 or 2021, but have taken 2 trips this year, with one more to go. I contracted a very mild case of COVID (if it did not exist I would have just figured I had a summer cold) and wife’s case was asymptomatic—if I had not been sick she would not have tested herself.
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The Baltic cruise people said they ate all their meals in their cruise ship cabin, but I don’t know if they rescheduled their flight home.
Yes, the Rhine River cruisers were positive for covid when they left the ship. They said it was awful to walk the streets for hours looking for hotels, and then felt they couldn’t say anything about being sick when they asked for rooms.
I am getting ready to travel on a bus tour. I have several over-the-counter drugs, N95 masks, as well as a list of inexpensive hotels/apartments with kitchens along the route. I have no idea how this will play out. Am I naive or do I just no longer care?
That is what the vaccines were intended to do. Covid is never going to be erased and they expect it will become like the flu, requiring a booster every year with that booster designed to fight the strains the scientists expect to arise that year.
Like with the flu or colds, there will be people who travel (for vacation, to see family, for work) when they have symptoms that might be covid (or flu or a cold). They’ll take their coughing children to the grocery story, on buses and planes. This is not new. There were people who never got flu shots, even though other people with medical conditions could die from the flu.
Your best defense will be a good offense - wear your mask, wash your hands, stay 6 to 10 feet away. Or stay home yourself. I used a lot more hand sanitizer and stayed farther back from people (and the incredibly germy kids I was tutoring) when the masks came off. I’d come to think of the masks as a magic barrier, and they really are just one more tool (but shouldn’t be the only one) to help stop the spread. The kids were coughing into their hands and picking their noses, so out came the hand sanitizer. They were probably doing the coughing and picking all along, but the masks hid it. My mistake.
If you don’t feel safe on a plane, don’t travel. I traveled twice this summer and didn’t notice many masks at all. All the planes were packed, many of the buses and venues I was at were also crowded. I wore a mask if I felt I needed the added protection.
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The COVID that I described getting in the above post came a day after we got back from a bus tour. We masked up in the air terminals, on the planes and on the coach bus, all were requirements. If a shop/museum, etc was crowded we masked up. The only time we did not have masks on is while eating (of course!). I believe we contracted it on our last evening during dinner—the man sitting next to me, near the end of the meal for some reason felt he had to share that he felt sick a few days ago but was now fine! WHY?
I think we all have to accept that our nation and the world blew the chance to get rid of COVID in the early days, so we have to learn to live our lives with COVID around. Thankfullly, with vaccines, drugs, and its own mutations, it is no longer the disease it was in 2020. Our mantra is that we will live our lives, but be careful and use common sense. We have a bus trip in Europe next month—we will be taking a bunch of masks, etc.
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I don’t think we can separate the risks of a covid infection (generally mild-moderate in the vaccinated, as many have noted above) from the ongoing, cumulative, and downright scary risks of possible long-term and permanent damage from even mild infection (Long Covid, neurological sequelae, blood clotting, heart, kidney, and other major organ damage). We are just beginning to untangle the latter, and we don’t know the whole story yet - but what we do know is not good news. And subsequent infections incur cumulative risks.
Every single time we go about unmasked in crowded indoor settings, or risk passing on our own infection to others, I think we ought to consider the fact that we may be permanently affecting someone else’s LIFE. This is not dramatic - it is the reality of what we’re all living through, whether we are aware of it or not. We hold each others’ lives in our hands.
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I have a good friend who returned from a Viking river cruise in July (along with her friend/traveling companion) with a case of Covid. Another couple I know flew to Nashville 2 weeks ago to meet family for a short vacation. All 4 parties involved came down with active Covid following the trip.
All of these people are vaccinated and boosted and they all had been “careful” and followed masking and social distancing protocols from the beginning of the pandemic. They all just wanted to have long-delayed fun and some return to “normal” travel and continued to wear masks indoors, except when eating and drinking, of course.
Yesterday, the Washington Post published an article entitled:
New study suggests covid increases risks of brain disorders
Part of the article reads:
The analysis, conducted by researchers at the University of Oxford and drawing on health records data from more than 1 million people around the world, found that while the risks of many common psychiatric disorders returned to normal within a couple of months, people remained at increased risk for dementia, epilepsy, psychosis and cognitive deficit (or brain fog) two years after contracting covid. Adults appeared to be at particular risk of lasting brain fog, a common complaint among coronavirus survivors.
I doubt any of my friends (all over 60, as I am) are thinking that they’ve suffered any long term effects and I certainly hope that they are right about that. Still, as much as I’d love to throw caution to the winds and hop on a plane to Europe this fall I can’t pretend that the risks are minimal when I very likely contract Covid at some point during the trip. I also can’t pretend that there aren’t several people on the plane, in the airport, at the restaurant or anyplace else I may be going who don’t have active cases of Covid. The reality is that while many dismiss a bout of Covid as no worse than a cold or flu, the very real risk of cognitive problems and earlier than normal dementia are enough for me to still want to avoid being infected.
Sorry to be a Debbie Downer.
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Yes, you are being dramatic. Way over dramatic. I cannot disagree with you more. This is not the reality we are living in. That is what some small percentage of people think is reality.
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Yes. We do disagree.
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No one should pretend the risks are minimal. They should assume they have a good chance of getting Covid and be pleased when they don’t (none of my family have gotten it from our airline trips - we’re thankful). H picked it up at the end of our train trip - such is life.
What people need to do is decide if they want to keep living or change their lives permanently. Creeklanders have decided we’re continuing on with life.
We know darn well that folks in medicine wonder what effects they are going to see down the road, because Covid is often nasty beyond what we see.
But we’d rather die young and actually live than grow into old age having done absolutely nothing.
This attitude is shared by our sons, their wives, H and I, and even FIL - who accompanied us on the train trip, but fortunately didn’t catch Covid (H was closest to the sick man we think gave it to him).
Now we have vaccines, boosters, better knowledge, and better treatment so to us, the risk is similar to hopping in the car with seatbelts, not driving under the influence or while on our cell phones.
And we’re still thankful our bouts with Covid were mild vs those we know who caught it and died. We’re thankful we haven’t been in the deadly car crashes around us too. Four people died on the road closest to us a couple months back. It’s a road we travel on practically daily. It won’t stop us from using the road.
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There are ways where getting COVID-19 can be a big deal, even if the medical effects are minimal for you. Getting COVID-19 can be significantly disruptive to travel plans, such as being excluded from events that you travel to, or having to rebook return travel while paying for expensive extended hotel stays to quarantine (and not be able to enjoy the destination) before return travel.
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I just moved my college student into his on-campus dorm for the current school year. His school is probably one of the most Covid conscious campuses in the Covid era (All online classes from late March 2020 through the entire 2020-2021 school year with almost no students on campus. The 2021-2022 school year had students back on campus, but over half of the classes were online with mandatory vaccination required, weekly testing and mandatory masking on-campus. The school is also in one of the Covid conscious cities (Washington DC).
But for the 1st time since the start of the pandemic, the students and the moving in process was no different from the pre-pandemic move-in process. Almost no students had masks on, even in crowded elevators and hallways. We will see how things go for these students, but I have been on the UGA campus some over the last year which has been pretty wide open for quite a while now.
Since Covid is going to be with us for the foreseeable future, my family has decided to live without many restraints (no masking except in higher risk indoor settings with many people and in any settings that require masks), since my family is all up to date with our vaccines. I definitely understand why some are more risk adverse and urge them to continue to protect themselves however they see fit. I am thankful that I have gone so long without catching Covid (that I know of), but I believe that Covid will eventually come for us all. I am just glad that when it comes for me, I have been fully vaccinated and boosted and that we have therapeutics to fight against serious Covid complications.
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I don’t know if my husband and I ever had COVID, we had no symptoms, never down a single day. Yesterday we attended a premier with about 70-100 people, no mask inside in LA. I’m still ok today.
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