Coronavirus prep
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snowflake954 wrote: »I get my 1st vaccine May 29th, Pfizer, 66 yrs old.
I get my first vaccine May 17th, also Pfizer. Age 57. (Canada)
Two of my kids are getting theirs May 11 and May 15! Also in Canada (age 27 and 31). Not sure what they are getting, I think probably Pfizer. Husband and I had ours March 3 (age 60 and 55).
Will only have one son left to be vaccinated after that (age 28) he is the only one of us who doesn’t live in a designated “hot spot” where transmission is high, so will probably have to wait until June.7 -
I have my second shot this morning at 9:15. My anxiety is high. I had fatigue, body aches, and a general feeling of being unwell after the first shot. The second shot is supposed to be worse. So not looking forward to that. Glad to be getting it, don't get me wrong! I would get it even if I knew I would be bed bound for all of today and tomorrow. I just don't like not knowing how I will feel. But I have planned for the worse. I have a personal set aside for tomorrow if needed and have money to order in food if I feel bad enough that I can't cook. After my shot I do hope to get through the rest of my workday, but it is all meetings for the most part so I can just sit here and listen.
Not everyone has a worse reaction on their second shot. In my workplace, a number didn't, some were about the same as the first, for some it was worse. Out of about 20, only one didn't present for work the next day and I went home from work about half way through (the next day).
For me, for my first shot it was the sore arm, lasted less than 24 hours. For the second shot, arm ache kicked in sooner and ached a bit more. I had a small bout of feeling very hot overnight, the following afternoon, not quite the chills but could not get warm and was chilled to the bone. I went home soaked in a hot bath, jumped into bed with the electric blanket on and finally warmed up. After that all was good.9 -
I have my second shot this morning at 9:15. My anxiety is high. I had fatigue, body aches, and a general feeling of being unwell after the first shot. The second shot is supposed to be worse. So not looking forward to that. Glad to be getting it, don't get me wrong! I would get it even if I knew I would be bed bound for all of today and tomorrow. I just don't like not knowing how I will feel. But I have planned for the worse. I have a personal set aside for tomorrow if needed and have money to order in food if I feel bad enough that I can't cook. After my shot I do hope to get through the rest of my workday, but it is all meetings for the most part so I can just sit here and listen.
Sounds like good planning!
Does your workplace already have a plan for employees who need some time to recover?0 -
To build on my last post - do peoples' workplaces have a plan for employees who need some time to get or recover from the vaccine?
Here in the US:
https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2021/04/21/fact-sheet-president-biden-to-call-on-all-employers-to-provide-paid-time-off-for-employees-to-get-vaccinated-after-meeting-goal-of-200-million-shots-in-the-first-100-days/
...President Biden is calling on every employer in America to offer full pay to their employees for any time off needed to get vaccinated and for any time it takes to recover from the after-effects of vaccination. He will announce a paid leave tax credit that will offset the cost for employers with fewer than 500 employees to provide full pay for any time their employees need to get a COVID-19 vaccination or recover from that vaccination.
Providing paid time off for vaccinations is an investment in the safety, productivity and health of an employer’s own workforce and their community. No working person in this country should lose a single dollar from their paycheck to take time to get the shot or recover from it. The paid leave tax credit that President Biden signed into the law in the American Rescue Plan ensures that no small businesses or non-profits will lose a single dollar by providing such paid leave to workers receiving a vaccination.5 -
Ok, now here is the dumb (but sincere) question of the day.
1) if receiving the vaccine causes our body to produce COVID antibodies AND
2) If one contracts COVID one's body produce antibodies
How can a doctor determine that a double vaccinated person has officially contracted COVID, especially for those cases that are asymptomatic? Wouldn't they be checking for antibodies to diagnose, yet a vaccinated person would have the antibodies regardless as well.
These are the odd things I think of when I do too much driving.
A COVID test doesn't test for antibodies...it tests for active virus.0 -
I have my second shot this morning at 9:15. My anxiety is high. I had fatigue, body aches, and a general feeling of being unwell after the first shot. The second shot is supposed to be worse. So not looking forward to that. Glad to be getting it, don't get me wrong! I would get it even if I knew I would be bed bound for all of today and tomorrow. I just don't like not knowing how I will feel. But I have planned for the worse. I have a personal set aside for tomorrow if needed and have money to order in food if I feel bad enough that I can't cook. After my shot I do hope to get through the rest of my workday, but it is all meetings for the most part so I can just sit here and listen.
I know the feeling. My concern is a very high risk mutation coming along requiring a booster shot and requiring proof of the first two. It is getting harder to travel without vaccine proof.0 -
kshama2001 wrote: »To build on my last post - do peoples' workplaces have a plan for employees who need some time to get or recover from the vaccine?
My office is still largely working from home, and is flexible anyway. I suppose if one couldn't work at all the day after the shot, it would in theory count toward a sick day for staff (which are paid, but total days off for staff per year vary based on length of employment). However, "sick days" haven't been counted at all since we all started working from home. So no "plan" but no issues. We are all vaccinated at this point, and likely going to start transitioning back to most days at the office in June.3 -
Antiopelle wrote: »snowflake954 wrote: »Theoldguy1 wrote: »janejellyroll wrote: »janejellyroll wrote: »missysippy930 wrote: »India's numbers are probably undercounted, though -- I found plenty of articles even from 2020 saying that. And it's clear that many places that were for whatever reason hit less hard early on got hit harder later, and the current situation in India is terrible.
https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2021/04/22/989768074/how-india-went-from-a-ray-of-hope-to-a-world-record-for-most-covid-cases-in-a-da
Older pieces include: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-54176375 and https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-53510307
I agree it’s devastating and extremely sad. People are dying because of oxygen shortages.
Just yesterday, my daughter said her boss thinks she has covid. My daughter told her to get tested. She said no, it’s probably just a cold🤷🏻♀️How many people think this way? Her boss won’t get the vaccine either.
A couple of months ago, my husband's boss had "really bad allergies or something" for over a week, kept getting worse and worse. She didn't want to get tested because she didn't want to be forced to quarantine. She ended up in the hospital with COVID (she's OK now but she was sick enough to stay in the hospital for a week.) Meanwhile, she spread it around work, the health department found out and came in and sent a bunch of people home to quarantine (including my husband who ended up negative.) Three other people at work ended up coming down with COVID shortly after. There are a handful of people at his work who say, "Yeah, we've all already been exposed. We don't need the vaccine now." WTH, people. So yeah, plenty of people "think this way."
I was telling my mom just last week that I was hoping that COVID would help end the "work through illness" culture that exists in some professions. It was not at all uncommon in my workplace for people to come to work with really bad coughs . . . basically as long as you weren't vomiting or had a high fever, you'd come into work. This wasn't due to economic insecurity (we had the ability to work from home, we had sick days). It was just "how things were."
But I think the mindset will be hard to change, even with the year we've just had.
But I have experienced "post viral cough" that can last up to 6 weeks. Even a regular cold or flu cough last about 10 days. I can't imagine anyone taking off 10 days for a cold. I don't get sick as much now, but when my kids were small it could happen 3 times a year. Like my work would not allow anyone to take off that much sick time for minor illnesses, I can't imagine most offices would. We get like 3 paid sick days.
Although I guess those who can work from home could do that, we didn't have that option before, we do now.
I understand that taking ten days off is out of scope for the majority of people, but I'm talking about a culture where people take no time off and assume whatever they have won't be communicated to others (or that it doesn't matter if it is). The point is that people often assume that what they have is no big deal and stories like the one above show that it sometimes IS a big deal.
Again, this is in the context of people being able to work from home, which I know is an option that wasn't freely available in the past and still isn't available for many workers now. I'm not at all judging people who need to go to work in order to keep their job or don't have sufficient sick days available.
Why we need better leave, and why everyone should have sick leave. I was really proud of our system--the UC gave everyone 128 hours of paid COVID leave that could be used for quarantine/isolation, to care for others, to help kids with online school. And they gave an additional 80 hours a couple months ago. I haven't used mine, but I have employees who have burned through all their paid leave with multiple quarantines and other COVID-related issues. The additional paid leave has truly been a blessing.
In previous years, I've watched office after office on campus go down with the flu, so clearly we were passing on the cooties. I would love to see us change our culture, but I think a lack pf paid leave (for whatever reason) will impact peoples' decisions to stay home. And I get it.
No offense, but other than a government entity (which I assume is like most, broke) and just raises taxes, how can an organization afford an additional 5+ weeks of sick time a person?
This is largely a cultural thing. I live in Finland and nobody here has any limits to paid sick days per time period.
Well, actually we do, but it’s literally a full year. How long is fully paid by employers depends on field of business (collective agreements) and duration of employment - I currently get maximum 6 weeks of company-paid leave per sickness and it only counts as the same sickness if it renews within 30 days, after that the 6-week limit resets. This means if I break my arm and go on sick leave for a month, and then need to have surgery on that arm to fix something 6 months later, it’s a ”different” sickness and the 6-week limit resets. 2 weeks per sickness is out of pocket for employers, after that the government reimburses a certain percentage (80% if I remember correctly) of salary, which is the same amount of money the government pays workers who have to take sick leave longer than what employers pay. This is on top of 5 weeks of paid vacation time per year per person, and our paid vacation is 1.5x salary due to weird historical reasons.
The only organizations I have ever heard of that can’t afford the sick leaves their employees take are tiny 1-5 employee organizations. Handling paid leave is cultural and systemic, there are different ways of handling it but most organizations can definitely afford it.
Italy here. But how much do you pay in taxes there? Therein lies the rub. Coverage like the kind you're getting for sickness (and other things) costs a lot. Italy is always eyeing your coverage and the people want it, but we're already broke with the generous coverage we do get.
It's more or less the same in Belgium. You can be on sick leave for a year, 1 month at the cost of the employer, the next 11 months at a slightly reduced "salary" from the government. After that, you'll be considered as having a long term sickness and will go on an even more reduced disability benefit from the government.
But indeed @snowflake954, we have a very high tax rate, which is scaled up according to salary. The highest is 52% and that will apply for let's say a middle class salary. Those 52% are divided between real taxes (for everything the government needs to make a functioning country), and a rather large part goes straight to a "wellfare" portion, which will cover hospital and care facilities funds but also pensions (as from an age of 62 to 67 depending on your career), disabilities and sick leaves. Yes, it is a lot but I wouldn't trade it for any country in the world, as we all have access to top notch care. And yet still, people here are complaining ...
It’s true, taxes are high. I continue to be a happy taxpayer because the government is organized, after all, rather effectively (compared to other countries) and everything works smoothly for the most part.
Sick leave benefits are one thing, but I also graduated college with a master’s degree and zero student debt because there’s no tuition and my part-time job was enough to cover the cost of living together with government-paid student aid, I had free nutritionally-high-quality school lunches from elementary until high school, infrastructure and public buildings are in decent shape, I don’t need a car because I have reasonably prized well-functioning public transportation, I get almost a full year of paid maternal/parental leave, I have free top-notch healthcare and nobody has to worry about being homeless due to financial hardship, covid ruining the economy or hospital bills leading to bankruptcy. These are a few benefits that come from a somewhat effectively running welfare state, definitely not an exhaustive list.
Yes, people always complain because things aren’t perfect, but striving for perfection creates improvement. I know I personally complained today because my maternity nurse called and she wants me to come in for an extra test within the next week and they’re only open during ”office hours” = when I work. This post, the fact that I get an assigned nurse to care and call me at home for free, and the fact that maternity healthcare that must happen during work hours is cause for paid absence, reminded me to stop complaining about the minor inconvenience of shuffling my meeting schedules to go to the clinic that takes care of me for free.
The only countries I’d ever trade this for are maybe the other Nordic countries and possibly places like Belgium.
Well to be fair it's not really "free" - you are paying for it through your taxes. I always make that distinction when people from the US talk about Canada's "free healthcare" - we definitely pay for it.
Canada is not quite the same, although we do have a strong social safety net, probably somewhere between your country and the US. We don't have mandated paid sick time, most larger companies provide it, and there are government programs you can access (through unemployment insurance) for sick leave if you don't have coverage through your work. Where I work there is a gap - we have long term disability after 120 days, but no short term sick leave. Although my company is good they would never not pay us if we were off for surgery or something, they would work something out.
We do have tuition fees and student debt here, but nothing like the hundreds of thousands that I hear about in the US. If you are low income there is a maximum loan amount of (I think) $7000 per year, and anything you get above that is a grant you don't have to pay back. I'll never understand the whole school lunch thing, don't parents want to feed their own children based on their families choices? Also I hear a lot about paid maternity leave in other countries - is it actually paid in full? You get your full salary? There is a year maternity leave here, but it is paid at 60% through the unemployment insurance system, not full salary. (Still better than back when I had my kids and had only 16 weeks.)
School lunch: I guess it’s perspective. Nobody here wants to go through the hassle of making and packing lunches for their kids, and the school lunches are ”basic” cuisine. It’s about what people are used to, and what the culture is. Medical and religious dietary requirements are accommodated, as well as vegetarian/vegan ethical choices. The school lunch isn’t a pre-packed meal. There’s usually salad, a side (carb), main dish, water and milk to drink as well as bread (usually a cracker-type dry thing, fresh bread on soup days), so you can choose your own portion in terms of carb intake, amount of veggies etc.
Maternity leave: as a full explanation, mothers get about 4 months maternity leave that must start 5 weeks before due date, but they can start it earlier. After that there’s a parental leave that either parent can use or it can be split that’s about 6 months. Dads/non-birthing partners get 9 weeks of paternity leave, out of which 3 weeks can be used while mom is on maternity leave (so usually right after birth), and the rest can be used any time before the kid turns 2 but not while the other parent is on a family leave. On top of these you can take care leave until the kid is 3, for that one the pay is a flat rate that sucks, but many cities/counties pay a little bit of extra. The maternity/paternity/parental leaves are 80% paid, I think, but in reality it’s closer to full pay as your tax rate decreases because you earn less. Many companies and collective agreements offer full salary for some part of that - I get 3 months full pay and my husband gets a week or two of fully paid paternity leave.
You’re right about me paying for all this in taxes, of course, but I’m pretty sure I haven’t paid enough taxes in my life to cover all the services I’ve used so far since I only have a couple of years of full-time work behind me after all those years of daycare, school and studying.8 -
kshama2001 wrote: »
Sounds like good planning!
Does your workplace already have a plan for employees who need some time to recover?
We do not have a plan in place, but my team at least is very understanding about it. We also have really good PTO since we are a government agency so the majority of people should be able to cover it. Obviously there are those who would have used their PTO due to illness or whatever other reason. I believe that if it for the COVID vaccine, that they are waving anything negative that would happen from taking time when you don't have any PTO to cover it. You would have to take that unpaid though.
I have a personal day I have been holding on to just for this reason and I already emailed my boss about taking it tomorrow. He was fine with it. Would rather that I feel better then to drag myself into work, even if we are still work from home.
Since the shot (which was 4 hours ago) I have been nauseated and lightheaded. A headache started about an hour ago. I did eat but it is not sitting well. My arm is super sore, but some of that is because I stupidly tensed up when I got my shot. Glad I have leftovers for tonight (just have to bake the potato fresh). Since I have chronic illness, including chronic fatigue, I make sure I take care of myself.8 -
Antiopelle wrote: »snowflake954 wrote: »Theoldguy1 wrote: »janejellyroll wrote: »janejellyroll wrote: »missysippy930 wrote: »India's numbers are probably undercounted, though -- I found plenty of articles even from 2020 saying that. And it's clear that many places that were for whatever reason hit less hard early on got hit harder later, and the current situation in India is terrible.
https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2021/04/22/989768074/how-india-went-from-a-ray-of-hope-to-a-world-record-for-most-covid-cases-in-a-da
Older pieces include: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-54176375 and https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-53510307
I agree it’s devastating and extremely sad. People are dying because of oxygen shortages.
Just yesterday, my daughter said her boss thinks she has covid. My daughter told her to get tested. She said no, it’s probably just a cold🤷🏻♀️How many people think this way? Her boss won’t get the vaccine either.
A couple of months ago, my husband's boss had "really bad allergies or something" for over a week, kept getting worse and worse. She didn't want to get tested because she didn't want to be forced to quarantine. She ended up in the hospital with COVID (she's OK now but she was sick enough to stay in the hospital for a week.) Meanwhile, she spread it around work, the health department found out and came in and sent a bunch of people home to quarantine (including my husband who ended up negative.) Three other people at work ended up coming down with COVID shortly after. There are a handful of people at his work who say, "Yeah, we've all already been exposed. We don't need the vaccine now." WTH, people. So yeah, plenty of people "think this way."
I was telling my mom just last week that I was hoping that COVID would help end the "work through illness" culture that exists in some professions. It was not at all uncommon in my workplace for people to come to work with really bad coughs . . . basically as long as you weren't vomiting or had a high fever, you'd come into work. This wasn't due to economic insecurity (we had the ability to work from home, we had sick days). It was just "how things were."
But I think the mindset will be hard to change, even with the year we've just had.
But I have experienced "post viral cough" that can last up to 6 weeks. Even a regular cold or flu cough last about 10 days. I can't imagine anyone taking off 10 days for a cold. I don't get sick as much now, but when my kids were small it could happen 3 times a year. Like my work would not allow anyone to take off that much sick time for minor illnesses, I can't imagine most offices would. We get like 3 paid sick days.
Although I guess those who can work from home could do that, we didn't have that option before, we do now.
I understand that taking ten days off is out of scope for the majority of people, but I'm talking about a culture where people take no time off and assume whatever they have won't be communicated to others (or that it doesn't matter if it is). The point is that people often assume that what they have is no big deal and stories like the one above show that it sometimes IS a big deal.
Again, this is in the context of people being able to work from home, which I know is an option that wasn't freely available in the past and still isn't available for many workers now. I'm not at all judging people who need to go to work in order to keep their job or don't have sufficient sick days available.
Why we need better leave, and why everyone should have sick leave. I was really proud of our system--the UC gave everyone 128 hours of paid COVID leave that could be used for quarantine/isolation, to care for others, to help kids with online school. And they gave an additional 80 hours a couple months ago. I haven't used mine, but I have employees who have burned through all their paid leave with multiple quarantines and other COVID-related issues. The additional paid leave has truly been a blessing.
In previous years, I've watched office after office on campus go down with the flu, so clearly we were passing on the cooties. I would love to see us change our culture, but I think a lack pf paid leave (for whatever reason) will impact peoples' decisions to stay home. And I get it.
No offense, but other than a government entity (which I assume is like most, broke) and just raises taxes, how can an organization afford an additional 5+ weeks of sick time a person?
This is largely a cultural thing. I live in Finland and nobody here has any limits to paid sick days per time period.
Well, actually we do, but it’s literally a full year. How long is fully paid by employers depends on field of business (collective agreements) and duration of employment - I currently get maximum 6 weeks of company-paid leave per sickness and it only counts as the same sickness if it renews within 30 days, after that the 6-week limit resets. This means if I break my arm and go on sick leave for a month, and then need to have surgery on that arm to fix something 6 months later, it’s a ”different” sickness and the 6-week limit resets. 2 weeks per sickness is out of pocket for employers, after that the government reimburses a certain percentage (80% if I remember correctly) of salary, which is the same amount of money the government pays workers who have to take sick leave longer than what employers pay. This is on top of 5 weeks of paid vacation time per year per person, and our paid vacation is 1.5x salary due to weird historical reasons.
The only organizations I have ever heard of that can’t afford the sick leaves their employees take are tiny 1-5 employee organizations. Handling paid leave is cultural and systemic, there are different ways of handling it but most organizations can definitely afford it.
Italy here. But how much do you pay in taxes there? Therein lies the rub. Coverage like the kind you're getting for sickness (and other things) costs a lot. Italy is always eyeing your coverage and the people want it, but we're already broke with the generous coverage we do get.
It's more or less the same in Belgium. You can be on sick leave for a year, 1 month at the cost of the employer, the next 11 months at a slightly reduced "salary" from the government. After that, you'll be considered as having a long term sickness and will go on an even more reduced disability benefit from the government.
But indeed @snowflake954, we have a very high tax rate, which is scaled up according to salary. The highest is 52% and that will apply for let's say a middle class salary. Those 52% are divided between real taxes (for everything the government needs to make a functioning country), and a rather large part goes straight to a "wellfare" portion, which will cover hospital and care facilities funds but also pensions (as from an age of 62 to 67 depending on your career), disabilities and sick leaves. Yes, it is a lot but I wouldn't trade it for any country in the world, as we all have access to top notch care. And yet still, people here are complaining ...
It’s true, taxes are high. I continue to be a happy taxpayer because the government is organized, after all, rather effectively (compared to other countries) and everything works smoothly for the most part.
Sick leave benefits are one thing, but I also graduated college with a master’s degree and zero student debt because there’s no tuition and my part-time job was enough to cover the cost of living together with government-paid student aid, I had free nutritionally-high-quality school lunches from elementary until high school, infrastructure and public buildings are in decent shape, I don’t need a car because I have reasonably prized well-functioning public transportation, I get almost a full year of paid maternal/parental leave, I have free top-notch healthcare and nobody has to worry about being homeless due to financial hardship, covid ruining the economy or hospital bills leading to bankruptcy. These are a few benefits that come from a somewhat effectively running welfare state, definitely not an exhaustive list.
Yes, people always complain because things aren’t perfect, but striving for perfection creates improvement. I know I personally complained today because my maternity nurse called and she wants me to come in for an extra test within the next week and they’re only open during ”office hours” = when I work. This post, the fact that I get an assigned nurse to care and call me at home for free, and the fact that maternity healthcare that must happen during work hours is cause for paid absence, reminded me to stop complaining about the minor inconvenience of shuffling my meeting schedules to go to the clinic that takes care of me for free.
The only countries I’d ever trade this for are maybe the other Nordic countries and possibly places like Belgium.
Well to be fair it's not really "free" - you are paying for it through your taxes. I always make that distinction when people from the US talk about Canada's "free healthcare" - we definitely pay for it.
Canada is not quite the same, although we do have a strong social safety net, probably somewhere between your country and the US. We don't have mandated paid sick time, most larger companies provide it, and there are government programs you can access (through unemployment insurance) for sick leave if you don't have coverage through your work. Where I work there is a gap - we have long term disability after 120 days, but no short term sick leave. Although my company is good they would never not pay us if we were off for surgery or something, they would work something out.
We do have tuition fees and student debt here, but nothing like the hundreds of thousands that I hear about in the US. If you are low income there is a maximum loan amount of (I think) $7000 per year, and anything you get above that is a grant you don't have to pay back. I'll never understand the whole school lunch thing, don't parents want to feed their own children based on their families choices? Also I hear a lot about paid maternity leave in other countries - is it actually paid in full? You get your full salary? There is a year maternity leave here, but it is paid at 60% through the unemployment insurance system, not full salary. (Still better than back when I had my kids and had only 16 weeks.)
School lunch: I guess it’s perspective. Nobody here wants to go through the hassle of making and packing lunches for their kids, and the school lunches are ”basic” cuisine.
Yeah my daughter has been vegetarian since age 7, and was also an athlete who trained up to 25 hours a week. I guess I imagine the kids getting chicken fingers and fries or pizza, and that would not have cut it with our family. I also wouldn't consider feeding my kids a hassle (I used to get up at 4:30 to take her to practice and prep two breakfasts, for before and after practice, and a cooked lunch for her, and my husband made lunch for her brothers when he made his own). If they were getting decent meals then I guess I might feel different, I just can't imagine that happening in a setting like that.1 -
For a lot of kids in the US, unfortunately, school lunch and breakfast might be the only meals they get. Some parents just don't feed their kids or take care of them properly.
8 -
The vaccines do have unpleasant, but usually temporary and non-serious, side effects. What I'm going to say next will probably be taken by some as an accusation, but it isn't. Seriously, not. I'm just going to talk about something I never dreamed of as a thing that could even happen, until I experienced it. I'd characterize it as a "stupid brain trick" that can happen because we're wired in particular ways as humans, and the results are physical, not imaginary. It's not "all in one's head".
During chemotherapy, I learned that when someone has an unpleasant experience with their first round in a series of chemotherapy treatments, that person can get something called "anticipatory nausea" (but the effects aren't limited to nausea). After the first bad experience, the person (me) literally experiences the side effect symptoms sometimes even before drug administration. It's a fairly common phenomenon.
That may have implications, IMO, for a 2-shot regimen like these vaccines. There could, I suspect, be both physical and psychological mechanisms for *physical* side effects with the second shot. If so, it's not imaginary, neurotic, or anything like that.
I'm bringing it up because if that *is* a factor in someone's side effects, or their severity, the strategies to treat the side effects may benefit from addressing both the physical triggers (by hydrating and taking OTC pain relievers, for example), but also any possible subconscious psychological triggers or amplifiers.
I honestly don't know exactly how to do that for a vaccine. For the chemotherapy situation, what had been found effective in research scenarios was to use visualization techniques, trying to vividly imagine the chemo drugs as a positive force in the body, visualize them as an ally, imagining them traveling around the body, attacking and killing cancer cells. That helped me manage side effects with subsequent chemo rounds (alongside changes in anti-side effect drugs and such), and I'm not typically an imaginative or suggestible person.
Conceivably, it could help to take the wait times at the vaccine site as a few minutes to close one's eyes, and imagine the vaccine amping up the immune system to make us stronger and more powerful against the virus, then repeating that thought process in spare moments through the day.
Would it help? Don't know. But it's pretty easy, cost-free, no real down side.
FWIW.15 -
Antiopelle wrote: »snowflake954 wrote: »Theoldguy1 wrote: »janejellyroll wrote: »janejellyroll wrote: »missysippy930 wrote: »India's numbers are probably undercounted, though -- I found plenty of articles even from 2020 saying that. And it's clear that many places that were for whatever reason hit less hard early on got hit harder later, and the current situation in India is terrible.
https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2021/04/22/989768074/how-india-went-from-a-ray-of-hope-to-a-world-record-for-most-covid-cases-in-a-da
Older pieces include: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-54176375 and https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-53510307
I agree it’s devastating and extremely sad. People are dying because of oxygen shortages.
Just yesterday, my daughter said her boss thinks she has covid. My daughter told her to get tested. She said no, it’s probably just a cold🤷🏻♀️How many people think this way? Her boss won’t get the vaccine either.
A couple of months ago, my husband's boss had "really bad allergies or something" for over a week, kept getting worse and worse. She didn't want to get tested because she didn't want to be forced to quarantine. She ended up in the hospital with COVID (she's OK now but she was sick enough to stay in the hospital for a week.) Meanwhile, she spread it around work, the health department found out and came in and sent a bunch of people home to quarantine (including my husband who ended up negative.) Three other people at work ended up coming down with COVID shortly after. There are a handful of people at his work who say, "Yeah, we've all already been exposed. We don't need the vaccine now." WTH, people. So yeah, plenty of people "think this way."
I was telling my mom just last week that I was hoping that COVID would help end the "work through illness" culture that exists in some professions. It was not at all uncommon in my workplace for people to come to work with really bad coughs . . . basically as long as you weren't vomiting or had a high fever, you'd come into work. This wasn't due to economic insecurity (we had the ability to work from home, we had sick days). It was just "how things were."
But I think the mindset will be hard to change, even with the year we've just had.
But I have experienced "post viral cough" that can last up to 6 weeks. Even a regular cold or flu cough last about 10 days. I can't imagine anyone taking off 10 days for a cold. I don't get sick as much now, but when my kids were small it could happen 3 times a year. Like my work would not allow anyone to take off that much sick time for minor illnesses, I can't imagine most offices would. We get like 3 paid sick days.
Although I guess those who can work from home could do that, we didn't have that option before, we do now.
I understand that taking ten days off is out of scope for the majority of people, but I'm talking about a culture where people take no time off and assume whatever they have won't be communicated to others (or that it doesn't matter if it is). The point is that people often assume that what they have is no big deal and stories like the one above show that it sometimes IS a big deal.
Again, this is in the context of people being able to work from home, which I know is an option that wasn't freely available in the past and still isn't available for many workers now. I'm not at all judging people who need to go to work in order to keep their job or don't have sufficient sick days available.
Why we need better leave, and why everyone should have sick leave. I was really proud of our system--the UC gave everyone 128 hours of paid COVID leave that could be used for quarantine/isolation, to care for others, to help kids with online school. And they gave an additional 80 hours a couple months ago. I haven't used mine, but I have employees who have burned through all their paid leave with multiple quarantines and other COVID-related issues. The additional paid leave has truly been a blessing.
In previous years, I've watched office after office on campus go down with the flu, so clearly we were passing on the cooties. I would love to see us change our culture, but I think a lack pf paid leave (for whatever reason) will impact peoples' decisions to stay home. And I get it.
No offense, but other than a government entity (which I assume is like most, broke) and just raises taxes, how can an organization afford an additional 5+ weeks of sick time a person?
This is largely a cultural thing. I live in Finland and nobody here has any limits to paid sick days per time period.
Well, actually we do, but it’s literally a full year. How long is fully paid by employers depends on field of business (collective agreements) and duration of employment - I currently get maximum 6 weeks of company-paid leave per sickness and it only counts as the same sickness if it renews within 30 days, after that the 6-week limit resets. This means if I break my arm and go on sick leave for a month, and then need to have surgery on that arm to fix something 6 months later, it’s a ”different” sickness and the 6-week limit resets. 2 weeks per sickness is out of pocket for employers, after that the government reimburses a certain percentage (80% if I remember correctly) of salary, which is the same amount of money the government pays workers who have to take sick leave longer than what employers pay. This is on top of 5 weeks of paid vacation time per year per person, and our paid vacation is 1.5x salary due to weird historical reasons.
The only organizations I have ever heard of that can’t afford the sick leaves their employees take are tiny 1-5 employee organizations. Handling paid leave is cultural and systemic, there are different ways of handling it but most organizations can definitely afford it.
Italy here. But how much do you pay in taxes there? Therein lies the rub. Coverage like the kind you're getting for sickness (and other things) costs a lot. Italy is always eyeing your coverage and the people want it, but we're already broke with the generous coverage we do get.
It's more or less the same in Belgium. You can be on sick leave for a year, 1 month at the cost of the employer, the next 11 months at a slightly reduced "salary" from the government. After that, you'll be considered as having a long term sickness and will go on an even more reduced disability benefit from the government.
But indeed @snowflake954, we have a very high tax rate, which is scaled up according to salary. The highest is 52% and that will apply for let's say a middle class salary. Those 52% are divided between real taxes (for everything the government needs to make a functioning country), and a rather large part goes straight to a "wellfare" portion, which will cover hospital and care facilities funds but also pensions (as from an age of 62 to 67 depending on your career), disabilities and sick leaves. Yes, it is a lot but I wouldn't trade it for any country in the world, as we all have access to top notch care. And yet still, people here are complaining ...
It’s true, taxes are high. I continue to be a happy taxpayer because the government is organized, after all, rather effectively (compared to other countries) and everything works smoothly for the most part.
Sick leave benefits are one thing, but I also graduated college with a master’s degree and zero student debt because there’s no tuition and my part-time job was enough to cover the cost of living together with government-paid student aid, I had free nutritionally-high-quality school lunches from elementary until high school, infrastructure and public buildings are in decent shape, I don’t need a car because I have reasonably prized well-functioning public transportation, I get almost a full year of paid maternal/parental leave, I have free top-notch healthcare and nobody has to worry about being homeless due to financial hardship, covid ruining the economy or hospital bills leading to bankruptcy. These are a few benefits that come from a somewhat effectively running welfare state, definitely not an exhaustive list.
Yes, people always complain because things aren’t perfect, but striving for perfection creates improvement. I know I personally complained today because my maternity nurse called and she wants me to come in for an extra test within the next week and they’re only open during ”office hours” = when I work. This post, the fact that I get an assigned nurse to care and call me at home for free, and the fact that maternity healthcare that must happen during work hours is cause for paid absence, reminded me to stop complaining about the minor inconvenience of shuffling my meeting schedules to go to the clinic that takes care of me for free.
The only countries I’d ever trade this for are maybe the other Nordic countries and possibly places like Belgium.
Well to be fair it's not really "free" - you are paying for it through your taxes. I always make that distinction when people from the US talk about Canada's "free healthcare" - we definitely pay for it.
Canada is not quite the same, although we do have a strong social safety net, probably somewhere between your country and the US. We don't have mandated paid sick time, most larger companies provide it, and there are government programs you can access (through unemployment insurance) for sick leave if you don't have coverage through your work. Where I work there is a gap - we have long term disability after 120 days, but no short term sick leave. Although my company is good they would never not pay us if we were off for surgery or something, they would work something out.
We do have tuition fees and student debt here, but nothing like the hundreds of thousands that I hear about in the US. If you are low income there is a maximum loan amount of (I think) $7000 per year, and anything you get above that is a grant you don't have to pay back. I'll never understand the whole school lunch thing, don't parents want to feed their own children based on their families choices? Also I hear a lot about paid maternity leave in other countries - is it actually paid in full? You get your full salary? There is a year maternity leave here, but it is paid at 60% through the unemployment insurance system, not full salary. (Still better than back when I had my kids and had only 16 weeks.)
School lunch: I guess it’s perspective. Nobody here wants to go through the hassle of making and packing lunches for their kids, and the school lunches are ”basic” cuisine.
Yeah my daughter has been vegetarian since age 7, and was also an athlete who trained up to 25 hours a week. I guess I imagine the kids getting chicken fingers and fries or pizza, and that would not have cut it with our family. I also wouldn't consider feeding my kids a hassle (I used to get up at 4:30 to take her to practice and prep two breakfasts, for before and after practice, and a cooked lunch for her, and my husband made lunch for her brothers when he made his own). If they were getting decent meals then I guess I might feel different, I just can't imagine that happening in a setting like that.
In 12 years of eating school lunches every day I remember getting pizza maybe once on some special school spirit type of day. Chicken fingers happened maybe once a year, never fries. A typical lunch was rice or potatoes with some type of stew or sauce that had veggies and meat, or a pasta casserole or some hearty soup with potatoes, veggies and a protein. I never tried the vegetarian options unless it was a vegetarian day for the whole school, so I can’t speak about that. Seriously, it was just regular food served buffet style, very rarely anything that comes in an individual packaging or any sort of ”this many pieces” portioning like pizza or chicken fingers. I understand your apprehension if what you imagine as school lunch is the american way of doing it - I ate that lunch for a year during my high school exchange and was horrified.
It’s also very common that workplaces have buffet style cafeterias or provide lunch benefits for employees to eat at restaurants, so nobody is making or packing lunches for anyone on weekdays if everyone in the family works or goes to daycare/school. My mom stopped prepping even my breakfast when I was maybe 11 and asked her to stop because I wanted to choose and prep my own breakfast (basically decide between toast and oatmeal, instead of her prepping the oatmeal for me every day). One of the biggest and widely complained culture ”shocks” in fully remote work during covid has been people having to plan and prep their own lunches, we aren’t used to it.6 -
American schools are locally run and what the lunch options are vary widely.
I like that we have an option of school "hot lunch" or bringing our own, as the lunch works well for many (especially those who are food insecure, of course, or simply lower income), but I much preferred bringing my own lunch.1 -
kshama2001 wrote: »To build on my last post - do peoples' workplaces have a plan for employees who need some time to get or recover from the vaccine?
Other than using my normal sick time, no. There is nothing specific to Covid vaccination.
I used half my sick time during the first week of the year because of appendicitis and I'm chipping away at the remaining balance with my usual medical appointments. Hopefully my vaccinations don't cause problems.0 -
The vaccines do have unpleasant, but usually temporary and non-serious, side effects. What I'm going to say next will probably be taken by some as an accusation, but it isn't. Seriously, not. I'm just going to talk about something I never dreamed of as a thing that could even happen, until I experienced it. I'd characterize it as a "stupid brain trick" that can happen because we're wired in particular ways as humans, and the results are physical, not imaginary. It's not "all in one's head".
Snipping the quote to simply keep the post shorter.
I 100% agree that there can be a mental side to how one feels. I see it with stress and anxiety being triggers to my IC pain. There is no physical reason I should be having the pain and it would only start when my anxiety was high. I also know the "anticipatory nausea" concept. My mom had that when she was doing chemo. The thought of it brought on the symptoms that she was so worried about. It was a horrible thing to see.
In my case today, I don't believe that is a part of it. The nausea has held on all day. Still feeling it tonight. It's not bad enough to keep me from eating, but it is unsettled. I also have started running a mild fever and the fatigue is about to send me to bed at 7:30pm lol.
Still, I think what you are saying is totally possible.4 -
Antiopelle wrote: »snowflake954 wrote: »Theoldguy1 wrote: »janejellyroll wrote: »janejellyroll wrote: »missysippy930 wrote: »India's numbers are probably undercounted, though -- I found plenty of articles even from 2020 saying that. And it's clear that many places that were for whatever reason hit less hard early on got hit harder later, and the current situation in India is terrible.
https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2021/04/22/989768074/how-india-went-from-a-ray-of-hope-to-a-world-record-for-most-covid-cases-in-a-da
Older pieces include: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-54176375 and https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-53510307
I agree it’s devastating and extremely sad. People are dying because of oxygen shortages.
Just yesterday, my daughter said her boss thinks she has covid. My daughter told her to get tested. She said no, it’s probably just a cold🤷🏻♀️How many people think this way? Her boss won’t get the vaccine either.
A couple of months ago, my husband's boss had "really bad allergies or something" for over a week, kept getting worse and worse. She didn't want to get tested because she didn't want to be forced to quarantine. She ended up in the hospital with COVID (she's OK now but she was sick enough to stay in the hospital for a week.) Meanwhile, she spread it around work, the health department found out and came in and sent a bunch of people home to quarantine (including my husband who ended up negative.) Three other people at work ended up coming down with COVID shortly after. There are a handful of people at his work who say, "Yeah, we've all already been exposed. We don't need the vaccine now." WTH, people. So yeah, plenty of people "think this way."
I was telling my mom just last week that I was hoping that COVID would help end the "work through illness" culture that exists in some professions. It was not at all uncommon in my workplace for people to come to work with really bad coughs . . . basically as long as you weren't vomiting or had a high fever, you'd come into work. This wasn't due to economic insecurity (we had the ability to work from home, we had sick days). It was just "how things were."
But I think the mindset will be hard to change, even with the year we've just had.
But I have experienced "post viral cough" that can last up to 6 weeks. Even a regular cold or flu cough last about 10 days. I can't imagine anyone taking off 10 days for a cold. I don't get sick as much now, but when my kids were small it could happen 3 times a year. Like my work would not allow anyone to take off that much sick time for minor illnesses, I can't imagine most offices would. We get like 3 paid sick days.
Although I guess those who can work from home could do that, we didn't have that option before, we do now.
I understand that taking ten days off is out of scope for the majority of people, but I'm talking about a culture where people take no time off and assume whatever they have won't be communicated to others (or that it doesn't matter if it is). The point is that people often assume that what they have is no big deal and stories like the one above show that it sometimes IS a big deal.
Again, this is in the context of people being able to work from home, which I know is an option that wasn't freely available in the past and still isn't available for many workers now. I'm not at all judging people who need to go to work in order to keep their job or don't have sufficient sick days available.
Why we need better leave, and why everyone should have sick leave. I was really proud of our system--the UC gave everyone 128 hours of paid COVID leave that could be used for quarantine/isolation, to care for others, to help kids with online school. And they gave an additional 80 hours a couple months ago. I haven't used mine, but I have employees who have burned through all their paid leave with multiple quarantines and other COVID-related issues. The additional paid leave has truly been a blessing.
In previous years, I've watched office after office on campus go down with the flu, so clearly we were passing on the cooties. I would love to see us change our culture, but I think a lack pf paid leave (for whatever reason) will impact peoples' decisions to stay home. And I get it.
No offense, but other than a government entity (which I assume is like most, broke) and just raises taxes, how can an organization afford an additional 5+ weeks of sick time a person?
This is largely a cultural thing. I live in Finland and nobody here has any limits to paid sick days per time period.
Well, actually we do, but it’s literally a full year. How long is fully paid by employers depends on field of business (collective agreements) and duration of employment - I currently get maximum 6 weeks of company-paid leave per sickness and it only counts as the same sickness if it renews within 30 days, after that the 6-week limit resets. This means if I break my arm and go on sick leave for a month, and then need to have surgery on that arm to fix something 6 months later, it’s a ”different” sickness and the 6-week limit resets. 2 weeks per sickness is out of pocket for employers, after that the government reimburses a certain percentage (80% if I remember correctly) of salary, which is the same amount of money the government pays workers who have to take sick leave longer than what employers pay. This is on top of 5 weeks of paid vacation time per year per person, and our paid vacation is 1.5x salary due to weird historical reasons.
The only organizations I have ever heard of that can’t afford the sick leaves their employees take are tiny 1-5 employee organizations. Handling paid leave is cultural and systemic, there are different ways of handling it but most organizations can definitely afford it.
Italy here. But how much do you pay in taxes there? Therein lies the rub. Coverage like the kind you're getting for sickness (and other things) costs a lot. Italy is always eyeing your coverage and the people want it, but we're already broke with the generous coverage we do get.
It's more or less the same in Belgium. You can be on sick leave for a year, 1 month at the cost of the employer, the next 11 months at a slightly reduced "salary" from the government. After that, you'll be considered as having a long term sickness and will go on an even more reduced disability benefit from the government.
But indeed @snowflake954, we have a very high tax rate, which is scaled up according to salary. The highest is 52% and that will apply for let's say a middle class salary. Those 52% are divided between real taxes (for everything the government needs to make a functioning country), and a rather large part goes straight to a "wellfare" portion, which will cover hospital and care facilities funds but also pensions (as from an age of 62 to 67 depending on your career), disabilities and sick leaves. Yes, it is a lot but I wouldn't trade it for any country in the world, as we all have access to top notch care. And yet still, people here are complaining ...
It’s true, taxes are high. I continue to be a happy taxpayer because the government is organized, after all, rather effectively (compared to other countries) and everything works smoothly for the most part.
Sick leave benefits are one thing, but I also graduated college with a master’s degree and zero student debt because there’s no tuition and my part-time job was enough to cover the cost of living together with government-paid student aid, I had free nutritionally-high-quality school lunches from elementary until high school, infrastructure and public buildings are in decent shape, I don’t need a car because I have reasonably prized well-functioning public transportation, I get almost a full year of paid maternal/parental leave, I have free top-notch healthcare and nobody has to worry about being homeless due to financial hardship, covid ruining the economy or hospital bills leading to bankruptcy. These are a few benefits that come from a somewhat effectively running welfare state, definitely not an exhaustive list.
Yes, people always complain because things aren’t perfect, but striving for perfection creates improvement. I know I personally complained today because my maternity nurse called and she wants me to come in for an extra test within the next week and they’re only open during ”office hours” = when I work. This post, the fact that I get an assigned nurse to care and call me at home for free, and the fact that maternity healthcare that must happen during work hours is cause for paid absence, reminded me to stop complaining about the minor inconvenience of shuffling my meeting schedules to go to the clinic that takes care of me for free.
The only countries I’d ever trade this for are maybe the other Nordic countries and possibly places like Belgium.
Well to be fair it's not really "free" - you are paying for it through your taxes. I always make that distinction when people from the US talk about Canada's "free healthcare" - we definitely pay for it.
Canada is not quite the same, although we do have a strong social safety net, probably somewhere between your country and the US. We don't have mandated paid sick time, most larger companies provide it, and there are government programs you can access (through unemployment insurance) for sick leave if you don't have coverage through your work. Where I work there is a gap - we have long term disability after 120 days, but no short term sick leave. Although my company is good they would never not pay us if we were off for surgery or something, they would work something out.
We do have tuition fees and student debt here, but nothing like the hundreds of thousands that I hear about in the US. If you are low income there is a maximum loan amount of (I think) $7000 per year, and anything you get above that is a grant you don't have to pay back. I'll never understand the whole school lunch thing, don't parents want to feed their own children based on their families choices? Also I hear a lot about paid maternity leave in other countries - is it actually paid in full? You get your full salary? There is a year maternity leave here, but it is paid at 60% through the unemployment insurance system, not full salary. (Still better than back when I had my kids and had only 16 weeks.)
School lunch: I guess it’s perspective. Nobody here wants to go through the hassle of making and packing lunches for their kids, and the school lunches are ”basic” cuisine.
Yeah my daughter has been vegetarian since age 7, and was also an athlete who trained up to 25 hours a week. I guess I imagine the kids getting chicken fingers and fries or pizza, and that would not have cut it with our family. I also wouldn't consider feeding my kids a hassle (I used to get up at 4:30 to take her to practice and prep two breakfasts, for before and after practice, and a cooked lunch for her, and my husband made lunch for her brothers when he made his own). If they were getting decent meals then I guess I might feel different, I just can't imagine that happening in a setting like that.
It’s not necessarily about hassle or culture, but what families can afford. Single parent and/or low income homes rely on the school breakfast and lunch programs to provide needed nutrition for children. Many programs are subsidized for families based on income. In Los Angles, continuing these meals when the schools closed due to COVID was a very big deal.9 -
Same even here in Appalachia. Which was a problem here in the summers pre-Pandemic. My daughter volunteered with the food truck program that delivered the meals to the communities.
It is country-wide. And now it is even worse. Many many communities are food insecure.8 -
Antiopelle wrote: »snowflake954 wrote: »Theoldguy1 wrote: »janejellyroll wrote: »janejellyroll wrote: »missysippy930 wrote: »India's numbers are probably undercounted, though -- I found plenty of articles even from 2020 saying that. And it's clear that many places that were for whatever reason hit less hard early on got hit harder later, and the current situation in India is terrible.
https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2021/04/22/989768074/how-india-went-from-a-ray-of-hope-to-a-world-record-for-most-covid-cases-in-a-da
Older pieces include: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-54176375 and https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-53510307
I agree it’s devastating and extremely sad. People are dying because of oxygen shortages.
Just yesterday, my daughter said her boss thinks she has covid. My daughter told her to get tested. She said no, it’s probably just a cold🤷🏻♀️How many people think this way? Her boss won’t get the vaccine either.
A couple of months ago, my husband's boss had "really bad allergies or something" for over a week, kept getting worse and worse. She didn't want to get tested because she didn't want to be forced to quarantine. She ended up in the hospital with COVID (she's OK now but she was sick enough to stay in the hospital for a week.) Meanwhile, she spread it around work, the health department found out and came in and sent a bunch of people home to quarantine (including my husband who ended up negative.) Three other people at work ended up coming down with COVID shortly after. There are a handful of people at his work who say, "Yeah, we've all already been exposed. We don't need the vaccine now." WTH, people. So yeah, plenty of people "think this way."
I was telling my mom just last week that I was hoping that COVID would help end the "work through illness" culture that exists in some professions. It was not at all uncommon in my workplace for people to come to work with really bad coughs . . . basically as long as you weren't vomiting or had a high fever, you'd come into work. This wasn't due to economic insecurity (we had the ability to work from home, we had sick days). It was just "how things were."
But I think the mindset will be hard to change, even with the year we've just had.
But I have experienced "post viral cough" that can last up to 6 weeks. Even a regular cold or flu cough last about 10 days. I can't imagine anyone taking off 10 days for a cold. I don't get sick as much now, but when my kids were small it could happen 3 times a year. Like my work would not allow anyone to take off that much sick time for minor illnesses, I can't imagine most offices would. We get like 3 paid sick days.
Although I guess those who can work from home could do that, we didn't have that option before, we do now.
I understand that taking ten days off is out of scope for the majority of people, but I'm talking about a culture where people take no time off and assume whatever they have won't be communicated to others (or that it doesn't matter if it is). The point is that people often assume that what they have is no big deal and stories like the one above show that it sometimes IS a big deal.
Again, this is in the context of people being able to work from home, which I know is an option that wasn't freely available in the past and still isn't available for many workers now. I'm not at all judging people who need to go to work in order to keep their job or don't have sufficient sick days available.
Why we need better leave, and why everyone should have sick leave. I was really proud of our system--the UC gave everyone 128 hours of paid COVID leave that could be used for quarantine/isolation, to care for others, to help kids with online school. And they gave an additional 80 hours a couple months ago. I haven't used mine, but I have employees who have burned through all their paid leave with multiple quarantines and other COVID-related issues. The additional paid leave has truly been a blessing.
In previous years, I've watched office after office on campus go down with the flu, so clearly we were passing on the cooties. I would love to see us change our culture, but I think a lack pf paid leave (for whatever reason) will impact peoples' decisions to stay home. And I get it.
No offense, but other than a government entity (which I assume is like most, broke) and just raises taxes, how can an organization afford an additional 5+ weeks of sick time a person?
This is largely a cultural thing. I live in Finland and nobody here has any limits to paid sick days per time period.
Well, actually we do, but it’s literally a full year. How long is fully paid by employers depends on field of business (collective agreements) and duration of employment - I currently get maximum 6 weeks of company-paid leave per sickness and it only counts as the same sickness if it renews within 30 days, after that the 6-week limit resets. This means if I break my arm and go on sick leave for a month, and then need to have surgery on that arm to fix something 6 months later, it’s a ”different” sickness and the 6-week limit resets. 2 weeks per sickness is out of pocket for employers, after that the government reimburses a certain percentage (80% if I remember correctly) of salary, which is the same amount of money the government pays workers who have to take sick leave longer than what employers pay. This is on top of 5 weeks of paid vacation time per year per person, and our paid vacation is 1.5x salary due to weird historical reasons.
The only organizations I have ever heard of that can’t afford the sick leaves their employees take are tiny 1-5 employee organizations. Handling paid leave is cultural and systemic, there are different ways of handling it but most organizations can definitely afford it.
Italy here. But how much do you pay in taxes there? Therein lies the rub. Coverage like the kind you're getting for sickness (and other things) costs a lot. Italy is always eyeing your coverage and the people want it, but we're already broke with the generous coverage we do get.
It's more or less the same in Belgium. You can be on sick leave for a year, 1 month at the cost of the employer, the next 11 months at a slightly reduced "salary" from the government. After that, you'll be considered as having a long term sickness and will go on an even more reduced disability benefit from the government.
But indeed @snowflake954, we have a very high tax rate, which is scaled up according to salary. The highest is 52% and that will apply for let's say a middle class salary. Those 52% are divided between real taxes (for everything the government needs to make a functioning country), and a rather large part goes straight to a "wellfare" portion, which will cover hospital and care facilities funds but also pensions (as from an age of 62 to 67 depending on your career), disabilities and sick leaves. Yes, it is a lot but I wouldn't trade it for any country in the world, as we all have access to top notch care. And yet still, people here are complaining ...
It’s true, taxes are high. I continue to be a happy taxpayer because the government is organized, after all, rather effectively (compared to other countries) and everything works smoothly for the most part.
Sick leave benefits are one thing, but I also graduated college with a master’s degree and zero student debt because there’s no tuition and my part-time job was enough to cover the cost of living together with government-paid student aid, I had free nutritionally-high-quality school lunches from elementary until high school, infrastructure and public buildings are in decent shape, I don’t need a car because I have reasonably prized well-functioning public transportation, I get almost a full year of paid maternal/parental leave, I have free top-notch healthcare and nobody has to worry about being homeless due to financial hardship, covid ruining the economy or hospital bills leading to bankruptcy. These are a few benefits that come from a somewhat effectively running welfare state, definitely not an exhaustive list.
Yes, people always complain because things aren’t perfect, but striving for perfection creates improvement. I know I personally complained today because my maternity nurse called and she wants me to come in for an extra test within the next week and they’re only open during ”office hours” = when I work. This post, the fact that I get an assigned nurse to care and call me at home for free, and the fact that maternity healthcare that must happen during work hours is cause for paid absence, reminded me to stop complaining about the minor inconvenience of shuffling my meeting schedules to go to the clinic that takes care of me for free.
The only countries I’d ever trade this for are maybe the other Nordic countries and possibly places like Belgium.
Well to be fair it's not really "free" - you are paying for it through your taxes. I always make that distinction when people from the US talk about Canada's "free healthcare" - we definitely pay for it.
Canada is not quite the same, although we do have a strong social safety net, probably somewhere between your country and the US. We don't have mandated paid sick time, most larger companies provide it, and there are government programs you can access (through unemployment insurance) for sick leave if you don't have coverage through your work. Where I work there is a gap - we have long term disability after 120 days, but no short term sick leave. Although my company is good they would never not pay us if we were off for surgery or something, they would work something out.
We do have tuition fees and student debt here, but nothing like the hundreds of thousands that I hear about in the US. If you are low income there is a maximum loan amount of (I think) $7000 per year, and anything you get above that is a grant you don't have to pay back. I'll never understand the whole school lunch thing, don't parents want to feed their own children based on their families choices? Also I hear a lot about paid maternity leave in other countries - is it actually paid in full? You get your full salary? There is a year maternity leave here, but it is paid at 60% through the unemployment insurance system, not full salary. (Still better than back when I had my kids and had only 16 weeks.)
School lunch: I guess it’s perspective. Nobody here wants to go through the hassle of making and packing lunches for their kids, and the school lunches are ”basic” cuisine.
Yeah my daughter has been vegetarian since age 7, and was also an athlete who trained up to 25 hours a week. I guess I imagine the kids getting chicken fingers and fries or pizza, and that would not have cut it with our family. I also wouldn't consider feeding my kids a hassle (I used to get up at 4:30 to take her to practice and prep two breakfasts, for before and after practice, and a cooked lunch for her, and my husband made lunch for her brothers when he made his own). If they were getting decent meals then I guess I might feel different, I just can't imagine that happening in a setting like that.
It’s not necessarily about hassle or culture, but what families can afford. Single parent and/or low income homes rely on the school breakfast and lunch programs to provide needed nutrition for children. Many programs are subsidized for families based on income. In Los Angles, continuing these meals when the schools closed due to COVID was a very big deal.
I was responding the the person who said that where she lives people were used to having the meals provided and didn't want the hassle of preparing lunches for their kids.
I am aware that low income people rely on these meals. That is not the scenario I was discussing.2 -
Antiopelle wrote: »snowflake954 wrote: »Theoldguy1 wrote: »janejellyroll wrote: »janejellyroll wrote: »missysippy930 wrote: »India's numbers are probably undercounted, though -- I found plenty of articles even from 2020 saying that. And it's clear that many places that were for whatever reason hit less hard early on got hit harder later, and the current situation in India is terrible.
https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2021/04/22/989768074/how-india-went-from-a-ray-of-hope-to-a-world-record-for-most-covid-cases-in-a-da
Older pieces include: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-54176375 and https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-53510307
I agree it’s devastating and extremely sad. People are dying because of oxygen shortages.
Just yesterday, my daughter said her boss thinks she has covid. My daughter told her to get tested. She said no, it’s probably just a cold🤷🏻♀️How many people think this way? Her boss won’t get the vaccine either.
A couple of months ago, my husband's boss had "really bad allergies or something" for over a week, kept getting worse and worse. She didn't want to get tested because she didn't want to be forced to quarantine. She ended up in the hospital with COVID (she's OK now but she was sick enough to stay in the hospital for a week.) Meanwhile, she spread it around work, the health department found out and came in and sent a bunch of people home to quarantine (including my husband who ended up negative.) Three other people at work ended up coming down with COVID shortly after. There are a handful of people at his work who say, "Yeah, we've all already been exposed. We don't need the vaccine now." WTH, people. So yeah, plenty of people "think this way."
I was telling my mom just last week that I was hoping that COVID would help end the "work through illness" culture that exists in some professions. It was not at all uncommon in my workplace for people to come to work with really bad coughs . . . basically as long as you weren't vomiting or had a high fever, you'd come into work. This wasn't due to economic insecurity (we had the ability to work from home, we had sick days). It was just "how things were."
But I think the mindset will be hard to change, even with the year we've just had.
But I have experienced "post viral cough" that can last up to 6 weeks. Even a regular cold or flu cough last about 10 days. I can't imagine anyone taking off 10 days for a cold. I don't get sick as much now, but when my kids were small it could happen 3 times a year. Like my work would not allow anyone to take off that much sick time for minor illnesses, I can't imagine most offices would. We get like 3 paid sick days.
Although I guess those who can work from home could do that, we didn't have that option before, we do now.
I understand that taking ten days off is out of scope for the majority of people, but I'm talking about a culture where people take no time off and assume whatever they have won't be communicated to others (or that it doesn't matter if it is). The point is that people often assume that what they have is no big deal and stories like the one above show that it sometimes IS a big deal.
Again, this is in the context of people being able to work from home, which I know is an option that wasn't freely available in the past and still isn't available for many workers now. I'm not at all judging people who need to go to work in order to keep their job or don't have sufficient sick days available.
Why we need better leave, and why everyone should have sick leave. I was really proud of our system--the UC gave everyone 128 hours of paid COVID leave that could be used for quarantine/isolation, to care for others, to help kids with online school. And they gave an additional 80 hours a couple months ago. I haven't used mine, but I have employees who have burned through all their paid leave with multiple quarantines and other COVID-related issues. The additional paid leave has truly been a blessing.
In previous years, I've watched office after office on campus go down with the flu, so clearly we were passing on the cooties. I would love to see us change our culture, but I think a lack pf paid leave (for whatever reason) will impact peoples' decisions to stay home. And I get it.
No offense, but other than a government entity (which I assume is like most, broke) and just raises taxes, how can an organization afford an additional 5+ weeks of sick time a person?
This is largely a cultural thing. I live in Finland and nobody here has any limits to paid sick days per time period.
Well, actually we do, but it’s literally a full year. How long is fully paid by employers depends on field of business (collective agreements) and duration of employment - I currently get maximum 6 weeks of company-paid leave per sickness and it only counts as the same sickness if it renews within 30 days, after that the 6-week limit resets. This means if I break my arm and go on sick leave for a month, and then need to have surgery on that arm to fix something 6 months later, it’s a ”different” sickness and the 6-week limit resets. 2 weeks per sickness is out of pocket for employers, after that the government reimburses a certain percentage (80% if I remember correctly) of salary, which is the same amount of money the government pays workers who have to take sick leave longer than what employers pay. This is on top of 5 weeks of paid vacation time per year per person, and our paid vacation is 1.5x salary due to weird historical reasons.
The only organizations I have ever heard of that can’t afford the sick leaves their employees take are tiny 1-5 employee organizations. Handling paid leave is cultural and systemic, there are different ways of handling it but most organizations can definitely afford it.
Italy here. But how much do you pay in taxes there? Therein lies the rub. Coverage like the kind you're getting for sickness (and other things) costs a lot. Italy is always eyeing your coverage and the people want it, but we're already broke with the generous coverage we do get.
It's more or less the same in Belgium. You can be on sick leave for a year, 1 month at the cost of the employer, the next 11 months at a slightly reduced "salary" from the government. After that, you'll be considered as having a long term sickness and will go on an even more reduced disability benefit from the government.
But indeed @snowflake954, we have a very high tax rate, which is scaled up according to salary. The highest is 52% and that will apply for let's say a middle class salary. Those 52% are divided between real taxes (for everything the government needs to make a functioning country), and a rather large part goes straight to a "wellfare" portion, which will cover hospital and care facilities funds but also pensions (as from an age of 62 to 67 depending on your career), disabilities and sick leaves. Yes, it is a lot but I wouldn't trade it for any country in the world, as we all have access to top notch care. And yet still, people here are complaining ...
It’s true, taxes are high. I continue to be a happy taxpayer because the government is organized, after all, rather effectively (compared to other countries) and everything works smoothly for the most part.
Sick leave benefits are one thing, but I also graduated college with a master’s degree and zero student debt because there’s no tuition and my part-time job was enough to cover the cost of living together with government-paid student aid, I had free nutritionally-high-quality school lunches from elementary until high school, infrastructure and public buildings are in decent shape, I don’t need a car because I have reasonably prized well-functioning public transportation, I get almost a full year of paid maternal/parental leave, I have free top-notch healthcare and nobody has to worry about being homeless due to financial hardship, covid ruining the economy or hospital bills leading to bankruptcy. These are a few benefits that come from a somewhat effectively running welfare state, definitely not an exhaustive list.
Yes, people always complain because things aren’t perfect, but striving for perfection creates improvement. I know I personally complained today because my maternity nurse called and she wants me to come in for an extra test within the next week and they’re only open during ”office hours” = when I work. This post, the fact that I get an assigned nurse to care and call me at home for free, and the fact that maternity healthcare that must happen during work hours is cause for paid absence, reminded me to stop complaining about the minor inconvenience of shuffling my meeting schedules to go to the clinic that takes care of me for free.
The only countries I’d ever trade this for are maybe the other Nordic countries and possibly places like Belgium.
Well to be fair it's not really "free" - you are paying for it through your taxes. I always make that distinction when people from the US talk about Canada's "free healthcare" - we definitely pay for it.
Canada is not quite the same, although we do have a strong social safety net, probably somewhere between your country and the US. We don't have mandated paid sick time, most larger companies provide it, and there are government programs you can access (through unemployment insurance) for sick leave if you don't have coverage through your work. Where I work there is a gap - we have long term disability after 120 days, but no short term sick leave. Although my company is good they would never not pay us if we were off for surgery or something, they would work something out.
We do have tuition fees and student debt here, but nothing like the hundreds of thousands that I hear about in the US. If you are low income there is a maximum loan amount of (I think) $7000 per year, and anything you get above that is a grant you don't have to pay back. I'll never understand the whole school lunch thing, don't parents want to feed their own children based on their families choices? Also I hear a lot about paid maternity leave in other countries - is it actually paid in full? You get your full salary? There is a year maternity leave here, but it is paid at 60% through the unemployment insurance system, not full salary. (Still better than back when I had my kids and had only 16 weeks.)
School lunch: I guess it’s perspective. Nobody here wants to go through the hassle of making and packing lunches for their kids, and the school lunches are ”basic” cuisine.
Yeah my daughter has been vegetarian since age 7, and was also an athlete who trained up to 25 hours a week. I guess I imagine the kids getting chicken fingers and fries or pizza, and that would not have cut it with our family. I also wouldn't consider feeding my kids a hassle (I used to get up at 4:30 to take her to practice and prep two breakfasts, for before and after practice, and a cooked lunch for her, and my husband made lunch for her brothers when he made his own). If they were getting decent meals then I guess I might feel different, I just can't imagine that happening in a setting like that.
It’s not necessarily about hassle or culture, but what families can afford. Single parent and/or low income homes rely on the school breakfast and lunch programs to provide needed nutrition for children. Many programs are subsidized for families based on income. In Los Angles, continuing these meals when the schools closed due to COVID was a very big deal.
I was responding the the person who said that where she lives people were used to having the meals provided and didn't want the hassle of preparing lunches for their kids.
I am aware that low income people rely on these meals. That is not the scenario I was discussing.
I was just adding another point to the conversation after the last post. I didn’t mean for you to feel it was in response to you specifically.3 -
5 people this week alone got blood clots from the AZ shots here in Australia. I've always been pro vaccine but now I'm not so sure especially as we have low rates of Covid. So confused.8
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5 people this week alone got blood clots from the AZ shots here in Australia. I've always been pro vaccine but now I'm not so sure especially as we have low rates of Covid. So confused.
In Canada we've had three people die from the blood clots, two of them women in their early 50s. One presented at Emergency with classic symptoms and was sent home to rest.3 -
5 people this week alone got blood clots from the AZ shots here in Australia. I've always been pro vaccine but now I'm not so sure especially as we have low rates of Covid. So confused.
In Canada we've had three people die from the blood clots, two of them women in their early 50s. One presented at Emergency with classic symptoms and was sent home to rest.
They changed the rules here recently. Only over 50's can get the AZ but I don't like how it's going so far. I think they all were in hospital and didn't die though. Wish we had a choice on what to get.4 -
5 people this week alone got blood clots from the AZ shots here in Australia. I've always been pro vaccine but now I'm not so sure especially as we have low rates of Covid. So confused.
In Canada we've had three people die from the blood clots, two of them women in their early 50s. One presented at Emergency with classic symptoms and was sent home to rest.
They changed the rules here recently. Only over 50's can get the AZ but I don't like how it's going so far. I think they all were in hospital and didn't die though. Wish we had a choice on what to get.
We definitely have a choice here, based on which vaccination stream you book yourself into. Private pharmacies are administering the AZ (at least in my province) although locally the supply ran out a couple of weeks ago. The public health folks will give you either Pfizer or Moderna.
I'm not sure what's happening with the J&J. I'm pretty sure it was approved for use in Canada but none has ever shown up here. It may be that Canada hasn't received any yet.2 -
Really happy you have a choice there pretty lamma. I now have a DIL pregnant so just another thing to worry about. Covid better not get bad here or I'll be totally freaking out.3
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Really happy you have a choice there pretty lamma. I now have a DIL pregnant so just another thing to worry about. Covid better not get bad here or I'll be totally freaking out.
Aw, congrats!
You guys have always had strong policies for preventing the spread of the virus, I think you'll be okay.3 -
Really happy you have a choice there pretty lamma. I now have a DIL pregnant so just another thing to worry about. Covid better not get bad here or I'll be totally freaking out.
Aw, congrats!
You guys have always had strong policies for preventing the spread of the virus, I think you'll be okay.
So true. Lets pray it stays that way.
1 -
5 people this week alone got blood clots from the AZ shots here in Australia. I've always been pro vaccine but now I'm not so sure especially as we have low rates of Covid. So confused.
1.4 million vaccinations in Australia so far, and 11 reported cases of TTS. Younger people are more at risk than older, though older people can develop TTS too.
I am not a statician, I don't know what the odds are, I guess people have to weigh up the risk of clots vs the long term impact of having covid or possibly dying from it.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-05-07/covid-astrazeneca-vaccine-clotting-risks-over-50s-explained/100122730
It's easy for me to say as I had the pfizer vaccine and I am over 50, but if I had to have the az vaccine I very likely would have.8 -
tiptoethruthetulips wrote: »1.4 million vaccinations in Australia so far, and 11 reported cases of TTS. Younger people are more at risk than older, though older people can develop TTS too.
Canada's rate is a bit higher at 7 cases out of 700,000 vaccines. Two were 50+ and two were 60+, I don't know the ages of the other three.3
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