Coronavirus prep

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  • 33gail33
    33gail33 Posts: 1,155 Member
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    hipari wrote: »
    Antiopelle wrote: »
    snowflake954 wrote: »
    hipari wrote: »
    Theoldguy1 wrote: »
    Psychgrrl wrote: »
    janejellyroll wrote: »
    33gail33 wrote: »
    janejellyroll wrote: »
    jenilla1 wrote: »
    missysippy930 wrote: »
    lemurcat2 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.)
  • paperpudding
    paperpudding Posts: 8,984 Member
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    SModa61 wrote: »
    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. :p


    If I have understood the question correctly - that is the same for many diseases. eg chicken pox.

    If I present with symptoms the Dr takes a swab from a pustule and it shows I have or don't have the disease. (equivalent to getting a nasal swab in a Covid test)

    If I at some other point, get a blood test it will show antibodies - there is no way to know if the antibodies are from previous disease or vaccination.

  • kshama2001
    kshama2001 Posts: 27,897 Member
    edited May 2021
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    Psychgrrl wrote: »
    janejellyroll wrote: »
    33gail33 wrote: »
    janejellyroll wrote: »
    jenilla1 wrote: »
    missysippy930 wrote: »
    lemurcat2 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.

    When I worked at a small liberal arts college we had excellent benefits, including generous sick time. I never took close to my full amount of available sick time.

    ETA: have since read the posts from people from Finland, Italy, and Belgium - so glad to have your perspectives!
  • snowflake954
    snowflake954 Posts: 8,400 Member
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    kshama2001 wrote: »
    Antiopelle wrote: »
    snowflake954 wrote: »
    hipari wrote: »
    Theoldguy1 wrote: »
    Psychgrrl wrote: »
    janejellyroll wrote: »
    33gail33 wrote: »
    janejellyroll wrote: »
    jenilla1 wrote: »
    missysippy930 wrote: »
    lemurcat2 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 ...

    So that's an individual tax rate. I see "The Belgian corporate tax rate in 2021 is 25%, having been reduced from 29%." Here Belgium's EFFECTIVE tax rate is listed as 29%:

    https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/effective-corporate-tax-rate-by-country

    (I'm assuming one of those sites is not current but for this example 25-29% is close enough.)

    Here in the US our corporate tax rate is currently 21% but companies can pay much less in actuality. For example "In 2020, Amazon paid an effective federal income tax rate of 9.4%" and in in 2017 and 2018 actually received money back from the federal government rather than paying ANY taxes.

    I'm thinking of all the ways we could super-size health care here if corporations' effective tax rate = listed tax rate.

    I checked out your link and had a good laugh. I asked my husband how much the average person pays in taxes here, and he said 35-50%. Your link gives Italy at 24%. I wish. We could live with that. My husband knows the tax rate because of his job--law expert, estate planning, now retired.
  • kshama2001
    kshama2001 Posts: 27,897 Member
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    Athijade wrote: »
    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?
  • cwolfman13
    cwolfman13 Posts: 41,876 Member
    Options
    SModa61 wrote: »
    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. :p

    A COVID test doesn't test for antibodies...it tests for active virus.
  • GaleHawkins
    GaleHawkins Posts: 8,160 Member
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    Athijade wrote: »
    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.
  • lemurcat2
    lemurcat2 Posts: 7,885 Member
    edited May 2021
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    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.

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