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We are so close. Final stretch. Let’s go 🔥
I am on bench from 1 nov 2022. I am PA.
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Seize ze means!!!!
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It’s a vibe.
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I'm fat now and I wasn't fat in March what happened
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Imagine writing all this to try and justify being irresponsible during a pandemic...
K3 what kind of consulting do you do where you wouldn’t be expected to know the difference between total deaths and total deaths per capita?
Chief
The right thing would be for you to stay home for the next 2 weeks (or 5 days +negative test) and order groceries in. Not sure if you are expecting medal for your plan, but you are putting innocent ppl under unnecessary risk
Pro
Ah. I see the confusion: at the time I posted this I meant that I would still in fact physically go to the grocery store.
HOWEVER: the reasoning is because of the risk factors: Italy isn’t a risk country anymore + the care that I took while I was there + the tourist population being as low as it is now.
As a doctor friend of mine put it: “living” there for a week (given all the conditions I listed above) has about the same amount of risk as spending the same amount of time living in my current country of residence.
I’m as new to all this as anyone else is so I’m doing the best I can with the what I feel is sound reasoning and the science/medical direct resources I have available to me.
From the replies here, the one behavior I’ll change then from my original post, is doing grocery delivery instead of physically going. Trivial change for me.
Unfortunately FB doesn’t allow me to edit my original post at this point. :/
Pro
I cant believe I just read all this shit.
Conversation Starter
"I'm risking the lives of strangers, can we be civil?"
I would even cut out physically going grocery shopping and get delivery if you can. I know that’s not possible in all places right now due to high demand, but it’s one less incident of exposure. Same with the Shrink. Can’t you do that appointment virtually?
Chief
OP, I hope your response ^ was related to Shrink appt, and not virtual prostate exam :-))))
I probably would have started with the “I live in Western Europe” bit
Pro
Touché
Pro
...CONT:
Quarantining:
- For the next 5 days I'll be minimizing/eliminating unnecessary contact with other people - e.g.: Grocery shopping = yes, clothes shopping = no, drinks with friends = no
- I have an appointment with my super shrink this week - but I'll call them well before the appointment, disclose my travel and let them decide if we should still have the appointment or move it.
- In five days I'll go in for a PCR test for Covid - this is the "do I have it right now?" test and not the "have I had it?" test.
- If the test comes back negative, I'll call it good, no longer self-quarantine (but still be masked when appropriate/necessary),and go to bed at night knowing I did due diligence to those around me.
Reasoning:
- According to rki.de, (Germany's central biomedicine scientific institute) Italy is not, as of when I went and returned, a high risk country.
- When traveling through the various cities, I avoided crowds as much as possible. With the exception of Bologna, I would guess there was about 80% complete compliance among the population I saw; i.e.: If I took the sum total of *all* the people I physically laid eyes on, 80% of them were in mask compliance at that moment in time. Bologna is a university town and unfortunately the compliance there was noticeably - and surprisingly - lower.
- Although it is possible people from banned countries were around, officially there shouldn't have been; I have to believe the EU does due diligence in keeping them out at the air borders. With virtually zero travelers from the .US and .CN (two of largest tourist groups in the area) the tourist population was cut *substantially*.
- I did not take any public transport - I walked or drove everywhere I went.
- The median incubation period for the virus is 5-6 days.
- Despite Italy not being on the risk list of countries, I'm disclosing the travel to those with whom I *must* come into close contact with so that I can put the power of the decision in their hands as I'm the potential carrier, not them.
The trip itself was awesome. The food - fantastic, the wine - wondrous, the men - magnificent. I can highly recommend all the aforementioned. While I can highly recommend going, I can highly un-recommend going in August for two reasons: A: 34°C is not fun to be in all day, B: Italy goes on vacation in August - like, all of it; so an infuriatingly large amount of businesses/restaurants were closed and all scheduled to open the day after we were scheduled to leave - of course.
* Before you ask "wtf and htf were you doing in Italy in the middle of a pandemic", keep in mind I live in Western Europe, not the US.
Chief
I hear you. American here, and I lived in rural northern Italy for several years for grad school. It was hard living there in August because you simply couldn’t do certain things for a month.
As an American who was raised with 24/7 everything, being told “the town butcher and 4 of the 5 restaurants are closed for August, so just don’t eat or something” was wild.
Still, Sienna is one of my favorite cities in the world, so, well played on the choice of destinations.
Enthusiast
TLDR
Sit your ass in bed, boy.
Chief
You really should be self-quarantining for the full 14 days, regardless what your test says on day 5. You would be a high risk candidate for the virus since you travelled so much, and the virus can take up to 14 days to actually be detected by a test. No idea why you are trying to justify your irresponsible actions so adamantly 🤦🏼♀️
Chief
CTO1, imagine that there are people who actually took the time to educate themselves and then decided on what'd "irresponsible" and what's "risk management strategy"
Rising Star
You’re doing the right thing.
NYC docs won’t even test you if you came from the “banned” states...they just expect you to sit home for 2 weeks and not go outside for any reason, so I’m happy you can actually responsibly take the test after the appropriate incubation period. Keeping people from tests in the false hope that they won’t step foot for groceries or maybe even medicine (what if you run out of Advil. What about feminine supplies. Etc etc) is really silly.
Rising Star
I mean it’s not a feasible strategy because people still need to get....food? Cleaning supplies? I had to pick up a drug from the pharmacy (unrelated to covid). So instead of testing people, we’re basically settling for partial compliance. It’s just not a good look on the state if you ask me.
Pro
Sorry, did I miss the portion where you mention what you'll do if you test positive?
Pro
Fair: if I test positive then I completely quarantine and see what my doc wants me to do.
Pro
I would just follow the rules laid out by the German govt for travel to Italy- then you’ve done your due diligence. If that’s what you’re doing, great.
But not sure why you chose to go to not-beach Italy in August either... so much more pleasant in Oct IMO.
Pro
Re: beach: Since a lot of Italy/Europe does exactly that in August I didn’t want to take any more risk than really necessary. I wanted to just have a mini vacation somewhere not-at-home more than I wanted it to be at a beach (where I normally would be). Risk mitigation, really :)
I’ll wait to go in the middle of off-season.
Pro
Glad that you are switching to grocery delivery. If your test on day 5 is negative, I would still wear a mask every time you leave your house until day 10, and test again on day 10. Since the median time is 5 days, that still means there's still many cases that don't show up until days 5 thru 10+.
Pro
Fair enough. I’m calling my doc tomorrow to schedule the day 5 and day 10 tests. Also going to see if he’ll do a day 1 test since I was there for a full week and could potentially have been infected on day 1 there.
Don’t go for grocery shopping. Order in or ask a friend to leave it at your door.
You already lived a nice holiday. Just chill for a while.
Best advice
Enthusiast
Glad you had time to unwind before returning to Germany !
Pro
I cannot confirm nor deny the Britishnesss or non-Britishness of any passports I may or may not possess. ;)
So the 14 days quarantine is “recommended” in your country, not “mandatory” like in Canada, for example?
Pro
It’s not about yolo - it’s about striking the balance between reopening the economy and watching the numbers.
The advisories and mandates are not fixed and the list of risk countries is revisited every 14 days based on the virus performance in the countries. eg: Spain was hit hard and was considered high risk - if you travelled there you had to quarantine when you got back. Over time they got better and the infection rate numbers dropped. Then they were removed from the list (therefore considered safe). Their numbers started to climb and travel from CERTAIN CITIES was then considered risky...then eventually the whole country (like 3 days ago?) was re-banned.
Moral of the story: the EU is learning and adapting...trying to strike the necessary balance but doing to safely.
https://ourworldindata.org/coronavirus-data-explorer?yScale=log&zoomToSelection=true&minPopulationFilter=1000000&time=2020-02-01..latest&country=ITA~FRA~DEU~CAN~USA~GBR~ESP~SWE&casesMetric=true&interval=smoothed&aligned=true&perCapita=true&smoothing=7&pickerMetric=location&pickerSort=asc