Michaela & Brandon 6: She Is an LPN and He Is Boring.....

[neuroticcat]

And…when I get called a troll I see it’s time for me to stop carrying on conversation. I’ve been posting here since 2014, so I am not a troll, just someone with an alternate perspective. Perhaps the fact that an opinion arguing against hating a subgroup of people results in a dogpile dismissal might make my point better than my words anyway.

Anyway, I wish you all well and hope for better days for us all ahead. See you on other less-contentious topics. 

[Bluebirdbluebell]

10 minutes ago, neuroticcat said:

I think this is directed at me, but I agree with you that we should not scapegoat anyone. I don’t know what you mean about mentally ill/autistic or obese as original antivax scapegoats. 

I think it would be wrong to scapegoat those groups of people as well, though I haven’t heard anyone saying “f them, they are prolonging the pandemic,” have you?

ETA: Ok, so I see by your edit that this is definitely directed at me, because you are trying to speak for me.

I have never said the things you claim in your post. 

 

The original anti-vaxxers hate autistic people. They would rather see their own children dead from preventable disease than autistic. I can't blame my friends on the spectrum for seeing them as a hate group against autistic people. 

You've compared anti-vaxxers to mentally ill people and obese people. Obesity and Mental Illness are not necessarily in people's control; getting vacinated or not is a choice people can make. You're trying to deflect blame on anti-vaxxers by transferring people with mental illness or obesity.

There is such a thing as herd immunity. It's when enough people are vaccinated the disease has trouble finding hosts and dies out. Unfortunately if a big enough portion of the population is unvaccinated, the disease will continue to find hosts.

[Mama Mia]

1 hour ago, Antimony said:

Weird that you bring up Iceland, because the Washington Post actually had something to say about it being used as a stupid anti-vax talking point;

But let's put some numbers in perspective.

Iceland has a population of 366,425. Let's call it 366,000 for our sanity. They've had 36,447 cases of COVID. For sanity and math, let's call it 36,000. That's 10% of the population that has had it. That is, fairly high, but okay. Iceland has recorded 39 COVID Deaths or ~one death per 10,000 persons. If you know 10,000 people, you know a dead person.

And over in the USA....

We get bigger numbers (frick - math, ew) but we have to scale that. United States has a population of about 330 Million People (that is a lot of apple pie, folks) and we've had about 60 Million cases of Covid. About 18% of us have had it (complicated, because some people get it twice but you get the jist). We're looking at 848,000 deaths. That's 0.25% of the population KO'd or, about one in 390 people dead. 

One in 390. The Average American knows about 600 people, and has about ~300 Facebook friends. 

Between 1 in 10,000 or 1 in 390, I know which choice I would choose just on the grief load alone.  

It is only because we live in a globalized world that countries who are doing the right thing can't have nice things, like a safe population, because unless everybody else gets the fuck on board, there will be more mutations. 

I'll also confess that I hate this type of math and if anybody finds a mistake (that isn't just rounding, I'm rounding this because the bigness of these numbers is unfathomable to the human mind anyway), I cheer you on. Point it out. 

Another way to put this was a mathematician on Twitter, (can't find it, but I am looking) expressed that while case numbers are about 1 Million Cases a day, it's equivalent to a birthday lottery. As in, you'd get the same number by just announcing that everybody with a certain birthday now has COVID. It's a pandemic death draft. 

I like numbers. I like statistics. But these aren’t good statistics. If you are using vaccinated vs non-vaccinated to compare deaths, you’d need to only include deaths since vaccines were widely available to the general population in both countries. That is very hard to pinpoint, as states had different roll-outs, but somewhere around June 2021 would be safe for the US, no idea about Iceland. I suspect you’ll get a very similar outcome, if not even more in favor of vaccinated vs unvaccinated, but it would be a more apples to apples comparison. Sorry. You’d probably also need to consider other factors when looking at death rates - age of population, access to health care, ability to isolate etc…

[nelliebelle1197]

48 minutes ago, Mama Mia said:

I like numbers. I like statistics. But these aren’t good statistics. If you are using vaccinated vs non-vaccinated to compare deaths, you’d need to only include deaths since vaccines were widely available to the general population in both countries. That is very hard to pinpoint, as states had different roll-outs, but somewhere around June 2021 would be safe for the US, no idea about Iceland. I suspect you’ll get a very similar outcome, if not even more in favor of vaccinated vs unvaccinated, but it would be a more apples to apples comparison. Sorry. You’d probably also need to consider other factors when looking at death rates - age of population, access to health care, ability to isolate etc…

@Antimonykind of knows her way around data and research in a serious way. I would not doubt her sources or statistics.

[Antimony]

1 hour ago, Mama Mia said:

I like numbers. I like statistics. But these aren’t good statistics. If you are using vaccinated vs non-vaccinated to compare deaths, you’d need to only include deaths since vaccines were widely available to the general population in both countries. That is very hard to pinpoint, as states had different roll-outs, but somewhere around June 2021 would be safe for the US, no idea about Iceland. I suspect you’ll get a very similar outcome, if not even more in favor of vaccinated vs unvaccinated, but it would be a more apples to apples comparison. Sorry. You’d probably also need to consider other factors when looking at death rates - age of population, access to health care, ability to isolate etc…

The short answer is that - yes, I used the most zoomed out statistics but the long answer is it's hard as hell to get good ones that are broken down by these categories and a good analysis of that data wouldn't fit in a forum post. Statisticians have done that (very hard) work and we do know that vaccination works, no matter how you slice or bin. 

Iceland and the US are easy (and maybe important?) because the aforementioned attempt to use Iceland's rising rates as an anti-vax argument instead of the whole broad pictures. 

It's always been true that there are more cases than we can see, too and theres no good method around that. I was talking about this kind of thing with somebody -- genuinely cant remember who but it was in Meatspace -- and the statistics they want were a Good Idea but near impossible to acquire. (This is actually a problem for almost all public health research, data sets usually come with flaws. The studies on obesity are often borked by really bad data sets.)

 

[Mama Mia]

18 minutes ago, Antimony said:

The short answer is that - yes, I used the most zoomed out statistics but the long answer is it's hard as hell to get good ones that are broken down by these categories and a good analysis of that data wouldn't fit in a forum post. Statisticians have done that (very hard) work and we do know that vaccination works, no matter how you slice or bin. 

Iceland and the US are easy (and maybe important?) because the aforementioned attempt to use Iceland's rising rates as an anti-vax argument instead of the whole broad pictures. 

It's always been true that there are more cases than we can see, too and theres no good method around that. I was talking about this kind of thing with somebody -- genuinely cant remember who but it was in Meatspace -- and the statistics they want were a Good Idea but near impossible to acquire. (This is actually a problem for almost all public health research, data sets usually come with flaws. The studies on obesity are often borked by really bad data sets.)

 

Right. I just think the best way to compare deaths by country to highlight the effectiveness of vaccination is to only compare once vaccinations have become available. Otherwise it makes them look somewhat LESS effective at preventing death than they are, because the significantly higher death rate pre-vaccination availability is averaged in. 

Edited January 10, 2022 by Mama Mia

[formergothardite]

I may have had an IBLP science education, but even I can grasp that every time a virus moves to a new host it has a chance to mutate. And the longer a person takes to fight off the virus, the more time it has to mutate. So this idea that no blame for new mutations can be placed on the people who refuse to get vaccinated, refuse to wear masks, refuse to quarantine and refuse to acknowledge the virus is real is just ridiculous. Vaccinated people who wear masks and quarantine are less likely to catch and spread the virus and typically are sick for less time giving the virus less of a chance to develop mutations. 

Here is an article that explains it better than I can. 

https://www.henryford.com/blog/2021/09/get-vaccinated-to-stop-variants

[backyard sylph]

Tangent alert:

I work for grocery pickup at a medium-sized store. At the beginning of the pandemic we were so overwhelmed with orders we doubled our daily order capacity and hired many people to help in our department. Also, quite a few people working in other parts of the store were cross-trained to help. We had several people taking orders out to cars at any one time, and sometimes, often, they were still overwhelmed, and dealing with people angry it took ten minutes or more to have their groceries loaded into their cars. Also angry because we had to drop our fill rate metric from 97% to 85%. 

This past Spring when it looked like people would be vaccinated, customers again crowded the stores. Unvaccinated were asked to continue wearing masks, but...often one rebellious act accompanies another. Our pickup orders dropped, we were back at 93% or more efficiency, and staff was cut or moved. In the case of our specific store, new management led to many people leaving to get other jobs. By summer, I was doing the work that formerly took three people. So even though there were fewer orders, there were still more than we used to have, and I wore myself out for months trying to handle more than pretty much anyone could. This happened at other stores, as well. 

For awhile in the summer heat, I did not wear my mask outside, but still tried to limit contact with the customers, often just talking to them through their hatches. Some people put signs in their windows to have no contact at all, which can be tricky to handle, but we worked it out. 

We can't get and keep staff in our department now; it's a much harder job than it used to be, and we are shorthanded every single day, because the corporate people in charge of deciding how much we can handle make management jump through hoops every day to have orders shut off when we reach some number well beyond the day's forecast, to which hours were scheduled. Nearly every day we call many people to ask them to come two or three hours after the time they expected to pick up. There aren't enough people in the store to keep the shelves stocked completely, trucks delivering goods are often late because they are short drivers, or short of workers in distribution centers that load the trucks, or short of workers at the companies that produce the supplies to make the goods that are distributed. And at the end of it I get to be yelled at because we are still out of the almond milk creamer someone prefers. Last night I stayed an extra hour, after going in an hour early, so that the morning people would have a clean organized space to work in, but in order to do that I had to stack 18 totes full of items that were shopped for as people cancelled their orders because their pickup time had been changed. 

No one has the time to put it all away. If I explained it all in detail it would take pages and pages here. But every time someone has to stay home with Covid, there is a gap that has to be filled by whoever is left standing. 

Some of you may carry on arguing about what society ought to be doing for each other. In my reality, it is below freezing here, yet I will happily help the old people and families get what they need to the best of my ability because they are frightened to come inside, not understanding why this was made so much harder than it needed to be. But I'm worn out from doing it. And I assume 100% of the time I've been exposed to the virus, because I probably have been. So I sit here at home between shifts and watch birds and go nowhere else except on rare occasions. My feet are too tired, anyway.

[byzant]

16 hours ago, neuroticcat said:

1. Again, I will state that I am not trying to make an argument against vaccination. I am arguing against irrationally blaming the unvaxxed for the pandemic. The fact that Iceland at nearly 100 percent vax rate has ANY cases/deaths at this point demonstrates that fact. 

I think people should get the vaccine if they want it and be glad for its protection. Whether someone else gets vaccinated or not does not magically make your vaccine more or less effective.

2. Re: your numbers for US, We have no idea how many cases of Covid we have had in US because we have no national tracking system and a crap way of accounting for vax/unvaxxed/ etc, including most states dropping tracking hospitalization and cases for the double vaxxed. In my state, for instance, per the Seattle Times yesterday, they only record if a vaxxed person over 65 is hospitalized, because the amount of under 65 hospitalizations - vaxxed OR unvaxxed - is too small to be statistically significant. US likely has had many many many more cases than that - either where people haven’t tested or tested at home.

We also are at 40 percent obesity as a country (I don’t know where Iceland falls on that) which makes country-to-country comparisons pointless, because there are so many confounding factors, and like it or not, obesity is one of them.

I am not saying we have done a better job than Iceland. I am saying Iceland is nearly 100 percent vax rate and having cases spiking. So what should they do? Boost more. To what end? 
 

Oh so to be clear you are admitting you don't like the numbers so have decided they are wrong because of your fixed and irrational beliefs! It's clear no numbers or  evidence  will be  suitable for you because it doesn't fit your beliefs. 

With all due respect sit down and shut up. You have now clearly shown your position is irrational and based on no evidence.  You might do better on facebook- where I'm sure you "get your research" 

It's not scapegoating to put in place sensible and evidence based public health restrictions. It's also not scapegoating to identify and describe the impact of ignorant and selfish assholes and the impact of their actions . And selfish idiots who refuse to take the basic step to protect society are welcome to leave ! 

 

Edited January 10, 2022 by byzant
Spelling

[byzant]

Also you are not being dog piled you are being corrected after providing an irrational and non evidenced view about a very serious issue which is impacting everyone in the entire world(I have friends in Antarctica who have had positive cases) there isn't a continent or person your false information doesn't impact negatively

 

That's like me saying I'm being dogpiled of I start swearing the whole world is made of cheese and people point out that's objectively not true. 

@backyard sylph your post is amazing and really made me think about a part of this I don't see  I'm in awe of the folk who have kept food and goods moving against the pressures you describe. 

Edited January 10, 2022 by byzant
Merging

[backyard sylph]

Thank you, @byzant I confess sometimes I see people blithely (but rightly!) saying, "Oh, I'm going back to curbside pickup to be safe," and I remember when we were called essential, and given thank you cards and pizzas, and I sigh a little bit. Things sure took a weird turn when it didn't all just go back to normal after a few weeks. 

But of course, though I don't have the luxury of an at-home job these days, I use food delivery sometimes, and order things online sometimes, and I just want to always be mindful of how much effort it takes to pull all that off as well. AND SO I THINK THE LEAST WE CAN DO is try to protect each other by whatever means we are offered, even if it requires adaptation month by month. 

Edited January 11, 2022 by backyard sylph
improved syntax

[Ash]

@backyard sylph Fellow grocery store employee here. I get it. Thank you for your service. Sending virtual hugs and foot rubs.

[Alisamer]

@backyard sylph Thank you for the work you do! I started using grocery pickup just before the pandemic, and have kept it up throughout - in fact I have an order to pick up on the way home from work today. You are doing essential, important work!

I get that people might sometimes get annoyed if something's out of stock (ahem, what is up with Zesta crackers?), their pickup time needs changing, etc. But that's not the fault of the person at the end of the system bringing your stuff out to you! 

I am actually kind of looking forward to the message I'll get in a couple hours from now telling me what groceries I'm actually getting. Will it suck if they're out of cat food again? Sure. But maybe they'll have something in stock that's been missing!

I always try to add a small treat for myself in with every grocery order. Like a reward for adulting. Sometimes that's the thing that's out of stock, but sometimes I get a gift from myself!

[fluffernutter]

We have been doing instacart or pick-up since covid started, other than those few months around summer when it seemed like things were calming down. My two oldest did instacart to make money while at college, and they both told me the importance of answering questions promptly, tipping well, and leaving good reviews. @Ash and @backyard sylph, do you have tips on how to show appreciation when picking up orders? What makes you feel good when interacting with costumers? 

[backyard sylph]

1 hour ago, Alisamer said:

@backyard sylph Thank you for the work you do! I started using grocery pickup just before the pandemic, and have kept it up throughout - in fact I have an order to pick up on the way home from work today. You are doing essential, important work!

I get that people might sometimes get annoyed if something's out of stock (ahem, what is up with Zesta crackers?), their pickup time needs changing, etc. But that's not the fault of the person at the end of the system bringing your stuff out to you! 

I am actually kind of looking forward to the message I'll get in a couple hours from now telling me what groceries I'm actually getting. Will it suck if they're out of cat food again? Sure. But maybe they'll have something in stock that's been missing!

I always try to add a small treat for myself in with every grocery order. Like a reward for adulting. Sometimes that's the thing that's out of stock, but sometimes I get a gift from myself!

Did I lose my reply? Hopefully, as I am beginning again. Spoiler Alert: they will be out of your cat food again. Sorry again! Also I do not know what the deal is about Zesta crackers. Lately, Townhouse, as well.

I love that you give yourself a treat. As Dale Cooper said, “Every day, once a day, give yourself a present. Don't plan it. Don't wait for it. Just let it happen. It could be a new shirt at the men's store, a catnap in your office chair, or two cups of good, hot black coffee.” But planning is also of the good. 🙂

2 minutes ago, fluffernutter said:

We have been doing instacart or pick-up since covid started, other than those few months around summer when it seemed like things were calming down. My two oldest did instacart to make money while at college, and they both told me the importance of answering questions promptly, tipping well, and leaving good reviews. @Ash and @backyard sylph, do you have tips on how to show appreciation when picking up orders? What makes you feel good when interacting with costumers? 

With Instacart, they do need the answer asap, or game over, and I find it a little awkward, myself, but it's improving. With Pickup, if we successfully complete your order 45 minutes before your time, you get a text telling you about your substitutions. It's so important for people to look at those; it saves everyone time and stress. But sadly we're often not done before then lately, and we have to show them on paper to the customers. They can still reject items and we don't mind at all. I just want them to understand they really won't be able to march into the store and find it themselves...we would have if we could have. Also, please don't have two sets of golf clubs and a stroller in the back of your mid-sized crossover, thank you.

In the store, we are all overworked and exhausted. We just hope people will try to be friendly and polite and also not monologue about their interesting political takes on things. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ 

[Ash]

1 hour ago, backyard sylph said:

We just hope people will try to be friendly and polite and also not monologue about their interesting political takes on things. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ 

This, pretty much. Treat us like fellow humans. Understand that things happen that are beyond our control and don't take them out on us. I was always happy to go out of my way to help a customer with a problem as long as the customer approached me in a polite manner and calmly explained the situation. The ones who came to complain and immediately dialed it up to +100 and "get me your manager, I'm making sure you're fired" Karen style... Those were the ones I never wanted to do a thing for.

On the Rod thread (IIRC) a poster mentioned how people are becoming more and more entitled as time passes. Arguably, it's the whole customer-is-always-right mentality that has bred this. Just treat us like humans and we're happy to try. Don't get bent out of joint if we can't cater to your every whim when give it a reasonable shot.

[Sheltie]

Backyard sylph, thanks for everything you do.  I have a experience based on something you mentioned in your post about people not thinking they could come in the store and find things because if it was there you would have found it.

 We used instacart a few times pre COVID and one time we had 20 items on our list.  We would get texts for substitutions and that’s fine but we kept getting them until they hadn’t found 17 items of the 20.  We thought that was an unusually high amount and just cancelled the order and went to the store right away to shop to see for ourselves.  We found 14 of the 17 items that they said they didn’t have.  What do you think was going on there??  

[backyard sylph]

18 minutes ago, Ash said:

This, pretty much. Treat us like fellow humans. Understand that things happen that are beyond our control and don't take them out on us. I was always happy to go out of my way to help a customer with a problem as long as the customer approached me in a polite manner and calmly explained the situation. The ones who came to complain and immediately dialed it up to +100 and "get me your manager, I'm making sure you're fired" Karen style... Those were the ones I never wanted to do a thing for.

On the Rod thread (IIRC) a poster mentioned how people are becoming more and more entitled as time passes. Arguably, it's the whole customer-is-always-right mentality that has bred this. Just treat us like humans and we're happy to try. Don't get bent out of joint if we can't cater to your every whim when give it a reasonable shot.

Lol at those people who say they can get us fired because we keep saying we don't have their rice crackers in "the back." There are like, eleven* people still working here. You're the one who will be asked to go, Karen, not me. I blame the emerging culture of instant gratification for this. Who remembers ordering something through the mail and waiting 4-6 weeks for it to arrive?

*More than eleven, but not a lot more. 

1 minute ago, Sheltie said:

Backyard sylph, thanks for everything you do.  I have a experience based on something you mentioned in your post about people not thinking they could come in the store and find things because if it was there you would have found it.

 We used instacart a few times pre COVID and one time we had 20 items on our list.  We would get texts for substitutions and that’s fine but we kept getting them until they hadn’t found 17 items of the 20.  We thought that was an unusually high amount and just cancelled the order and went to the store right away to shop to see for ourselves.  We found 14 of the 17 items that they said they didn’t have.  What do you think was going on there??  

We...don't think super highly of Instacart where I work, but not because of the system itself. The people who shop for it aren't trained, and some of them spend a lot of time asking us where things are, sometimes even what things are. We think our chain should use our own people for it, and in fact they are working toward automating the process as much as possible. 

At my store, we are not allowed to substitute or out-of-stock any item without manager approval, and this slows us down, but we are more accurate because of it; no one could get away with not looking for items not found on the shelf, which brings me back to your Instacart problem. Stocking is tough right now, and inconsistent. Those shoppers aren't allowed on the back dock to see what the very late truck just brought in, which might then have been put on the shelf by the time you got there. 

[Alisamer]

Aww. My treat for myself was out of stock. As were my bagels and a couple other things. Looks like the cat food was in stock, though! I'm just glad I don't have to go in the store myself. 

[backyard sylph]

38 minutes ago, Alisamer said:

Aww. My treat for myself was out of stock. As were my bagels and a couple other things. Looks like the cat food was in stock, though! I'm just glad I don't have to go in the store myself. 

We just keep having beef or beef and liver or cod and tuna pate, and everyone insists their cats need flaky chicken or turkey in gravy or they will starve themselves. So I am very happy for you that you got whatever it is your cat will eat! 

If it's cold where you are, I recommend a nice cup of cocoa for a treat. 

[CanadianMamam]

Some fertility treatments can increase the risk of blood clots, and Michaela has confirmed she has the clotting disorder, so she may very well not be a good candidate for any kind of treatment including egg retrieval. 

[AussieKrissy]

Brandon’s third book arrived. It is the happiest and most animated I have ever seen him.  It was quiet disconcerting I’m so used to him being as flat as a board. 

[Expectopatronus]

On 1/11/2022 at 2:54 PM, backyard sylph said:

We just keep having beef or beef and liver or cod and tuna pate, and everyone insists their cats need flaky chicken or turkey in gravy or they will starve themselves. So I am very happy for you that you got whatever it is your cat will eat! 

If it's cold where you are, I recommend a nice cup of cocoa for a treat. 

You are clearly acquainted with my cats. They seem to think that pâté is poison. I don’t doubt that people panic when they can’t get the food their cat eats but they should not be taking it out on you. You have zero control over what Friskies produces and sends. 
What did send my stress level through the roof was Enfamil telling me that the pandemic had caused them to be missing key ingredients for Puramino and most Canadian distributors were out of stock. I didn’t yell at them but I had a meltdown in private. Then my sister and I ordered cases off of eBay and brought it in from the UK, the USA and off of Kijiji. Allergy safe formula should be prioritized as an essential product! 

[backyard sylph]

9 hours ago, Expectopatronus said:

You are clearly acquainted with my cats. They seem to think that pâté is poison. I don’t doubt that people panic when they can’t get the food their cat eats but they should not be taking it out on you. You have zero control over what Friskies produces and sends. 
What did send my stress level through the roof was Enfamil telling me that the pandemic had caused them to be missing key ingredients for Puramino and most Canadian distributors were out of stock. I didn’t yell at them but I had a meltdown in private. Then my sister and I ordered cases off of eBay and brought it in from the UK, the USA and off of Kijiji. Allergy safe formula should be prioritized as an essential product! 

Wow, I am so glad you found a way to have it shipped to you! That is much worse than not being able to get pretzel rods or Glacier Freeze Gatorade 12 packs. It's a weird time right now, and we need to prioritize. 

One day, a man screamed at me about his cat litter. Now, I do think this man had some sort of troubles that caused him to not handle all aspects of life well, but I ended up giving him more than he'd asked for without charging, and I didn't need him to launch into invectives about how I was rude when he said we must be overwhelmed in there, and I chirped, "We sure are!" But all the other people waiting told me how sorry they were I had to be screamed at and that was something, anyway. 

[Smash!]

@backyard sylph and everyone else working in similar jobs thank you for all you do! 

To show appreciation I started to write emails to customer service and praised the grocery delivery or postal worker for the great job they do and asked to forward it to their boss.