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Three things for Sunday
19 Dec 2021 13:521. So yeah, sis and BIL aren't coming for the holidays. As I expected her fallback plan after my brother and family couldn't make it was to go to Austin with her dh (to see his kids) and drive to Baton Rouge to see bro etc. Then flying became iffy (long story) so they're staying home. Sob. I'd be fine with nobody here, just my family, but since we are here, I'll have to make Christmas dinner for my MIL and the bitch, aka my sister-in-law. Ugh. MIL will complain incessantly about her neighbors, who are objectively awful, but when we found her a place she could afford in the brand new apartments AC is living at, she declined, because it wasn't enough square footage. OK, but the neighbors aren't drug dealing scum. Just ugh. I wish I could just cancel, but not gonna happen.
2. Not having a good morning here. Dh wanted to go walk the dog earlier, but I was still drinking my tea, so I said fine go by yourself, but he said he'd wait. Eventually I got ready, but he decided to clear off his work desk (so we can put up the tree) and now he has to eat lunch. I can't eat if I'm going to do any kind of exercise, and it's 2pm, and I haven't had breakfast yet. I'm being snippy and bitchy because I'm sad and frustrated.
3. The Biden admin has handled Covid... poorly. Yes on getting people access to vaccines. But hello? Where are the rapid tests at an affordable price? Heck, where are they, even expensive, LOL? I tried to buy some earlier this week but no dice at three places and I got sick of looking. The clinic at dh's work gives them out (two tests per person per week, apparently) but I didn't know that until last week and they were out for the week by the time I got there. Anyhow, the CDC director Walensky is, educated MD or not, a total and utter blathering idiot. First it was the profoundly stupid "Go ahead and take off your mask if you are vaccinated", which worked so well, yeah, oh hai Delta and fucking lying Republicans, now it's take a rapid test if you are gathering with family. That's nice dumbass. Need to test at least 2-3 times per person to be safe-ish, tests are expensive ($12 each, $7 at WalMart), if you can even find them. The whole admin "Insurance will pay for it!" BS is just that. Is that before or after my deductible? And oh, what about the people who don't fucking have insurance? Everyone talks about 'free covid tests' but it's not for everyone.
FWIW, I don't mind paying a reasonable amount for a test, but I think we're being ripped off right now, and the Administration isn't doing what it can to mitigate any of this. They should have had a plan in place, yes, even pre-Omicron, to get tests to everyone. I don't know why they didn't bother.
The thing is, what is making all this difficult is that we're relying on the scummy for-profit private sector for public health things. I'd been trying to get a booster. For each place I tried -some of them for each branch I tried, I had to enter sensitive personal information, which they saved, before I could even find out IF there were appointments (note: there never were, at least not before late Dec/early Jan). We ended up getting our boosters from the Snohomish County public health corps. King County has been useless: they've needed to focus on equity, so a lot of stuff available in South King County, nothing near me, and even those appointments were difficult to come by. I signed up with them a month ago to get in line for a booster, right after the state opened it to everyone and... still waiting. We got our initial shots from the National Guard (or Army?) at the FEMA site halfway across the state in Yakima. Both government sites made it easy to sign up, gave me the info I needed before I divulged a lot of personal information, and didn't ask for much to begin with.
Public health needs to be handled by public entities. Not private.
I was going to suggest to my sister that we all get PCR tests 2-3 days before the holidays and then just the rapid tests, but obviously no dice on that. They've wound down many of the gov sites for testing, that I can tell, and now we're at the mercy of Walgreens and its ilk. Your data for a chance to look at the schedule and see if there an appointment within 100 miles. Or you can go to Urgent Care and pay $300 per person, not sure if this is reimbursed. This is just non-tenable.
Anyhow. Trump caused a lot of these problems, but Biden and his incomp CDC director haven't made as much progress as I'd hoped they would.
2. Not having a good morning here. Dh wanted to go walk the dog earlier, but I was still drinking my tea, so I said fine go by yourself, but he said he'd wait. Eventually I got ready, but he decided to clear off his work desk (so we can put up the tree) and now he has to eat lunch. I can't eat if I'm going to do any kind of exercise, and it's 2pm, and I haven't had breakfast yet. I'm being snippy and bitchy because I'm sad and frustrated.
3. The Biden admin has handled Covid... poorly. Yes on getting people access to vaccines. But hello? Where are the rapid tests at an affordable price? Heck, where are they, even expensive, LOL? I tried to buy some earlier this week but no dice at three places and I got sick of looking. The clinic at dh's work gives them out (two tests per person per week, apparently) but I didn't know that until last week and they were out for the week by the time I got there. Anyhow, the CDC director Walensky is, educated MD or not, a total and utter blathering idiot. First it was the profoundly stupid "Go ahead and take off your mask if you are vaccinated", which worked so well, yeah, oh hai Delta and fucking lying Republicans, now it's take a rapid test if you are gathering with family. That's nice dumbass. Need to test at least 2-3 times per person to be safe-ish, tests are expensive ($12 each, $7 at WalMart), if you can even find them. The whole admin "Insurance will pay for it!" BS is just that. Is that before or after my deductible? And oh, what about the people who don't fucking have insurance? Everyone talks about 'free covid tests' but it's not for everyone.
FWIW, I don't mind paying a reasonable amount for a test, but I think we're being ripped off right now, and the Administration isn't doing what it can to mitigate any of this. They should have had a plan in place, yes, even pre-Omicron, to get tests to everyone. I don't know why they didn't bother.
The thing is, what is making all this difficult is that we're relying on the scummy for-profit private sector for public health things. I'd been trying to get a booster. For each place I tried -some of them for each branch I tried, I had to enter sensitive personal information, which they saved, before I could even find out IF there were appointments (note: there never were, at least not before late Dec/early Jan). We ended up getting our boosters from the Snohomish County public health corps. King County has been useless: they've needed to focus on equity, so a lot of stuff available in South King County, nothing near me, and even those appointments were difficult to come by. I signed up with them a month ago to get in line for a booster, right after the state opened it to everyone and... still waiting. We got our initial shots from the National Guard (or Army?) at the FEMA site halfway across the state in Yakima. Both government sites made it easy to sign up, gave me the info I needed before I divulged a lot of personal information, and didn't ask for much to begin with.
Public health needs to be handled by public entities. Not private.
I was going to suggest to my sister that we all get PCR tests 2-3 days before the holidays and then just the rapid tests, but obviously no dice on that. They've wound down many of the gov sites for testing, that I can tell, and now we're at the mercy of Walgreens and its ilk. Your data for a chance to look at the schedule and see if there an appointment within 100 miles. Or you can go to Urgent Care and pay $300 per person, not sure if this is reimbursed. This is just non-tenable.
Anyhow. Trump caused a lot of these problems, but Biden and his incomp CDC director haven't made as much progress as I'd hoped they would.
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