covid beard

Let's call this a covid-style beard, with a ridiculous-looking shaved track through the middle of my beard where a face mask needs to make a better seal.  (Which is different from the covid beard I grew to mark the passage of time until I got vaccinated.)

My workplace officially opened on Monday.  I'm not a fan.  I have coworkers isolating due to known exposures, covid in their household, or receiving covid-positive tests themselves.  There are economic and psychological reasons for opening now, sure, but those are not medical safety reasons.  I disapprove.

I am double masking at work this week, for the first time in 2 years.  I wear an official N95 disposable mask first, then around it I wear my favorite copper-lined reusable cloth mask.  It's annoying, but I feel much safer that way with all of the new exposure I'm receiving in the office.  The Twin Cities metro area has been skating along the bottom with zero adult ICU beds and less than 1% adult non-ICU beds available in area hospitals.  Today, both Minneapolis and St. Paul finally announced the renewal of mask requirements, long overdue.

And, for the people who keep insisting that this is just like the flu...  since you won't believe anyone else, maybe you'll believe the insurance companies who are going to help pay charge people for their resulting medical costs.  They're noting that excess deaths in their area are up, to say nothing of those surviving with long term health issues.

This is not the flu.  Excess deaths in the USA are way up.  Scroll down that link to see this chart.


I'm double-masking, washing my hands, disinfecting my groceries, and I intend to not get infected at all for the duration of this long emergency.  I still think there will be long-term consequences for even minor infections with SARS-CoV-2, and I'm not playing games with this pandemic.  As I keep repeating, don't get covid.