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twitblr:

Definitely masking up post-COVID (x) {{the original link didn’t actually lead anywhere; I have replaced it with a genuine source link}}

 

juliainfinland:

Also, let’s keep having soap and disinfectant dispensers everywhere.

 

derinthescarletpescatarian:

By contrast, I’ve been getting the same number of sniffles that I do every year even though there’s no one to catch them from, which is how I learned this year that I’m not prone to minor colds; I’m prone to hayfever.

 

brin-bellway:

Huh, you’re still getting hayfever with a mask? I started wearing a mask in 2017 *specifically* to avoid pollen, and it’s been working wonderfully for me.

Have you been keeping the mask on outside, and when near front doors that people are opening a lot? Does it have a well-fitted nosepiece?

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I also had no colds in the calendar year 2020. It used to be fairly normal for me to go entire years without getting sick (after I adjusted to my current microbial milieu, that is; I got sick a *lot* the first couple years I lived in Canada), but then I started working a customer-facing job where nobody else ever took sick leave and staff members were forbidden from wearing masks, and I went from a cold every 1 – 2 years to a cold every few months. Getting rid of that damned fast-food cold rate wasn’t worth what it’s cost, but it’s a very nice silver lining.

(for anyone who finds my rate of colds bogglingly low: I’m guessing the two big components are “trained myself out of touching my face in public when I was a pre-teen, and always wash my hands upon returning home” and “rarely travel”, in that order)

I didn’t even used to do any anti-airborne measures†, just anti-fomite. I plan to start wearing a mask in indoor public spaces from October – March or so each year and on public transit year-round, and it’ll be very interesting to see what that does to my baseline cold rate.

(also, on a broader scale, it will be interesting to see if COVID-19 vaccines grant any cross-protection against cold-type coronaviruses)

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†Except in extreme situations like “on an airplane two seats away from a coughing dude”. Guess who didn’t get sick until an incubation period *after* the rest of her family? (unfortunately there’s only so much you can isolate from people you’re sharing a hotel room with)

 

derinthescarletpescatarian:

I very rarely wear a mask. I hardly leave the house and when I do, almost nobody wears masks here because there’s no covid in my state outside of the quarantined medi-hotels for infected international arrivals; we just sanitise, social distance, keep records of where we go and get tested any time symptoms show up so that when it does show up, we can respond before it’s got more than a couple of people. The distancing and group size limits are enough that basically nobody’s getting colds.

My probably-hayfever is very mild and isn’t debilitating at all (which is probably why it took me so long to notice); I just get a sniffly, runny nose so I haven’t bothered with any pollen precautions. They’d be more annoying than just living with it.

 

brin-bellway:

Fair enough, I suppose.

When I started wearing pollen masks, my only symptom was mild sore throats. The main problem I was having was that pollen attacks felt exactly like…well, the onset of a cold. *Physically* the sore throats per se weren’t a big deal, but I hated never being sure whether or not I was coming down with something.

I’ve started getting runny noses too now, which I found even worse in that they’re impairing in their own right. Maybe I’m just more bothered by having a runny nose than you are.

 

alarajrogers:

My allergies are for animals and dust. I have pets and am far too disorganized to dust. So yeah, I’m actually just as miserable this year as I am every year, but I definitely have noticed, no colds. Runny nose and sneezing and occasional sore throat and cough… but at my age, the biggest symptom of a cold is a draining and horrible fatigue. All my fatigue this year comes from diabetes and depression.

I do think I’m going to keep using masks during the winter every year.

 

brin-bellway:

At your age? Are you implying you *didn’t* get horrible draining fatigue from colds when you were younger?

When I saw that one of the DSM rules is that in order to qualify as having clinical depression it has to be at least two weeks, I thought “ah, of course, they’re thinking of self-limiting diseases”. The last week of December, 2017, I had a cold that *didn’t* come with a transient depressive episode, and it was amazing how much less it sucked. Turns out that while sore throats and stuffy noses and coughing fits *are* pretty annoying, *most* of the badness of colds is from direct inducement of misery.

…if there are people who *normally* don’t get depression from colds, that would explain a lot about how blase they are about disease prevention.

(…“people with enough depression at baseline that colds are just background noise” would also explain a lot but in a much more horrifying way. you indicate that in at least some cases they can be distinguished, though.)

 

brin-bellway:

@rustingbridges replied: “no, I don’t feel that way. identifying a cold mostly consists of ruling out allergies and guessing”

holy fuck

 

poipoipoi-2016:

Same really. 

At some point, I will give in and move to the desert but right now, the year is: 

* Mold/Dust season all winter
* Fading into OH GOD OH NOOOOOOO season as pollen season arrives and I more or less fall over flat on my ass for a month
* Summer is great except for the bit where it’s 97 degrees and going outside is hellish
* Into August/September where ragweed arrives and knocks me out for 3 days every year
* Into leaf season where it’s time to get bronchitis and pneumonia again just in time to redevelop a continuous hacking cough for
* Oh look at that, it’s dust season.  

I literally have a rule that I maintain 3 alarms and if I sleep straight through them, it’s a sick day because if it’s a choice between ragweed and getting hit by a truck, let’s go play in some traffic.  

Horrible draining fatigue is pretty normal, but trivially, if you can throw a depressingly expensive cocktail of OTC, prescription, and illegal meds at “Getting your nose the f*ck back open”, that basically goes away.  

Then of course, I’m increasingly certain I ended up with Long COVID, because I’ve had constant chest pains and shortness of breath since April, so I’m working on going remote so I can carefully maintain CO2 levels below 600PPM…. by opening a window to ragweed spores year-round.  

Ouch. Many sympathies for what you have to put up with.

Every year my pollen sensitivity NOS (the allergist couldn’t figure out what to make of me) gets worse: stronger symptoms, for more of the year, after less exposure. I hope I never end up in as terrible a position as yours, but I’m worried I might.

I also don’t get depression from pollen, but again worried this might change as my condition deteriorates. (The psychological problem of a pollen-induced sore throat is the fear from “I associate this feeling with *becoming* depressed a few hours later”: pollen currently doesn’t *directly* cause any brain symptoms.) For a cold, the depression hits before the nose symptoms do, so getting my nose open clearly isn’t enough.

What happens if you just…wear a mask all the time, taking it off only when you need to eat or drink or something? Maybe with one of those tabletop air purifiers too?

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@jadagul has reported in as not experiencing cold-induced depression [link], although honestly I’m not even surprised. Like, if you’d asked me before all this “does jadagul get cold-induced depression”, I’d have said “god, probably not, *nothing* depresses that man: failing to get depressed when sick is *exactly* the kind of weird shit his brain would do”.

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I have now written up a post describing what colds are like for me [link].

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