Omicron Check: Are you still hiring?

[jeezifonly]

If 100% of population were vaccinated, it would end in a couple of weeks.
 

Meanwhile, Imma wait.

[Guest]

27 minutes ago, jeezifonly said:

If 100% of population were vaccinated, it would end in a couple of weeks.
 

Meanwhile, Imma wait.

No, it would not. People who are vaccinated can get and transmit Omicron. Easily. The virus is with us forever. But you do what's right for you. (And, BTW, 100% of the population will not get vaccinated, especially in the US)

[+ tassojunior]

On 12/22/2021 at 7:49 PM, keroscenefire said:

I think Omicron is going to burn out quickly. Already it's subsiding in South Africa. I think in a few weeks it will be mostly done. I'm probably not going to hire until I visit Washington DC for the forum events there. I think it's good to be prudent while Omicron does its thing but I think it's really not going to last very long. 

That's what Fauci said about Coronavirus in early 2020. 

 

There's a good piece in today's BBC about not assuming Omicron will rapidly abate or is so harmless to all age groups it will eventually reach. In the UK the many first cases are young people. 

We're not sure what will happen when Omicron hits the elderly

[Jarrod_Uncut]

On 12/23/2021 at 11:11 AM, jetlow said:

Headed to Sao Paolo Jan 3. Absolutely plan to hire - are you crazy?  The question is which one. I have a dependable favorite there in Sao Paolo but I may hire someone new. We'll see.

Early 40s, reasonably fit, Moderna X3 , no major health issues. 

And how I love beautiful men….

That said : I think everyone should do their own risk assessment. If you are HIV+ ( even undetectable)  , have prior or current health issues, then yeah, maybe you should pause. I personally see no reason to.

 

 

On 12/22/2021 at 7:41 PM, Tygerscent said:

No point in going out there, getting sick and then not being able to play, socialize, hire or be hired if you get sick unnecessarily for weeks or months on end, however long it takes to recover and clear the virus~ Plus… most people don’t want to take out their social circle mates or play mates~ 

 

On 12/22/2021 at 7:50 PM, CheckCar said:

Do you have any sense of what other providers in your city or networks are doing?

Considering there are 2 opposite responses above to this question, I think your question is a good question lol.

I’m glad to hear some clients are still hiring. Despite the situation that’s being put on the plate, I’m sure there’s some of us who are really relying on bookings to follow thru. 
 

But at this point, this Holiday season is on par with last holiday season but almost worse: another variant just in time for the holidays, so nobody wants to hire until after “next year” due to family exposure concerns and such . Needless to say, this has been one of the more depressing leads up to Christmas I’ve experience.
 

This week I’ve only booked 2 clients, despite seemingly DOZENS of “inquiries”. One last Sunday and another on Tuesday. I just BARELY set aside enough money to get my car fixed that’s been down for 3 weeks (by the Grace of God I have a backup vehicle). By the time I did that, and traveled across state (300 miles) to ensure I could at least be in the company of family for Christmas, I’ve been left with somewhere around $20.

Can anyone imagine how depressing that is? Left with only $20 the week of Christmas? While everyone is out shopping and buying presents. So, you can throw out the virus facts and vaccine limitations and everyone can be scared, but for some there’s not always an immediate alternative.

I even want to take clients, but I know that it’s almost pointless to be online in Kansas City because nobody is calling, and anybody who does call is guaranteed going to be a flake. I already know I’ll have to ask for a deposit on the 1st or 2nd text, to run them away, else they’ll bullshit me and end up on Mr. number in a heartbeat 😆 Or they’ll be available for 1 hour, and expect me to show up in 2 minutes. So, despite the real peril, I know likely the only thing I can do is advertise in another market, and hope I can have at least 1 booking locally to get me there.

I was talking with a former client telling him last month: it’s been well over a year since I found myself in a very tight situation where finances were strained. However, seems like every since the week of Halloween, these slump times are recurrent. It’s been back to back. On and off. Somebody has to do something.

I’m so desperate for change at this point, I’m willing to experience living out of my car for awhile (not technically but like “tour bus” mode)  and leaving to a different side of the country or something. I can only take misery for so long, and the Midwest seems to have gone bottoms up. Thanks to Covid AND inflation.

Edited December 25, 2021 by Jarrod_Uncut

[BuffaloKyle]

Taking a bit of a break here until the Spring due to a combination of things. Work got really crazy in Nov and Dec for me. Then Omicron happened and our case numbers have been pretty bad here. Some family, friends, & coworkers who have all been vaccinated have gotten sick recently. Really shows that the vaccine does lose effectiveness after six months. I'm actually getting my booster shot tomorrow though. And then I'm not as horny in the winter once it gets really cold & snowy so usually just stay home when I'm not at work. 

[+ augustus]

Good news everyone!   Omicrom is providing big protection against the delta variant and also far less deadly in and of itself.  I predicted months ago that this virus would mutate into something far less dangerous.  We can see the light at the end of the tunnel.  Things will be back to normal soon.

 

Covid: Omicron appears to protect against delta and could displace it, study says (cnbc.com)

[+ WilliamM]

52 minutes ago, augustus said:

Good news everyone!   Omicrom is providing big protection against the delta variant and also far less deadly in and of itself.  I predicted months ago that this virus would mutate into something far less dangerous.  We can see the light at the end of the tunnel.  Things will be back to normal soon.

 

Covid: Omicron appears to protect against delta and could displace it, study says (cnbc.com)

Even on Fox News, Nobody is suggesting Omicron is providing "big" protection against Delta.

It is providing protection, so you right on that.

[Luv2play]

As I think about it, Omicron has the potential to crowd out Delta and if Omicron proves to be less problematic, then it might result in the pandemic turning into a pesky virus like the flu which circulates around the world seasonly and only causes minor inconvenience to most, but not all people. 

After all, the flu still kills thousands each year, year after year. And those of us old enough need to get our flu shots annually. So this may become just another shot we need to get on a periodic basis, updated to confront the latest variation of virus circulating in the world.

To me that's the optimistic outlook.

[+ Pensant]

11 minutes ago, Luv2play said:

As I think about it, Omicron has the potential to crowd out Delta and if Omicron proves to be less problematic, then it might result in the pandemic turning into a pesky virus like the flu which circulates around the world seasonly and only causes minor inconvenience to most, but not all people. 

After all, the flu still kills thousands each year, year after year. And those of us old enough need to get our flu shots annually. So this may become just another shot we need to get on a periodic basis, updated to confront the latest variation of virus circulating in the world.

To me that's the optimistic outlook.

I think you’re right. I now know a ton of people with it, many asymptomatic. And I’ve been exposed a few times to COVID + people and never contracted it.

I’ll get my booster tomorrow morning since I’m heading back to the island on Saturday morning (SEA) and  Washington State is a hotspot.

[Luv2play]

1 minute ago, Pensant said:

I think you’re right. I now know a ton of people with it, many asymptomatic. And I’ve been exposed a few times to COVID + people and never contracted it.

I’ll get my booster tomorrow morning since I’m heading back to the island on Saturday morning (SEA) and  Washington State is a hotspot.

Interesting, I just got my booster today, six months after my second shot in June. Today it was Moderna as Pfizer is in short supply in Canada. My two first shots were Pfizer. I will hold off on seeing anyone for a couple of weeks at least and see how things look mid January.

[+ Pensant]

9 minutes ago, Luv2play said:

Interesting, I just got my booster today, six months after my second shot in June. Today it was Moderna as Pfizer is in short supply in Canada. My two first shots were Pfizer. I will hold off on seeing anyone for a couple of weeks at least and see how things look mid January.

I seem to have an amazing immune system.  Was thinking of switching to Moderna given its efficacy edge, but scheduled another Pfizer.

That said, I’m doing an overnight with an increasingly edgy and exotic male later next week. His style changes by the day!

[Guest]

2 hours ago, Luv2play said:

Interesting, I just got my booster today, six months after my second shot in June. Today it was Moderna as Pfizer is in short supply in Canada. My two first shots were Pfizer. I will hold off on seeing anyone for a couple of weeks at least and see how things look mid January.

While a primary antibody response can take a couple of weeks, booster antibodies come up pretty quickly. Next week, you should be teeming with antibodies. Despite the massive numbers of people contracting omicron, there have been almost no reports of boosted people being hospitalized, and zero boosted killed by omicron. 

[jeezifonly]

A soupçon of light, it seems.

A relative had it some time ago, no symptoms at all, until recent progressive deafness in one ear. Perhaps treatable but too soon to tell. She’d have trouble with work - a first grade teacher who needs to know from which direction the spitballs are coming.
Had nearly 20 kids sick since return to school last fall. 

[NJF]

If you look the covid admission number in NYC hospitals, there is a 3 fold increase in December (up to 2400 roughly). It is driven by the current omicron wave.

[mike carey]

There was an interesting set of numbers presented by the ABC's stats guru yesterday on hospital admissions here. It's not authoritative analysis, but it provides some clues. There has been a huge surge in case numbers in NSW and Victoria over the last fortnight, but the percentage of cases ending up in hospital, while raw numbers have risen sharply, has dropped significantly. At the end of October, 10% of cases in NSW were ending up in hospital, now it's 1%. In Victoria, it has only dropped to 1.5%, but like NSW the total number of cases going to hospital has increased.

In Victoria there has continued to be 6-8 deaths a day, while in NSW it's typically been one or two. One difference between the two states is that in NSW at least 80% of all cases are now Omicron, but the proportion in Victoria is much more skewed to Delta. It's not unreasonable to conclude that both the higher death rate and higher hospitalisation rate in Victoria can be attributed to a higher proportion of Delta. The NSW figures show that almost all of the hospitalised cases that have ended up in an ICU have been Delta patients, as have almost all of the deaths. There has been one case of a triple vaxed patient with Omicron dying, but he was a man in his eighties with co-morbidities, so it may be the case that he died with the disease rather than from it (of course it's difficult to be certain that Covid wasn't just the straw that broke the camel's back, as it were, rather than its presence being unrelated to his death).

That last parenthetic point is a hint at a complication in the analysis of Covid trends in the future. People will be admitted to hospitals after heart attacks or traffic accidents who will be tested and found to have asymptomatic Covid. They need to be tested because even without symptoms, an undetected Covid case presents an infection risk, but their inclusion in the statistics adds a wrinkle to the analytical process.

The numbers here appear to confirm that Omicron is resulting in fewer hospitalisations and fewer deaths per case, but also that the sheer numbers of cases could result in increased stress on the hospital system. I'm not eligible for my third jab for another 10 days, and while I'll avoid unnecessary contact with other people, I'm becoming more confident in venturing out when I need to, and that might even include a trip to Sydney with an, ahem, liaison while I'm there.

[jgoo]

I haven't hired since the start of the pandemic and try to not let my little head do my thinking for me.  I am considering, however, hiring based on the escort indicating they are fully vaccinated (I am as well, along with a booster).  Also I'm going to ask them if they would be willing to take a rapid self-test at the time of our meeting, which I would bring with me (I would indicate I would take one at the same time as well). 

Not sure how it will be received but it is the only way I would proceed with a meeting at this point in time.  Perhaps not full proof but an extra level of caution.  I would have to come up with a way to deal with payment should one (or both) of us get a positive result.  My thinking is if he is positive then no payment and if I am positive then half.

[CheckCar]

41 minutes ago, jgoo said:

I haven't hired since the start of the pandemic and try to not let my little head do my thinking for me.  I am considering, however, hiring based on the escort indicating they are fully vaccinated (I am as well, along with a booster).  Also I'm going to ask them if they would be willing to take a rapid self-test at the time of our meeting, which I would bring with me (I would indicate I would take one at the same time as well). 

Not sure how it will be received but it is the only way I would proceed with a meeting at this point in time.  Perhaps not full proof but an extra level of caution.  I would have to come up with a way to deal with payment should one (or both) of us get a positive result.  My thinking is if he is positive then no payment and if I am positive then half.

I would include your proposal about payment in the pre-meeting communications. Conflicting understandings around payment can lead to contentious interactions.

I also applaud you for determining what level of risk you’re willing to take on, and for communicating that to potential hires. 

[Guest]

5 hours ago, NJF said:

If you look the covid admission number in NYC hospitals, there is a 3 fold increase in December (up to 2400 roughly). It is driven by the current omicron wave.

Well, not quite. First of all, most people are not being tested for which strain when admitted, so we have to rely on sampling and CDC estimates when trying to determine which portion of patients are omicron and which delta. The CDC revised its estimate as to what percentage of patients had omicron last week:

https://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/587506-cdc-lowers-estimate-of-omicron-prevalence-in-us

"The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on Tuesday significantly revised downward the estimate of the percentage of new COVID-19 infections in the U.S. caused by the omicron variant of the virus.

According to agency data, omicron accounted for about 59 percent of all U.S. infections as of Dec. 25. Previously, the CDC said the omicron variant comprised 73 percent of all cases for the week ending Dec. 18. But that number has now been revised to 22.5 percent of all cases..."

Secondly, even if it were true that most of the hospital admissions were due to omicron, and it most certainly is not true, one also has to look at the proportional increase in total infections. For example, if infections increase 20-fold, but hospital admissions increase only 3-fold, that's a comforting sign regarding the virulence of the new strain. @mike careyhas pointed to more strong evidence regarding the lack of virulence of omicron (Australia now has a much higher proportion of its population vaccinated now than the US, though). 

[Guest]

5 hours ago, mike carey said:

... There has been one case of a triple vaxed patient with Omicron dying, but he was a man in his eighties with co-morbidities, so it may be the case that he died with the disease rather than from it...

Yes, you are 100% spot-on here. When you have an extremely prevalent illness that every single person entering the hospital is tested for, given the massive number of people infected, you're bound to pick up someone who coincidentally has the virus on board.

[Guest]

5 hours ago, jgoo said:

I haven't hired since the start of the pandemic and try to not let my little head do my thinking for me.  I am considering, however, hiring based on the escort indicating they are fully vaccinated (I am as well, along with a booster).  Also I'm going to ask them if they would be willing to take a rapid self-test at the time of our meeting, which I would bring with me (I would indicate I would take one at the same time as well). 

Not sure how it will be received but it is the only way I would proceed with a meeting at this point in time.  Perhaps not full proof but an extra level of caution.  I would have to come up with a way to deal with payment should one (or both) of us get a positive result.  My thinking is if he is positive then no payment and if I am positive then half.

You have to make your own choices, of course, but should realize that when you're fully vaccinated, and especially when boosted, severe illness is extraordinarily rare unless you are in very frail health or have a condition/take a medication which suppresses your immune system (in which case you have more than Covid to worry about). The risks of Covid for someone vaxxed-up are similar to the risks for flu for someone vaccinated for influenza, as well as the cold (including rhinoviruses and non-SARS-CoV2 coronaviruses). If you are in very frail health, you might want to skip hiring under any circumstances. 

Unless you're in one of those categories, though, your risk of getting in to any serious trouble from the virus is less than the risk of getting into a serious auto accident on your way down to the appointment, especially if the escort is also vaccinated himself (which reduces viral load and number of days contagious). The risk will never be zero, but that applies to everything we do in life. Even hiring an escort, before you've even done anything intimate, carries with it all sorts of risks (intimacy adds a bunch). 

Personally, I began hiring a week after my 2nd dose. I don't hire now, but only because I'm now in a monogamous relationship. When a fully vaxxed person is hiring a vaxxed provider, Covid-19 would not be among my bigger concerns. 

[jgoo]

1 hour ago, Unicorn said:

You have to make your own choices, of course, but should realize that when you're fully vaccinated, and especially when boosted, severe illness is extraordinarily rare unless you are in very frail health or have a condition/take a medication which suppresses your immune system (in which case you have more than Covid to worry about). The risks of Covid for someone vaxxed-up are similar to the risks for flu for someone vaccinated for influenza, as well as the cold (including rhinoviruses and non-SARS-CoV2 coronaviruses). If you are in very frail health, you might want to skip hiring under any circumstances. 

Unless you're in one of those categories, though, your risk of getting in to any serious trouble from the virus is less than the risk of getting into a serious auto accident on your way down to the appointment, especially if the escort is also vaccinated himself (which reduces viral load and number of days contagious). The risk will never be zero, but that applies to everything we do in life. Even hiring an escort, before you've even done anything intimate, carries with it all sorts of risks (intimacy adds a bunch). 

Personally, I began hiring a week after my 2nd dose. I don't hire now, but only because I'm now in a monogamous relationship. When a fully vaxxed person is hiring a vaxxed provider, Covid-19 would not be among my bigger concerns. 

All that is true and I agree, especially about having to make your own choices.  There are a number of other considerations in my decision to do what I have detailed, all of which are too involved to go into.  Needless to say that for me it is something that I feel comfortable with and necessary to do for myself and others that may be impacted by my decision to hire and how to hire.

[Guest]

My experience over the last week or two (in Vancouver, BC) was that omicron did affect hiring, but not exactly for the reason that one might expect: a health amount of appointments were made, but many were cancelled as clients received word that a recent contact had tested positive and they awaited their own results. We typically wait a couple days for test results here, and sadly, that meant many staying home from holiday plans, as well as appointments with escorts. 

It's the same in my personal life: everybody is a contact of a contact at this point. We're looking forward to it all blowing over and hoping not too many vulnerable people are exposed along the way. 

[Guest]

3 hours ago, DanteV said:

....many were cancelled as clients received word that a recent contact had tested positive and they awaited their own results. We typically wait a couple days for test results here...

Jesus Christ. If FDR were alive today, he'd say "The only thing we have to fear is hysterical people over-reacting to a mostly-resolved health crisis." We've found a vaccine which works wonderfully, and, to make things even better, the virus has mutated to a form which leaves the vaccinated unscathed. We are not where we were a year ago. The only people in any real danger at this point are people who've chosen to put themselves in danger. 

Cancelling appointments not even because they tested positive, but just because they know someone who tested positive? For crying out loud, if you're that concerned, just test yourself immediately prior to the onset of the appointment. It takes 15 minutes. The incubation period (for alpha and delta, at least) could easily be 7 days (and occasionally even longer), so if you want to see if you're gonna turn positive, you'd have to wait a week, not 2 days. 

In Canada, 90%+ of adults are vaccinated, so you don't even have the worry that we have in the US of the healthcare system being strained. The world is full of infectious organisms and other dangers which are far more dangerous than this virus is to vaccinated adults (or to even unvaccinated young children). It's time for public health officials to dial back the flames of public hysteria. And either educate the unvaxxed, or let them go. 

[+ Pensant]

I’m stunned by the number of people I know who have tested positive in the past week. Most of those who were vaxxed had mild symptoms and some were asymptomatic. A few who are anti-vaxxers, but under 40, had most unpleasant home bound experiences.

I’m now triple-vexed, and in excellent health, so I plan to go ahead with an overnight late next week. Perhaps I should be more worried than I am.

[+ Lucky]

There is so much contradictory information out there. Still no info as to how omicron affects those with HIV or diabetes or old age.