Gaijin Gaming (2024)

11/04/2023

Here's What Happens When Everyone Panics and Pulls Money Out of Banks

Last month, the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) was the second-biggest bank failure in U.S. history. News of bank failures naturally fuels concerns for bank customers everywhere, so you might be wondering what would happen if you pulled all your money out of the bank entirely—and what would happen if a bunch of people shared the same thinking. The result would be what’s known as a bank run. In fact, SVB’s failure was driven by this sort of run on the bank.

What is a bank run?

A bank run is what happens when a large group of customers run to their bank (either physically or online) to withdraw their money out of fears that the bank will fail. When this is done simultaneously by enough depositors at the same time, the bank will use up their cash reserves and collapse.

A bank run triggered by fear of insolvency can push a bank into actual insolvency, and then turn into a default. In other words, bank runs are something of a catch-22: The fears of a collapse are what lead to the collapse.

Should you be worried about a run on the bank?

Most banks have a limited cash reserve they store in their vaults each day for need-based and security reasons. On the other hand, banks are required to keep a minimum amount of cash reserves on hand to minimize the risks related to bank runs.

Cash reserve requirements aren’t the only precautions for bank runs. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) was established in 1933 after the stock market crash of 1929 with the purpose of providing economic stability and public confidence in the U.S. financial system. And, as we’ve touched on recently, the FDIC provides $250,000 worth of insurance per depositor, which means your deposits will be protected up to that amount.

What to do if you’re nervous about the banks

Flocking to the banks and withdrawing all your cash isn’t a long-term solution. So what can you do as an individual customer? Unfortunately, it’s nearly impossible to predict that your bank is failing. Some small steps you can take are keeping Google alert for your bank in case there are news stories about it, as well as staying on top of your bank’s stock price.

If you take away one thing today, let it be this peace of mind: If you have less than $250,000 in your account at an FDIC-insured U.S. bank, you don’t need to live in a constant state of panic. Reduce your risk of losing money in a bank run by keeping your accounts under that FDIC-insured limit. And if you have more than $250,000 in liquid assets, split up your funds into different FDIC-insured accounts. And if you have more than $250,000 in liquid assets—I’m always looking for someone to take me out to dinner.

11/04/2023

You Should Absolutely Make This Spam and Tater Tot Casserole

Spam is a block of salty, umami-heavy satisfaction in an average meal scenario, but casserole it with eggs and tater tots, and it rises into an entirely different level. This casserole somehow tastes like a cross between fast food and fancy, but maybe that’s just a state of mind. Regardless, you should absolutely treat yourself to a Spam and tater tot casserole.

This crowd pleaser of a dish is a prime example of the excellent results you can get from using packaged foods to make a creative meal. Spam and tater tot casserole uses these eponymous ingredients in their store-bought form, no need to prepare and cook up protein or potatoes, and aside from onion powder and paprika to dress up the eggs, the components are already seasoned. I especially appreciated the specific use of smoked paprika. It’s not as obvious of a flavor booster as garlic powder, but it worked wonders to amplify the smoky flavors of the Spam.

I expected this dish to taste great, but I was in no way prepared for how the tater tots would transform the overall texture. They’re added into the mixture straight from the freezer, no thawing necessary, so I assumed the spuds would end up as individual, discernible potato bites. Instead the tots softened and blended seamlessly into the fluffy egg base, infusing the entire casserole with tater flavor. Any potato bites that were poking out of the mixture on top crisped up nicely, giving me the overall impression that I was eating a refined french fry bread pudding.

I stumbled upon this genius recipe on the Spam website, and while I think the ingredients and instructions are accurate for the most part, there are a few things to consider to ensure your casserole is a success. The recipe calls for “one bag” of tater tots, but doesn’t indicate what size bag. A 28-ounce bag versus a 5-pound bag is quite the difference. I used a 28 ounce bag (Ore-Ida tater tots) and felt like it might even be better with a handful fewer tots.

The recipe also doesn’t mention how to prepare the baking dish. Butter the darn thing. Not the biggest loss if you forget to do this, but I prefer when my casserole slices don’t put up a fight. Give the dish a quick lather of butter along the bottom and the sides to prevent any egg from sticking. To give your casserole a finished look, reserve a cup of cheese and a cup of seared Spam cubes to top the casserole before baking. The picture on the Spam website shows the top of the casserole with extra crispy meaty bits, but if you don’t set some aside, you won’t have such a picturesque top.

This last tip is critical: Do not broil it for 15-20 minutes like the recipe instructs. I don’t know what kind of broiler they have at the Spam test kitchen but that is far too long for my broil function. I actually did not need to broil mine at all, because it was perfectly golden and crispy after 45 minutes of regular baking, plus the Spam gets pan seared in the second step so it’s already crisp. If you do think broiling is a good idea, do it for 3 minutes and watch it like a hawk for every extra minute.

You can even explore beyond Spam and tater tots. Try adding other spices, chopped bacon, minced herbs, or mix in a tablespoon of barbecue sauce. Keep these tips in mind and you’ll be well on your way to making a fine casserole that floats for breakfast, lunch, or dinner.

Modified Spam Tater Tot Casserole

Ingredients:

1 small onion, diced

1 tablespoon butter

1 can Spam, ½-inch dice

2 teaspoons smoked paprika

2 teaspoons onion powder

1 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon black pepper

10 eggs, whisked

18 or 19 ounces of tater tots (about ⅔ of a 28-ounce bag)

3 cups of loosely packed shredded cheddar

Preheat the oven to 350°F. Butter a casserole dish, an 8-inch by 10-inch, or thereabouts.

In a frying pan over medium heat, sauté the onion in the butter until translucent. Set aside in a large bowl. In the same pan, fry the cubed Spam until crisped and browned on at least one side of each cube. Add all but a scant cup of the Spam cubes to the large bowl.

Reserve that cup of Spam cubes and a scant cup of the shredded cheese for the topping,

Add the dry seasonings to the bowl and toss. Add the eggs, tots, and remaining cheese and stir to evenly combine everything. Dump the mixture into the prepared casserole dish. Scatter the reserved Spam and cheese on top. Bake in the 350°F oven for 45 minutes. Optionally broil at the end for 3-5 minutes for an extra toasted top. Cool for 5 minutes before slicing and serving.

11/04/2023

Travel Cheap and Watch the 2024 Paris Olympics Ceremony for Free

While it might be too early to look for flights, it’s the right time to buy tickets for the 2024 Paris Summer Olympics. Some admissions are as cheap as $26, and for the first time ever, the opening and closing ceremony will take place outside a stadium and be free to the public. Here’s how to make an affordable vacation to experience the major international multi-sport event.

The 33rd Summer Olympic Games will take place from July 26 to Aug. 11, 2024, and are expected to attract millions of spectators from around the world.

How to catch the 2024 Olympics opening ceremony in person

Opening Ceremony Highlights

Olympic opening ceremonies are filled with fanfare, artistic performances, parades featuring all the competing nations, and, of course, the lighting of the Olympic torch. As mentioned, spectators will be able to catch the opening ceremony for free on July 26, 2024. You don’t need to be a ticket to the official games to watch the ceremony.

The opening ceremony will be held along the River Seinea, with thousands of athletes on boats cruising along the river. Paris is inviting about 600,000 people to watch along four miles of the upper banks of the riverside for free, with some tickets available for seating on the lower banks, bridges, and other nearby areas. There will also be 80 giant screens around the area showing the whole ceremony.

If you’re interested in the lower bank tickets, they are available during a “single tickets sales phase” and only available by a draw, which you can register for here. If you are selected, you can buy up to four tickets for the opening and closing ceremony. You can find more information about the opening and closing ceremonies here.

Where to buy tickets for the games

Tickets for the actual games are already on sale, but it’s not too late to get yours. Be mindful that the Paris 2024 ticketing website is the only place where international spectators can buy the tickets. If you buy tickets from any other unauthorized site, they could be cancelled.

Ticket sales for games, like the ceremonies, are determined by a draw. The second phase of the of ticket sales closes on April 20 at 6 p.m. CET, so make sure to enter the draw before then. If you win the draw, you’ll be notified by email after May 9 and will be given a 48-hour window to buy tickets for event, as well as paid tickets to the opening and closing ceremonies.

Ticket prices will vary depending on the sport and seating location you choose, but you can find tickets for as low as $26 and as high as $1,000. Since this is the second wave of ticket sales, there’s a chance that the most popular events will already be sold out. You can buy a maximum of 30 tickets per account, and a maximum of six tickets per event. Find all the ticketing information here.

Getting to Paris and lodging

Since it’s still a bit early for flights, it’s better to first buy tickets for Olympic Games you’re interested in attending (unless you just want to watch the opening and/or closing ceremonies for free), and plane your plane ticket purchase around those events.

You can start shopping for flights in September 2023, which will be around the time when most airlines will start selling flights for July 2024. It’s important to start tracking flights as early as possible to get good prices. We recommend you use Kiwi to buy your international flights.

The most important thing to book will be lodging. Some hotels in Paris are already taking bookings for the summer 2024, but the majority won’t open their reservations until about 13 months in advance, according to the New York Times. That means the earliest you can start looking for lodging will be around July 2023, and at that point, you should already know which events you’ll be attending, so you can plan your lodging around those dates. Just make sure you don’t wait any longer than July to start looking.

11/04/2023

Don't Use a Wire Brush to Clean Your Grill (Do This Instead)

Photo: Jan von nebenan (Shutterstock)

Not cleaning your grill can be dangerous, but how you clean it is important, too. Even if it’s the easiest option, you shouldn’t use a wire brush. Here’s why you should chuck that bristle brush in the trash, plus what you can replace it with.

The problem with bristle brushes

If you’ve spent any time on TikTok recently, you might have seen a viral video posted by a doctor of pediatric emergency medicine. The clip, which has over five million likes and millions more views, details the case of a four-year-old child who was admitted with ear pain after a barbecue and baffled doctors for days when they couldn’t find the cause. After a series of tests and days of pain, the source was identified: A small wire was embedded in the soft tissue of the child’s neck. It came from a wire brush used to clean the grill where his lunch had been made.

The viral video may be new, but the issue isn’t: In 2012, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued a warning against the brushes, noting that in recent years, “internal injuries have been reported following unintentional ingestions of wire grill-cleaning brush bristles by both children and adults.” In addition to the soft tissue of the neck, the bristles can perforate the gastrointestinal tract, which requires emergency surgery. And yet, these products are still for sale at a variety of retailers. Some of them are priced as low as about $3.

You can use foil to clean your grill instead

Fortunately, you have other options for cleaning your grill that are just as cheap and efficient. First, heat your grill to its hottest temperature and close the hood for 15 to 20 minutes. You should notice a lot of the gunk has already come off the racks, and then you can just use tinfoil. Ball it up loosely and grab it with a tongs or a heatproof glove, then push it around on the grill the same way you would a brush. If you don’t ball it too tight, it should be malleable enough to get into the grooves and spaces. It’s hard enough to scrape off baked-on food, but soft enough not to damage the grill itself.

11/04/2023

You Can Get a Free McDonald’s Big Mac Right Now

Photo: G_A_M (Shutterstock)

McDonald’s is giving out free Big Macs to those who download their app and spend at least a dollar. It doesn’t matter if you’re new to the app or already have it, you’ll be able to take advantage of this deal.

If you are new to the app, make sure to join “My McDonald’s Rewards” to get all the deals, although you might not see them right away. McDonald’s says it can take up to 48 hours to see new deals on your account. If you already have the app downloaded, you’ll find the deal under the “Rewards and deals” tab. You’ll probably see a couple deals if you haven’t used the app often. Find the “Free Big Mac with minimum purchase of $1.” Choose “Add to Mobile Order” to order through your phone, or “Use at restaurant” to pull up the QR code to scan it in person at a McDonald’s restaurant. You can also use the deal in the drive-thru by choosing “Use at restaurant” and using the four-digit numerical code on top of the QR code.

The deal is good until April 30, but you can only redeem it once. All McDonald’s should be participating.

11/04/2023

Keep a Melted Butter Jar Near Your Stove

Whenever I melt butter for brushing, drizzling, or dunking (or popcorn), I almost always overestimate the amount of butter I need to melt, and end up with a little extra. Melted butter can never be unmelted. It can re-solidify, but it won’t be the same. Some proteins will have inevitably coagulated and fallen out of suspension, and the texture will be a little greasier and oilier than a fresh stick. That’s OK though, because melted butter can always be re-melted and used again.

If you are an overly enthusiastic butter-melter like myself, you might need a mitigation strategy—one that doesn’t result in wasting precious butter. Instead of tossing the bonus butter, I transfer it to a jar (with a lid), and keep the jar by the stove. Every little bit of extraneous melted butter goes into that jar, as do any unaesthetic globs leftover from greasing pans of skillets. (Again, I almost always over estimate the amount I’ll need to grease a skillet.) Then, the next time I need melted butter, I get my jar.

You can use a fancy hinged jar with a metal clasp like the one you see above, but I prefer a Bonne Mamam jar because I can remove the lid and pop the whole thing in the microwave to re-melt the butter. You can also use a microwave-safe bowl (and cover with plastic to keep dust out), any piece of microwave-safe Tupperware, or similar plastic or glass food storage container. To re-melt, remove any lid and nuke for five seconds at a time, stirring after each blast until the butter is melted. Brush, drizzle, and dunk to your heart’s content, then place the jar back in its spot by the stove. Repeat as needed.

11/04/2023

Now You Can Talk to ChatGPT With Your Voice

We’re all used to the ChatGPT protocol by now. You boot it up, write your query, and the AI reacts accordingly—accuracy not guaranteed. While chatting with ChatGPT is surprisingly human-like, you’re really just texting at the end of the day. The chatbot isn’t at the point where you can have a spoken-word conversation like you would in-person or on the phone. At least, not without a little outside help.

To turn ChatGPT into a vocal conversationalist, enlist the help of TalkBerry, a new Chrome extension from developer Userly Labs. TalkBerry, according to the developer’s Twitter account, seems to have started as a language learning tool powered by AI. But while the TalkBerry chrome extension doesn’t place much of an emphasis on language learning, it does let you speak to ChatGPT with your voice, and have it respond in kind.

TalkBerry is easy enough to set up: Install the extension from the Chrome Web Store, then go to the ChatGPT web app. Here, you’ll notice a new green microphone button. You can click it or press the space bar to activate the microphone, although you need to grant the extension permission to use your mic the first time you do. After that, just start talking. You can end your side of the chat by hitting Enter, and cancel it entirely with Escape.

ChatGPT will process your query and write out its response as per usual. Once it finishes, however, it’ll read the results out loud. You can customize ChatGPT’s voice with the control strip next to the green mic button, too: You can change the language (13 options at this time), speed, and voice (I count 29 English options at the moment). If you want, you could have ChatGPT respond in another language, which makes the TalkBerry extension a bit like the language-learning app its developers originally created. It works well, and it’s seamless to setup, so kudos to the developer.

But TalkBerry is more than a neat trick, or one step closer to what the movie Her predicted in 2013. By allowing ChatGPT to be vocally interactive, it opens the chatbot up to users who are visually impaired. There’s no need for workarounds here: A simple button press lets you speak with ChatGPT, and another press soon initiates a spoken result in return. Tools like ChatGPT should be available to as many people as possible. I’m sure the future will bring a more accessible AI, just as accessibility features have evolved in current tech. But until then, tools like TalkBerry make it possible to for more people to experience ChatGPT and the burgeoning consumer AI experience:

There is a privacy angle to consider here, however. TalkBerry does claim it accesses “User activity,” a vague idea that, according to Chrome, could mean anything from network monitoring to keystroke logging. The developer claims your data isn’t used outside the core functionality of the extension, won’t be sold to third-parties “outside approved use cases,” and isn’t used to determine creditworthiness (not that that would ever cross my mind). Plus, if you dive into its settings, it only has access to the ChatGPT web app, so it shouldn’t be able to interact with your activity across other apps and sites.

I’ll take an optimistic approach here, and assume “user activity” is simply the data needed to power TalkBerry and turn your spoken words into a ChatGPT prompt. However, you can always turn TalkBerry off anytime you aren’t using it, just to be safe.

11/04/2023

Gamify Your Savings Goals With Sticky Notes

With the never-ending prospect of a recession hanging over our heads, building out your savings is a mental challenge. A tough economy is exactly when building up your savings should be a priority, but a tough economy is when finding the funds to save is most painful.

In order to boost your savings habit, what you need is an engaging way to train (or force) yourself to set aside a little money every day. Enter: the sticky notes method. Like with the cash stuffing method, using sticky notes adds a tangible element to savings to make your goals feel more real—you know, like what piggy banks used to do. Here’s what to know about using sticky notes to make saving money more fun while you work toward your savings goals.

How to use sticky notes to save more money

This hack comes from a trend on TikTok, aka the number one hub of perfect personal finance advice. (Kidding: TikTok is not all bad, but beware of any financial advice you find on your “for you” page.)

As we’ve previously covered, and as you’ve probably noticed in your own life, touching money and giving it away can actually hurt on an emotional level. On the flip side, adding the element of physical touch can incentivize you to be more aware of—and excited by—the money you’re saving. This is where the sticky notes come in. Here’s how it works.

First, write down different dollar amounts on individual sticky notes. The amount can be as small as single digits, but for bigger savings goals, feel free to write whatever amounts you can afford. Throw those sticky note dollar amounts in a container—perhaps a shoe box or a vase.

Then, every morning, pull a note at random, and set aside the amount of money listed. You can do this through online banking, or, if you’re really trying to get a mental boost, create a physical savings box with cash. I wasn’t kidding earlier: Break out that old piggy bank.

Remember, the amounts that you set yourself up to save should be personalized to your finances. To get started setting a goal amount, here’s how much money you should be saving in 2023.

At the end of the day, the sticky notes method is a simple gamification hack to get you more in touch with your savings goals. The rules are simple, and the rewards are worth it.

11/04/2023

Here's When You Should Pay Your Taxes With a Credit Card

We’re in the final countdown to Tax Day (Tuesday, April 18), which means you should be thinking about filing your 2022 tax return and paying your bill if you haven’t already. Most people are eligible to do their taxes for free, and if it turns out you owe money, there are a handful of ways to avoid any processing fees when you go to pay your bill.

If you can front the cash, it’s tempting to skip over the pay-by-credit-card option in favor of the IRS’ direct pay portal, which deducts directly from a checking or savings account. With a direct transfer, you don’t have to send the government a penny more than what you actually owe on your return. But there are a few good reasons to put your tax bill on your credit card this year.

How much does it cost to pay your taxes with a credit card?

The IRS partners with several third-party processors to accept credit card payments, and each charges a different transaction fee:

payUSAtax: 1.85% (minimum $2.69)

Pay1040: 1.87% (minimum $2.50)

ACI Payments, Inc.: 1.98% (minimum $2.50)

This means that if you owe $1,000 to the feds, you’ll drop anywhere from $18.50 to $19.80 in fees when you pay your bill with a credit card. Increase the debt to $5,000, and you’ll pay nearly $100 extra to use a credit card.

When should you use a credit card to pay your taxes?

Purposely paying a processing fee may seem illogical (and, if you’ve been following the Ticketmaster saga, enraging), but in some cases, you may gain more than you lose.

According to a breakdown from The Points Guy, there are a handful of credit cards that could net you more than 1% back, and possibly over 2% back, on your tax transaction. If you have a card with a high earning rate (miles or cash back), it may well be worth the fee.

Here are a few general instances when you should consider using your credit card for your tax bill:

Your card rewards outweigh the fee.

You need to hit a minimum spend (soon!) to receive your welcome bonus or other card perks, such as free hotel nights or elite airline status.

You have an intro 0% APR on purchases, meaning you don’t need to pay the bill immediately.

However, there are also a few downsides. Putting a big bill on your credit card could land you with hefty interest charges if you carry the balance. Plus, significantly increasing your credit utilization rate could affect your credit score. So keep those things in mind when deciding how to pay this year.

11/04/2023

Products From Targeted Ads Might Be Worse Than You Think

Photo: BestForBest (Shutterstock)

Almost everything you do on your phone is tracked. That data is collected and used to sell you targeted ads, which can be fine—but more often than not, they products are lower quality than what you would otherwise buy. A new study published this week from researchers at Carnegie Mellon and Virginia Tech shows how targeted ads are selling us more expensive products from lower quality vendors.

In the study, targeted ads were shown to 500 participants, where they were directed to more expensive products from lower-quality vendors than they would have otherwise found online through a generic search. The average price hike was 10%, and the products were twice as likely to be sold by lower-quality vendors according to Better Business Bureau ratings.

Of course, not everything about personalized ads is objectively bad. Seeing an ad for a local concert with your favorite band is better than some of other clutter you might see on banner ads and social media feeds. But even if it’s a product or service you’d like to buy, it’s it’s worth taking an extra step of two instead of buying directly from the ad and risking a more expensive, less-quality product. Just do a quick search to find that same product or service to get the “real” price and maybe a more reputable vendor. And, of course, consider using a VPN or privacy-focused browsers to avoid all that tracking before it starts.

11/04/2023

Five Things That Could Save Your Life If You're Immunocompromised

Hello from day 1,113 of isolation. It’s me, your immunocompromised friend in hell. Most days, it feels like the entire world wants you to eff off and die before they’ll just strap a mask to their flappers. As masking in doctors offices ends and everyone is slowly being forced back into offices and conferences, the outside keeps feeling riskier. You already know you are your best advocate. As the entire world shifts back into “normal” (best of luck with that), we have a different reality. Here are the five actions that really could save your life.

Stay on top of your boosters

The CDC really garbled the language around vaccines for immunocompromised (IC) people. The initial series was three shots, not two, then we had access to more boosters, and then Evusheld; it was all very hard to decipher. The good news is that it’s easier now: You just get the the bivalent booster, and you’re done. As a bonus, it’s the only booster anymore, so if you’ve gotten boosted since late fall, you got the bivalent. If you haven’t gotten it (and can medically do so), time’s a wastin’. The bad news, and there’s a bit of it, is that Evusheld doesn’t work against the current variant, so I hope you enjoyed that 12-hour desperate drive you took to find it. For those who couldn’t form antibodies or get vaccine doses for medical reasons, Evusheld was two shots of monoclonal antibodies delivered directly into your hip. But as variants change, so does the efficacy of monoclonal antibodies, and so as we moved into late winter’s variants, they removed the emergency-use authorization for Evusheld as it joined all the other monoclonal antibodies that had previously worked, but don’t anymore.

Some folks are trying to get scripts from physicians for an additional bivalent booster, and many have success. However, since there is no formal protocol from the CDC or FDA on giving additional boosters yet, no pharmacist will fill the script. This week, there was news that an additional booster might become available for us in the next few weeks, so it’s worth it to stay on top of the news. Set a google alert for “bivalent, immunocompromised.”

If you’re one of the lucky IC bunch that can actually get vaccine doses, and then actually form antibodies to the vaccine, you still may want to time that booster for two weeks or so before a risky event because that’s when your response will be the highest. Studies show that in our bodies, these vaccines wane very quickly, which is why hopefully, we’ll have more tools in the future.

Know what COVID looks like right now

With each subvariant, symptoms of COVID change. While it’s worth remembering that you can be totally asymptomatic and still be infectious, I’m sure you’re as tired as I am of hearing friends or coworkers claim that they’re just suffering from allergies or a cold, based on nothing other than a hunch, before they expose themselves to you. Knowing these symptoms can help you navigate risk mitigation around people.

Loss of taste and smell, a common symptom early on in the COVID crisis, became less common in Delta and Omicron, but made a small reappearance earlier this year. An epidemiologist recently noted that her and her colleagues were all noticing sneezing as a common COVID symptom in the last few weeks, which is unusual, and troubling, for everyone sure they have allergies. That’s part of the problem—the variants move too quickly for peer-reviewed studies to be the place to hear about new symptoms.

As one might expect in 2023, the nightly news is the last place to look for these kinds of details…so if you’re not already a part of TikTok, now’s a good time. Twitter also has a number of epidemiologists and immunologists who break down the latest studies and findings, as well as the community at .

Know where to get a test when you need it

If you have an underlying health condition, you are more prone to severe COVID, but getting treatment depends on getting a positive test. It sucks that PCR tests are hard to come by again. Most people are now relegated to home tests, most of which are rapid antigen/lateral flow tests. These tests are unreliable for the first five or six days because they can show a false negative (positives are reliable). So access to PCRs is essential, but many testing sites have closed, leaving only urgent care centers as options for a rapid PCR. Since you won’t want to go where the sick people are, if you can afford it, you’ll want to pick up at-home molecular tests. Cue Health and Lucira Health are options, and until May 11, you can still be reimbursed $12 per test, up to eight tests a month by private insurance.

Have a plan for if you get infected

Paxlovid is the only intervention we currently have against COVID. All monoclonal antibodies have now been ruled ineffective, including Evusheld. Interventions like Paxlovid are critical.

You need to understand how Paxlovid works, ensure that you’d be a candidate, and know where you can get it—all before you get COVID. It’s an antiviral that lowers your viral load, through a course of 30 pills over five days, and tends to leave a metallic, unappealing taste in your mouth that is partially muted by hard peppermints. The sooner you take Paxlovid, the more effective it is, but you can only get a script within the first five days of symptoms, with a positive test. While it was initially thought that Paxlovid could lead to rebound, which is testing negative and then testing positive again five to 10 days later, this turns out to be true of 15% of all COVID cases, regardless of whether the patient took Paxlovid.

If you have a physician (because not all IC folks have doctors or insurance), you need to discuss with them a game plan for if you get COVID. Who should you call? Are you a candidate for Paxlovid or another drug, or should you not pursue it due to a drug conflict or underlying issue? What if you test positive on a weekend; who would you call then? Remember, pharmacists can only script Paxlovid if they have your medical history, including tests, so your best bet is always going to be your physician. A call to the office can answer these questions usually.

You also need to know where to get a script filled. Few pharmacies are open 24 hours, and not everyone stocks Paxlovid—and even those that are listed may not have it in stock. It’s good to try calling and figuring out which pharmacy near you usually has it.

If you don’t have a physician, you can still get Paxlovid, and its worth your time to see which of these are accessible to you, now. First, there are a number of online virtual care platforms that specifically exist to script Paxlovid. You set up an appointment, pay a set rate, get connected, show them your positive test, and discuss your medical history, and they either write a script to fill locally, or overnight Paxlovid to you. In some places like Oregon or Massachusetts, the state has set up an agreement with one of these services to provide free care for those without a doctor or insurance.

Your plan should go beyond medication—who could you call for help getting groceries, taking care of a pet, or checking in on you.

Find your people

Most IC people I know are struggling to find ways to carve out a little more normalcy for themselves while staying safe. Its important to not feel alone, and it turns out, there’s a massive community out there of people just like you. Its time to root them out and forge some new relationships, either online or offline.

First, there’s the covidmeetups.com site, which is rudimentary but pretty great for legitimately connecting with people nearby. There’s an unthinkably large community on Facebook called “Still COVIDing” made up of hundreds of microgroups for your city, or singles or crafters or hikers, etc. There are support groups on meetup.com, and the twitter and TikTok hashtags I mentioned. Since Hinge and Bumble haven’t figured this one out yet, someone took up the cause on IG and started Covid Safe Cuties.

Upgrade those masks to an elastomeric, do a fit check, and invest in some ventilation and filtration.

I know the exhaustion of trying to explain to your people why you’re still doing all this extra work to stay safe. That’s why finding people you don’t have to explain anything to is critical.

It’s been so reassuring lately to realize how many people there actually are like me, living below the noise about going back to normal. Finding other people you can talk to can help make the next few years a little more tolerable as we try to figure out a new normal for us, too.

Gaijin Gaming

11/04/2023

11/04/2023

11/04/2023

11/04/2023

11/04/2023

11/04/2023

11/04/2023

11/04/2023

11/04/2023

11/04/2023

11/04/2023

Address

Website

Alerts

Videos

The Youngest Soldier Of World War 2! Real Life Story!!

Shortcuts

Share