Comment by chx | Hacker News Reader

Comment by chx | Hacker News Reader

I have been living for 12 years in Canada in an apartment with a baseboard heater. Came an unusually cold winter -- for Vancouver at least -- and I have acknowledged the heater just can't cope with this much cold. Old windows, not much insulation, the works. I bought three three 1500W ceramic heaters and AWG 12 extension cords and it was OK.

Then a visitor told me the baseboard heater had a cover which you could remove. How was I supposed to know?? https://i.imgur.com/Gncty0s.jpeg see that long hole in it? Well, the cover was always on it and it got painted over and I had no idea it can be removed. I grew up in Europe, behind the Iron Curtain actually, childhood heaters in prefabricated buildings were like this https://i.imgur.com/8KMuAKO.jpeg but even more modern ones were on the wall https://i.imgur.com/s6NWHDM.jpeg and I never before had a baseboard heater.

There are things you expect to be problematic with immigration. This was certainly was not one. Another was finding a laundry basket when I came over. Not really an online thing, not then, not in Canada at least. So I asked someone in the elevator. That was weird.

Past immigration shopping, surprisingly, even in 2024 is a problem. I just moved back to Europe after more than 15 years. Now I can't find a travel size and packaged lemon juice anywhere. Not in Malta where I live (not a surprise) but neither in the UK either (WTF). https://www.waitrose.com/ecom/shop/search?&searchTerm=lemon%... https://www.sainsburys.co.uk/gol-ui/SearchResults/lemon%20ju... this and Amazon UK has an appropriate size https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B07W1KGCZJ but it's a weak cover, it will spill if it gets jostled in the backpack. I am drawing a total blank: https://geizhals.eu/?fs=zitronensaft+100ml&hloc=at&hloc=de&h... In North America I could get https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00BZSUWPY but now that I live within ferry distance of Sicily, I can't? Nothing for succo limone 100ml site:it either. scratches head

Why'd you leave Canada, if I may ask?

Because y'all don't mask any more and if all I can do is sit at home then why not be warm while at it? And be closer to family, too.

I can travel wearing the Halo to visit my brother's family (in the UK) and my parents (in Hungary) but that's all. Otherwise, by and large, I don't go anywhere any more. I can't. That's the new reality. I wear a positive air pressure respirator to risk such activities as boarding a bus. And while it's quiet it's not silent so cinema, theatre etc is totally out. You can't possibly imagine how lonely life became even for an introvent who has worked from home all his life. I didn't quite get suicidal over the 2022 holidays but let's just say I understood why suicide statistics climb up over the holidays and I decided this can not be borne any more and changed things so it's easier to visit what few family I have left. I have no other human contact than these visits every few months. Sometimes I don't leave my apartment for several days at all and if I do, it's mostly for lonely walks (very rarely the post office or the pharmacy). The few friends I had in Vancouver got lost during Covid -- and I know no one in Malta. (Perhaps this helps explaining some of my recent post history.)

Thank you for the explanation. I definitely didn't appreciate what's going on in your life, but that makes sense. Loneliness is of course a significant danger and I'm sorry your life circumstances are making it difficult to be with other people right now. May I ask what the danger is for your particular circumstance? Is it for your health or for a loved one? And it's something to do with compromised immune system? Such that you want to limit contact to avoid infecting either yourself or the loved one? Wishing you all the best tho eh, I'm only asking to try and help brainstorm solutions.

For my third shot they were still doing mass vaccinations in Vancouver and the way to get express treatment was by your doctor filling out a stupid form which had a number of conditions but didn't have a way to say "other" so he just gave me a generic doctor's note urging to get vaccinated. On site the nurse asks, ok, why do you need one ahead of your age cohort? I haven't even finished listing the shit I live with when she said enough, enough. It's not one health condition, it's a mix brewed in hell. Based on this and on my reaction to the first AZ shot, I am fair certain I wouldn't survive covid. (You do know "variant" means "vaccine resistant", right?) And if by luck I would, I don't think I would much appreciate long covid.

Luckily shots from 3rd were mRNA and those were uneventful.

Do you have a diagnosis yet? Sounds like it's a hard to categorize condition, likely chronic? Chronic illness can be very difficult to diagnose (correctly), as it's tough to know which symptoms are closer to the root cause when there's so many symptoms. Do you think there's a root cause (or a couple) to your cluster of symptoms? Do you think there's some testing that can help you identify some of the root causes?

I'm sure you've done testing for your health, but it can often be very difficult to do thorough testing in Canada. In my experience, you reeally have to press your doctors to get thorough testing, beyond just cursory basic panels for e.g. liver, immunity, etc. I understand they're triaging and saving public resources, but it's not ideal for patients.Likewise, a lot of OHIP-covered tests aren't the most up-to-date, which causes an industry for naturopathic tests to try and fill the gaps, but you obviously have to be careful which of those tests are actually good or not (but still there's some good non-OHIP covered tests you can do too).

idk, obviously I don't know too much about your health, but if I were in your shoes, and in a sense I can relate (going through my own health journey, but aren't we all?), I would be doing as much testing as possible to try and identify root causes and get those fixed. I expect that is what you are doing, but I know how hard it can be to navigate the health system and actually get proper testing.

In regards to your point on variant meaning vaccine resistant, that's a good point. Vaccines (the current iteration) necessarily have to try and predict the strains they're targeting, because the viruses evolve so quickly. But there's specificity and more generalized types of immunity in the body. We've got lots of immune systems and they're tuned in different ways. You can probably get more in-depth testing to see how these specific, relatively independent immune systems are functioning in your body if you want to try and figure out how at-risk you are for covid or long-covid. Again, I'm sure you are doing significant testing as obviously you care a lot for your health, but I would encourage you to press your primary care doctor to do more in-depth testing, and also consider some of the naturopathic tests (ignore their solutions, just use their lab tests), because they can also provide valuable insight into root causes.

Oh, I got a good neurologist back in Hungary thirty years ago who over two years have sorted what's wrong and set me up and I have been symptom free since 1997 and then I added diabetes T2 on top of a couple years back, all of this is known. That's not the problem, thanks.

A fellow HN reader I know in a Covid Cautious online community shared your comment with me, and I just wanted to come here to say that you’re not alone.

There are some of us who stay largely indoors and only leave the house for essential visits, with a respirator. I’m one of those people.

I don’t know if you’re able to find a local community that’s cautious too.

But if you want to talk, I have contact details in my bio.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com