I had a massive pity party for myself on Thursday/Friday and started looking for great places to live in America by crowdsourcing ideas on Facebook.
Of course that stirred up a flurry of messages asking if we were moving … God willing, no, but something’s gotta give. Every week things change and new rules are announced that are very unclear and it takes a week to clarify/understand what they mean and by the time we get it they are on to the next announcement that is no clearer than before.
Am I too tired to explain the most recent confusion? Let’s give it a try. A week ago in order to enter Abu Dhabi you needed either a PCR nose swab test ($100) that was good for 48 hours of crossings or a quick blood test at the border ($13) that was good for a 1 time crossing.
This is mostly an issue for commuters as regular people have been trained to treat AD as it’s own country and not even attempt to decipher the ever changing rules to come home if we were to dare venture over the border … but there are people who have to commute every day (as the cities are only an hour and 15 mins apart). This change was a boon for commuters as they could pay $13 per day (plus the hassle of the line at the border for testing, etc) instead of $100 every 2 days.
But 7 days ago they made an announcement saying that the Nose test would be good for 6 days as long as you had a current blood test which would also be good for 48 hours, but you couldn’t do blood tests back to back. So instead of the cheap tests only, daily commuters would have to trade on and off between the tests. (We think. This announcement was particularly confusing in wording and no one was ever sure what it meant. Which means you’d be at the mercy of those at the border interpreting it in whatever way they deem accurate. Well that’s always the case here, but I digress.)
The decision makers must have decided it was confusing too, because yesterday they announced that once again you could do either test to cross the border, but after 6 days of being in AD you’d have to do another nose swab. Still so unclear. What about those who do daily crossings? Do they have to do a 6 day follow up test? For a one time trip if you did a nose swab to cross why would you now need another nose swab on day 6? (Doubling the amount of testing that was previously required.)
The bigger question is why are we conducting all this security theater (I love this term along with hygiene theater) in our city while the rest of the country is going on as normal?
With confusion like this it’s no surprise why we end up staying close to home. There are people who have no idea what all the rules are, and it’s much better for their peace of mind, but I don’t like to live in the dark. I might have to try dimming the lights a bit though because my brain can’t take much more of this.
The restrictions that affect us daily are no visitors are allowed to our home, no public or private gatherings (other than 4 people to a table in a coffee shop or restaurant) and masks everywhere in public. Those restrictions haven’t changed since early on in quarantine. Churches are beginning to be allowed to meet in person, but you have to register in advance, go through a sanitizing machine (like a mister of disinfectant), insert your ID with a chip so it logs your presence as it captures your temperature, and then you can sit way spaced out (the photos I saw had people at separate ends of the pews and every other row), and service is a maximum of 1 hour. Our church, because we don’t have a dedicated space, has to wait until they allow public meetings (like in hotel conference rooms) to be able to open. With the current restrictions we’d prefer to stay home. We compromise by hopping in the car after the service ends and meeting up with friends from our home group at the mall food court to catch up in person.
On the bright side the news announcement requiring quarantine in a field hospital for positive people has quietly disappeared. The link still exists, with the original headline, but it takes you to a different story now. Such is the way things go here. Poorly conceived ideas disappear, leaving only rumors behind.