I ended up finally getting COVID a few weeks ago. I was working in person in hospitals before any vaccines existed and never got it.

I was either lucky or unlucky it was while I also was sick with the flu. I just woke up one day and besides the flu aches I felt just totally bizarre. I'd describe it as sparkly brained. Then I noticed I couldn't taste the goat cheese I put in a salad. I took a COVID test and it came back positive. So I don't really know what symptoms I had were from the flu and which were from COVID but I basically worked (from home) and slept 14 hours a day for a week and a half. I had congestion for like 2 weeks after and still do a little too. Just crappy all around. And then I'm here in Amherst (N. Buffalo) in Blurricane central.

Pretty crap winter, but it could have been so much worse. People are still dying of COVID. People lost power and some got stuck out of their house. So despite all this, I still feel a bit fortunate.

Yep, that's one of the reasons I'm expecting it to go much higher. I'm not listening myself, I think it'd be too depressing but people are constantly reporting more and more.

This is some nonsense. This was a century level storm. Part of the problem is Buffalo deals with storms all the time so people thought they could run home on the leading edge but it hit so hard and suddenly they got caught. It wasn't just the snow, it was complete whiteout conditions were people were getting lost going outside in their own neighborhood and 70 mph wind gusts where the snow was all coming in sideways. The killer was even the emergency vehicles built to get places would try to get to emergencies and all got stuck. There were no emergency services and a lot of the first deaths were due to that. You have a heart attack, well that's too bad. Lose power in 11 degree weather, or your windows break from the hurricane winds, hope you figure it out.

I heard it's up to 35 now, likely to go quite a bit higher.