I got in the other day which was nearly a week after I applied. They're just overwhelmed right now. Pretty sure they've only got like 4 people doing the approvals.
You can still subscribe to their communities and even reply if you're in an instance that's defederated from them, but you'll only see comments from the people in your own instance.
You don't actually get new content outside of your own though from what i can tell. Some beehaw posts pop up every now and then but they're always from this instances users that likely don't know that the defederation took place.