I also don't care. I get my booster with my flu shot and If I do get sick which I don't it is mild.
this post was submitted on 28 Aug 2024
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I finally got it this summer after avoiding it, it sucked. (Currently up to date on shots)
As the book says, we may be done with COVID, but COVID ain't done with us.
I still wear KN95 masks in public. I got COVID once two years ago and never want to get it again.
But the main concern isn't being deathly sick for a few weeks and having a cough that lasts for months (which I had, and which is enough to wear a mask a few extra times a day), nor death rates (which are still objectively awful and can take healthy and young people even if rare), it's the possibility of long COVID. Every time you get it, you're rolling the dice on lifelong, currently incurable health problems. And it's the same moral problem of potentially being a carrier that kills the elderly or susceptible person you may not even know.
I'm like, "you do you" to everyone who is treating COVID as the new flu, but it's objectively not. It may be endemic, hospitals may be used to it and have capacity, but it's still very dangerous.
Covid is endemic and the hospital system can handle it now that people have had it
We're in the middle of the largest spike in the last 2 years and school just started back up.
Yes, but can the hospital system handle it? We have these spikes just before school every year and there is not necessarily a huge spike in the excess death rate. Most people have antibodies now and the body will still recognize it with these mutations.
There are consequences to disease other than actually dying.
Yes, and we have all accepted those consequences. What's the solution anyway? More lockdowns? Mandatory masking? Most people who get sick get over it quickly.
Maybe you have, but just because you think it's a new cold doesn't make it true. Long COVID exists and people don't just get over it. Even when you do and there aren't immediately obvious consequences (not necessarily meaning there aren't any), people don't like to be sick for a week.
My employer still requires regular testing, uses air purifiers, and requires staying home until negative over multiple tests. We have family or friends that aren't exclusively healthy 20 year olds and are scientists and engineers, so we know a 3% incidence rate of long COVID adds up. Responsible businesses care about exposing their employees and customers to potential long term health consequences. The choice isn't do nothing or lockdowns.
That's great that your employer takes those extra precautions on your behalf but I'm not sure it's practical on a large scale. It sounds expensive and ineffective.
I have children in elementary school and we all get sick a few times a year and test every time we do. We're all vaccinated and boosted as many times as we're allowed and we haven't had Covid since early 2022, which was the first time. We also all test every time we go see an immune compromised family member.
I'm not necessarily advocating that we all do nothing, I just believe we all need to navigate the risk for ourselves and our families. There are things we can do as individuals, but there is nothing we can do as a society except monitor the situation. As long as the hospital system is safe, this is an individual problem.
That’s great that your employer takes those extra precautions on your behalf but I’m not sure it’s practical on a large scale. It sounds expensive and ineffective.
Why? Because your employer said fuck you? And "ineffective"? On what do you even think you could base that judgement? We catch cases every week and to our knowledge have never had an instance of in-office transmission.
We, as a society, could be better. We could have maintained free testing, mandated COVID leave, and invested in better air cleanliness. There's a reason nurses aren't just constantly infected, and it's not because they have super vaccines the rest of us don't get.
There's a cost for these preventions, but there's a very real cost for vax and forget. Millions more people have been disabled and removed from the workforce, every bout makes you more likely to get long COVID, and it's compounding other health problems, leading to earlier death and unusual ailments. These are societal costs whether or not you individually have avoided being the unlucky ones.
To answer your questions, air purifiers are not enough to protect people from Covid according to the CDC, unless you're masking, and you didn't mention that. Also, regular testing is expensive and you mentioned nurses, they wear masks.
Otherwise I suppose I need to read more about long covid. However, a lot of the symptoms sound like a lot of other things, like depression or lupus or Lyme disease. I'll take a look at your links in a bit and will be curious to see how it's diagnosed vs other things. Regardless, I still believe there isn't much we can do given cost, inconvenience and everyone longing for a sense of normalcy even still, agree to disagree on that I guess.
N95s can be reused to reduce cost. Cycle through 5 masks so that each mask sits for 4 days between uses. Throw away if it gets wet, becomes hard to breathe through, is visibly dirty, or will no longer fit tightly.
Air purifiers aren't enough to protect people, but they're a simple passive solution that would impact infection rates for a population that largely doesn't want to mask. Few people mask at my workplace. And air purification will help will all other sorts of disease, including helping us be resilient to the next pandemic, because it's a when and not an if. You mentioned often being sick with non-COVID colds and flus. Even if it's not a complete protection, wouldn't it be nice to be sick 20% less? Your community has a major source of disease transmission right there that they could reduce.
We should be coming out of COVID better prepared, instead we're even worse off.
I'm not often sick, I have had maybe five colds in the last two years. Pretty standard when you have small children and not nearly as bad as when they were in daycare prior to covid.
I find you incredibly unreasonable. Enjoy your bunker and be well.
Flu and other regular seasonal illnesses also carry the risk of long-term health consequences. People focus on "long covid" because it's new, but chronic health issues resulting from illnesses to which we are accustomed typically don't even merit conversation let alone the sort of protocols suggested by some for covid. It used to simply be called "post-infectious syndrome" or "myalgic encephalomyelitis syndrome."
I guess it's not surprising that there is an equal and opposite ideology to antivaxxers, but I do find them just about equal in terms of intractibility and unreasonableness. Two extreme and unrealistic views bunkered in silos of their own creation.
What completely braindead comparison. Cold and seasonal illnesses do not have remotely the same rate of severe long term issues as COVID. People also sometime got lasting diseases from stubbed toes, it doesn't make it comparable to COVID. You don't have 3-7% incidence rate for colds resulting in symptoms lasting two months and impacting daily life.
The enlightened centrism comparing antivaxxers to actual scientists is just the cherry on top.
K.
Wear a mask if you wanna.
It's weird that this is still an issue in USA?
Here (Denmark) it hasn't been an issue for ages, after we (almost) all got vaccinated 3 times. Actually it stopped being an issue already after the first vaccination.
There are professions like nurses that AFAIK remain monitored, but it's not something we hear about anymore.
Authorities are monitoring waste water, to detect if action should become required again. No need for worrying or any individual actions anymore.
From what I understand (person living in the US in their 30s), pretty much everyone I know has gotten the vaccine and 2 boosters. But (allegedly) because insurance companies are no longer footing the bill, pharmacies are stonewalling people asking for the next booster. I know three people who have separately been in contact or contracted the new Covid strain, all of whom couldn't get the latest booster.
We don't get that here either, except if you are older, I think it's 65+, or you are vulnerable for some other reason.
I think one of my neighbors were infected about ½ a year ago, but the symptoms were very mild, so I'm not sure.
From what I hear the new strains are more infectious but less dangerous if you catch it. So maybe it's not a biggie anymore?
I've seen recent pictures from USA, where some demonstrators and police were wearing masks, nobody does that here anymore.
But all your friends being vaccinated is not enough, you need a general populous around 90% to be vaccinated.
We didn't quite achieve that, but we did achieve 97% with vulnerable groups, and 99% with health and social workers.
We do have anti-vaxxers, but they are few, and not a single party has an anti-vaxxer policy.
Protesters and police don't wear masks for covid, they wear them so they can't be identified. Places like Hong Kong used them heavily before covid existed.
Oh boy, the world has gone mad with sociopathy!
I would have thought that would be illegal for a policeman in USA, aren't they supposed to be able to identify?
Interesting. Well, I'm glad you don't have anti-vaxxers, because they are alive and well here, even in a pretty progressive city like mine.
The elderly have almost certainly gotten every booster available to them, understandably, and I'm not so sure about the young. A confounding factor is that most of my friends work at least somewhat remotely, and so only the people who have to see other people in person are masked up.
I have heard the same about the new strains (i.e. more contagious but less serious), but the two people I know who have contracted it this year have both been on their ass for at least a day or two. Add on top of that that we still don't fully understand Long Covid...
Dominant strains may also be different depending on country, and especially if you are on another continent.
But there can also be big differences in how big the original infection was. A bigger infection gives the immune system less time to respond, before the virus has infected your entire system.
But all your friends being vaccinated is not enough, you need a general populous around 90% to be vaccinated.
There was no percentage that would have quashed COVID, because the vaccine doesn't stop transmission. A vaccine-only approach to COVID means an ever-circulating and ever-mutating disease, like the flu, but with a much higher chance for long term issues.
That is false, vaccines also prevent the decease from spreading. As it cannot multiply in a vaccinated body.
Lol what? That's not remotely true. If it was vaccinated people wouldn't even get sick. Where do you get this nonsense?
Denmark has a much higher vaccination rate than the US, where vaccination became heavily politicised and one of their two parties basically embraced antivaxxing.
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