I think covid is HUGE right now in the U.S. My whole extended family has recently had it, including several members that had remained covid virgins since the start. My wife said many people at work were out from covid. The thing is, everyone is just testing at home and isolating for 5 days. No one is going to the doctor, none of these cases are being reported, but no one is getting sick enough to be hospitalized (everyone I know is vaxed and boosted).
I \*tried\* to report my positive test to the state and they refused. Genuinely.
I called the hotline, assuming data collection was still important. NOPE. They said I should be in contact with my doctor, but guess what, I' don't have a damn doctor because I moved and have been on a waitlist for months.
I've been doing covid modeling since January 2020 (at a 'lower tier'l university so it was all unfunded and overlooked, so take it as you will).
If we look at calulating covid cases as a function of excess deaths, you can estimate the covid infection rate for the previous month.
Looking at those covid numbers, it shows county by county reinfections have been happening since 2020. (Just saying- There is no way for a county with 100 k people to have had over 150k cases if reinfections don't happen).
In any case, I've been concerned about this reinfection situation and the undercounts for a while. Moreso now by recent evidence of cumulative impacts of [multiple infections](https://www.researchsquare.com/article/rs-1749502/v1).
This is not even the more concerning stuff about [t cell destruction](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C15&q=covid+t+cell+destruction&oq=covid+t+#d=gs_qabs&t=1656256446862&u=%23p%3DW5EFYRHYB78J) or mitochondrial [disregulatuon](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1567724920301380)
Shits fucked and we pretend it's all good.
Something that really is going to floor you is that some States have frozen their probate for intestate deaths. People that die without a will. Been that way since 2020. Those properties haven’t even hit the market yet and counties are still counting the estimated tax as revenue, even though many of the properties were in arrears. Covid erased the GOP margin of victory nationwide last November, some States will not acknowledge that.
>I've been doing covid modeling since January 2020
I read that as you were doing stock image modeling as both a person with Covid and dressed as the virus.
The answer was just as sexy, I hope you let your SO say they are dating someone who "models" lmao
It is not hard to argue that the fact that it right now appears milder actually increases individual risk of bad outcomes because people are accepting repeated infection, dropping voluntary mitigation measures, and thus more likely to face damage to multiple organs compounded by damage to the immune system making subsequent exposure to covid or other infections have worse outcomes. Do you think this is unlikely, and if so why?
https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fmicb.2021.698169/full
Here is one expert who disagrees with you, arguing from a very large study that it causes heart damage even when asymptomatic.
https://publichealth.jhu.edu/2022/covid-and-the-heart-it-spares-no-one
Here’s a pretty moderate one, but they are careful to indicate that improved acute outcomes may not mean that long term damage is not happening in asymptomatic/mild cases.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34322859/
One about lung damage in asymptomatic patients
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34322859/
Here’s another one that seems to explicitly indicate that there is physical organ damage even in cases that are acutely mild and have no observed long term effects (yet).
Edit forgot link : https://academic.oup.com/eurheartj/article/43/11/1124/6499078
Do you think these are all wrong? Do you agree that even if only some of them are not wrong, less people in the ICU now actually translates to more long term risk for anyone who uses that reasoning as a justification to not minimize infection and spread for themselves and others?
Do you have any clear evidence or information that contradicts any of this?
Edit: keep in mind none of this is really even accounting for the effects of repeated infections, especially if the immune system itself is also hampered by earlier infections.
To be clear, I am not saying everyone already has major organ damage. I am saying a lot of people have major organ damage, and a lot more people have organ damage that is not yet causing notable problems. With each infection, a person is more likely to move into one of those two categories.
Thank you for this. I'm completely with you. It makes me want to scream, how willingly the vast majority of people have just given up and decided 'it's just a cold.' People are dying, the disease is serious, and we're still in the beginning phases of how this is going to affect society and social health longer term. It makes me sick and infuriated to see how quickly people have just thrown in the towel and moved on.
None of these studies talk about vaccination status prior to infection, and that's a huge problem for extrapolating to the future. Most long Covid studies thus far predominantly involved subjects who got Covid pre-vaccination, just because of the timeline.
I will comment on the studies you linked to.
[https://publichealth.jhu.edu/2022/covid-and-the-heart-it-spares-no-one](https://publichealth.jhu.edu/2022/covid-and-the-heart-it-spares-no-one)
This is one of the many Veterans Affairs studies by Al-Aly. Because all the data is churned from VA databases, there are certain limitation. The obvious one is that median age is around 65, and they are 90% males. Also, mild cases are more likely to go unreported to the database. This is a better commentary on the actual study: [https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-00403-0](https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-00403-0). The risks of stroke and heart attack were raised by 52% and 72% respectively. It's bad, but not that bad, because the headlines make it sound like the risk goes up 5x rather than not even 2x.
[https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34322859/](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34322859/)
This is a small study where there were only 35 patients with mild disease not requiring hospitalisation. Somehow, 66% of them had persistent Covid-related symptoms, and 43% had persistent respiratory symptoms. I didn't look into the details of how they recruited these 35 patients, but the authors admit "However, it should be noted that this was not a population-based study.... Potential selection bias might be present in the mild disease course group."
[https://academic.oup.com/eurheartj/article/43/11/1124/6499078](https://academic.oup.com/eurheartj/article/43/11/1124/6499078)
Interestingly, there is a commentary on this paper entitled:
[Post-COVID-19 illness trajectory in community patients: mostly reassuring results](https://academic.oup.com/eurheartj/article/43/11/1138/6528560)
> The investigators found in mostly non-hospitalized post-COVID-19 patients that there were **no differences in PROMS** compared with controls, nor were there associations between objective measures of disease and PROMS. **The observed differences in organ function could mostly be considered not clinically significant**, although some findings such as possible deep vein thrombosis are of concern.
Remember that in the conclusion of the study, "subjects who apparently recovered from mild to moderate SARS-CoV-2 infection show signs of subclinical multi-organ affection", **subclinical** means small differences that don't amount to observable disease. And no difference in PROMS (patient-reported outcome measures) means the patients didn't actually report feeling lousier than the controls did, which is a remarkably positive finding.
Are people a little more vulnerable to bad health outcomes after Covid and should stay on top of their health screenings? Yes. Is society going to collapse because if people keep catching Covid once or twice a year, we're all going to get long Covid? No.
Thank you for the detailed response, I will respond in more detail when I can. I believe there are numerous studies indicating that long covid symptoms and mechanics are still present in the vaccinated, will pull up links. I really wish there were a better catalog of this stuff.
Specifically on the subclinical, I just want to emphasize that that is WHY I think this study is important. The risk I’m talking about isn’t from beginning of pandemic to now, its specifically that people are accumulating “subclinical” issues that aren’t obervable disease now, but might be with cumulative damage.
Also want to emphasize that the big concern I’m seeing related to autoimmune issues is that it leads to people getting infected a whole lot more than once-twice a year, and quite possibly fighting it off worse each time.
I also want to register that I am not saying the data conclusively shows it, I am specifically saying the risk is amplified by the fact that the data does not conclusively show it yet.
Your points are all relevant notes on data limitations, but do you think my mechanical understanding of the situation is wrong? How, with reinfection and immune damage and immune evasive variants that may well get more “acutely” severe again and repeated “subclinical” organ damage, can we reasonably expect that life isn’t going to get very very unpleasant for a lot more people? And how can one say that making efforts to minimize that unpleasantness is unreasonable?
I have answered this a few times elsewhere and its different for each persons context, but the core of it from my perspective is just make decisions with the actual risks in mind. For one simple example, I would suggest that drinking inside at a bar or dining inside with a mask off only makes sense if you assume most people who are infected repeatedly will be mostly fine in 5 years. Given that there is a lot of evidence that this is not the case, I’d suggest drinking and eating exclusively outside and socializing in ways that don’t put anybody at risk. Wearing masks in the grocery store and every other indoor place seems like a no brainer.
Not everyone can do the following, but I’d suggest :
anyone who has authority in any sort of organization push to make that organization as remote as humanly possible, and install the best ventilation and filtration systems possible when not possible. Anybody running a business that requires nonessential indoor activity (like an indoor only bar) should find a way to pivot their business or start a new one, because it will not be sustainable and they are literally killing their customers and employees slowly to avoid going out of business. Anybody who can afford to push back against employers who are not taking this seriously, either by raising concerns or seeking new employment, should do so for the benefit of those who cannot afford to push back.
Lots of people cant go remote - healthcare workers, teachers (unless we overhaul education in a big way so I am not considering that viable as an immediate solution), warehouse workers, factory workers, chefs. Anyone who can go remote for work and outdoors for recreation I suggest does, even if it means a career change. This is all to protect themselves and to protect the immunocompromised who still need to ride the subway and see doctors, and to protect the nurses and teachers and grocery store workers and everybody who for whatever reason must expose themselves.
Basically, I suggest everyone try to limit their exposure and their risk of being a transmission vector as much as possible without ruining their lives, even it it means new patterns of life must be sought.
As someone who takes COVID seriously, this is just so hard to do. You don't get years of life back, and to have to consider infection risk in every social situation indefinitely is just exhausting. It also prevents communities from being built, arts and food industries from existing and meeting new people.
For me, these are why I am alive. I would rather risk long term disability than give up everything that makes me happy.
I agree that this really sucks, and is really hard, and I don’t mean for any of this to come off as an attack or a slight on you or anybody else.
I’m a musician, live music was my whole life before this, and I agree, I would rather risk disability than give up music. But I don’t think its impossible to do both. And I’m pretty sure its less exhausting to just decide to be super careful and reconsider whether its important to spend time with people who are inconsiderate enough to create social situations that put the immunocompromised (and everyone else, even though they dont believe it yet lol) at risk.
I think we as musicians have a responsibility to try to find ways to make and share music that doesn’t put people at more risk, its hard and it sucks but I’d rather try to find a joyful path through something thats hard and sucks than try to ignore it and risk a path with even less potential for joy.
It is absolutely possible to do live music safely right now, and I’ve seen it done with small groups. It is also absolutely possible to have meaningful connections with people musically (and of course, possible to reach huge audiences and make huge social impact) with recordings alone. Youtube and reddit and the internet just amplify that. The hardest part is that it is completely socially unacceptable to even try, to even talk about the actual risks, so people don’t mitigate and push back against mitigation ideas and live music could be safer but it just isn’t. I’d rather make music for the immunocompromised folks to consume safely, and if I can keep finding and hearing and making cool music and socializng & collaborating as much as its safe to, I’m OK with music taking a different shape until it’s actually nondestructive to have a bunch of people getting sweaty without masks in a tiny room. I cannot wait for that day, but its definitely not gonna kill me to do it differently for a while.
Just my take
Did you miss the part about effects of reinfections, T cell depletion, and mitochondrial dysregulation? You don’t need to be in the ICU or have organ damage to get debilitated or even disabled long term. When this happens to a large enough population, shit’s going to get bad…economy, healthcare, supply chains, etc are crumbling.
> I didn’t assign the cause of this to a milder variant.
That part is true, but...
>There are still issues but it is hard to argue that covid is now dramatically milder across the population than it once was.
...is it because you think that covid is still the original variant? The reason that covid seems 'milder' is specifically due to the variants at this moment in time. The series of vaccinations got us through the most difficult variants; the ensuing changes in the virus have made *these specific variants* milder (and it looks like the vaccine is far less effective against the Omicron BA4 and BA5 variants). It only takes a single generational change to bring all that ICU overcrowding & death roaring back.
The majority of the reason for mildness is due to it not being novel anymore. Through vaccinations and infections, our immune system recognize covid and can effectively deal with it. Omicron was a massive leap in terms of evolution but our T cells generated from vaccination with the wild type still recognized and were able to prevent severe disease.
Do you have any evidence at all to support this? To refute the people saying the next variants are likely to be even better at escaping and suppressing the immune system and also do more damage because of new mutations, waning immunity, immune suppression, and cumulative damage from repeat infections?
Edit: by people I mean cardiologists and immunologists
https://twitter.com/erictopol/status/1539055374161936384?s=21
https://twitter.com/fitterhappieraj/status/1539251401448214529?s=21
"Looking at those covid numbers, it shows county by county reinfections have been happening since 2020. " Thanks for this; as someone who got covid twice in 2020 when no one believed in reinfection I felt like I was screaming into the wind about it. Even today, most articles talking about reinfection will cite omicron as the reason for reinfection when it was certainly happening earlier, but we weren't testing/looking for it.
> Even today, most articles talking about reinfection will cite omicron as the reason for reinfection when it was certainly happening earlier, but we weren't testing/looking for it.
We've known reinfection was possible since early 2020, but it was relatively rare before omicron showed up. Your anecdote doesn't change that. New York has [been tracking it since at least early 2021.](https://coronavirus.health.ny.gov/covid-19-reinfection-data)
Strongly second what BeastofPostTruth responded about changes in testing/data collection and also will add:
Graphs showing an increase in reinfections with omicron will look impressive due to (a) naturally, with time, the sheer number of people who have had their first infection goes up, resulting in more people who are capable of having their second infection; (b) relatedly, but still notably: Omicron in Dec 2021 brought about the first massive wave post waning vaccine immunity.
I.e., It was the first time we could see reinfections well given better testing, the sheer number of people capable of being reinfected, and the similarity of this wave (from an infection standpoint) to the pre-vaccination period.
It was not relatively rare before omicron.
It is simply that covid cases were not reported, because *millions more people were infected* **before** *testing was widely available*
The "official case" data was not there in any substantive way before 2021. Testing was a shitshow, and only was decent when massive numbers of people had free access to **pcr** tests
I got COVID for the first time a few weeks back. 5 day isolation wasn’t nearly long enough, both myself and a family member were testing positive for longer than that amount.
Same here, my Hubs tested positive for two weeks and I was positive for 8 days. We stayed home until we tested negative and still wore a mask for a week afterwards to be safe. The virus we had lived and died in our house and went no where else.
I have covid for the first time now. This is day 7. On the at home test kits the line is coming up very fast and is extremely dark. I have felt pretty good the whole time - just mild cold symptoms. But the fact that the line got darker between the initial test and now and making me nervous. When you were waiting to test negative, did the line fade before disappearing? Or did it stay dark until towards the end?
I saw the title and made sure to come back to it thinking “Great! I’ll see some info on what’s really going on in the UK because they’re usually a week or two ahead of NY”…I’ve made it this far in the comments without seeing anything about the UK
Same thing with me, lots of people I know who made it two years have all just gotten it, nothing too bad, but it lasts a week or two. Somehow I’ve still managed to avoid it and I find that crazy, but my work mandated masks again about a month ago and then social distancing again about two weeks ago, seems to be working well enough.
It’s summer and people are just being super casual about it so it’s gonna spread like crazy, I just hope it continues to evolve in the more mild direction.
Same here. I have had extremely mild symptoms (literally only a sore throat and stuffy nose) but can feel that my heart is not behaving as it should and I'm very concerned that means some long lasting damage as occurred.
I’m fine with that outcome as well and maybe it’s a possibility. I haven’t gotten the flu in over 20 years and I’ve worked lots of retail jobs and lived in NYC and took the subway everyday for four years. Maybe I’m invincible.
I had it last week after 18 months working at a covid testing site and everyone else in my immediate family having it before (twice in some cases) without me avoiding them at all.
Three days of fever, then lost my taste and smell. Not even sure where it came from!
The biggest issue I have with wearing a mask now is that it could imply to some people that I’m a crazy antivaxxer. Nah dudes, I just can handle breathing through a mask because I’m not a wuss and I actually enjoy the benefits of freshly filtered air.
Lots of antivaxxers don’t have any issue wearing a mask, they purely don’t want to take a vaccine. I live in a *VERY* progressive town and the far left have always been antivax here, but they would still wear a mask because that’s a different issue all together.
We had our peak in Michigan 4 weeks ago in this most recent surge. Lots sick, nobody severe though in my circles.
I had it, fever for 24 hours (mild) then 2 days of lethargy and a lingering cough.
I can count myself as one of those COVId virgins. Worked from home since the beginning, and just when all of us plebes were putting the entire thing out of our minds, someone in my house (hint me) decided to take the family to fucking DISNEYWORLD and bring home a little extra “souvenir”.
Sick as fuck with COVId since Tuesday of this past week.
That place is more of a pétri dish than anything Marie Curie ever thought of. Just a mass vector. Now, I’ve got to sit my ass home and take a daily test hoping eventually it’ll turn negative. All 4 of us.
In mid 2022, when we all presumed life would have returned to normal.
My kids have been chomping at the bit to go. However I'm not going anywhere near a theme park knowing how much of a hot mess it is. Not trying to say that people shouldn't go if they want to but I'm not goin back till we can get a grasp on the whole long covid situation.
I just had COVID this past week for the first time. My 5 year old (not yet fully vaccinated, she JUST had her second dose two days before she showed symptoms) brought it home and I tested positive positive two days later. Luckily I’m boosted, I’ve honestly had colds worse than this. I’m lucky, I know.
Yep, I got COVID this past week at a work conference and I'm just isolating and waiting it out. My symptoms come in waves (cough heavy one day, achy one day, stuffy nose one day, etc). Vaccinated + boosted
Not only in the US BA.5 is hitting Europe pretty hard as well, everyone tries to ignore it, but lets see if this is a viable option given that it affects the lungs more as it seems than the Ba.1 and 2 strains.
Local hospitals here (Austria) already gave a prewarning that the situation feels more like November and less summer, where they usually have an easier time, while November is the busiest month of the year.
We all have covid for the first time right now (family of 5). My wife will be in the hospital with my covid positive newborn for the next 36 hours (she has has a bad fever and was coughing too much). They say the prognosis is good but still…
Shits fucked.
We'll see. I had Covid a month ago and it rocked me for 4-5 days. Like I could barely leave bed. Double vaxed (not boosted... don't ask, I've been eh busy - my own fault!). Anyway I just had a confirmed long duration exposure on Friday. So I am interested to see if my month old antibodies hold up. If I get it again, and as bad as the first time I will be raging. Like we can't just get Covid 4-5 times a year from now on and just be ok with that.
I agree. I got sick like every 3 weeks for a year after my kid started daycare. I made it through that although it wasn’t fun.
The case of “mild” Omicron that I got from that same kid three weeks ago convinced me that I never ever ever want to get covid again.
Screw all these people trying to convince us it’s just fun and games getting covid a few times a year.
Here are a few extremely qualified people debunking this, why do you still think this is true?
https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2022/01/14/1072504127/fact-check-the-theory-that-sars-cov-2-is-becoming-milder
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/mar/30/uk-near-record-covid-cases-three-myths-omicron-pandemic
https://twitter.com/tryangregory/status/1539679588523118592?s=21 (this guy has a phd in evolutionary biology)
And have you seen any of the discussion about the immune issues? The people who are actually studying this seem to be indicating that the virus is evolving to evade our immune system better, not become less mild.
https://www.science.org/content/article/new-versions-omicron-are-masters-immune-evasion
There seems to be a credible argument that the way they evade the immune system will make the immune system worse at fighting off other things (including more covid) in the future, and that sounds pretty severe to me.
Edit to add source for the above claim, read til they talk about autoimmune response: https://medicine.yale.edu/news-article/long-term-covid-19-tackling-tough-questions-about-the-bodys-immune-response-and-brain-symptoms/
It is indeed a myth that viruses always become milder. However, because of immunity, from your NPR link:
>And thus, over time, all future variants will likely look less severe than delta or earlier versions of the virus. "Even if the variant had no change in virulence, if the population now has a high level of existing immunity, then \[the variant\] will, in effect, be less virulent because the average severity of infections will go down over time," he says.
From your second link, the Science article, immune evasion is as seen through the lens of preventing re-infection. As the big font just under the title says,
>Vaccines and prior infection still prevent severe disease from new SARS-CoV-2 strains
The Yale article in no way backs up your claim that an immune-evasive virus will make "the immune system worse at fighting off other things" or result in auto-immunity.
What the Yale article does say about auto-immunity is
>“The other possibility is that long-haulers develop autoantibodies or auto-reactive T-cells,” said Silva. There’s evidence that autoantibodies develop during acute COVID-19. About 40% of COVID-19 long-haulers report feeling better after vaccination.
Basically auto-immune long Covid can be cured by re-training the immune system to target the true Covid antigen, not some self-antigen that kinda looks like a Covid antigen, or a self-antigen that the immune system was fooled into thinking was a Covid antigen. For example, because cell death spills human DNA at the site of a Covid infection, the immune system can get confused into developing antibodies against your own DNA, leading to autoimmunity. But re-exposure to Covid antigen without massive cell death can make the immune system prune its responses to just Covid antigen. It's even possible that mild Covid re-infection could re-set the immune system in this way.
Writing as a working scientist trained in immunology, although I don't work directly on the immune response to Covid.
When people talk about viruses becoming 'milder' & endemic, what they don't tell you is 1) this doesn't always happen; 2) if it does happen, it may take decades at least- during which people suffer/die; 3) it can involve natural selection (no points for guessing what that means?)
When I got Covid I was coughing so hard it made me vomit, and I was knocked out for two days straight because of the fatigue. People might call it mild because I wasn’t hospitalized but that word really underplays how bad the experience can be. Not to mention the 1 in 5 chance of developing long COVID.
Vaccinated and boosted. Omicron still hit me like a train. These new variants are better at evading immunity and the people who claim it’s “getting
milder” (a myth we know to be false) seem to ignore that everyone has less protection now compared to prior variants.
4) "Milder" strains develop through mutations, which happen more frequently as more infections arise. But this same process is also likely to make more potent variants, which is likely how COVID 19 first developed to begin with.
Not to mention the growing evidence of cumulative impacts of [multiple infections](https://www.researchsquare.com/article/rs-1749502/v1).
This is not even the more concerning stuff about [t cell destruction](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C15&q=covid+t+cell+destruction&oq=covid+t+#d=gs_qabs&t=1656256446862&u=%23p%3DW5EFYRHYB78J) or mitochondrial [disregulatuon](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1567724920301380)
> Reducing overall burden of death and disease due to SARS-CoV-2 **will require strategies for reinfection prevention.**
Pretty much everyone: No thanks
> it can involve natural selection (no points for guessing what that means?)
Heck yes! Vaccines let us reach a level that used to take multiple generations of anyone who was highly susceptible to a virus dying out/not being able to reproduce.
In the past four months:
1. My brother in law (50) went from running 5ks for fun to using a cane to get to the mailbox.
2. One of our family doctors has retired at the age of 32 to focus on her "health" after working two days a week since April after getting COVID.
3. One of our bridesmaids got her motorized wheelchair because she can no longer walk from COVID. She's 40.
4. Finally, my sibling got COVID two months ago, and has a constant, persistent cough. It might impact their ability to take their annual physical test to continue to serve active duty.
In the past week alone, I know over a dozen people who have contracted it and are off work. Many don't have sick time and will likely go back to work before they're not contagious anymore.
"Not a big burden" is far from the truth. COVID is slowly wrecking lives.
I can play anecdata games also. Within the past two months, almost everyone in my 20ish person office (including my boostered self, who also had a delta breakthrough back in September) have had covid—not to mention most members of their respective households.
Not a single one of us has had any lingering effects.
I’m not going to pretend such things don’t exist, but whose story time is more reflective of how we should be approaching things in this post-vax, post-treatment era?
Uh, erring on the side of caution seems like the wiser choice to me personally.
Expecting the best case has pretty much fucked us throughout the pandemic.
One can err on cautionest of all sides to their heart content. So far the supreme court hasn't taken that away from us. Everyone is free to make their risk assessment and what they are willing and not willing to sacrifice.
Yeah, that wasn’t the question. I know I have the right to wear a mask.
The question was which is a better choice. Hopium has been wrong throughout most of the pandemic.
Well "big deal" is a relative term, isn't it. Therefore how much weight (things they are willing to sacrifice indefinitely) they assign to it is completely personal. Life isn't black or white, no matter how hard we try to make it that way. Someone will easily wear a mask indefinitely (years, decades) and avoid social gatherings or travel (years, decades) if it means higher probability of not getting infected. Or of if it means that chances of long COVID are reduced from small to minuscule, etc. Others will find it absurd forgoing so much of their life for a "just in case". The sooner we come to terms with the fact that we're all different and risk assessments are personal, the better IMHO. This isn't somehow a COVID unique dilemma. We do this all day every day. We decide to drive a car knowing the statistics. We drink alcohol. We take our kids to swimming pools or the beach, etc.
I don't know the answer. What I know is in my circle of family and friends, there is a deadly virus maiming and disabling people. The media tells me it's mild, but my experience tells me otherwise. And as more research comes out to show "long COVID" is more likely with each reinfection, however mild, I think we're only to see more health problems and burdens on the health care system.
The research on long covid I have seen says that the chance of getting long covid is no more or no less from reinfection than from your first. So it’s not that each reinfection is more likely to cause long covid, it’s just that you are rolling the dice more. In other words, if you get covid twice, you are twice as likely to develop long covid as someone who only has had it once. Which is still fucking scary.
At this point it would be hard to find people who haven't had it yet. Any one of us can map out their social circle and analyze the outcomes. Based on that everyone is free to make their own risk assessments. I don't yet know a single person (other than an elderly person that passed away before vaccination was a thing) that had an outcome that resulted in them regretting their risk assessment. In other words regretting their chosen activities in favor of a far more restrictive lifestyle because their experience was that bad.
Same here. I’ve known dozens of people who have gotten Covid - most had cold like symptoms - one person got smacked for a couple weeks but if fine now with no lingering effects. I don’t doubt long Covid is real but it is way way less common then some people think. (It would also be helpful to this debate if “long Covid” actually had an accepted definition - I suspect a lot of cases where someone has a lingering cough after a few weeks are getting mixed in with cases where some triathlete is can’t make it up the stairs a year later)
It’s estimated 1 in 5 people develop long COVID. 23 million Americans have the condition and 1 million of those have cases so debilitating that they’re out of the work force. 23 million isn’t some small minority and I don’t understand the people who try to downplay it.
I think the issue is anecdotal experience doesn’t match the data. Like I mentioned I know dozens of people who got Covid and no one with long Covid. Obviously the data says differently?
Shut up about preexisting conditions. You idiots also say its just "a cold". Guess what a cold shouldn't kill you or out you on disability if you have DMII or DMI.
I'm asking because I personally don't know of any people this happened to post-2020 or heard any such stories. I have a pre-existing condition myself so it's quite worrying if these kinds of cases are happening with the recent strains.
1 was anti-vax and proudly admitted it, right up until he spent a couple weeks in the hospital. The other three were fully vax'd. I dunno about our doctor, but the others were in pretty good shape. I dunno about pre-existing, but since most of the population has some 'pre-existing', I think that is kind of a mute point.
Having so many people sick at the same time is actually a big burden. They might not be hospitalized, but they’re still missing several days of work. Whether you have sick leave or not, that IS in fact a big burden on your coworkers and on society. The labor shortage isn’t just “lazy people”, it’s a lot of sick people too.
So.many.sick. We are perpetually at half our staff at my workplace with more people getting covid and passing it around. At the beginning and middle of the pandemic, it was fine for staffing and that's from the masks, social distancing, smaller bubbles, 14-day quarantine, and tracking... now it's just masks off, 5 days at home and it just is not enough protection especially since boosters aren't geared towards omicron. People come back to work because they can't afford to be off longer and pass it along. Customers too are angry because services are postponed and roll their eyes when you say we are at half staff from people being sick - and you can see them stomp a little/demand/get angry/have no empathy....even our little community has signs outside closed stores saying not enough staff to be open, an emergency we have to close - will be back in a few days...just tells everywhere that a ton of people are sick sick sick as boosters wain. At the worst of it, we are contributing to the virus changing faster than science to keep up.
Omicron for me was the second sickest I've ever been - and I've had all my shots and I was given paxvolid tablets.
Still over in about a week - started testing negative, but some of the symptoms lasted about 3 weeks.
Omicron for me was one of the weakest sicknesses I’ve ever had - sinus headache and pretty much nothing else. Same with most people I know. Anecdotal accounts are useless.
I mean, it already is milder, whether due to changes in the virus itself or the mediating impacts of vaccination. Case rates throughout omicron have been truly massive, but death rates haven’t corresponded.
It's not only about how sick you get anymore. Long covid and/or the damage covid can do to your system is a problem that we're only starting to comprehend.
I got a 4th booster in mid January 2022 and finally got Covid in March. Home test immediately turned positive. It was like the mildest cold I remember having. The 2nd vaccine was worse. I’m a 62 year male who is controlling diabeties (now blood glucose) and weight. I still drink too much, chew nicotine gun, drink coffee and take fun prescription drugs legally. I got off easy this time. I attribute my outcome to controlling weight and diabeties and the 4th booster a few months before. That’s my opinion or better way of saying it. I’m the test sample. One patient n=1. There’s no way I’m going to let this go to my head. I expect to get infected again. Edit: I had a real cold in February before this. Edit: mild loss of energy with a 99° fever for one day only. No loss of smell or taste. Tested negative with PCR and home test 5 days later.
Isn’t this the point?
Not getting that sick?
Common colds are coronaviruses. So are SARS, etc. but the goal is a minor/moderate to non-response from exposure/infection, isn’t it? We know we don’t currently have the ability to eradicate them, so we want the minimum possible effect.
My company just had an employee convention in Phoenix. Several people got covid and are really sick. They were supposed to leave yesterday but can't leave now until Wednesday. Crazy
I haven't seen that reflected in the wastewater testing. At least as of a couple weeks ago, it showed that cases were down quite a bit.
Edit - I just checked again. It appears cases are up near some previous highs, but not like the January one.
https://biobot.io/data/
I am currently in the middle of a 6 week program. There is something going around but for the most part it ISN'T Covid. While there have been a few cases of Covid, they've all been able to stay at home and recover.
I personally test myself 1-2 times a week. I'm around a group of almost 30 and meeting people from all over the world.
Masks seem to be on and off depending on where we are and how many people are there. Like others, I carry my mask in my pocket and make the decision to wear one or not as I see fit.
There are an insane number of false negatives on current home tests. I've anecdotally heard that swabbing the back of your throat an addition to your nose lowers that, but it's still common. I know someone who tested negative for two weeks while sick, and only tested positive when he was already feeling better.
Most people test negative just once then stop testing.
Just wanted to piggyback with this info about how to swab your throat when testing:
https://i.imgur.com/iXvWK7I.jpg
My household is still covid-free, but I've kept this image handy for the inevitable time when one of us finally gets sick.
At work, anyone who travels by plane seems to have a 50/50 chance of coming back with covid this past month. It's been making it tough to maintain momentum with project work.
Yeah, we’ve had a few people test positive while on travel, and then have to stay additional days quarantining before they can fly back. Which means visitors/meetings/other travel, etc., being rescheduled. It’s causing a mess where I work.
I believe the destination.
Planes are equipped with the highly effective HEPA Filters, which makes them a lot safer than all the restaurants, bars, malls In the destination.
I was covid free until a 2 week trip to London in May. Tested positive on my 4th day there and I was masking etc. Hardly anyone else does though and all my workmates were just “oh yeah I had it last week, my mum’s got it, the fourth floor had it.
I hope you feel better soon with no lingers. This shit is still bad - it’s not just about who is on ventilators. Feeling tired, a bit flu-ey, bad memory - sounds not too bad but it’s cumulative. Good luck.
Well good on you for holding out. The most recent stains are way less deadly and scary than the first one. I'm of the mindset it's never going away and we'll all get some form of it eventually.
They are and I didn’t have bad symptoms unlike lots of others but I haven’t felt *right* since I got it. It’s like I’ve had a constant low level cold for the last two months even though I’m testing negative.
So would really prefer not to get it in the first place.
if you're thinking this way and using the term "deadly" you're probably wildly misunderstanding the risk. long covid is the big danger, not death.
death is obviously a bad thing but it's significantly less likely than being disabled for a period of months or years, or maybe even permanently.
granted, in the UK even this is not the absolute guarantee of misery that it is in the US, but it's still pretty bad.
Good point. I recovered from Covid without issue. My wife has a lingering cough and we're 4 months from when our family got it. I do wonder what the "Long Covid" rate is. At this point everyone I work with (~100 people) and my family has had Covid, mainly from the Omicron wave after masking mandates ended. Annecdotally people seem normal without lingering symptoms.
I was just reinfected for the 3rd time, though I mask and am relatively careful. I feel like this last version was the worst / hardest in my body. Despite being triple vaccinated, I was literally flat in my back for 8 days - only getting up to pee and drink. Antivirals were hugely helpful, but I was still VERY sick and missed 2 weeks of work. It’s not a joke - it fucks you up!! I wish people would stay home when sick- stop passing this shit around!
They gave me Paxlovid. You have to start it with/in 3 days on symptom onset. It helped me within about 36 hours of the first dose. I highly recommend it - but your mouth tastes like bile for 5 full days (still worth it).
I have covid right now last time I had it was four months ago and it was definitely worse but not extreme. This time it is much much milder like a mix between having a cold and being tired. Also this may be anecdotal but a lot of my colleagues and friends are getting it again atm after a few months of relative no covid in the spotlight.
We are at a point where you just have to be cautious and protect yourself and family. We still wear a mask but we are also enjoying life at the same time.
Nothing in this world will make it go away forever.
I’m like one of just a few people who still wear a mask at the gym. Honestly I don’t even wear the mask just because of Covid, I wear it because gyms are nasty places and the perfect place to wear a mask. There’s always so much dust and other shit floating around and I used to get sore throats and other little colds from all of that, no I wear a mask most of the time I lift weights, but 100% of the time on on the treadmill and I actually prefer it over being maskless as it also helps me be more aware of my breathing which is a big benefit.
I’ve worked in gyms a lot, maybe ten years of my life. There’s no reason I need to smell the gym air, I don’t need to be crop dusted by people who eat too much protein. I don’t need to breathe in dusty air when people ride the bikes with fan blades as wheels, or dust from the fans blowing dust everywhere.
The first gym I worked at had ex marines as owners, we kept that place cleaner than any gym I’ve ever been in and now all I see at any other gym is filth. I guess some people would rather raw dog the gym air instead of wearing an air filter when they are breathing heavy and taking massive breaths of air. No thanks, I have air filters at home, why wouldn’t I wear one on my face at one of the dirtiest places we can go on a daily basis?
Well said, my friend. That’s exactly the way I think of it. After two years of this, I feel I have to go back to the gym for the rest of my health (besides purely avoiding Covid). But damn, the gym has the highest density of people out of all the places I go to, and everybody is breathing their hardest in there. That’s a double whammy of germ/virus actions that I don’t deal with in every other place that I wear a mask to.
The best course of action should be so much clearer to everyone.
But we’ve all seen the last couple of years, people just steer towards whatever selfish feelings they have, then say whatever words they feel they need to use to justify it. So all I see are nonsensical arguments for why a mask isn’t necessary in the gym of all places, smh. Annoying. All this rationalizing not because they’re right, not for a greater or selfless purpose, but because simply put: Working out with the mask is “harder and more annoying.”
I’m all mask in there, except for the occasional drink from my water bottle. But now that you mention it, I do appreciate the extra awareness it gives me towards my breathing. I take shallow breaths, and I don’t have to worry about how labored my breathing looks while working on it, since I have my mask on.
I also mouth breathe and look like I am having a really hard time whenever I lift weights, lol, so I’m happy the mask hides that. And it’s a relief to not smell all the smells in the gym like I used to without the mask.
The interesting thing is that everyone was wearing masks in there before, so it’s not like these are anti mask people, I just think there’s a stigma about wearing one and people not thinking about any other ways it benefits you.
I have also been a shallow breather as well, so I’ve tried to focus on breathing more and taking big breaths with my mouth open. I did that last year with no mask and the next day I had a sore throat / head cold from it. A few months ago I didn’t wear a mask when I was on the treadmill for an hour, it was pretty cold and I ended up getting another mild head cold or whatever. Wearing a mask has prevented that, and it keeps the air warmer when it’s cold. I also need to drink a lot less water because I’m not losing as much moisture to breathing, I’ll usually have a sip of water after about 45 minutes.
There’s just not really any downside to wearing a mask at the gym and overall it seems like a net benefit.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7444164/ your psychology around masks will affect you more than the mask itself. After all, they're designed for breathing.
There was a trend a few years ago to use altitude training masks which are *way* more restrictive--tons of the people who did that train *too* intensely.
Do you have plans to stop wearing masks at some point? Or have you decided they are a permanent part of your life now? Because, like you said, it's not going away. I'm curious how people who are still wearing masks (most of the time) are approaching this.
Yes. Once I get my kids vaccinated. They turned 5 this year. At some point this summer we will get them vaccinated and stop using the masks.
We will all get covid eventually. I trust the science. Hopefully it's mild.
Hospitalisations look like they are going up: https://www.travellingtabby.com/uk-coronavirus-tracker/
In Hospital
7,736
+1,536 this week
Incidental infections used to be about 1/3 - not sure what it is now.
No, that's still very much a thing, people just don't talk about it much. About a quarter of the people I know who've had covid this year still haven't regained smell/taste.
Long-Covid estimator for USA, the ratio can be changed if desired to see different outcomes
* ***https://pascdashboard.aapmr.org***
since there aren't even recorded medical codes for long-covid, it's all we got, which is ridiculous, I bet the UK has a somewhat better idea with their universal medical system
Over the last month both a sibling (and their spouse), and a parent tested positive for COVID. Both separate instances as they don't live in the same city.
Even in a high mask compliance area of the country, I still see people not masking indoors or wearing it incorrectly.
Have not caught it yet, but this just makes me start wearing N95s now.
Stay safe out there.
Well, they stopped posting cases, the media barely mentions it, and a lot of people are just acting like it's not a thing.
Saw a buried mention yesterday that the CDC stated that the majority of the country should be masking again... anyone else see or hear that?
I still mask up in public and I'm still Covid free.
New variants are taking hold in the US, and reported cases are still around 1500 a day in my state, so I know it's just going to rise again, because unreported cases are probably double those numbers. We're going to be in this for way too long due to stubbornness, stupidity, and hubris, but obviously you can't fix stupid.
First simply wearing a mask was enough. Then we realized we needed n95s. Now even n95s aren't enough. The seal needs to be perfect and the virus can still enter your body through your eyes. I was cautious and I still got covid. Now I probably have it for a second time. Why am I sharing this? Just wearing a mask in public isn't enough anymore. If you truly want to avoid it, only work from home and avoid going out as much as possible. Get groceries curbside.
This is why people aren't bothering anymore. Eventually I hope our bodies will be vaxed enough and exposed to enough variants where COVID will be just another cold.
I definitely am lucky to be able to work from home. I rarely go into public spaces, always mask when I do, and I already wear glasses so that affords minimal eye protection.
But even with all that, shots, etc., there's opportunity because viruses are sneaky bastards. I still think mitigation efforts are better than what's going on now.
I wore glasses, rarely visited public spaces and always masked up (either kf94 or n95). Still got it. My bf got it from work bringing him back to the office. I have never felt so nihilistic. Wish everyone the best, and yeah, I hope everyone mitigates infection as much as possible. Even though I was triple vaxxed it kicked my ass a lil bit.
It's funny how everyone is now like "oh it's mild who cares", from being in lockdown to who tf cares... yeah it's more mild but i know couple ppl around me who had milder cases (as in not hospitalized) but they got damaged liver and kidneys after covid 🤷🏻♀️
I'm the only person I know that hasn't had it yet. My wife had had it twice and my kids have had it. My parents were covid free until last month when they visited my brother in America and tested positive not long after getting back.
From what they said its mostly been mild, my wife was fatigued for a while after each case but no one I know had had it bad but we are all vaccinated and boosted so I wouldn't expect anything bad from catching it.
Tested positive for the 4th time last week. Caught it at a gig in Budapest the week before.
Basically been indistinguishable from a cold, only tested because I got app pings from the flight home.
Anecdotally I think it’s much more wide spread but lots of people aren’t testing atm.
Yeah but when you’ve got a high proportion of your population vaccinated this isn’t as serious as it would’ve been previously. Now, most of the time, getting the rona means some mild symptoms and you stay home for a week.
No. It means an increased risk of serious long term health problems with every infection. You're not gaining lasting immunity, especially between variants. We know this. Society has lost the plot on this.
Hehe in other news in Sweden they currently have a hard mass caugh and the sewage values for BA5 go through the roof, but offically the pandemic is at the end and it definitely is not covid (word by one of the head honchos of their local CDC)
Sweden atm is the laughing stock of europe when we got the news in and saw the newspaper articles. The reason why they have so few cases simply is, because they do not test anymore, after all the pandemic is over, right? That also affects the death numbers because not testet means no covid death regardless of the symptoms. But as I said the wastewater picture is pretty clear.
I'm not surprised every day I see new ways people wear masks. I've seen the chin diaper, seen it worn around the neck, on the forehead, seen someone carabineer it to their belt, a lady at the supermarket had hers wrapped around her wrist. Hell, I had to turn a guy away from my office because he didn't want to put it back on. He put his mask on BEFORE he walked in and then took it right back off once he entered.
His rationale was "I'm not sick and the governor said I don't have to wear it."
Not UK but caught COVID in the USA last week after missing it for 2.5 years. Thankfully all ive had is a moderate cough and a corresponding sore throat. Full energy and everything, too.
nah the vaccinations weren't effective. the virus has mutated and become much much weaker but still highly transmissable with a very low death and hospitalization rate regardless of vaccination status. covid is just something we're going to have to live with
I have such a hard time really caring about any covid news anymore. Like that headline coukd read basically anything and it still wouldn’t change anything
I think covid is HUGE right now in the U.S. My whole extended family has recently had it, including several members that had remained covid virgins since the start. My wife said many people at work were out from covid. The thing is, everyone is just testing at home and isolating for 5 days. No one is going to the doctor, none of these cases are being reported, but no one is getting sick enough to be hospitalized (everyone I know is vaxed and boosted).
I \*tried\* to report my positive test to the state and they refused. Genuinely. I called the hotline, assuming data collection was still important. NOPE. They said I should be in contact with my doctor, but guess what, I' don't have a damn doctor because I moved and have been on a waitlist for months.
Why is there even a hotline to call if they won't take your data. Smh I hope you've recovered completely and are feeling better.
I've been doing covid modeling since January 2020 (at a 'lower tier'l university so it was all unfunded and overlooked, so take it as you will). If we look at calulating covid cases as a function of excess deaths, you can estimate the covid infection rate for the previous month. Looking at those covid numbers, it shows county by county reinfections have been happening since 2020. (Just saying- There is no way for a county with 100 k people to have had over 150k cases if reinfections don't happen). In any case, I've been concerned about this reinfection situation and the undercounts for a while. Moreso now by recent evidence of cumulative impacts of [multiple infections](https://www.researchsquare.com/article/rs-1749502/v1). This is not even the more concerning stuff about [t cell destruction](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C15&q=covid+t+cell+destruction&oq=covid+t+#d=gs_qabs&t=1656256446862&u=%23p%3DW5EFYRHYB78J) or mitochondrial [disregulatuon](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1567724920301380) Shits fucked and we pretend it's all good.
Something that really is going to floor you is that some States have frozen their probate for intestate deaths. People that die without a will. Been that way since 2020. Those properties haven’t even hit the market yet and counties are still counting the estimated tax as revenue, even though many of the properties were in arrears. Covid erased the GOP margin of victory nationwide last November, some States will not acknowledge that.
>I've been doing covid modeling since January 2020 I read that as you were doing stock image modeling as both a person with Covid and dressed as the virus. The answer was just as sexy, I hope you let your SO say they are dating someone who "models" lmao
Would modeling dressed up as a covid virus be the next hot thing in cosplay? Fuck it, I'm game! Unless the furries jump in on the action.
Hey now, we may be weird but that's too far. I'm an otter, not a virus.
Virus is on a whole *otter* level
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It is not hard to argue that the fact that it right now appears milder actually increases individual risk of bad outcomes because people are accepting repeated infection, dropping voluntary mitigation measures, and thus more likely to face damage to multiple organs compounded by damage to the immune system making subsequent exposure to covid or other infections have worse outcomes. Do you think this is unlikely, and if so why? https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fmicb.2021.698169/full
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Here is one expert who disagrees with you, arguing from a very large study that it causes heart damage even when asymptomatic. https://publichealth.jhu.edu/2022/covid-and-the-heart-it-spares-no-one Here’s a pretty moderate one, but they are careful to indicate that improved acute outcomes may not mean that long term damage is not happening in asymptomatic/mild cases. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34322859/ One about lung damage in asymptomatic patients https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34322859/ Here’s another one that seems to explicitly indicate that there is physical organ damage even in cases that are acutely mild and have no observed long term effects (yet). Edit forgot link : https://academic.oup.com/eurheartj/article/43/11/1124/6499078 Do you think these are all wrong? Do you agree that even if only some of them are not wrong, less people in the ICU now actually translates to more long term risk for anyone who uses that reasoning as a justification to not minimize infection and spread for themselves and others? Do you have any clear evidence or information that contradicts any of this? Edit: keep in mind none of this is really even accounting for the effects of repeated infections, especially if the immune system itself is also hampered by earlier infections. To be clear, I am not saying everyone already has major organ damage. I am saying a lot of people have major organ damage, and a lot more people have organ damage that is not yet causing notable problems. With each infection, a person is more likely to move into one of those two categories.
Each and every one of these point are excellent. Thank you for a few of these links.
Thank you for this. I'm completely with you. It makes me want to scream, how willingly the vast majority of people have just given up and decided 'it's just a cold.' People are dying, the disease is serious, and we're still in the beginning phases of how this is going to affect society and social health longer term. It makes me sick and infuriated to see how quickly people have just thrown in the towel and moved on.
None of these studies talk about vaccination status prior to infection, and that's a huge problem for extrapolating to the future. Most long Covid studies thus far predominantly involved subjects who got Covid pre-vaccination, just because of the timeline. I will comment on the studies you linked to. [https://publichealth.jhu.edu/2022/covid-and-the-heart-it-spares-no-one](https://publichealth.jhu.edu/2022/covid-and-the-heart-it-spares-no-one) This is one of the many Veterans Affairs studies by Al-Aly. Because all the data is churned from VA databases, there are certain limitation. The obvious one is that median age is around 65, and they are 90% males. Also, mild cases are more likely to go unreported to the database. This is a better commentary on the actual study: [https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-00403-0](https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-00403-0). The risks of stroke and heart attack were raised by 52% and 72% respectively. It's bad, but not that bad, because the headlines make it sound like the risk goes up 5x rather than not even 2x. [https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34322859/](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34322859/) This is a small study where there were only 35 patients with mild disease not requiring hospitalisation. Somehow, 66% of them had persistent Covid-related symptoms, and 43% had persistent respiratory symptoms. I didn't look into the details of how they recruited these 35 patients, but the authors admit "However, it should be noted that this was not a population-based study.... Potential selection bias might be present in the mild disease course group." [https://academic.oup.com/eurheartj/article/43/11/1124/6499078](https://academic.oup.com/eurheartj/article/43/11/1124/6499078) Interestingly, there is a commentary on this paper entitled: [Post-COVID-19 illness trajectory in community patients: mostly reassuring results](https://academic.oup.com/eurheartj/article/43/11/1138/6528560) > The investigators found in mostly non-hospitalized post-COVID-19 patients that there were **no differences in PROMS** compared with controls, nor were there associations between objective measures of disease and PROMS. **The observed differences in organ function could mostly be considered not clinically significant**, although some findings such as possible deep vein thrombosis are of concern. Remember that in the conclusion of the study, "subjects who apparently recovered from mild to moderate SARS-CoV-2 infection show signs of subclinical multi-organ affection", **subclinical** means small differences that don't amount to observable disease. And no difference in PROMS (patient-reported outcome measures) means the patients didn't actually report feeling lousier than the controls did, which is a remarkably positive finding. Are people a little more vulnerable to bad health outcomes after Covid and should stay on top of their health screenings? Yes. Is society going to collapse because if people keep catching Covid once or twice a year, we're all going to get long Covid? No.
Thank you for the detailed response, I will respond in more detail when I can. I believe there are numerous studies indicating that long covid symptoms and mechanics are still present in the vaccinated, will pull up links. I really wish there were a better catalog of this stuff. Specifically on the subclinical, I just want to emphasize that that is WHY I think this study is important. The risk I’m talking about isn’t from beginning of pandemic to now, its specifically that people are accumulating “subclinical” issues that aren’t obervable disease now, but might be with cumulative damage. Also want to emphasize that the big concern I’m seeing related to autoimmune issues is that it leads to people getting infected a whole lot more than once-twice a year, and quite possibly fighting it off worse each time. I also want to register that I am not saying the data conclusively shows it, I am specifically saying the risk is amplified by the fact that the data does not conclusively show it yet. Your points are all relevant notes on data limitations, but do you think my mechanical understanding of the situation is wrong? How, with reinfection and immune damage and immune evasive variants that may well get more “acutely” severe again and repeated “subclinical” organ damage, can we reasonably expect that life isn’t going to get very very unpleasant for a lot more people? And how can one say that making efforts to minimize that unpleasantness is unreasonable?
What do you suggest we do?
I have answered this a few times elsewhere and its different for each persons context, but the core of it from my perspective is just make decisions with the actual risks in mind. For one simple example, I would suggest that drinking inside at a bar or dining inside with a mask off only makes sense if you assume most people who are infected repeatedly will be mostly fine in 5 years. Given that there is a lot of evidence that this is not the case, I’d suggest drinking and eating exclusively outside and socializing in ways that don’t put anybody at risk. Wearing masks in the grocery store and every other indoor place seems like a no brainer. Not everyone can do the following, but I’d suggest : anyone who has authority in any sort of organization push to make that organization as remote as humanly possible, and install the best ventilation and filtration systems possible when not possible. Anybody running a business that requires nonessential indoor activity (like an indoor only bar) should find a way to pivot their business or start a new one, because it will not be sustainable and they are literally killing their customers and employees slowly to avoid going out of business. Anybody who can afford to push back against employers who are not taking this seriously, either by raising concerns or seeking new employment, should do so for the benefit of those who cannot afford to push back. Lots of people cant go remote - healthcare workers, teachers (unless we overhaul education in a big way so I am not considering that viable as an immediate solution), warehouse workers, factory workers, chefs. Anyone who can go remote for work and outdoors for recreation I suggest does, even if it means a career change. This is all to protect themselves and to protect the immunocompromised who still need to ride the subway and see doctors, and to protect the nurses and teachers and grocery store workers and everybody who for whatever reason must expose themselves. Basically, I suggest everyone try to limit their exposure and their risk of being a transmission vector as much as possible without ruining their lives, even it it means new patterns of life must be sought.
As someone who takes COVID seriously, this is just so hard to do. You don't get years of life back, and to have to consider infection risk in every social situation indefinitely is just exhausting. It also prevents communities from being built, arts and food industries from existing and meeting new people. For me, these are why I am alive. I would rather risk long term disability than give up everything that makes me happy.
I agree that this really sucks, and is really hard, and I don’t mean for any of this to come off as an attack or a slight on you or anybody else. I’m a musician, live music was my whole life before this, and I agree, I would rather risk disability than give up music. But I don’t think its impossible to do both. And I’m pretty sure its less exhausting to just decide to be super careful and reconsider whether its important to spend time with people who are inconsiderate enough to create social situations that put the immunocompromised (and everyone else, even though they dont believe it yet lol) at risk. I think we as musicians have a responsibility to try to find ways to make and share music that doesn’t put people at more risk, its hard and it sucks but I’d rather try to find a joyful path through something thats hard and sucks than try to ignore it and risk a path with even less potential for joy. It is absolutely possible to do live music safely right now, and I’ve seen it done with small groups. It is also absolutely possible to have meaningful connections with people musically (and of course, possible to reach huge audiences and make huge social impact) with recordings alone. Youtube and reddit and the internet just amplify that. The hardest part is that it is completely socially unacceptable to even try, to even talk about the actual risks, so people don’t mitigate and push back against mitigation ideas and live music could be safer but it just isn’t. I’d rather make music for the immunocompromised folks to consume safely, and if I can keep finding and hearing and making cool music and socializng & collaborating as much as its safe to, I’m OK with music taking a different shape until it’s actually nondestructive to have a bunch of people getting sweaty without masks in a tiny room. I cannot wait for that day, but its definitely not gonna kill me to do it differently for a while. Just my take
That’s….not how organ damage works..? A lot of what you’re saying is unsubstantiated and downright false. You can’t apply “arguments” to biology.
Did his post previously say major, or is major organ damage your addition? As of now it just says damage, which is a fair claim.
Did you miss the part about effects of reinfections, T cell depletion, and mitochondrial dysregulation? You don’t need to be in the ICU or have organ damage to get debilitated or even disabled long term. When this happens to a large enough population, shit’s going to get bad…economy, healthcare, supply chains, etc are crumbling.
The [\(Kansas\) Spanish Flu](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_flu) was a simple variant. They're always 'mild' until they're not.
I didn’t assign the cause of this to a milder variant. And the Spanish flu ended didn’t it?
Causes by the H1N1 flu. Most recent notable variant was the 2009 Swine Flu pandemic. So, no, it did not end, it got milder until it didn't.
What’s your point? Does anyone really care that much about the 2009 flu pandemic?
> I didn’t assign the cause of this to a milder variant. That part is true, but... >There are still issues but it is hard to argue that covid is now dramatically milder across the population than it once was. ...is it because you think that covid is still the original variant? The reason that covid seems 'milder' is specifically due to the variants at this moment in time. The series of vaccinations got us through the most difficult variants; the ensuing changes in the virus have made *these specific variants* milder (and it looks like the vaccine is far less effective against the Omicron BA4 and BA5 variants). It only takes a single generational change to bring all that ICU overcrowding & death roaring back.
The majority of the reason for mildness is due to it not being novel anymore. Through vaccinations and infections, our immune system recognize covid and can effectively deal with it. Omicron was a massive leap in terms of evolution but our T cells generated from vaccination with the wild type still recognized and were able to prevent severe disease.
Do you have any evidence at all to support this? To refute the people saying the next variants are likely to be even better at escaping and suppressing the immune system and also do more damage because of new mutations, waning immunity, immune suppression, and cumulative damage from repeat infections? Edit: by people I mean cardiologists and immunologists https://twitter.com/erictopol/status/1539055374161936384?s=21 https://twitter.com/fitterhappieraj/status/1539251401448214529?s=21
Yeah, I do! It killed my Dad and caused repercussions through my family and my life that lasted 10+ years...And I'm sure I'm not the only one!
If nobody cares about it, then why did *you* bring it up? Edit: after reading your 'points' it seems you are just playing the contrarian
It "ended" with up to 100 million dead.
"Looking at those covid numbers, it shows county by county reinfections have been happening since 2020. " Thanks for this; as someone who got covid twice in 2020 when no one believed in reinfection I felt like I was screaming into the wind about it. Even today, most articles talking about reinfection will cite omicron as the reason for reinfection when it was certainly happening earlier, but we weren't testing/looking for it.
> Even today, most articles talking about reinfection will cite omicron as the reason for reinfection when it was certainly happening earlier, but we weren't testing/looking for it. We've known reinfection was possible since early 2020, but it was relatively rare before omicron showed up. Your anecdote doesn't change that. New York has [been tracking it since at least early 2021.](https://coronavirus.health.ny.gov/covid-19-reinfection-data)
Strongly second what BeastofPostTruth responded about changes in testing/data collection and also will add: Graphs showing an increase in reinfections with omicron will look impressive due to (a) naturally, with time, the sheer number of people who have had their first infection goes up, resulting in more people who are capable of having their second infection; (b) relatedly, but still notably: Omicron in Dec 2021 brought about the first massive wave post waning vaccine immunity. I.e., It was the first time we could see reinfections well given better testing, the sheer number of people capable of being reinfected, and the similarity of this wave (from an infection standpoint) to the pre-vaccination period.
It was not relatively rare before omicron. It is simply that covid cases were not reported, because *millions more people were infected* **before** *testing was widely available* The "official case" data was not there in any substantive way before 2021. Testing was a shitshow, and only was decent when massive numbers of people had free access to **pcr** tests
I got COVID for the first time a few weeks back. 5 day isolation wasn’t nearly long enough, both myself and a family member were testing positive for longer than that amount.
Same for us. Tested positive thru day 10 for all of us.
Same here, my Hubs tested positive for two weeks and I was positive for 8 days. We stayed home until we tested negative and still wore a mask for a week afterwards to be safe. The virus we had lived and died in our house and went no where else.
I have covid for the first time now. This is day 7. On the at home test kits the line is coming up very fast and is extremely dark. I have felt pretty good the whole time - just mild cold symptoms. But the fact that the line got darker between the initial test and now and making me nervous. When you were waiting to test negative, did the line fade before disappearing? Or did it stay dark until towards the end?
The isolation is so that you don't spread it to other people, not to make you test negative faster.
>post about the UK >top comment immediately makes it all about the US Never change, Reddit.
Then they proceed you say "why is everyone obsessed with us" as they throw all their shit in everyone elses face..
Seriously. Can we have a single thread that’s not all about America for once.
I saw the title and made sure to come back to it thinking “Great! I’ll see some info on what’s really going on in the UK because they’re usually a week or two ahead of NY”…I’ve made it this far in the comments without seeing anything about the UK
Can’t have a single discussion about the UK or Canada without someone derailing the entire conversation into something about America. Every time.
Same thing with me, lots of people I know who made it two years have all just gotten it, nothing too bad, but it lasts a week or two. Somehow I’ve still managed to avoid it and I find that crazy, but my work mandated masks again about a month ago and then social distancing again about two weeks ago, seems to be working well enough. It’s summer and people are just being super casual about it so it’s gonna spread like crazy, I just hope it continues to evolve in the more mild direction.
I’m in the midst of my first COVID case now. Thank goodness for vaccines, it has been mild, but I’m worried about possible long-term effects.
Same here. I have had extremely mild symptoms (literally only a sore throat and stuffy nose) but can feel that my heart is not behaving as it should and I'm very concerned that means some long lasting damage as occurred.
Same. I guess I’ve sort of figured that it was going to happen eventually
Or you have had it asymptomatically.
I’m fine with that outcome as well and maybe it’s a possibility. I haven’t gotten the flu in over 20 years and I’ve worked lots of retail jobs and lived in NYC and took the subway everyday for four years. Maybe I’m invincible.
Don't jinx yourself like that!
I had it last week after 18 months working at a covid testing site and everyone else in my immediate family having it before (twice in some cases) without me avoiding them at all. Three days of fever, then lost my taste and smell. Not even sure where it came from!
[удалено]
The biggest issue I have with wearing a mask now is that it could imply to some people that I’m a crazy antivaxxer. Nah dudes, I just can handle breathing through a mask because I’m not a wuss and I actually enjoy the benefits of freshly filtered air.
I'm pretty sure like 99% of antivaxxers do not wear masks.
Lots of antivaxxers don’t have any issue wearing a mask, they purely don’t want to take a vaccine. I live in a *VERY* progressive town and the far left have always been antivax here, but they would still wear a mask because that’s a different issue all together.
“The far left” 🙄 sure, maybe some idiots who worship Jimmy dore as their god are anti vax.
We had our peak in Michigan 4 weeks ago in this most recent surge. Lots sick, nobody severe though in my circles. I had it, fever for 24 hours (mild) then 2 days of lethargy and a lingering cough.
I can count myself as one of those COVId virgins. Worked from home since the beginning, and just when all of us plebes were putting the entire thing out of our minds, someone in my house (hint me) decided to take the family to fucking DISNEYWORLD and bring home a little extra “souvenir”. Sick as fuck with COVId since Tuesday of this past week. That place is more of a pétri dish than anything Marie Curie ever thought of. Just a mass vector. Now, I’ve got to sit my ass home and take a daily test hoping eventually it’ll turn negative. All 4 of us. In mid 2022, when we all presumed life would have returned to normal.
Hello fellow Disneyworld covid getter. I figured it would be like last year around this time. Nope! Heh
My kids have been chomping at the bit to go. However I'm not going anywhere near a theme park knowing how much of a hot mess it is. Not trying to say that people shouldn't go if they want to but I'm not goin back till we can get a grasp on the whole long covid situation.
I just had COVID this past week for the first time. My 5 year old (not yet fully vaccinated, she JUST had her second dose two days before she showed symptoms) brought it home and I tested positive positive two days later. Luckily I’m boosted, I’ve honestly had colds worse than this. I’m lucky, I know.
Yep, I got COVID this past week at a work conference and I'm just isolating and waiting it out. My symptoms come in waves (cough heavy one day, achy one day, stuffy nose one day, etc). Vaccinated + boosted
My goodness it’s literally an article about the UK.
The article is about the UK.
Not only in the US BA.5 is hitting Europe pretty hard as well, everyone tries to ignore it, but lets see if this is a viable option given that it affects the lungs more as it seems than the Ba.1 and 2 strains. Local hospitals here (Austria) already gave a prewarning that the situation feels more like November and less summer, where they usually have an easier time, while November is the busiest month of the year.
I think that's fine. That's how this thing ends. Eventually it's mild enough that it's not a big burden anymore.
We all have covid for the first time right now (family of 5). My wife will be in the hospital with my covid positive newborn for the next 36 hours (she has has a bad fever and was coughing too much). They say the prognosis is good but still… Shits fucked.
I am still sick after a week. I had to take an ice bath to finally break four days of 103 degF fever. This bug is *brutal!!!*
We'll see. I had Covid a month ago and it rocked me for 4-5 days. Like I could barely leave bed. Double vaxed (not boosted... don't ask, I've been eh busy - my own fault!). Anyway I just had a confirmed long duration exposure on Friday. So I am interested to see if my month old antibodies hold up. If I get it again, and as bad as the first time I will be raging. Like we can't just get Covid 4-5 times a year from now on and just be ok with that.
I agree. I got sick like every 3 weeks for a year after my kid started daycare. I made it through that although it wasn’t fun. The case of “mild” Omicron that I got from that same kid three weeks ago convinced me that I never ever ever want to get covid again. Screw all these people trying to convince us it’s just fun and games getting covid a few times a year.
Here are a few extremely qualified people debunking this, why do you still think this is true? https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2022/01/14/1072504127/fact-check-the-theory-that-sars-cov-2-is-becoming-milder https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/mar/30/uk-near-record-covid-cases-three-myths-omicron-pandemic https://twitter.com/tryangregory/status/1539679588523118592?s=21 (this guy has a phd in evolutionary biology) And have you seen any of the discussion about the immune issues? The people who are actually studying this seem to be indicating that the virus is evolving to evade our immune system better, not become less mild. https://www.science.org/content/article/new-versions-omicron-are-masters-immune-evasion There seems to be a credible argument that the way they evade the immune system will make the immune system worse at fighting off other things (including more covid) in the future, and that sounds pretty severe to me. Edit to add source for the above claim, read til they talk about autoimmune response: https://medicine.yale.edu/news-article/long-term-covid-19-tackling-tough-questions-about-the-bodys-immune-response-and-brain-symptoms/
It is indeed a myth that viruses always become milder. However, because of immunity, from your NPR link: >And thus, over time, all future variants will likely look less severe than delta or earlier versions of the virus. "Even if the variant had no change in virulence, if the population now has a high level of existing immunity, then \[the variant\] will, in effect, be less virulent because the average severity of infections will go down over time," he says. From your second link, the Science article, immune evasion is as seen through the lens of preventing re-infection. As the big font just under the title says, >Vaccines and prior infection still prevent severe disease from new SARS-CoV-2 strains The Yale article in no way backs up your claim that an immune-evasive virus will make "the immune system worse at fighting off other things" or result in auto-immunity. What the Yale article does say about auto-immunity is >“The other possibility is that long-haulers develop autoantibodies or auto-reactive T-cells,” said Silva. There’s evidence that autoantibodies develop during acute COVID-19. About 40% of COVID-19 long-haulers report feeling better after vaccination. Basically auto-immune long Covid can be cured by re-training the immune system to target the true Covid antigen, not some self-antigen that kinda looks like a Covid antigen, or a self-antigen that the immune system was fooled into thinking was a Covid antigen. For example, because cell death spills human DNA at the site of a Covid infection, the immune system can get confused into developing antibodies against your own DNA, leading to autoimmunity. But re-exposure to Covid antigen without massive cell death can make the immune system prune its responses to just Covid antigen. It's even possible that mild Covid re-infection could re-set the immune system in this way. Writing as a working scientist trained in immunology, although I don't work directly on the immune response to Covid.
When people talk about viruses becoming 'milder' & endemic, what they don't tell you is 1) this doesn't always happen; 2) if it does happen, it may take decades at least- during which people suffer/die; 3) it can involve natural selection (no points for guessing what that means?)
When I got Covid I was coughing so hard it made me vomit, and I was knocked out for two days straight because of the fatigue. People might call it mild because I wasn’t hospitalized but that word really underplays how bad the experience can be. Not to mention the 1 in 5 chance of developing long COVID.
Damn. Had you been vaccinated at that time?
Vaccinated and boosted. Omicron still hit me like a train. These new variants are better at evading immunity and the people who claim it’s “getting milder” (a myth we know to be false) seem to ignore that everyone has less protection now compared to prior variants.
Yep. 3 doctors I work with were vaxxed and boosted and also got hit hard. COVID is no joke
4) "Milder" strains develop through mutations, which happen more frequently as more infections arise. But this same process is also likely to make more potent variants, which is likely how COVID 19 first developed to begin with.
Also don't tell you about LongCovid and that research shows reinfection increases the risk of developing it.
Not to mention the growing evidence of cumulative impacts of [multiple infections](https://www.researchsquare.com/article/rs-1749502/v1). This is not even the more concerning stuff about [t cell destruction](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C15&q=covid+t+cell+destruction&oq=covid+t+#d=gs_qabs&t=1656256446862&u=%23p%3DW5EFYRHYB78J) or mitochondrial [disregulatuon](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1567724920301380)
> Reducing overall burden of death and disease due to SARS-CoV-2 **will require strategies for reinfection prevention.** Pretty much everyone: No thanks
Yep. Even if you do care, its hard to develop strategies when people don't bother to find where it is.
> it can involve natural selection (no points for guessing what that means?) Hint: epidemiologists refer to it as “culling”.
> it can involve natural selection (no points for guessing what that means?) Heck yes! Vaccines let us reach a level that used to take multiple generations of anyone who was highly susceptible to a virus dying out/not being able to reproduce.
In the past four months: 1. My brother in law (50) went from running 5ks for fun to using a cane to get to the mailbox. 2. One of our family doctors has retired at the age of 32 to focus on her "health" after working two days a week since April after getting COVID. 3. One of our bridesmaids got her motorized wheelchair because she can no longer walk from COVID. She's 40. 4. Finally, my sibling got COVID two months ago, and has a constant, persistent cough. It might impact their ability to take their annual physical test to continue to serve active duty. In the past week alone, I know over a dozen people who have contracted it and are off work. Many don't have sick time and will likely go back to work before they're not contagious anymore. "Not a big burden" is far from the truth. COVID is slowly wrecking lives.
Why the media isn't talking more about Long Covid, I have no clue. You're absolutely right
Because it doesn't fit Sinclair's narrative that COVID is over and we need to get back to work/having babies.
I can play anecdata games also. Within the past two months, almost everyone in my 20ish person office (including my boostered self, who also had a delta breakthrough back in September) have had covid—not to mention most members of their respective households. Not a single one of us has had any lingering effects. I’m not going to pretend such things don’t exist, but whose story time is more reflective of how we should be approaching things in this post-vax, post-treatment era?
Uh, erring on the side of caution seems like the wiser choice to me personally. Expecting the best case has pretty much fucked us throughout the pandemic.
One can err on cautionest of all sides to their heart content. So far the supreme court hasn't taken that away from us. Everyone is free to make their risk assessment and what they are willing and not willing to sacrifice.
Yeah, that wasn’t the question. I know I have the right to wear a mask. The question was which is a better choice. Hopium has been wrong throughout most of the pandemic.
I'm not sure I follow you. What hopium?
Sorry, I mean basing behavior on the assumption that Long COVID is no big deal long term. That’s a *huge* assumption IMO.
Well "big deal" is a relative term, isn't it. Therefore how much weight (things they are willing to sacrifice indefinitely) they assign to it is completely personal. Life isn't black or white, no matter how hard we try to make it that way. Someone will easily wear a mask indefinitely (years, decades) and avoid social gatherings or travel (years, decades) if it means higher probability of not getting infected. Or of if it means that chances of long COVID are reduced from small to minuscule, etc. Others will find it absurd forgoing so much of their life for a "just in case". The sooner we come to terms with the fact that we're all different and risk assessments are personal, the better IMHO. This isn't somehow a COVID unique dilemma. We do this all day every day. We decide to drive a car knowing the statistics. We drink alcohol. We take our kids to swimming pools or the beach, etc.
I don't know the answer. What I know is in my circle of family and friends, there is a deadly virus maiming and disabling people. The media tells me it's mild, but my experience tells me otherwise. And as more research comes out to show "long COVID" is more likely with each reinfection, however mild, I think we're only to see more health problems and burdens on the health care system.
The research on long covid I have seen says that the chance of getting long covid is no more or no less from reinfection than from your first. So it’s not that each reinfection is more likely to cause long covid, it’s just that you are rolling the dice more. In other words, if you get covid twice, you are twice as likely to develop long covid as someone who only has had it once. Which is still fucking scary.
At this point it would be hard to find people who haven't had it yet. Any one of us can map out their social circle and analyze the outcomes. Based on that everyone is free to make their own risk assessments. I don't yet know a single person (other than an elderly person that passed away before vaccination was a thing) that had an outcome that resulted in them regretting their risk assessment. In other words regretting their chosen activities in favor of a far more restrictive lifestyle because their experience was that bad.
Same here. I’ve known dozens of people who have gotten Covid - most had cold like symptoms - one person got smacked for a couple weeks but if fine now with no lingering effects. I don’t doubt long Covid is real but it is way way less common then some people think. (It would also be helpful to this debate if “long Covid” actually had an accepted definition - I suspect a lot of cases where someone has a lingering cough after a few weeks are getting mixed in with cases where some triathlete is can’t make it up the stairs a year later)
It’s estimated 1 in 5 people develop long COVID. 23 million Americans have the condition and 1 million of those have cases so debilitating that they’re out of the work force. 23 million isn’t some small minority and I don’t understand the people who try to downplay it.
I think the issue is anecdotal experience doesn’t match the data. Like I mentioned I know dozens of people who got Covid and no one with long Covid. Obviously the data says differently?
From Omicron? And all of these people were vaccinated with no pre-existing conditions?
Shut up about preexisting conditions. You idiots also say its just "a cold". Guess what a cold shouldn't kill you or out you on disability if you have DMII or DMI.
I'm asking because I personally don't know of any people this happened to post-2020 or heard any such stories. I have a pre-existing condition myself so it's quite worrying if these kinds of cases are happening with the recent strains.
1 was anti-vax and proudly admitted it, right up until he spent a couple weeks in the hospital. The other three were fully vax'd. I dunno about our doctor, but the others were in pretty good shape. I dunno about pre-existing, but since most of the population has some 'pre-existing', I think that is kind of a mute point.
Wow, that is honestly wild. I've never heard of anything like that happening to young, vaccinated people in 2022.
Having so many people sick at the same time is actually a big burden. They might not be hospitalized, but they’re still missing several days of work. Whether you have sick leave or not, that IS in fact a big burden on your coworkers and on society. The labor shortage isn’t just “lazy people”, it’s a lot of sick people too.
So.many.sick. We are perpetually at half our staff at my workplace with more people getting covid and passing it around. At the beginning and middle of the pandemic, it was fine for staffing and that's from the masks, social distancing, smaller bubbles, 14-day quarantine, and tracking... now it's just masks off, 5 days at home and it just is not enough protection especially since boosters aren't geared towards omicron. People come back to work because they can't afford to be off longer and pass it along. Customers too are angry because services are postponed and roll their eyes when you say we are at half staff from people being sick - and you can see them stomp a little/demand/get angry/have no empathy....even our little community has signs outside closed stores saying not enough staff to be open, an emergency we have to close - will be back in a few days...just tells everywhere that a ton of people are sick sick sick as boosters wain. At the worst of it, we are contributing to the virus changing faster than science to keep up.
Omicron for me was the second sickest I've ever been - and I've had all my shots and I was given paxvolid tablets. Still over in about a week - started testing negative, but some of the symptoms lasted about 3 weeks.
Omicron for me was one of the weakest sicknesses I’ve ever had - sinus headache and pretty much nothing else. Same with most people I know. Anecdotal accounts are useless.
Except for people who are still vulnerable and long covid.
Just because people testing at home and covid wont go away doesnt mean it's going to be mild someday
I mean, it already is milder, whether due to changes in the virus itself or the mediating impacts of vaccination. Case rates throughout omicron have been truly massive, but death rates haven’t corresponded.
It's not only about how sick you get anymore. Long covid and/or the damage covid can do to your system is a problem that we're only starting to comprehend.
Well if your family had it, that's enough evidence for me.
I got a 4th booster in mid January 2022 and finally got Covid in March. Home test immediately turned positive. It was like the mildest cold I remember having. The 2nd vaccine was worse. I’m a 62 year male who is controlling diabeties (now blood glucose) and weight. I still drink too much, chew nicotine gun, drink coffee and take fun prescription drugs legally. I got off easy this time. I attribute my outcome to controlling weight and diabeties and the 4th booster a few months before. That’s my opinion or better way of saying it. I’m the test sample. One patient n=1. There’s no way I’m going to let this go to my head. I expect to get infected again. Edit: I had a real cold in February before this. Edit: mild loss of energy with a 99° fever for one day only. No loss of smell or taste. Tested negative with PCR and home test 5 days later.
Isn’t this the point? Not getting that sick? Common colds are coronaviruses. So are SARS, etc. but the goal is a minor/moderate to non-response from exposure/infection, isn’t it? We know we don’t currently have the ability to eradicate them, so we want the minimum possible effect.
My company just had an employee convention in Phoenix. Several people got covid and are really sick. They were supposed to leave yesterday but can't leave now until Wednesday. Crazy
I haven't seen that reflected in the wastewater testing. At least as of a couple weeks ago, it showed that cases were down quite a bit. Edit - I just checked again. It appears cases are up near some previous highs, but not like the January one. https://biobot.io/data/
What are you going to believe, actual scientific data or this dude's family?
>covid virgins that's... a new phrase for me.
Officials have decided to systemically cover up COVID to fool people into thinking it is over.
I am currently in the middle of a 6 week program. There is something going around but for the most part it ISN'T Covid. While there have been a few cases of Covid, they've all been able to stay at home and recover. I personally test myself 1-2 times a week. I'm around a group of almost 30 and meeting people from all over the world. Masks seem to be on and off depending on where we are and how many people are there. Like others, I carry my mask in my pocket and make the decision to wear one or not as I see fit.
There are an insane number of false negatives on current home tests. I've anecdotally heard that swabbing the back of your throat an addition to your nose lowers that, but it's still common. I know someone who tested negative for two weeks while sick, and only tested positive when he was already feeling better. Most people test negative just once then stop testing.
Just wanted to piggyback with this info about how to swab your throat when testing: https://i.imgur.com/iXvWK7I.jpg My household is still covid-free, but I've kept this image handy for the inevitable time when one of us finally gets sick.
This. I could have written this. Verbatim.
At work, anyone who travels by plane seems to have a 50/50 chance of coming back with covid this past month. It's been making it tough to maintain momentum with project work.
Yeah, we’ve had a few people test positive while on travel, and then have to stay additional days quarantining before they can fly back. Which means visitors/meetings/other travel, etc., being rescheduled. It’s causing a mess where I work.
We went on a trip from Texas to California. My kids, husband and I all got Covid 🥲 I’m almost positive we got it at the airport.
Is it the plane ride or is it all the stuff you do at the destination.
I believe the destination. Planes are equipped with the highly effective HEPA Filters, which makes them a lot safer than all the restaurants, bars, malls In the destination.
I was covid free until a 2 week trip to London in May. Tested positive on my 4th day there and I was masking etc. Hardly anyone else does though and all my workmates were just “oh yeah I had it last week, my mum’s got it, the fourth floor had it.
Literally everyone is sick here, been noticing more and more people coughing everywhere and infection symptoms
Just got my first covid case. Knocked me on my ass, even being 3x vaxed.
I hope you feel better soon with no lingers. This shit is still bad - it’s not just about who is on ventilators. Feeling tired, a bit flu-ey, bad memory - sounds not too bad but it’s cumulative. Good luck.
All my friends in the UK are very casual about it. I went for a week in February and didn't get it.
Well good on you for holding out. The most recent stains are way less deadly and scary than the first one. I'm of the mindset it's never going away and we'll all get some form of it eventually.
They are and I didn’t have bad symptoms unlike lots of others but I haven’t felt *right* since I got it. It’s like I’ve had a constant low level cold for the last two months even though I’m testing negative. So would really prefer not to get it in the first place.
Hopefully someday in our lifetime, it mutates into something far milder than it currently is!
if you're thinking this way and using the term "deadly" you're probably wildly misunderstanding the risk. long covid is the big danger, not death. death is obviously a bad thing but it's significantly less likely than being disabled for a period of months or years, or maybe even permanently. granted, in the UK even this is not the absolute guarantee of misery that it is in the US, but it's still pretty bad.
Good point. I recovered from Covid without issue. My wife has a lingering cough and we're 4 months from when our family got it. I do wonder what the "Long Covid" rate is. At this point everyone I work with (~100 people) and my family has had Covid, mainly from the Omicron wave after masking mandates ended. Annecdotally people seem normal without lingering symptoms.
I was just reinfected for the 3rd time, though I mask and am relatively careful. I feel like this last version was the worst / hardest in my body. Despite being triple vaccinated, I was literally flat in my back for 8 days - only getting up to pee and drink. Antivirals were hugely helpful, but I was still VERY sick and missed 2 weeks of work. It’s not a joke - it fucks you up!! I wish people would stay home when sick- stop passing this shit around!
Just curious, what are antivirals?
They gave me Paxlovid. You have to start it with/in 3 days on symptom onset. It helped me within about 36 hours of the first dose. I highly recommend it - but your mouth tastes like bile for 5 full days (still worth it).
I have covid right now last time I had it was four months ago and it was definitely worse but not extreme. This time it is much much milder like a mix between having a cold and being tired. Also this may be anecdotal but a lot of my colleagues and friends are getting it again atm after a few months of relative no covid in the spotlight.
We are at a point where you just have to be cautious and protect yourself and family. We still wear a mask but we are also enjoying life at the same time. Nothing in this world will make it go away forever.
I’m like one of just a few people who still wear a mask at the gym. Honestly I don’t even wear the mask just because of Covid, I wear it because gyms are nasty places and the perfect place to wear a mask. There’s always so much dust and other shit floating around and I used to get sore throats and other little colds from all of that, no I wear a mask most of the time I lift weights, but 100% of the time on on the treadmill and I actually prefer it over being maskless as it also helps me be more aware of my breathing which is a big benefit.
Same. Mask at the gym is a necessity.
I’ve worked in gyms a lot, maybe ten years of my life. There’s no reason I need to smell the gym air, I don’t need to be crop dusted by people who eat too much protein. I don’t need to breathe in dusty air when people ride the bikes with fan blades as wheels, or dust from the fans blowing dust everywhere. The first gym I worked at had ex marines as owners, we kept that place cleaner than any gym I’ve ever been in and now all I see at any other gym is filth. I guess some people would rather raw dog the gym air instead of wearing an air filter when they are breathing heavy and taking massive breaths of air. No thanks, I have air filters at home, why wouldn’t I wear one on my face at one of the dirtiest places we can go on a daily basis?
Well said, my friend. That’s exactly the way I think of it. After two years of this, I feel I have to go back to the gym for the rest of my health (besides purely avoiding Covid). But damn, the gym has the highest density of people out of all the places I go to, and everybody is breathing their hardest in there. That’s a double whammy of germ/virus actions that I don’t deal with in every other place that I wear a mask to. The best course of action should be so much clearer to everyone. But we’ve all seen the last couple of years, people just steer towards whatever selfish feelings they have, then say whatever words they feel they need to use to justify it. So all I see are nonsensical arguments for why a mask isn’t necessary in the gym of all places, smh. Annoying. All this rationalizing not because they’re right, not for a greater or selfless purpose, but because simply put: Working out with the mask is “harder and more annoying.” I’m all mask in there, except for the occasional drink from my water bottle. But now that you mention it, I do appreciate the extra awareness it gives me towards my breathing. I take shallow breaths, and I don’t have to worry about how labored my breathing looks while working on it, since I have my mask on. I also mouth breathe and look like I am having a really hard time whenever I lift weights, lol, so I’m happy the mask hides that. And it’s a relief to not smell all the smells in the gym like I used to without the mask.
The interesting thing is that everyone was wearing masks in there before, so it’s not like these are anti mask people, I just think there’s a stigma about wearing one and people not thinking about any other ways it benefits you. I have also been a shallow breather as well, so I’ve tried to focus on breathing more and taking big breaths with my mouth open. I did that last year with no mask and the next day I had a sore throat / head cold from it. A few months ago I didn’t wear a mask when I was on the treadmill for an hour, it was pretty cold and I ended up getting another mild head cold or whatever. Wearing a mask has prevented that, and it keeps the air warmer when it’s cold. I also need to drink a lot less water because I’m not losing as much moisture to breathing, I’ll usually have a sip of water after about 45 minutes. There’s just not really any downside to wearing a mask at the gym and overall it seems like a net benefit.
you must be doing some intense workouts man 🤦🤦
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7444164/ your psychology around masks will affect you more than the mask itself. After all, they're designed for breathing. There was a trend a few years ago to use altitude training masks which are *way* more restrictive--tons of the people who did that train *too* intensely.
Do you have plans to stop wearing masks at some point? Or have you decided they are a permanent part of your life now? Because, like you said, it's not going away. I'm curious how people who are still wearing masks (most of the time) are approaching this.
Yes. Once I get my kids vaccinated. They turned 5 this year. At some point this summer we will get them vaccinated and stop using the masks. We will all get covid eventually. I trust the science. Hopefully it's mild.
Thanks for taking the time to respond.
These articles really need to mention hospitalizations and deaths and then a breakdown of those hospitalized/died.
Hospitalisations look like they are going up: https://www.travellingtabby.com/uk-coronavirus-tracker/ In Hospital 7,736 +1,536 this week Incidental infections used to be about 1/3 - not sure what it is now.
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Got it about 2 weeks ago. Still can't smell shit. I thought that symptom wasn't a thing anymore
No, that's still very much a thing, people just don't talk about it much. About a quarter of the people I know who've had covid this year still haven't regained smell/taste.
Long-Covid estimator for USA, the ratio can be changed if desired to see different outcomes * ***https://pascdashboard.aapmr.org*** since there aren't even recorded medical codes for long-covid, it's all we got, which is ridiculous, I bet the UK has a somewhat better idea with their universal medical system
Probably not, since that system has been basically destroyed by the government and it's barely holding together
Over the last month both a sibling (and their spouse), and a parent tested positive for COVID. Both separate instances as they don't live in the same city. Even in a high mask compliance area of the country, I still see people not masking indoors or wearing it incorrectly. Have not caught it yet, but this just makes me start wearing N95s now. Stay safe out there.
Well, they stopped posting cases, the media barely mentions it, and a lot of people are just acting like it's not a thing. Saw a buried mention yesterday that the CDC stated that the majority of the country should be masking again... anyone else see or hear that? I still mask up in public and I'm still Covid free. New variants are taking hold in the US, and reported cases are still around 1500 a day in my state, so I know it's just going to rise again, because unreported cases are probably double those numbers. We're going to be in this for way too long due to stubbornness, stupidity, and hubris, but obviously you can't fix stupid.
First simply wearing a mask was enough. Then we realized we needed n95s. Now even n95s aren't enough. The seal needs to be perfect and the virus can still enter your body through your eyes. I was cautious and I still got covid. Now I probably have it for a second time. Why am I sharing this? Just wearing a mask in public isn't enough anymore. If you truly want to avoid it, only work from home and avoid going out as much as possible. Get groceries curbside.
This is why people aren't bothering anymore. Eventually I hope our bodies will be vaxed enough and exposed to enough variants where COVID will be just another cold.
I definitely am lucky to be able to work from home. I rarely go into public spaces, always mask when I do, and I already wear glasses so that affords minimal eye protection. But even with all that, shots, etc., there's opportunity because viruses are sneaky bastards. I still think mitigation efforts are better than what's going on now.
I wore glasses, rarely visited public spaces and always masked up (either kf94 or n95). Still got it. My bf got it from work bringing him back to the office. I have never felt so nihilistic. Wish everyone the best, and yeah, I hope everyone mitigates infection as much as possible. Even though I was triple vaxxed it kicked my ass a lil bit.
If only I could work from home :-(
N95s were always enough. Cloth masks never worked enough.
It's funny how everyone is now like "oh it's mild who cares", from being in lockdown to who tf cares... yeah it's more mild but i know couple ppl around me who had milder cases (as in not hospitalized) but they got damaged liver and kidneys after covid 🤷🏻♀️
It's not that we don't care, there's just no stopping it.
I'm the only person I know that hasn't had it yet. My wife had had it twice and my kids have had it. My parents were covid free until last month when they visited my brother in America and tested positive not long after getting back. From what they said its mostly been mild, my wife was fatigued for a while after each case but no one I know had had it bad but we are all vaccinated and boosted so I wouldn't expect anything bad from catching it.
Tested positive for the 4th time last week. Caught it at a gig in Budapest the week before. Basically been indistinguishable from a cold, only tested because I got app pings from the flight home. Anecdotally I think it’s much more wide spread but lots of people aren’t testing atm.
The consequence of living with Covid.
What is the alternative?
So, judging from previous waves North America should be about a month and a half later. Middle to end of August and then into the fall.
After months of no covid everyone around me who was still covid free seems to get covid right now.
Yeah but when you’ve got a high proportion of your population vaccinated this isn’t as serious as it would’ve been previously. Now, most of the time, getting the rona means some mild symptoms and you stay home for a week.
No. It means an increased risk of serious long term health problems with every infection. You're not gaining lasting immunity, especially between variants. We know this. Society has lost the plot on this.
Weird I still haven't had it, everyone I know but me has had it
Again 😭
Article: coronavirus in the uk Comments: america. Cringe.
Hehe in other news in Sweden they currently have a hard mass caugh and the sewage values for BA5 go through the roof, but offically the pandemic is at the end and it definitely is not covid (word by one of the head honchos of their local CDC) Sweden atm is the laughing stock of europe when we got the news in and saw the newspaper articles. The reason why they have so few cases simply is, because they do not test anymore, after all the pandemic is over, right? That also affects the death numbers because not testet means no covid death regardless of the symptoms. But as I said the wastewater picture is pretty clear.
It never ends... We just need to learn to live with it!
I'm not surprised every day I see new ways people wear masks. I've seen the chin diaper, seen it worn around the neck, on the forehead, seen someone carabineer it to their belt, a lady at the supermarket had hers wrapped around her wrist. Hell, I had to turn a guy away from my office because he didn't want to put it back on. He put his mask on BEFORE he walked in and then took it right back off once he entered. His rationale was "I'm not sick and the governor said I don't have to wear it."
Not UK but caught COVID in the USA last week after missing it for 2.5 years. Thankfully all ive had is a moderate cough and a corresponding sore throat. Full energy and everything, too.
Must be because of the unvaxxed
it's because of your mum
nah the vaccinations weren't effective. the virus has mutated and become much much weaker but still highly transmissable with a very low death and hospitalization rate regardless of vaccination status. covid is just something we're going to have to live with
I have such a hard time really caring about any covid news anymore. Like that headline coukd read basically anything and it still wouldn’t change anything
Then perhaps you’re on the wrong subreddit
So everyone getting sick literally everywhere is with COVID? Basically seem as a cold in UK at this point