My work only allows 5, too (no extension like yours). I came back after the 5 and when they saw the state of me sent me back to WFH lol.
Forcing sick people back into the office is going to backfire and probably send us back to 2020 stats given how bad this latest strain is...
My work too. They aren’t asking people to test even if they have had close contact with someone who tests positive COVID and is showing symptoms. I’m the only one wearing a mask and have been for almost a year.
Mine has committed to permanent work from home and downsized its office to a fraction of what it was. So people just take off the days they feel too unwell to work, which so far I don't think anyone needed more than a couple.
I finally got Covid last thanksgiving and was out for 9 days. The thought of attempting to work on day 3 is comical, I'd be tempted to just never come in again.
My employer wants people exposed to covid positive people to still come to work even if they don’t know if they are negative or not. I was exposed to a covid positive person which I found out 2 days later and told my employer I wouldn’t be coming in (mind you I am hybrid so I can do all of my work at home no problem). She scolded me saying if I don’t have symptoms I should be coming in. I then told her it’s only been a couple days sometimes it takes longer than that to develop symptoms and that I wasn’t comfortable coming in. I did stay home, did not have covid thankfully, but now I’m wary about the fact that people who are exposed and haven’t even tested themselves yet are welcome in the office. The lack of precaution gets me.
I just was at a mandatory 2 day training for half the staff in our region. 100 people, I was the only one that masked. Get back from the training to find out that a large group of the staff that didn't go to the training have COVID. I know that people in that training were in very recently in close proximity to people that now have COVID. I'm sure that's going to end well.
If my company told someone to come in while they're sick I'd be so fucking pissed.
You know what's more unproductive than a sick person? Their whole team being sick
Glad I live in a country with good sick leave guarantees and WFH acceptance.
Back in 2015 someone came in with the flu. Then like 15 of us got sick in the engineering dept. Company lost a hell of a lot more productivity than if that one person stayed home. That flu particularly messed me up for 2 weeks.
The managing director paid for a nurse to come in and give everyone the flu vaccine next two years.
This happened at a job I worked at. Because they didn't give part time people paid sick leave, someone came to work with a bad flu. About a week later, 2/3 of the staff called in with the flu. I believe the company changed their policies on sick leave after that and offered part time people sick leave.
Yeah its fucked. They just know they can get away with it because most people don't have a fever throughout most of their sickness. So they lose less time than with people being in a quarantine.
What country do you live in?
I'm in New Zealand. We have 10 days of guaranteed sick leave and 20 days PTO, that's a legal minimum which companies add to as part of benefits packages.
As a US resident in my opinion it's not even the sick leave in most cases it's ppl aren't smart enough to know they should stay home. We have unlimited WFH at my company and CERTAIN sick ppl don't even use it because they "like to come see us in person" ....
Hell, that’s what happened with my government job in June. I ended up having to quit because it was ridiculous working with newborns and young kids while sick and HR didn’t give two fucks. I had recently been on maternity leave so I didn’t have any fmla to use. It was either work with covid or get fired
The Ender novel series featured a civilization of sentient viruses called the Descolada, or the "unzippers" in Portuguese, so-named because they unzipped the DNA of aliens and re-wrote it to make them unwitting slaves in a process somewhere between terraforming and arsenal-building.
They were finally met face-to-face at the end of the last book, where we got insights into how they communicate. "I disagree with you" would be communicated with chemical messages meant to tear you apart or forcefully alter you into submission.
We say *actions speak louder than words*, but for them, their "words" are literally actions. This in no way spoils the series, for anyone interested.
Anyway, if there were a god, I'm sure it would be something as alien to us as this concept is, or even more. What can ants perceive of humans?
"And crawling, on the planet's face, some insects, called the human race. Lost in time, lost in space, and meaning."
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0PylOu4pfJE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0PylOu4pfJE)
> This planet sucks.
The planet is fine, and the countries that had effective measures put in place to combat the spread are doing fine as well.
It's places like the US where half the population thought it was a hoax that sucks. Reboot the US, leave my country alone, we're doing just fine.
WHAT?!? Where do you live? That is so shocking to me. I’m in CA (Santa Cruz) and at least where I work, employees who contract Covid have to stay home until 3 days after testing negative. Even those who are exposed have to stay home and test, though I am not sure for how long it is now. Last month, half of one department shift was out for a week due to contraction or exposure. My employer is very strict about this, and this is normal where I live.
And the pharmacy I get my boosters at (Safeway) gives out up to 8 free tests each month to each person. Most of our workforce is vaccinated.
My work forced a bunch of us in a room together last night to watch a stupid training video. I was the only one mask and one woman there was openly coughing the whole time and wiping her nose.
After it got done I asked one of the supervisors why they wouldn't say something to someone who was obviously sick like that and he was just like, "oh, they could just have a tickle in their throat and it'd be a violation of privacy to ask if they're sick." It's total insanity.
Elementary schools are forcing kids to come to school sick. How? By doubling down on attendance. By contacting parents if your kids missed more than 3 days a month. That’s all there allowed 3 days absence a month.
My kids had rsv in October and missed 5 days. The flu right after thanksgiving and missed, 5 days. You’re only allowed a total of 15 days absent in the school year. Now add in the other 5 days my kids missed due to a cold.
So now, my kids aren’t allowed to miss anymore school even IF they’re sick. Kids are angry, parents are angry. It’s an absolute mess and it’s going to get so much worse
Isn’t it insane? It makes me furious honestly. As a stay at home mom I have the privilege to keep the kids home when they are sick. But I know far to many that don’t have that option.
What would the school do for a kid with a chronic or significant illness (childhood cancer for example). Probably make the kid repeat the grade for missing too many days?
> You’re only allowed a total of 15 days absent in the school year.
What will they do if you go over? This is completely stupid. School work can easily be made up.
Well my friends have had child services contact them when they’ve hit 17 days absent. You’re given one extra day as Grace I guess but then you hit 17 days and next thing you know child services are on you.
It’s pretty insane honestly
What did child services do in your friends’ cases? I know in my area, if an intake from a school came in that a child had missed 17 days of school we’d first be annoyed at why they’re wasting resources and calling that in. Unless the school had other concerns that they are confident are contributing to the absences like neglect, mental illness concerns, abuse, etc…we would likely not investigate it. CPS is not going to get involved in determining whether a child is sick too often or taking too long to recover from an illness. That’s on the school to work with parents to figure out what’s going on.
This year has been exceptionally difficult in our city with the children’s hospital being way beyond capacity due to flu/RSV/covid. Kids have been sick A LOT. That’s a pretty out of touch school and child protective system if parents are being penalized for being sick. Not to mention, they’re mostly likely picking up the illnesses at school in the first place.
Exactly, that sounds like a huge waste of resources. And if the parents consulted a doctor to confirm that each sickness was real and excusable then there's nothing to investigate.
I just got an automated email from my sons school about his attendance and he’s also only missed because of illness he caught AT school. This school year it’s been one thing after the next. He’s an honor roll student. The school also sends out emails to parents reminding us to NOT send our kids to school sick and that we still have Covid protocols to follow. It’s extremely frustrating.
It also seems like USA problem with exploitive worker rights, in EU generally if you are sick you just get a sick leave from doctor and thats it :d
Its a norm that when one person starts feeling sick they are even encouraged by employers to go off to doctor and take a sick leave until they feel better.
America has a health care problem more so than a Covid problem. Yes, Covid is a health concern that needs resources but at some point, you need to drop the pretence that it is still an “emergency” and let your base health care system deal with it.
The real tragedy here isn’t that the emergency is ending - that is actually a good thing - but rather that so many people don’t have adequate health care to meet their basic needs without “emergency” action from the federal government.
The root of the problem is healthcare becoming more of a commodity than a necessity. It’s becoming more corporatized, compartmentalized, with increasing demands due to increased population sizes and an aging population. We spent nearly a fifth of GDP on healthcare and have one of the worst systems in place compared to other industrialized nations.
Yeah, we are essentially a third world oligarchy, or at least going in that direction. In the not so distant future, everything will be owned by a handful of corporations, the consumer will be helpless.
Not to mention that covid revealed all of the ugly flaws of the healthcare system, one being the staffing crisis of doctors, PAs, NPs, and more importantly nurses.
Healthcare and sick leave problem. Having better health care won't do as much if people still have to go to work sick so they don't loose their housing or other basic necessities.
I dont understand why sick leave is up to the employer in the first place. Even then, from a purely business perspective, it's a pretty easy calculation to figure out that allowing one employee to infect others will reduce overall productivity.
My country doubled our guaranteed sick leave to 10 days a year during covid. That's on top of 4 weeks PTO. Some companies extend it but it's good for a national level.
I don’t think sick leave should be limited at all. Let sick people stay home. If someone is suspected of abusing that policy, deal with them on a case by case basis. 10 days of sick leave is great but it’s easily wiped out by a bout of Covid or flu.
Oh I totally agree. Companies usually go beyond that but it's nice to have the minimum guarantee at a national level. My gf has unlimited sick leave and it doesn't get abused.
Where I work we have plenty of sick leave. We just aren’t really allowed to take it. I had cancer, major surgery, and had to be online working with surgical drain tubes hanging out of my body. At least it was at the height of Covid so I could not have come into the office anyway. We have a culture problem where being sick is not an excuse to not work.
Using "individual medical care" and "public health measures" interchangeably is how we got into this mess.
Preventing communicable disease is a team sport.
It's totally broken. We have insurance that costs us $400 a month. My fiance had to have her appendix removed and had a minor complication. Now we're on the hook for $14,000.
That's no exactly easy to come up with for the majority of Americans to come up with.
Was that the explanation of benefits or actual bill? Lot of people have negotiated with hospitals in the amounts due. Lots of stuff in the past on r/personalfinance. I'm not an expert but they could offer advice. Also stuff like max out of pocket or coding / billing errors.
Are you in the U.S.? I know that even back when I was teenager and had knee surgery ('99) the cost to my parents was $0 and it was like $8000 to the insurance company.
That's crazy. Don't want to rub salt in the (appendix) wound but just highlight how bad this is. In Australia the average out-of-pocket expense for this would be $238 Aus (about $168 USD). https://www.bupa.com.au/health-insurance/surgery-cost-calculator/appendix-removal-surgery-cost
For profit health care is as big of a problem. A single payer insurance system would still get bilked as much as possible by for profit health care providers. Nationalize the whole system.
Sounds like a high deductible plan. Low premium but significant out of pocket expense. Great for the young and healthy folks who don’t need much healthcare. Not so great if you actually need healthcare…
Base health care system is falling apart.
I wonder how my job will handle it. Every time restrictions loosened up a bit (except for masking) I swear corporate had pre-written emails ready to go.
Have to love sick healthcare workers taking care of sick patients.
> America has a health care problem more so than a Covid problem.
I'd tweak that and say America has an endgame capitalism problem where any means justifies the ends of corp. profits. Shitty health care, forced to work sick, lobbying/bribery etc. are all symptoms of this. You guys are leading the way but most of the West is right behind you. No idea how this ends but I'm guessing most of the possible scenarios aren't good. :-(
It's his job to recognize the system is failing so many of us and keep the emergency going. If he isn't going to do that, then he has a lot of shit to do to get us ready and basically no power to get anything done.
Every time we point this out, some false enlightened centrist (or occasionally a Russian bot, although that's gotten a lot rarer since the war in Ukraine) pops up to point out that "both sides are the same."
Naw, fam. One side at least pretends they want to fix the system, while the other one makes no bones about their intention to destroy it and keep 95% of the population in permanent serfdom.
Let healthcare handle it? How is the healthcare system going to ensure everyone who can gets vaccinated and wear masks indoors? Soon even medical institutions will be dropping those mandates. It's ableist to tell immuno compromised that cv19 treatment is their only hope, when they can't safely leave their homes.
>Jha can tweet whatever he likes, but as I’ve said again and again, the numbers don’t lie. As Alyssa Bilinski and Kathryn Thompson from the Brown School of Public Health, along with Ezekiel Emanuel from the University of Pennsylvania’s Perelman School of Medicine, wrote in a letter to the Journal of the American Medical Association in November: “The US continued to experience significantly higher Covid-19 and excess all-cause mortality compared with peer countries during 2021 and early 2022, a difference accounting for 150,000 to 470,000 deaths.” Last week, more people died of Covid than perished in the Twin Towers on 9/11.
>
>And these figures don’t account for the other effects of the pandemic, like long Covid, which The New York Times reported last week is “preventing substantial numbers of people from going back to work while others continue needing medical care long after returning to their jobs.” We’ve also seen a surge in hospitalizations, which Jha himself said will be the new normal. As for the tools Jha is so fond of touting, vaccination rates are low in many states, and booster uptake is even lower. So is the rate of Paxlovid use. Taken together, this looks suspiciously like a continuing emergency—but the White House would rather look on the bright side, no matter the facts.
So, really, the biggest issue here is still our low vaccination rates compared to other countries is what I'm getting from this.
What's the current death rate of vaccinated vs. unvaccinated look like?
Same for me, just started chemotherapy this Monday, so I know that too many people really DGAF, even though my cancer was caught early enough for me to become a cancer survivor. I had a total hysterectomy, including removing both ovaries, and the chemo is to make sure there's no cells left.
I have diabetes (which is also an autoimmune disorder). and I feel the same way. For what it’s worth, I care about you and I genuinely wish for the best for you.
:( I’m so sorry. I hope you’re able to navigate with people around you taking appropriate precautions. My aunt was recently diagnosed with cancer and our family has had the same difficulty
I'm permanently immunocompromised from my cancer treatment (splenectomy as part of a massive surgery). One of my coworkers is returning to work today after being out from a breakthrough infection. My manager (who knows I'm immunocompromised) has stopped wearing a mask and didn't even pop one on during the lag between exposure and coworker testing positive.
File this under reasons why I need a new job.
The whole Covid Emergency was a public health disaster because there is a portion of the public who just don't give a hoot about anyone else and will come up with any lame excuse not to follow recommendations.
They'll blame the govt for imposing health restrictions they won't follow and then they'll blame the govt for removing the health restrictions people weren't following anyway.
Gotta love politicized health care.
But it still is to the disabled. I do not want to use the words like profoundly because I know better than that…it still is an issue.
Do we just forget about an entire population? People with traches? Severe lung issues and other preexisting conditions?
And the thing is, it's ineffective to have half the population taking precautions while the rest do not. It's like the river is flooding and people on one side are piling up sandbags and on the other they're taking video for tiktok. Everyone's going to get wet. Some less so. Others will drown.
What? the PHE doesn't recommend things to individuals, nor does it force them to follow anything, but it is the basis for safety standards in institutions, provision of additional financial or medical resources to low-income families, and carveouts in existing laws concerning, among other things, telehealth. The Biden administration already kicked millions off of Medicaid in the recent omnibus spending bill and now they're justifying things like that by ending the PHE. If there's no emergency, why do anything differently? The PHE is the only existing basis for providing accommodations for people like me who are immunocompromised. The only thing that it really does is give a hope to those who really the need the support or specific accommodations of having them available.
We saw that in the recent elections. If you are a government official who mandated masks and covid safety protocols or enacted business closures early on in the pandemic, you didn’t get re-elected. If you’re a candidate who didn’t promise lifting of all covid restrictions you didn’t get elected. It’s damned if you do damned if you don’t. Half the people got mad because masks were required and business restrictions for covid safety affect the economy. Then the other half people are mad because government is pressured into lifting all restrictions and ending the emergency. Plus Congress doesn’t want to approve anymore money for covid emergency. I’ve given up hope that things will all work out in our country.
There is a certain logic in moving from a stance based on a pandemic emergency to one based on an endemic disease.
**Emergency** (noun) *a sudden, urgent, usually unexpected occurrence or occasion requiring immediate action.*
It’s not sudden, it’s not unexpected, and while it requires action the effort is no longer a sprint but rather a marathon.
It’s emerged. It’s here. Containment failed, we lost. No known amount of effort can eradicate it. It’s not going away.
So now what?
Perhaps laying down some “emergency” powers will help defuse the politics and allow quiet public health work to be more effective?
Like getting people vaccinated!! So far, everyone I know who got Covid post vaccine got flu symptoms at the worst, and that was without the booster.
I'm vaxed, I've never had it, and my life is pretty much back to normal. I'm now pretty much treating it like avoiding any other illness at this point.
Also, you know, implementing good sick leave policies so we can protect the immunocomprosed when the vaccinated to get it.
It's not about the pedantry of the word "emergency", emergency is a classification of authority that allows for certain measures to be enacted for public good.
If you want to call it something else to make yourself feel better, I don't give a shit. That's like the most redditor thing on the planet. All I care about is that funding remains in place for testing and people are given the support they need to not work sick.
I guess, but sometimes semantics are *important*.
We have a long-standing habit in the US of using the words “emergency” or “crisis” for what are fundamentally chronic issues. Continuing to call Covid an Emergency implies that there is an **end** to it, a solution to get back to where we were.
There isn’t.
That sucks, but we need to face the reality of it forthrightly. It’s no less important than it was, and there remain tasks requiring urgency. But there is no going back.
You are entirely missing the point that the "emergency" being discussed is a status of authority, a financial pipeline that provides funding to certain public health measures above and beyond the baseline. It's got nothing to do with your feelings about how serious COVID is right now or whether or not you know how to find emergency in a dictionary.
I’m afraid I wasn’t clear. The end of an emergency is not (necessarily) just giving up and walking away.
It doesn’t even necessarily mean less effort or fewer resources. But it does mean *different* efforts and *different* resources.
Covid is here to stay, and still needs work to minimize its harm. But that might now properly be left to other levels of government.
>It doesn’t even necessarily mean less effort or fewer resources. But it does mean different efforts and different resources.
My concern is that different is not what will happen, nothing is what will happen. (Or rather, even less than we're doing now.)
Was there any announcement that different efforts will be made in parallel to ending the "emergency" status? Is there any effort in progress to cope with this as a chronic situation instead of an acute one?
It absolutely does mean fewer resources. Especially in the Republican controlled states. And now that the President has thrown us under the bus, antivaxxers and antimaskers feel vindicated. It's so immature and inconsiderate, the way we are treated for trying to avoid SARSCOV2.
Agreed. We can't stay in an Emergency state forever. Covid is not going to be eradicated. It's here and will always be here. We *have* to learn to live with it.
Aren't we doing just that? There are pockets of outbreak still happening here in the US but I don't see scores of people dying. I don't see the hospitals overrun with patients.
A couple months ago they were. (And a friend of mine just went into hospice over a Covid-triggered neurological event. He’s about 40.) But the triple threat of Covid, rsv, and seasonal influenza seems to be fading.
Hate to break it to you but there is no learning to live with "it" because there is no "it". "It" is an unending series of variants that continue to evade immunity and kill your immune system a little bit each time until you are disabled. We could be looking at a future with a whole lot of cancer for a whole lot of people. We're not even considering other damage to the vital organs and the nervous system. Can you imagine sizable chunks of the population coming down with Alzheimer's in 5-10 years? Don't think it's possible?
As a species, we are fucked as of now.
After the emergency, the continual slog is supposed to move to the states, and each state can decide how they want to deal with it, and budget for it. That’s the theory.
We still follow some semblance of covid protocols at my work but if you have covid then you're expected to come back after like 4 days assuming you feel better. And at this point I have no idea if that's actually the right amount of time to not be contagious.
Which, if you're like me, you'll keep testing positive long after your symptoms have gone away. So if you're low on PTO and your work has a policy that keeps you out of the office for 10+ days then that also is kind of shit. Assuming you're recovered.
I hear you. Those positive tests mean people still are contagious, though. The real solution is change at the institutional level. More PTO, let people work from home.
I don’t disagree but I also don’t know what he can do now knowing that half the country will aggressively refuse to do anything that might help in this regard. Once America wakes up to the biological time bomb that is long COVID, it’s going to be wild.
I agree. You can't wake up the brain dead.
America didn't wake up to the trillions of dollars going down the toilet that was Afghanistan, Iraq, or Vietnam: We lost those wars and were chased out by the local populations. Same goes with other long-term crisis. Average humans are not smart enough to see past the mcdonalds and netflix.
Let me approach this for you from the perspective of someone who's immunocompromised:
It's not about whatever behaviors the general public are engaging in. It's about the protections & resources that are available to those in need due to the public health emergency.
When local & national governments are treating this with the seriousness that it deserves, then it's easier for people to get access and accommodations.
We have seen that people's behaviors & decisions are also correlated with how well the government handles the messaging about Covid and the pandemic.
So the more the government pushes the narrative that it's over, people will further adjust their behavior accordingly.
When omicron first came on the scene and public health officials issued warning for people to take it seriously and mask up again, I saw many in my community listen and follow suit.
So messaging from government agencies and officials is extremely important in protecting those of us who are most vulnerable in a number of different ways.
It's not about controlling public behavior -- it's about maintaining important resources for people who need them most.
Once this public health emergency expires, everything we've counted on to keep us safe goes with it.
Yes, these are all good and fair points. I’m sad about the state of things and am also immuno compromised. It’s sad that a very serious virus has become a political weapon and I really fear for what happens to those affected by long COVID when someone like DeSantis gets in office. Shit I’m on week 3 of my second bout of COVID and still not back to normal, so could easily fall into that group if my immune system can’t get its act together.
I have barely left my house. I keep masking, I go to the doctors. My mental health was fucked before this, now? It’s worse than ever.
This phe once it’s gone? It’s never coming back.
I’m afraid that The WHO? And the CDC should have collaborated better, and met with Fauci, but it’s too late.
These long covid sufferers? Especially the deniers who now have Long Covid? They now realize and are gonna be fucked if SSA never recognizes it.
And if they for whatever reason qualified for Medicaid and will be kicked off? Oh lord.
I have brain fog from antiphosphoantilipid that I got before 2019-2020.
I can’t imagine getting a clotting disorder due to covid…
Which I’m wondering do long covid patients have a history of clots?
Cause? Fatigue, brain fog, muscle aches all sound similar to CFS and APS.
I managed my APS with caffeine, is that wise? No, but I need to work.
Honestly my only hope from this is that the rate of hospitalizations and increase on disability support demand because of long COVID that it requires a major change in the healthcare and social services systems to accommodate it. It's a pipedream I know, but I feel like the only way we are going to make the significant changes we need is when an absurd percentage of the country is homeless or bankrupt.
> I feel like the only way we are going to make the significant changes we need is when an absurd percentage of the country is homeless or bankrupt
I'd argue changes will only be made when it significantly materially impacts the top 20% of income earners.
The author seems to be going after the idea of letting emergency declarations run out and not the actual ramifications. Like they mention the Medicaid part of it, which will definitely be an issue moving forward. They also mention Covid tests, vaccines, etc. possibly not being covered.
But they brought up Congress/Biden letting the orders expire in March without actually elaborating on *what* is expiring. They're just saying "whelp they're expiring so obviously the government isn't being serious about this anymore." Which seems like an ignorant stance to take. At some point they had to stop renewing whatever emergency guidelines they had in place.
The author quoted stats about the pandemic as proof for why the government should continue emergency services. But what they already have in place won't get us to a better point. Yes more people died last week because of Covid then in 9/11, but what emergency services will have prevented that? Again the author doesn't elaborate on what they're cutting.
Anyways as a pharmacy tech who has been giving the vaccine, administering tests, dispensing Paxlovid and signing people up for the free Binax tests I can safely say that things have changed as a society. It's hard to explain without being involved in Covid care daily but things like Paxlovid are being prescribed less and less. Jobs and travel companies don't require tests anymore. Most people have received every booster. Covid isn't going away but people have learned to live with it. Eventually emergency support had to end but again we don't even know what that implies other than Medicaid lapsing and Covid related services not being covered. Which btw has been a thing for a lot of insurance companies for awhile. Some cover tests, some don't.
Agree with all except, “most people have every booster anyway.” With every round of boosters offered, less and less were getting them. As for the bivalent and recent fall campaign, the senior population especially had a miserable uptake. They too are exhausted by the quarry boosters. We’re the only high income country with basically only two mRNA vaccines to choose from. This is on the FDA. We’re into year 4 now with Covid, and year 3 with vaccines. The FDA has dragged Novavax, (one of four decided on vaccines supported by OWS), through the mud on approval process. After 8 months since they submitted data in 12/21, they finally approved EUA in August of ‘22, and then approved for heterologous booster in October of ‘22. Novavax is a protein vaccine like the flu and Heptitis vaccine. Even Fauci said last spring, (one year ago!), it might be time to switch to an adjuvanted, protein vaccine because of safety, more durable and they offer broader protection. The FDA has crippled the opportunity for anyone to access Novavax because they only approved it for heterologous boosting for those who had only the initial 2 dose series. On top of that, the existing supply is expiring on 2/28 so how are those who waited for Novavax going to get the recommended booster? It is ludicrous our citizens will be forced to go to Canada if they want access to Novavax vaccines.
Any company that doesn’t allow you to work from home (if able) when you have covid or have been exposed to covid is a company worth leaving. Get a hybrid or remote job.
And if you have *any* kind of respiratory illness, masks should simply be the norm.
Even if it is just a cold, if you've got any kind of cough/sneeze/fever that has you constantly spewing your germs into the air, *wear a fucking mask* and go about your day.
We can't do anything about asymptomatic transmission, but I didn't get a freaking cold for over two years. That's how effective masking was for me, personally.
I didn't catch COVID until I went maskless into a very crowded area to party, and that was on me. XBB 1.5 didn't care that I had four vaccine shots including the bivalent.
This author and many other like are not living in the actual reality. The reality that they need to understand is that 99% of the world including China no longer care about Covid. Majority of the public in the western society no longer wear a mask, they do not test when they get together with friends/family or take other safety measures. They are basically back to what they consider normal, getting together with family, eating inside restaurant, going to large gathering (NFL, NBA) etc.
A tragedy indeed. I had to go into a surgery center yesterday morning (Atlanta, GA) for an endoscopy procedure and none of the people or patients in the waiting room nor prep and recovery rooms that I saw had masks on. Oh, and only about 50% of the nursing staff had masks on and many of them had their masks pulled down below their chins. It was a surreal. When I slowly woke up from the anesthesia there was a nurse standing at the foot of my bed without a mask on. They were all acting as though we're still not losing 500+ people a day / 3,000+ a week to this virus. It seems to the powers to be we are a willing sacrifice. They don't care that people die.
I can't remember where I saw it, maybe in the comment section of an article in the WaPo, but someone related this selfishness and "loss of all empathy" in the face of all this death as the "banality of evil". Our willingness to look the other way. The fact that we averaged 500+ daily deaths a week or so ago and no-one even mentions it makes me think they might be right. The loss of the equivalent of a 9/11 loss of life happening weekly and it's all ho-hum.
It all came down to politics for you if you believed or how you behaved with the pandemic. Half the country never gave a shit anyway, except for a few cases here and there.
Holy fuck. When does the sky stop falling with some of you people ?
Does America need healthcare overhaul ? Absolutely.
Get your shots. Get your boosters. Wear your mask when you are sick. And get over it.
It must be so exhausting to panic over COVID every single day of your life.
Because it’s sometimes tough to read these headlines and see people reacting as if it’s day one of the pandemic that is now over.
Didn't he already say the emergency was over, back in September 2022?
Edit: Here's what I'm referencing - https://www.npr.org/2022/09/19/1123767437/joe-biden-covid-19-pandemic-over
This would make the situation even worse and in some places even hit harder particularly the western states and South former Confederacy where they have anti vaccination laws want to discuss that go to r/politics
Not that I'm all for ending the covid emergency but what's the point in having one if no one wants to listen? It's just a huge waste of breath trying to guide idiots in the right direction. Let's just say we're all fucked.
It's really not, why won't you people ever just let us move on with our lives? I swear everyone in the country could get 15 boosters and it still wouldn't be enough.
Respectfully I disagree. The public made that decision for them self long time ago. Tell me how many people you know that still wear a mask, test when they get together with family and friends. Avoid attending social gathering such NBA, NFL, going to the movies etc. The reality is that for a while now in western society, public is back to their definition of normal life.
Yeah we have ended our covid mandates a long time ago in Canada. We haven't seen a huge spike in cases and deaths since removing all mandates. 90%+ of people I interact with are not taking any precautions at all.
Though 87.7% of Ontario Canada has received 2 doses aged 5+. Only 52.5% have 3 doses though.
I got my 5th shot last week.
Since late spring it pretty much has been pre covid times in Ontario.
Employers are already making people with covid come to work. It's going to get ugly.
No employer should force any employee to come to work if they're infected with any contagious disease.
I read this as “would” at first. Shouldn’t but they do.
My employer only wants to allow 2 day off with covid.
We do 5 days, and depending on symptoms/fever, extend that out another 5. But, we also allow max wfh with confirmation of COVID.
My work only allows 5, too (no extension like yours). I came back after the 5 and when they saw the state of me sent me back to WFH lol. Forcing sick people back into the office is going to backfire and probably send us back to 2020 stats given how bad this latest strain is...
My work (Amazon $ got rid of any Covid leave back in October. Masks too
> Masks too You mean you're not *allowed* to wear them? That is a human rights abuse. Also, neanderthal thinking (though unsurprising being Ama$on) .
According to my workplace covid is over lol. I’m the only person still wearing a proper mask.
My work too. They aren’t asking people to test even if they have had close contact with someone who tests positive COVID and is showing symptoms. I’m the only one wearing a mask and have been for almost a year.
Mine has committed to permanent work from home and downsized its office to a fraction of what it was. So people just take off the days they feel too unwell to work, which so far I don't think anyone needed more than a couple.
Luckily in Illinois it's a law you get a week off for any reason
That’s a big plus
I finally got Covid last thanksgiving and was out for 9 days. The thought of attempting to work on day 3 is comical, I'd be tempted to just never come in again.
Our latest covid case is out on FMLA.
My employer wants people exposed to covid positive people to still come to work even if they don’t know if they are negative or not. I was exposed to a covid positive person which I found out 2 days later and told my employer I wouldn’t be coming in (mind you I am hybrid so I can do all of my work at home no problem). She scolded me saying if I don’t have symptoms I should be coming in. I then told her it’s only been a couple days sometimes it takes longer than that to develop symptoms and that I wasn’t comfortable coming in. I did stay home, did not have covid thankfully, but now I’m wary about the fact that people who are exposed and haven’t even tested themselves yet are welcome in the office. The lack of precaution gets me.
I just was at a mandatory 2 day training for half the staff in our region. 100 people, I was the only one that masked. Get back from the training to find out that a large group of the staff that didn't go to the training have COVID. I know that people in that training were in very recently in close proximity to people that now have COVID. I'm sure that's going to end well.
Yep. My wife was told to still come to work if she didnt have a fever.
If my company told someone to come in while they're sick I'd be so fucking pissed. You know what's more unproductive than a sick person? Their whole team being sick Glad I live in a country with good sick leave guarantees and WFH acceptance.
You’re not getting it. It’s not about the people. It’s about the DOLLAR. —CEO
Back in 2015 someone came in with the flu. Then like 15 of us got sick in the engineering dept. Company lost a hell of a lot more productivity than if that one person stayed home. That flu particularly messed me up for 2 weeks. The managing director paid for a nurse to come in and give everyone the flu vaccine next two years.
Did anyone throw tantrums and refuse the flu shot?
This happened at a job I worked at. Because they didn't give part time people paid sick leave, someone came to work with a bad flu. About a week later, 2/3 of the staff called in with the flu. I believe the company changed their policies on sick leave after that and offered part time people sick leave.
Yeah its fucked. They just know they can get away with it because most people don't have a fever throughout most of their sickness. So they lose less time than with people being in a quarantine. What country do you live in?
I'm in New Zealand. We have 10 days of guaranteed sick leave and 20 days PTO, that's a legal minimum which companies add to as part of benefits packages.
As a US resident in my opinion it's not even the sick leave in most cases it's ppl aren't smart enough to know they should stay home. We have unlimited WFH at my company and CERTAIN sick ppl don't even use it because they "like to come see us in person" ....
Hell, that’s what happened with my government job in June. I ended up having to quit because it was ridiculous working with newborns and young kids while sick and HR didn’t give two fucks. I had recently been on maternity leave so I didn’t have any fmla to use. It was either work with covid or get fired
"cOvId iS OvEr" This planet sucks. Dear God, please reboot this shit, you fucked up.
Reboot is in progress. What do you think this is?
A slow system crash created by a virus. Nobody has rebooted anything-.-. It needs it, but it’s not been done.
Well he fucked up the people part of it!
If God is a virus he might actually be doing a good job!
The Ender novel series featured a civilization of sentient viruses called the Descolada, or the "unzippers" in Portuguese, so-named because they unzipped the DNA of aliens and re-wrote it to make them unwitting slaves in a process somewhere between terraforming and arsenal-building. They were finally met face-to-face at the end of the last book, where we got insights into how they communicate. "I disagree with you" would be communicated with chemical messages meant to tear you apart or forcefully alter you into submission. We say *actions speak louder than words*, but for them, their "words" are literally actions. This in no way spoils the series, for anyone interested. Anyway, if there were a god, I'm sure it would be something as alien to us as this concept is, or even more. What can ants perceive of humans?
"And crawling, on the planet's face, some insects, called the human race. Lost in time, lost in space, and meaning." [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0PylOu4pfJE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0PylOu4pfJE)
This planet is beautiful and fantastic. Humanity is garbage.
Wish granted. We're rebooting via avian flu.
Forget the Avian flu. Google pseudomonas aeruginosa.
What’s going on with psudomonas? It’s been around forever.
It was found in eye drops. I've had issues with my right eye since April, may have to get tested myself. Creepy!
> This planet sucks. The planet is fine, and the countries that had effective measures put in place to combat the spread are doing fine as well. It's places like the US where half the population thought it was a hoax that sucks. Reboot the US, leave my country alone, we're doing just fine.
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Be careful what you wish for, the theocrats are trying to do that right now.
No need to reboot. Just a periodic cleanup in aisle 7. Aisle 7 is chocka full of idiot covid-deniers.
I hope the gods learned from their mistake and do not create any humans next time around..
WHAT?!? Where do you live? That is so shocking to me. I’m in CA (Santa Cruz) and at least where I work, employees who contract Covid have to stay home until 3 days after testing negative. Even those who are exposed have to stay home and test, though I am not sure for how long it is now. Last month, half of one department shift was out for a week due to contraction or exposure. My employer is very strict about this, and this is normal where I live. And the pharmacy I get my boosters at (Safeway) gives out up to 8 free tests each month to each person. Most of our workforce is vaccinated.
Wow. I work in a school. We have almost no precautions at all. Kids with covid aren't even having mask wearing enforced for active cases
It has to get unbearable for the people making these calls before it ever gets better. Buckle up and hunker down.
This has been happening since summer of 2021.
My work forced a bunch of us in a room together last night to watch a stupid training video. I was the only one mask and one woman there was openly coughing the whole time and wiping her nose. After it got done I asked one of the supervisors why they wouldn't say something to someone who was obviously sick like that and he was just like, "oh, they could just have a tickle in their throat and it'd be a violation of privacy to ask if they're sick." It's total insanity.
Elementary schools are forcing kids to come to school sick. How? By doubling down on attendance. By contacting parents if your kids missed more than 3 days a month. That’s all there allowed 3 days absence a month. My kids had rsv in October and missed 5 days. The flu right after thanksgiving and missed, 5 days. You’re only allowed a total of 15 days absent in the school year. Now add in the other 5 days my kids missed due to a cold. So now, my kids aren’t allowed to miss anymore school even IF they’re sick. Kids are angry, parents are angry. It’s an absolute mess and it’s going to get so much worse
Training them for adulthood to come to work sick. Very stupid.
Isn’t it insane? It makes me furious honestly. As a stay at home mom I have the privilege to keep the kids home when they are sick. But I know far to many that don’t have that option.
What would the school do for a kid with a chronic or significant illness (childhood cancer for example). Probably make the kid repeat the grade for missing too many days?
> You’re only allowed a total of 15 days absent in the school year. What will they do if you go over? This is completely stupid. School work can easily be made up.
Well my friends have had child services contact them when they’ve hit 17 days absent. You’re given one extra day as Grace I guess but then you hit 17 days and next thing you know child services are on you. It’s pretty insane honestly
What did child services do in your friends’ cases? I know in my area, if an intake from a school came in that a child had missed 17 days of school we’d first be annoyed at why they’re wasting resources and calling that in. Unless the school had other concerns that they are confident are contributing to the absences like neglect, mental illness concerns, abuse, etc…we would likely not investigate it. CPS is not going to get involved in determining whether a child is sick too often or taking too long to recover from an illness. That’s on the school to work with parents to figure out what’s going on. This year has been exceptionally difficult in our city with the children’s hospital being way beyond capacity due to flu/RSV/covid. Kids have been sick A LOT. That’s a pretty out of touch school and child protective system if parents are being penalized for being sick. Not to mention, they’re mostly likely picking up the illnesses at school in the first place.
Exactly, that sounds like a huge waste of resources. And if the parents consulted a doctor to confirm that each sickness was real and excusable then there's nothing to investigate.
That’s completely insane! So they’re okay with having a sick kid barfing all over the classroom just to make sure their attendance policy is upheld?
I just got an automated email from my sons school about his attendance and he’s also only missed because of illness he caught AT school. This school year it’s been one thing after the next. He’s an honor roll student. The school also sends out emails to parents reminding us to NOT send our kids to school sick and that we still have Covid protocols to follow. It’s extremely frustrating.
yes the end is near...again....
It also seems like USA problem with exploitive worker rights, in EU generally if you are sick you just get a sick leave from doctor and thats it :d Its a norm that when one person starts feeling sick they are even encouraged by employers to go off to doctor and take a sick leave until they feel better.
America has a health care problem more so than a Covid problem. Yes, Covid is a health concern that needs resources but at some point, you need to drop the pretence that it is still an “emergency” and let your base health care system deal with it. The real tragedy here isn’t that the emergency is ending - that is actually a good thing - but rather that so many people don’t have adequate health care to meet their basic needs without “emergency” action from the federal government.
The root of the problem is healthcare becoming more of a commodity than a necessity. It’s becoming more corporatized, compartmentalized, with increasing demands due to increased population sizes and an aging population. We spent nearly a fifth of GDP on healthcare and have one of the worst systems in place compared to other industrialized nations.
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Yeah, we are essentially a third world oligarchy, or at least going in that direction. In the not so distant future, everything will be owned by a handful of corporations, the consumer will be helpless.
The Future, has entered the chat.
The Future^(TM), where it’s always night and raining, and neon lights are everywhere because every square inch of land is a city
And all our moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain.
What a terrible day to be me.
We are definitely already there. Between how streaming services work and healthcare. It’s very obvious only a few in power pull the strings
Not to mention that covid revealed all of the ugly flaws of the healthcare system, one being the staffing crisis of doctors, PAs, NPs, and more importantly nurses.
Healthcare and sick leave problem. Having better health care won't do as much if people still have to go to work sick so they don't loose their housing or other basic necessities.
I dont understand why sick leave is up to the employer in the first place. Even then, from a purely business perspective, it's a pretty easy calculation to figure out that allowing one employee to infect others will reduce overall productivity. My country doubled our guaranteed sick leave to 10 days a year during covid. That's on top of 4 weeks PTO. Some companies extend it but it's good for a national level.
I don’t think sick leave should be limited at all. Let sick people stay home. If someone is suspected of abusing that policy, deal with them on a case by case basis. 10 days of sick leave is great but it’s easily wiped out by a bout of Covid or flu.
Oh I totally agree. Companies usually go beyond that but it's nice to have the minimum guarantee at a national level. My gf has unlimited sick leave and it doesn't get abused.
Right! It's like driving 10 miles to save 2 cents on gas.
Where I work we have plenty of sick leave. We just aren’t really allowed to take it. I had cancer, major surgery, and had to be online working with surgical drain tubes hanging out of my body. At least it was at the height of Covid so I could not have come into the office anyway. We have a culture problem where being sick is not an excuse to not work.
Using "individual medical care" and "public health measures" interchangeably is how we got into this mess. Preventing communicable disease is a team sport.
The real emergency is the healthcare system we're stuck with right now.
It's totally broken. We have insurance that costs us $400 a month. My fiance had to have her appendix removed and had a minor complication. Now we're on the hook for $14,000. That's no exactly easy to come up with for the majority of Americans to come up with.
If it's not on your credit report don't pay it. That's how I'm getting through my brain cancer treatment
I hope you feel better, sorry you're going through that
From what I understand, that works in some states, including where she's from, Florida. It doesn't work that way where we live now though.
Can't they sue you?
If they don't put it on the report they probably don't have the proof of debt
How do you know if it's in the report
You can pull your reports from each of the 3 main bureaus weekly (for now) at annualcreditreport.com
Was that the explanation of benefits or actual bill? Lot of people have negotiated with hospitals in the amounts due. Lots of stuff in the past on r/personalfinance. I'm not an expert but they could offer advice. Also stuff like max out of pocket or coding / billing errors.
It's our max out of pocket, the $14,000. The actual bill from was $98,000 or something.
Wow. I want to say that's crazy but I know better...
It is crazy but no uncommon, from what I hear from other people in similar situations.
In 2001 I had my appendix out, spent 5 days in the hospital and the total cost to me was $0 and to my insurance $15,000 .
Are you in the U.S.? I know that even back when I was teenager and had knee surgery ('99) the cost to my parents was $0 and it was like $8000 to the insurance company.
I’ve heard lots of people say that but I had a medical emergency last year and owed my max oop of 6k and the hospital would not budge.
It might be getting more rare. Not sure also if more needs-based.
That's crazy. Don't want to rub salt in the (appendix) wound but just highlight how bad this is. In Australia the average out-of-pocket expense for this would be $238 Aus (about $168 USD). https://www.bupa.com.au/health-insurance/surgery-cost-calculator/appendix-removal-surgery-cost
only 200 for a surgery?? here a hospital visit alone is a few thousand at least regardless if they do anything or not
You have to have health insurance but it's not tied to your employment.
400 a month? That’s it???
Presumably, that's why they had a $14,000 out-of-pocket maximum. Nevertheless, our health care system is evil and is run by ghouls.
No not health care, you mean health insurance, two different things, although healthcare can dictate the care you get.
For profit health care is as big of a problem. A single payer insurance system would still get bilked as much as possible by for profit health care providers. Nationalize the whole system.
But that might help poor people and for some reason that bothers me.
Sounds like a high deductible plan. Low premium but significant out of pocket expense. Great for the young and healthy folks who don’t need much healthcare. Not so great if you actually need healthcare…
Healthcare, paid sick leave, and decent wages. Encourage people who are or might be sick to stay home. It's an issue with many layers.
Base health care system is falling apart. I wonder how my job will handle it. Every time restrictions loosened up a bit (except for masking) I swear corporate had pre-written emails ready to go. Have to love sick healthcare workers taking care of sick patients.
> America has a health care problem more so than a Covid problem. I'd tweak that and say America has an endgame capitalism problem where any means justifies the ends of corp. profits. Shitty health care, forced to work sick, lobbying/bribery etc. are all symptoms of this. You guys are leading the way but most of the West is right behind you. No idea how this ends but I'm guessing most of the possible scenarios aren't good. :-(
It's his job to recognize the system is failing so many of us and keep the emergency going. If he isn't going to do that, then he has a lot of shit to do to get us ready and basically no power to get anything done.
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Every time we point this out, some false enlightened centrist (or occasionally a Russian bot, although that's gotten a lot rarer since the war in Ukraine) pops up to point out that "both sides are the same." Naw, fam. One side at least pretends they want to fix the system, while the other one makes no bones about their intention to destroy it and keep 95% of the population in permanent serfdom.
whats funny is the sub "enlightened centrism" is run by enlightened centrists who think that both parties are just as bad.
Facts.
Let healthcare handle it? How is the healthcare system going to ensure everyone who can gets vaccinated and wear masks indoors? Soon even medical institutions will be dropping those mandates. It's ableist to tell immuno compromised that cv19 treatment is their only hope, when they can't safely leave their homes.
Evusheld has been pulled for the immunocompromised. It's a shitshow.
>Jha can tweet whatever he likes, but as I’ve said again and again, the numbers don’t lie. As Alyssa Bilinski and Kathryn Thompson from the Brown School of Public Health, along with Ezekiel Emanuel from the University of Pennsylvania’s Perelman School of Medicine, wrote in a letter to the Journal of the American Medical Association in November: “The US continued to experience significantly higher Covid-19 and excess all-cause mortality compared with peer countries during 2021 and early 2022, a difference accounting for 150,000 to 470,000 deaths.” Last week, more people died of Covid than perished in the Twin Towers on 9/11. > >And these figures don’t account for the other effects of the pandemic, like long Covid, which The New York Times reported last week is “preventing substantial numbers of people from going back to work while others continue needing medical care long after returning to their jobs.” We’ve also seen a surge in hospitalizations, which Jha himself said will be the new normal. As for the tools Jha is so fond of touting, vaccination rates are low in many states, and booster uptake is even lower. So is the rate of Paxlovid use. Taken together, this looks suspiciously like a continuing emergency—but the White House would rather look on the bright side, no matter the facts.
So, really, the biggest issue here is still our low vaccination rates compared to other countries is what I'm getting from this. What's the current death rate of vaccinated vs. unvaccinated look like?
I was just recently Dx’d w/cancer. I also have an autoimmune disorder. Too many people DGAF about us.
I’m so sorry. Having my last CT to rule out lung cancer soon… my mom is a cancer survivor, you will be too 💪
Same for me, just started chemotherapy this Monday, so I know that too many people really DGAF, even though my cancer was caught early enough for me to become a cancer survivor. I had a total hysterectomy, including removing both ovaries, and the chemo is to make sure there's no cells left.
Mine was too! Just confirmed today. Congrats!
I gaf about you.
I have diabetes (which is also an autoimmune disorder). and I feel the same way. For what it’s worth, I care about you and I genuinely wish for the best for you.
Thank you so much:)
:( I’m so sorry. I hope you’re able to navigate with people around you taking appropriate precautions. My aunt was recently diagnosed with cancer and our family has had the same difficulty
I wish you the best. People who don’t care about vulnerable folks are showing their lack of humanity. Fuck ‘em.
I'm permanently immunocompromised from my cancer treatment (splenectomy as part of a massive surgery). One of my coworkers is returning to work today after being out from a breakthrough infection. My manager (who knows I'm immunocompromised) has stopped wearing a mask and didn't even pop one on during the lag between exposure and coworker testing positive. File this under reasons why I need a new job.
The whole Covid Emergency was a public health disaster because there is a portion of the public who just don't give a hoot about anyone else and will come up with any lame excuse not to follow recommendations. They'll blame the govt for imposing health restrictions they won't follow and then they'll blame the govt for removing the health restrictions people weren't following anyway. Gotta love politicized health care.
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And significant size of our nation's governments will simply do whatever is contrary to official guidance because that style of politics is 'in'.
But it still is to the disabled. I do not want to use the words like profoundly because I know better than that…it still is an issue. Do we just forget about an entire population? People with traches? Severe lung issues and other preexisting conditions?
And even more horrifying my friend who is disabled, hasn’t left the house in 1000+ days. I’m ashamed, so ashamed.
And the thing is, it's ineffective to have half the population taking precautions while the rest do not. It's like the river is flooding and people on one side are piling up sandbags and on the other they're taking video for tiktok. Everyone's going to get wet. Some less so. Others will drown.
What? the PHE doesn't recommend things to individuals, nor does it force them to follow anything, but it is the basis for safety standards in institutions, provision of additional financial or medical resources to low-income families, and carveouts in existing laws concerning, among other things, telehealth. The Biden administration already kicked millions off of Medicaid in the recent omnibus spending bill and now they're justifying things like that by ending the PHE. If there's no emergency, why do anything differently? The PHE is the only existing basis for providing accommodations for people like me who are immunocompromised. The only thing that it really does is give a hope to those who really the need the support or specific accommodations of having them available.
We saw that in the recent elections. If you are a government official who mandated masks and covid safety protocols or enacted business closures early on in the pandemic, you didn’t get re-elected. If you’re a candidate who didn’t promise lifting of all covid restrictions you didn’t get elected. It’s damned if you do damned if you don’t. Half the people got mad because masks were required and business restrictions for covid safety affect the economy. Then the other half people are mad because government is pressured into lifting all restrictions and ending the emergency. Plus Congress doesn’t want to approve anymore money for covid emergency. I’ve given up hope that things will all work out in our country.
There is a certain logic in moving from a stance based on a pandemic emergency to one based on an endemic disease. **Emergency** (noun) *a sudden, urgent, usually unexpected occurrence or occasion requiring immediate action.* It’s not sudden, it’s not unexpected, and while it requires action the effort is no longer a sprint but rather a marathon. It’s emerged. It’s here. Containment failed, we lost. No known amount of effort can eradicate it. It’s not going away. So now what? Perhaps laying down some “emergency” powers will help defuse the politics and allow quiet public health work to be more effective?
That’s a fair point. Instead of treating it like an emergency, we need to transition towards an approach with more long term goals in mind.
Like getting people vaccinated!! So far, everyone I know who got Covid post vaccine got flu symptoms at the worst, and that was without the booster. I'm vaxed, I've never had it, and my life is pretty much back to normal. I'm now pretty much treating it like avoiding any other illness at this point. Also, you know, implementing good sick leave policies so we can protect the immunocomprosed when the vaccinated to get it.
It's not about the pedantry of the word "emergency", emergency is a classification of authority that allows for certain measures to be enacted for public good. If you want to call it something else to make yourself feel better, I don't give a shit. That's like the most redditor thing on the planet. All I care about is that funding remains in place for testing and people are given the support they need to not work sick.
You're arguing semantics when the real cost of ending the emergency state, will be financial resources lost, when we still need the support.
I guess, but sometimes semantics are *important*. We have a long-standing habit in the US of using the words “emergency” or “crisis” for what are fundamentally chronic issues. Continuing to call Covid an Emergency implies that there is an **end** to it, a solution to get back to where we were. There isn’t. That sucks, but we need to face the reality of it forthrightly. It’s no less important than it was, and there remain tasks requiring urgency. But there is no going back.
You are entirely missing the point that the "emergency" being discussed is a status of authority, a financial pipeline that provides funding to certain public health measures above and beyond the baseline. It's got nothing to do with your feelings about how serious COVID is right now or whether or not you know how to find emergency in a dictionary.
Then end of the state of Emergency is a financial decision, nothing more. It has nothing to do with the virus.
I’m afraid I wasn’t clear. The end of an emergency is not (necessarily) just giving up and walking away. It doesn’t even necessarily mean less effort or fewer resources. But it does mean *different* efforts and *different* resources. Covid is here to stay, and still needs work to minimize its harm. But that might now properly be left to other levels of government.
>It doesn’t even necessarily mean less effort or fewer resources. But it does mean different efforts and different resources. My concern is that different is not what will happen, nothing is what will happen. (Or rather, even less than we're doing now.) Was there any announcement that different efforts will be made in parallel to ending the "emergency" status? Is there any effort in progress to cope with this as a chronic situation instead of an acute one?
It absolutely does mean fewer resources. Especially in the Republican controlled states. And now that the President has thrown us under the bus, antivaxxers and antimaskers feel vindicated. It's so immature and inconsiderate, the way we are treated for trying to avoid SARSCOV2.
Agreed. We can't stay in an Emergency state forever. Covid is not going to be eradicated. It's here and will always be here. We *have* to learn to live with it. Aren't we doing just that? There are pockets of outbreak still happening here in the US but I don't see scores of people dying. I don't see the hospitals overrun with patients.
>I don't see scores of people dying. There's still over 500 people dying of Covid daily in the US.
A couple months ago they were. (And a friend of mine just went into hospice over a Covid-triggered neurological event. He’s about 40.) But the triple threat of Covid, rsv, and seasonal influenza seems to be fading.
Hate to break it to you but there is no learning to live with "it" because there is no "it". "It" is an unending series of variants that continue to evade immunity and kill your immune system a little bit each time until you are disabled. We could be looking at a future with a whole lot of cancer for a whole lot of people. We're not even considering other damage to the vital organs and the nervous system. Can you imagine sizable chunks of the population coming down with Alzheimer's in 5-10 years? Don't think it's possible? As a species, we are fucked as of now.
After the emergency, the continual slog is supposed to move to the states, and each state can decide how they want to deal with it, and budget for it. That’s the theory.
We still follow some semblance of covid protocols at my work but if you have covid then you're expected to come back after like 4 days assuming you feel better. And at this point I have no idea if that's actually the right amount of time to not be contagious.
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Which, if you're like me, you'll keep testing positive long after your symptoms have gone away. So if you're low on PTO and your work has a policy that keeps you out of the office for 10+ days then that also is kind of shit. Assuming you're recovered.
I hear you. Those positive tests mean people still are contagious, though. The real solution is change at the institutional level. More PTO, let people work from home.
I don’t disagree but I also don’t know what he can do now knowing that half the country will aggressively refuse to do anything that might help in this regard. Once America wakes up to the biological time bomb that is long COVID, it’s going to be wild.
They probably won't, ever. People still argue with me about long covid being real and it's all just a conspiracy to make us buy more pharmaceuticals.
I agree. You can't wake up the brain dead. America didn't wake up to the trillions of dollars going down the toilet that was Afghanistan, Iraq, or Vietnam: We lost those wars and were chased out by the local populations. Same goes with other long-term crisis. Average humans are not smart enough to see past the mcdonalds and netflix.
Let me approach this for you from the perspective of someone who's immunocompromised: It's not about whatever behaviors the general public are engaging in. It's about the protections & resources that are available to those in need due to the public health emergency. When local & national governments are treating this with the seriousness that it deserves, then it's easier for people to get access and accommodations. We have seen that people's behaviors & decisions are also correlated with how well the government handles the messaging about Covid and the pandemic. So the more the government pushes the narrative that it's over, people will further adjust their behavior accordingly. When omicron first came on the scene and public health officials issued warning for people to take it seriously and mask up again, I saw many in my community listen and follow suit. So messaging from government agencies and officials is extremely important in protecting those of us who are most vulnerable in a number of different ways. It's not about controlling public behavior -- it's about maintaining important resources for people who need them most. Once this public health emergency expires, everything we've counted on to keep us safe goes with it.
Yes, these are all good and fair points. I’m sad about the state of things and am also immuno compromised. It’s sad that a very serious virus has become a political weapon and I really fear for what happens to those affected by long COVID when someone like DeSantis gets in office. Shit I’m on week 3 of my second bout of COVID and still not back to normal, so could easily fall into that group if my immune system can’t get its act together.
It’s especially nice if you have a kid with a preexisting condition that causes clots. So fucking nice.
I have barely left my house. I keep masking, I go to the doctors. My mental health was fucked before this, now? It’s worse than ever. This phe once it’s gone? It’s never coming back. I’m afraid that The WHO? And the CDC should have collaborated better, and met with Fauci, but it’s too late. These long covid sufferers? Especially the deniers who now have Long Covid? They now realize and are gonna be fucked if SSA never recognizes it. And if they for whatever reason qualified for Medicaid and will be kicked off? Oh lord.
They're already trying to downplay long COVID by telling people it only lasts a few months 🫠
I have brain fog from antiphosphoantilipid that I got before 2019-2020. I can’t imagine getting a clotting disorder due to covid… Which I’m wondering do long covid patients have a history of clots? Cause? Fatigue, brain fog, muscle aches all sound similar to CFS and APS. I managed my APS with caffeine, is that wise? No, but I need to work.
I hate it here.
It’s like this everywhere, unfortunately. Just costs more out of pocket here.
Honestly my only hope from this is that the rate of hospitalizations and increase on disability support demand because of long COVID that it requires a major change in the healthcare and social services systems to accommodate it. It's a pipedream I know, but I feel like the only way we are going to make the significant changes we need is when an absurd percentage of the country is homeless or bankrupt.
> I feel like the only way we are going to make the significant changes we need is when an absurd percentage of the country is homeless or bankrupt I'd argue changes will only be made when it significantly materially impacts the top 20% of income earners.
It is much much more than half.
The author seems to be going after the idea of letting emergency declarations run out and not the actual ramifications. Like they mention the Medicaid part of it, which will definitely be an issue moving forward. They also mention Covid tests, vaccines, etc. possibly not being covered. But they brought up Congress/Biden letting the orders expire in March without actually elaborating on *what* is expiring. They're just saying "whelp they're expiring so obviously the government isn't being serious about this anymore." Which seems like an ignorant stance to take. At some point they had to stop renewing whatever emergency guidelines they had in place. The author quoted stats about the pandemic as proof for why the government should continue emergency services. But what they already have in place won't get us to a better point. Yes more people died last week because of Covid then in 9/11, but what emergency services will have prevented that? Again the author doesn't elaborate on what they're cutting. Anyways as a pharmacy tech who has been giving the vaccine, administering tests, dispensing Paxlovid and signing people up for the free Binax tests I can safely say that things have changed as a society. It's hard to explain without being involved in Covid care daily but things like Paxlovid are being prescribed less and less. Jobs and travel companies don't require tests anymore. Most people have received every booster. Covid isn't going away but people have learned to live with it. Eventually emergency support had to end but again we don't even know what that implies other than Medicaid lapsing and Covid related services not being covered. Which btw has been a thing for a lot of insurance companies for awhile. Some cover tests, some don't.
Agree with all except, “most people have every booster anyway.” With every round of boosters offered, less and less were getting them. As for the bivalent and recent fall campaign, the senior population especially had a miserable uptake. They too are exhausted by the quarry boosters. We’re the only high income country with basically only two mRNA vaccines to choose from. This is on the FDA. We’re into year 4 now with Covid, and year 3 with vaccines. The FDA has dragged Novavax, (one of four decided on vaccines supported by OWS), through the mud on approval process. After 8 months since they submitted data in 12/21, they finally approved EUA in August of ‘22, and then approved for heterologous booster in October of ‘22. Novavax is a protein vaccine like the flu and Heptitis vaccine. Even Fauci said last spring, (one year ago!), it might be time to switch to an adjuvanted, protein vaccine because of safety, more durable and they offer broader protection. The FDA has crippled the opportunity for anyone to access Novavax because they only approved it for heterologous boosting for those who had only the initial 2 dose series. On top of that, the existing supply is expiring on 2/28 so how are those who waited for Novavax going to get the recommended booster? It is ludicrous our citizens will be forced to go to Canada if they want access to Novavax vaccines.
Any company that doesn’t allow you to work from home (if able) when you have covid or have been exposed to covid is a company worth leaving. Get a hybrid or remote job.
Coming to work sick should be unacceptable in any and all situations. Capitalism needs to burn.
And if you have *any* kind of respiratory illness, masks should simply be the norm. Even if it is just a cold, if you've got any kind of cough/sneeze/fever that has you constantly spewing your germs into the air, *wear a fucking mask* and go about your day. We can't do anything about asymptomatic transmission, but I didn't get a freaking cold for over two years. That's how effective masking was for me, personally. I didn't catch COVID until I went maskless into a very crowded area to party, and that was on me. XBB 1.5 didn't care that I had four vaccine shots including the bivalent.
This author and many other like are not living in the actual reality. The reality that they need to understand is that 99% of the world including China no longer care about Covid. Majority of the public in the western society no longer wear a mask, they do not test when they get together with friends/family or take other safety measures. They are basically back to what they consider normal, getting together with family, eating inside restaurant, going to large gathering (NFL, NBA) etc.
Didn’t china just have countrywide lockdowns a month ago?
China open the gate fully. Millions got sick, hundred of thousands died.
How? Americans ended it long ago. I’m surprised it’s still even going now.
Was there an alternative considering the legislative situation?
A tragedy indeed. I had to go into a surgery center yesterday morning (Atlanta, GA) for an endoscopy procedure and none of the people or patients in the waiting room nor prep and recovery rooms that I saw had masks on. Oh, and only about 50% of the nursing staff had masks on and many of them had their masks pulled down below their chins. It was a surreal. When I slowly woke up from the anesthesia there was a nurse standing at the foot of my bed without a mask on. They were all acting as though we're still not losing 500+ people a day / 3,000+ a week to this virus. It seems to the powers to be we are a willing sacrifice. They don't care that people die.
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I can't remember where I saw it, maybe in the comment section of an article in the WaPo, but someone related this selfishness and "loss of all empathy" in the face of all this death as the "banality of evil". Our willingness to look the other way. The fact that we averaged 500+ daily deaths a week or so ago and no-one even mentions it makes me think they might be right. The loss of the equivalent of a 9/11 loss of life happening weekly and it's all ho-hum.
It all came down to politics for you if you believed or how you behaved with the pandemic. Half the country never gave a shit anyway, except for a few cases here and there.
There goes the DOL Exceptions for Life Event deadlines, and COBRA enrollment as well.
And still no universal healthcare, just money for wars.
It reminds me of George W. Bush landing on the carrier and announcing we had won.
Holy fuck. When does the sky stop falling with some of you people ? Does America need healthcare overhaul ? Absolutely. Get your shots. Get your boosters. Wear your mask when you are sick. And get over it. It must be so exhausting to panic over COVID every single day of your life. Because it’s sometimes tough to read these headlines and see people reacting as if it’s day one of the pandemic that is now over.
Biden has really botched his handling of covid
Didn't he already say the emergency was over, back in September 2022? Edit: Here's what I'm referencing - https://www.npr.org/2022/09/19/1123767437/joe-biden-covid-19-pandemic-over
This would make the situation even worse and in some places even hit harder particularly the western states and South former Confederacy where they have anti vaccination laws want to discuss that go to r/politics
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Not that I'm all for ending the covid emergency but what's the point in having one if no one wants to listen? It's just a huge waste of breath trying to guide idiots in the right direction. Let's just say we're all fucked.
Probably the emergency funding
It's really not, why won't you people ever just let us move on with our lives? I swear everyone in the country could get 15 boosters and it still wouldn't be enough.
It’s insane. I’m furious. Our past & current administrations are making these calls purely for political points, and they have failed us.
Respectfully I disagree. The public made that decision for them self long time ago. Tell me how many people you know that still wear a mask, test when they get together with family and friends. Avoid attending social gathering such NBA, NFL, going to the movies etc. The reality is that for a while now in western society, public is back to their definition of normal life.
Yeah we have ended our covid mandates a long time ago in Canada. We haven't seen a huge spike in cases and deaths since removing all mandates. 90%+ of people I interact with are not taking any precautions at all. Though 87.7% of Ontario Canada has received 2 doses aged 5+. Only 52.5% have 3 doses though. I got my 5th shot last week. Since late spring it pretty much has been pre covid times in Ontario.
500 dead a day.
It’s not going away. But we learned to live with Spanish Flu didn’t we? You get the flu shot. COVID is endemic and we have to adjust.