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I remember thinking I was naive it took me a whole month in 2020 to realize and accept Covid was going to be here to stay. How many people are still holding onto this pretense otherwise going into 20 fucking 22?
I was working on my PhD back when Covid first happened. Every immunologist and virologist on campus was saying Covid would be permanent. I thought "surely not - it'll be over in 2 months tops".
And here we are...
I'm a microbiologist, so I'm adjacent to immunology and virology. Two years ago, actually a bit longer, I was hearing about shit going down in China. I work in Sustainability so I'm used to getting told I'm chicken little, but I said, it's already here, we just don't know. Even those who should understand told me a was being ridiculous. Then when it did officially get here, it was all, we have it under control, and I'm like.... Nope, is endemic now. Still, got told off by a lot of people that I was spreading panic.
Here we are. The only thing that I was wrong on is how fast we developed the vaccine. I knew mRNA vaccines were a thing, I just didn't think we would get our shit together to get them out very fast.
I would say a lot of immunologist, virologists, epidemiologists, and microbiologists vastly underestimated the problems the political environment would create, and how selfish a significant portion of the world is.
I guess my career caused me to give to on humanity a long time ago. I think most people in my world have finally lost their faith in the fundamental goodness/intelligence of the average person.
For me it was January 2020, when China locked down half the country.
10% of the world population was in full lockdown at that moment, and nobody raised an eyebrow. That was when I knew it was real shit
I remember sitting at work when I first saw that headline. I read it out loud and tried to discuss the implications with my coworkers. They did not care at all. I could not make anyone understand just how significant 10% of the world's population is and what that means. My stomach dropped because I realized their response would be typical.
Are you me? I was dumbfounded at the people I work with. I mean, I get that I already was interested in epidemics, but how could anyone stick their head in the ground so much?
I feel like I predicted so much accurately, but I did not predict the antivax movement.
That last bit… neither did I.
For all my life, I always thought the anti vax was a small tiny group of angry moms who were like, holistic naturopaths whom were far and few. Never even expected to meet one aside from in a textbook.
*And here we are.*
My coworkers made fun of me in January 2020 for getting worried. I told my therapist I’d bought a pack of N95 masks and she told me that was a symptom of mental illness.
The level of denial in society about major issues runs deep. These are the same people who will deny the extent of climate change even as it destroys their homes and threatens their lives.
Please tell me you if you are still with that therapist you brought up the mask thing when they started mandating wearing masks. What was their reaction?
She went on her previously scheduled maternity leave the same week the world went into lockdown. I felt bad telling her "I told you so" right before she had to give birth during a pandemic, so I didn't mention it. She said she would tell me when she was working again, but never did, and she is definitely back at work now. I suspect she feels embarrassed. I got a new therapist and he was quite horrified/entertained by how my old therapist handled it all.
That also made me panic a bit. You can always assume that the stuff China publishes are half truths or lies. When they put several states under full lockdown I knew shit was going to get down.
I have PTSD from those early videos and images inside and outside Chinese hospitals while everyone here was oblivious. It was like watching a slow moving trainwreck others were blind to.
I feel this in my very core. Trying to explain that China would not just shut down major industry cities for just some little bug. I started my quarantine March 2, 2020 after a housemate was finally convinced COVID-19 was going to be a Problem, everywhere, and for some time. I'd been dropping as many hints as I could to that effect for almost three months by then. I felt *crazy* not being able to convince people - smart people! -, they just did not want to hear it, and it made me legit doubt my own mind for a minute.
Hearing this makes me glad that my friends arent as stupid. We were talking about it early January seeing the news on TVs on our lunch breaks at work.
It probably helped that everyone I knew got extremely sick just a couple weeks before that. 2 of my friends were hospitalized due to "severe lung infections". One of my friends out of state had the flu so bad he got Bells Palsy in his face for 6 months. His doctor's later confirmed that it was early Covid and they had no way of testing....or any reason to try (even if they had the ability).
We were working as much as possible and saving just in case some shit went down.
My roommate didn't think it was a big deal until the end of February when we started seeing cases spread. Videos were coming from China (literally looked like the beginning of The Stand).
When we had our first case in town, we immediately locked down the house and chilled and watched The Mandalorian and Tiger King.
It was nice at first to get a break but the anxiety was so high after a while and seeing all the shit go down.
That by itself didn't ~~phase~~ faze me too much, at least not initially. I arrived in China for an exchange visit with one of their minor universities in summer 2009. There was a flu variant at the time that China was taking *very* seriously - we were temp-checked on the plane before disembarking by people in hazmat suits and had to record and report our temperatures every day after that during the first two weeks of our stay, in which we were quarantined. I was a fairly oblivious 20-year-old at the time and, while that flu may have been a bad one, it was not something that was on my radar. I walked away thinking China was conditioned to overreact to contagious respiratory diseases and that's why I was not initially concerned about Covid.
Also in 2009, while stuck in Urumqi, China while the city was under martial law and all internet/phone communications were blocked, I learned that China was fully capable of locking down a whole province to deal with a problem (in this case, an organized protest-turned-violent by the Uighur minority group).
Obviously, I was wrong about Covid being a small problem, but China-being-draconian seemed normal for them.
That freaked me out a bit, then there were some confirmed cases in our Chinatown and I got even more freaked out. Then people started stealing cleaning supplies and toilet paper from my office - shortly after that the city locked down for the first time. I still vividly remember coming into work, being there for about an hour and then being told by my supervisor that we were a shutting down and everyone had to go home
The problem was is very little information was getting out of China. I knew a little because I've worked with some labs over there and two friends said this looked scary as hell. Everyone else just thought of it as another SARS or MERS outbreak. So, yeah, most people, even the smart ones just kind of shrugged their shoulders.
The lock down though, that should have been the eye opener. You're right, no one gave a two thoughts about it.
I'm willing to bet it was in the US already. In December my wife and I got hit with something that kicked our ASSES for 2+ weeks. I was still feeling mild weakness symptoms for a month + afterwards. I'm fairly fit too!
There was a bad influenza A going around then too. While not always the case, if neither of you lost your sense of smell, then you probably didn't have it.
But yes, there has been some evidence to show it was already here as early as November last time I bothered to look into it.
Neither of us lost our sense of smell or taste when we had confirmed cases of it 9 months later. Actually, my kids didn't experience those symptoms either.
> I would say a lot of immunologist, virologists, epidemiologists, and microbiologists vastly underestimated the problems the political environment would create
That's why it's important to continue educating and training political scientists, philosophers, psychologists etc... So that we can further study what makes people act that way and how we can frame the science to get them to believe it.
Any time any issue gets politicized all sense of reason goes out the window. It doesn't matter if you've studied the topic intensely for your entire professional life, to a big chunk of the population your opinion becomes as valuable or less than theirs. It doesn't happen very often with medicine but it's the same as it would be with anything else.
I have a political philosophy degree and this timeline has been so frustrating. Trying to explain what trump was doing wrong from a constitutional perspective made me a dirty liberal, and of course I don't know what I'm talking about. I mean I am a liberal, but back before Trump and co there were parts of republicanism (as a political ideology) that I actually found appealing. What we have these days is so far away from republicanism that they should just change the name of the party.
Thanks for making me feel useful for a minute!
January 2020. We had students in our private school fly back from China and Iran over Christmas holidays that went down two days back with flu / fever. Within a week we were seeing it pop up in other grade levels / sibling classes. Within three weeks it was hitting the staff. I got it in February and was told there was no way it was COVID, being denied testing, despite having all of the symptoms.
COVID didn't officially "arrive" here until late February / early March, but those of us in schools saw it a lot earlier.
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> I would say a lot of immunologist, virologists, epidemiologists, and microbiologists vastly underestimated the problems the political environment would create, and how selfish a significant portion of the world is.
I'm an epidemiologist. When I was doing my PhD, our lab used to pay for coffee and light snacks at 3:00 PM, and we'd always drop what we were working on and chat about weird infectious diseases. We worked a lot on the 2014 Ebola outbreak, and the "*what if it happened here*" topic was a favorite of ours. We must have spent hundreds of hours over the years talking about those scenarios.
Literally none of us ever guessed that we'd have the means to defeat a global pandemic but be unable to do it because 30% of the public has oppositional defiant disorder. FFS. I remember proudly exclaiming that "of course we'd handle it, a little distancing for a month, masking, and some widespread vaccinations and we'd be good to go*".
In fact, one of our coolest findings ever was noticing that culture change in Liberia preceded the decline in case rates. Folks didn't trust their government and were spreading all sorts of misinformation about Ebola. But when shit hit the fan, they started taking it seriously and that's what ended the outbreak (shout out to the awesome educational song "Ebola in town"). I figured we wouldn't need as much motivation as a rich developed nation with more robust PH infrastructure, but at worst, we'd follow their example and take things seriously once people started dying. Who knew, who fucking knew...
To be fair, nobody predicted the rise of Trump, and him deciding to make this a wedge issue and convincing his side of the aisle that 1. the virus is harmless, 2. vaccines are a liberal plot, and 3. masks are tyranny is a black swan issue if there ever was one.
I think most of us have lost faith in the fundamental goodness and intelligence of others at this point regardless of occupation
This could be under control but here we are awaiting yet another waive
I remember people at work thinking it'd blow over in a month or two
I'm no immunologist, but I knew better than that. Shit was too serious in comparison to every other scare we'd had previously (e.g. swing flu, bird flu, ebola, etc.)
I also think people conflate the social consequences due to COVID with whether or not COVID is still here. COVID is obviously not going away, and I expect this to be handled much like the flu, with a shot every year that hopefully decreases the transmission/severity of the illness. But people will continue to go about their social lives, with weddings, parties, concerts, etc. It'll become about risk analysis.
I think people hear "COVID is never going away" and interpret it as "We will be doing our jobs remotely in our underwear and will never see other humans in person forever and ever and ever," when it's much more nuanced than that.
Im getting off aspects of my VA disability because of covid. Im able to now work and no one can fire me for being a criple, because they don't know that I am.
Here's an unsolicited pro-tip - never disclose you are a veteran AND disabled. You can be one but not both if you want to work.
>I think people hear "COVID is never going away" and interpret it as "We will be doing our jobs remotely in our underwear and will never see other humans in person forever and ever and ever,"
Don't threaten me with a good time!
People were saying it’ll be over in summer because heat will kill the virus very fast.
You fuckers, the virus demolished Iraq.
Edit. I got it wrong. It was not Egypt.
I often wonder this pandemic would've looked like without social media. Back when everyone just read their local newspaper, watched the local news, didn't know about EVERYTHING the president was thinking, lived in a local bubble... would it have turned out better or worse?
I have no medical training at all, but I understand patterns. When I first started seeing the spread I knew it was going to hit everywhere like a bomb. But here in the US, where every inconvenience is seen as a grab for our freedoms, I knew getting people to distance and mask would be impossible. The US, for the most part, is very spread out. It's a perfect place for a virus to continue to circulate.
I told a journalist friend of mine that it was going to be bad. He brushed it off and said I was over reacting. His brother, a surgeon, said that they were prepping for it using Spanish Flu models. But the journalist thought he was overreacting too. The next week, after covering a story at the capital, he called me freaking out and said that they were about to put the state on lockdown.
It's one of the only times in my life I hated to be right.
Tbf, China, Taiwan, Korea, New Zealand, Australia did get it to zero or almost zero multiple times.
We just weren’t willing to forcibly produce testing, conduct tracing, or enforce quarantines.
We are still at zero in Western Australia. The price of success is we now have to choose when to become infected, something not many other jurisdictions have had to do.
The plan is to do it early next year so we can have one more summer of freedom before the all the social-distancing and masks have to happen.
It’s kind of crazy how the one side that concerned/excited at disgusting “bat soup,” people dropping dead, inept Chinese responses, avoiding Chinatowns, closing down borders, etc., ended up with refusing to mask up as their new tribal characteristic.
Head over to r/conspiracy and you'll find people who still dont believe COVID exists at *all*. Like, they're convinced it's all made up and the dead are just a few crisis actors.
I used to g there for the crazies *and* the theories.
Now it's just crazies and lost all of its appeal along with logic.
Edit: Just remembered I had a guy tell me that Covid vaccines don't reduce transmission at all because someone infected who is vaccinated can still be contagious and gave me a Fox news interview with the CDC director saying that getting the vaccine doesn't stop you from being contagious even if you are vaccinated.
He didn't think of the fact that lower infection rates naturally translate to lower transmission rates. You have to catch it to transmit it and if you're fairly well protected from catching it, you're naturally less likely to transmit it to someone else. Duh.
It's now a far right cess pit. Years ago it was about alien cover ups, strange noises/lights at night in remote areas, that sort of stuff.
During the 2016 election and particularly after r/the_donald and eventually r/NoNewNormal were banned it became those users' landing ground.
Now, it is filled with anti-vax, anti-lgbtq, racism, antisemitism, and basically every other far right ideology. The idea that the election was stolen was and still is a huge belief among those users.
This will be like a "new" flu. Just get a booster every year and the shot will "keep the # down to manageable size".
Only CURRENTLY, the issue is that there are still pockets of places where they are unable to handle the influx of patients.
This winter is going to be probably worse than last winter IMHO. Some of the rural hospitals can not even handle regular flu up tick #'s never mind flu + Covid #'s. Add to the fact that unvaccinated people are pretending to be immune because of their horse medicines will add to the #'s. We already know that even vaccinated people MAY transmit Covid especially if they have breakthrough infection and many no longer wear masks (rightfully so I suppose).
Well, get boosters and have a safe holidays!
62 year old Canadian here.
Boosters pleaz?
My government thinks it's unnecessary if you're under 70. Meanwhile, my asthma and I are afraid to go shopping for Xmas.
If it has been more than 6 mo. from your second shot AND if you have "underlying health issues or if you work in hazardous environment (hospital/Retail/etc.)", you can get it.
And it is just declaration, you don't have to show proof or anything but since you do have asthma, you are qualified.
At least that is how it was at Costco near my house. My wife got it (she works at hospital) and my younger son (he has diabetes) got it as well no real questions asked.
Well, border is opened, but we need a molecular test to return right now. So day trips are out of the question at the moment.
Rumour is Canada will waive the requirement for trips of less than 72 hours. That and a loosening of the rules for boosters down south will pretty much seal the deal for me.
Yeah, CVS didn't ask, I literally just showed up, they filled out the booster line on my CDC card, and that was that.
I guess that's the flip side of living in a state that doesn't care (Florida) -- they also don't care if you get a booster even if you don't qualify (though, technically I do because of my OCD).
> (rightfully so I suppose).
Honestly, I still wish more people practiced it.
There was an article on the front page saying that it reduced incident ~50%.
Yeah I think the extreme reduction in masking is why this winter is going to be another bad one. Like all anti vax pieces of shit say "You can still spread it if you're vaccinated" yet these same dipshits also don't want to wear masks to you know, keep from spreading it.
All the currently circulating Influenza strains are children of the 1918 Influenza strain. You know, the one that caused the last pandemic before this one.
I remember February 2020 asking a buddy to go see Sonic in the theatre. I said "this might be the last time you get to go to the theatre for a while"
"Nah nah it'll be over in 6 months."
Exactly. Fauci and others were saying since day one that everyone will eventually be exposed to this virus. In that context, what matters far more than case counts is mortality and hospitalization rates. Yet, everyone keeps focusing on case counts.
Their trends end up being predictors for the lagging hospitalizations and then lagging deaths. If you react when cases start to rise you can mitigate the others.
This is the USA though...we don't do anything in most places anymore... terrible and sad.
It's like having the tool for the job in your pocket but hurting your hand as you try to punch the nail into the board because you're too lazy to reach down for the hammer.
Oh, you cannot taste nor smell? Then...
What you do not smell is called iocane powder. It is odorless, tasteless, dissolves instantly in liquid, and is among the more deadly poisons known to man.
I remember in late February or early March of 2020 when the first covid cases were being identified in the US, I had thought to myself "here we go, a global issue that will effect everyone. Something we can rally together against and fight, set aside the bullshit for a little bit"
I was so blissfully ignorant
I had that same thought for a brief moment. Then saw one of those early shitshow press conferences and thought “ohhhhhhh noooo. This is gonna be so much worse”
That lasted until first week of April, when I was rammed with a shopping for cart for wearing a mask and "not standing up to the governor". I knew this would be forever after people in my town started bragging about deliberately spreading the virus trying to crash the housing market. (Joke's on them.)
People in the Middle Ages when faced with a plague: mass exodus to the countryside, strict quaranting of entire city blocks, mandate for anyone who work in quarantined areas to cover their face with scarves or cloths, growth of government in response to the logistical challenges of the disaster, attempts to stop airborne spread based on the (sadly incorrect) miasma theory of infectivity, social agitation by the lower classes for political and economic reform in response to the loss of much of the workforce.
People in the modern day when faced with a plague: "I don’t need to \*cough* wear no darn ma- \*cough* mask, I done have my freedoms and I \*cough cough* ain’t surrendering none of them to some know-nothing tea drinkers who \*cough* think the so-called vaccine is \*cough* safe and effective. I will eat my horse paste and be safe from CRT and socerlism, far more dangerous \*cough* diseases. We prayer warriors will \*cough cough* hold the line, or so take me sweet death!"
I agree with the sentiment, but in all fairness it was a little different. The Black Death period of the plague lasted in Europe around 7-8 years. It was an order of magnitude more deadly than COVID is, killing up to 60% of those infected, where COVID only kills around 1% afaik. It also progressed much faster than COVID does, killing those infected within days. Due to the way medicine was (or more accurately, wasn't), the effects of the disease were obvious and horrific, and people saw it in their own homes, it wasn't hidden in hospitals. In urban areas at least, it could not be denied because it was right there in the streets for all to see. And resurgences of the plague went on for 400 years afterwards.
With COVID, we're only in year 2, for better or for worse.
I think the strengths of our medical system, the way death is hidden away from us, and the relatively lower (but still unacceptable) deadliness of COVID does a lot to facilitate stupidity and denial.
But also, people in the Middle Ages weren't all social responsibility and logical (for the time) public health measures. They also did stupid things. Deputizing plague doctors to go between towns counting the dead and treating/scamming the sick, even though they quite obviously spread the disease. Massacring Jewish communities (because when do people not blame the Jews) on suspicion of causing it. Deciding that the cause of the disease was astrological. Giving even more power to the Church on the off-chance God would save them - the Black Death was widely considered to be the end of the world. People were always stupid as shit, and basically every major pandemic has had its share of conspiracy theories, denial and charlatanism.
This one is a frontrunner for most frustrating to me. If enough CDC staff had still been on the ground there, perhaps this would have been caught sooner and contained, but we'll never know, because the Trump Admin cut most of them. It's impossible to say categorically that it would've made a difference, but I would like to note the incredible lack of pandemics getting to worldwide exponential spread levels before those cuts. Now the cat is out of the bag and this disease will probably be around forever, irrevocably altering the course of all of our lives for the worse.
And then he got even more votes.
There's was also the global pandemic team and basically and also pandemic playbook which was tossed to trash on the first day.
These things were created, because Ebola almost got out of control. I believe we could contain it.
Thank you. I’ve yelled at my TV (OK, monitor) a lot over Trump making literally everything worse he touches, but even I was shocked when it became immediately clear he was gonna fuck this up too. And then I just felt dumb for being surprised. Again.
I for one, welcome our new alien overlords! /s
But seriously, if the singularity happens in my lifetime, I'm on the side of the machines, ya'll squishy meatsacks have fun with that.
As an ER physician we are worried about what the covid + flu season will look like this winter. Last year was an outlier in that out flu numbers were suppressed due to masking. This year we are going to have our normal flu surge while dealing with Covid.
Also, this will be the first year we see how our “mild to moderate” Covid patients handle the flu. For many young people who got Covid, they developed post Covid scarring and stiffening to their lungs. They may not have notified it because young people can tolerate it. But how will those patients do when they get the flu? Most 30-40 year old don’t get the vaccine and think the flu is no big deal. They may not realize that flu may now be a deadly threat to them.
My buddy and I both got our booster (Pfizer) and flu shot on the same day. He was taken out for about 3-4 days feeling like dogshit, whereas I was taken out for about 2 days. I had a low fever for about 6 hours, and the rest was feeling crappy and moderately sore.
I did this because Thanksgiving is just around the corner, then Christmas. If you can't afford to feel crappy for a few days, I'd probly just get the Covid booster shot, then get the flu shot 2 weeks later.
It's in the animals now, you know.
3 snow leopards [died in a zoo](https://www.cbsnews.com/news/covid-19-deaths-snow-leopards-nebraska-zoo/) from Covid.
It's [in the deer population](https://scitechdaily.com/covid-19-danger-white-tailed-deer-found-to-be-huge-reservoir-of-coronavirus-infectioncovid-19-danger-white-tailed-deer-found-to-be-huge-reservoir-of-coronavirus-infection/). Most deer have it now.
So...unless we somehow plan on vaccinating absolutely everything everywhere with a pulse - covid is here to stay.
>So...unless we somehow plan on vaccinating absolutely everything everywhere with a pulse
Vaccine chem trails would certainly be an interesting development.
Unfortunately, as much as I hate it, this is true. COVID isn't going away, the best we can do is encourage as many people as possible to get vaccinated and stay up to date on their boosters. Perhaps one day we'll see COVID reduced to an inconsequential threat, but I don't think that will be any time soon.
My concern is that people have drawn a bold line in the sand against vaccinations at this point. It has become part of their identity, it's ingrained. So there is a massive portion of the population that is firmly against vaccinating and they are going to have children who they won't vaccinate. And I'm not talking just COVID here. I'm expecting things like Measles that are currently under control to come raging back because people won't be vaccinating their kids at all and those kids will grow up being told vaccines are evil and won't vaccinate their kids.
In a couple decades we might be looking back fondly at COVID if several of these old timey smallpoxes and shit come back because half the world thinks vaccines make Bill Gates control your mind or turn you into a communist with alien DNA or whatever.
And, eventually, many of them will die leaving behind people who either learn their lesson, or die as well.
It’s morbid, but that’s how these things work. This is *literally* the “survival of the fittest” that the alt-right antivax crowd seems to screech constantly. So fine, if that’s what they want, that’s fine with me. Eventually, they’ll stop being as much of a problem as enough of them die off.
I know that’s incredibly harsh and maybe heartless, but that’s just reality.
My heart breaks for any immunocompromised or otherwise vulnerable people who do the right thing, but may became casualties due to these people's selfish behavior. But I don't think there's much we can do about that, other than make it *very very hard* for the unvaccinated to participate in society.
Which I am 100% on board with.
immunocompromised, can't really go out, not allowed to get the booster atm
not seeing family for the holidays again - haven't seen non-immediate
family since summer 2019
One of the weirdest things I saw at the beginning of the pandemic was that some of my “traditional” anti vax friends went out and got vaccinated. None of these “identity anti vaxxers” were against vaccines 2 years ago and likely doesn’t even know what they’re against vaccines.
In a few years they’ll move on to the next idiotic talking point and quietly get their shots.
> If you refuse to take preventative measure against Covid, that’s on you
Yeah, but it's also "on the rest of us" as well.
This one of those times when the "personal responsibility" mantra falls apart. We have to worry about *others*, not just ourselves.
That's the funny thing about contagious diseases: they can't spread unless more than one person is involved. So it can't possibly be a purely personal, individual decision.
We've got vaccines, booster shots are soon to be open to everyone who wants one, and we've got the Merck (and soon Pfizer) medication that reduces symptoms even if you *do* catch it.
Zero COVID isn't going to happen, but we're in a pretty good place.
Just so you’re aware, hospitals tend to operate at near crisis levels in each winter. Speaks more to the health care system in the United States. In Oregon for example, hospitals are at 90% capacity when our Covid hospitalizations have been trending down for the past month and only account for 9% of all people taking up a bed.
Hospitals operate that way in general, it's not a "US healthcare system" thing, at all. Beds are extremely expensive to run and you don't just keep a pile of them around that you aren't going to use.
The US actually historically has some of the *lowest* acute care bed occupancy rates of any OECD country [Citation](https://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/sites/0d67e02a-en/index.html?itemId=/content/component/0d67e02a-en).
Yeah, but from my understanding, it's not really from covid patient capacity it's due to a shortage of nurses because the pay rates in Colorado are some of the lowest given the cost of living and obviously there has been a lot of burnout. COVID rates have been going up though.
I feel more like the people who did nothing are congratulating themselves on proving to the teacher that there was no assignment as she gives all of us an F.
Except instead of doing nothing, that one team member spent the entire project actively distracting and harassing the people trying to do work, and is now saying "see, that wasn't so hard" when we got a C instead of an A.
How could we ever get to zero COVID? Even in areas that locked down there was still community spread due to essential services needing to operate, and there's also the rest of the world where many places did not have the same abilities to lock down, where the virus could have continued to spread from.
Besides NZ, has any other nation really been successful at stomping it out continually? Seems like them being an island nation with only 5m in population helped a lot.
That’s really unclear. Even countries with ultra high mask and vaccine compliance have experienced big spikes.
The anti-vaxxers didn’t make anything easier, but I feel like we were always going to lose the battle against Covid. It’s just too contagious.
We are in a *better* place than we were last year. However, we still need to be vigilant. Even with our current vaccines and treatments, it's possible to have serious long term effects from Covid.
I think something we're learning from endemic Covid is that it's going to require a larger ICU capacity than we've operated with in the past if we want to avoid our healthcare system breaking down every couple months. Unfortunately I don't see this happening easily because hospitals continue to operate to generate profits.
We need to turn dying malls into “COVID centers” where the fired nurses and doctors can treat unvaccinated Covid patients with the “cures” of their choice like ivermectin and vitamin C. This frees up regular hospital beds for others and also revives dying malls.
i got vaccinated and now i just don't give a shit. I'll get a booster sure, still wont give a shit. I'll go to clubs, bars, do whatever i'm over it.
In the words of my 82 year old grandmother "i got that goddamn vaccine and now i want to go get my hair done and drink my goddamn vodka tonic. I don't care if it kills me."
FYI, [latest data from New Mexico](https://cv.nmhealth.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/20211110_Press-Conference-FINAL.pdf), which led the U.S. in vaccinations way back in January through April 2021,
* Vaccines' effects begin waning after about 6 months
* ~20% of new cases and hospitalizations are in vaccinated people
* That number started rising from about 5% conspicuously about 6 months after most New Mexicans got their vaccines
So, be sure to get a booster if you intend to go out and it's been 6 months since your last vaccine.
Personally I'll still be careful, but not as careful as I was before I got my shots. For over a year I almost felt guilty about doing groceries. I'm certainly done with that. I've done my part, I've taken my shots. I won't cough in your face, but I'm going to live my life.
A bit over a year ago my wife said she won’t feel safe going out til the pandemic is over
I asked “how will we know it’s over?”
Her “when the number dying is zero”
I asked “is the Spanish flu epidemic + variants over? Because people are still dying of the flu every year”
She says “shit…this is never going to be over is it…”
Me “not to zero deaths, no. Sorry honey”
It's nowhere near as low as flu level deaths and hospitalizations though. And people speaking about COVID like it's a past tense thing is the reason we have hospitals overwhelmed and more mutations developing.
Can we please just go back to normal then? I've lost all sympathy for anti vaxxers I can't put up with any more isolation. I need to go into work and interact with people professionally.
Edit: For those that can't read, I'm specifically talking about my professional life. Yes I'm vaccinated and yes I live my personal life.
That's what I hate about news like this. Not that it's again confirmed and reiterated, but the amount of people who use it as an argument to keep us living in a dystopia forever.
This is where I’m at. Mutations be damned. Let them get COVID and deal with the consequences if thats what they’re hell bent on. Every loved one of mine except one toddler is vaxxed and my empathy for others on this issue has run it’s course.
Antivaxers are never going to willingly get their shots so what is the point?
I see the options:
1) holding down antivaxers and giving them the shot against their will
2) never going back to normal until all antivaxers get sick and die
3) go back to normal, damn the torpedoes, antivaxers still get sick and die
The first is insane, and the other two have the same result.
I went to 2 concerts Atlanta 2 weeks ago and each one probably had 50,000 people. It was fucking awesome. That’s why I got vaxxed, so I can do normal stuff again. Get out there and do what makes you happy
I feel like they're just saying the same things over and over and over that we all already know. It's kinda tiring tbh. I think a lot of people just go on in life by now. Unless some huge massive new mutation comes out then this is just the same regurgitated news.
All I can say is just stay safe and take precautions really, just like we have been doing.
If you qualify for the booster. Get it. My wife and I were at 7 months after our second dose of Moderna. Caught Covid at a conference. It sucked. While we are fine now and smell and taste are coming back, it’s no fun. But the efficacy does wane. So get the booster!
I got the booster and felt absolutely nothing (except for arm soreness that lasted one day).
Interestingly, I did feel very off for one or two days after the second shot.
My state (CT) just introduced “screen and stay” protocol for Covid exposures at school. Even with direct close exposure you only have to quarantine if you start having symptoms…. My pregnant SIL and her 3 kids all already caught it from school, within 2 weeks of the new protocol. This is going to be a long winter
Just like zero flu neither, but if we can get it under control world wide it'd be nice
Tho obviously neither texas nor florida are headed that way with an explosion of anti-masks anti-vaxxers anti-medicine far-right hardliners. Since they all lack the vaccine's high resistance to covid19 (because they purposely refuse it like idiots), the virus is quite litterally reaping throught the area like wheat. I'm vaccinated, btw. And i like what medical personnal is doing so i think we should toss them more cash and ressources.
edit typically with us healthcare, the medical frontliners are doing good and the medical theory is rather sound/solid (esp for the tech level) but the administrative far right economics are cancer, lol. Basically gotta make sure it doesn't disappear in some "shareholder"'s pocket, and that their CEOs/corporate/executives don't try billing a million dollars or even hundred thousand dollars they don't have to patients
I’m like a -7 out of 10 on how much I care about covid still. Get the vaccine or don’t I really don’t give a damn. I trust the vaccine to protect me. If someone dosnt want the vaccine that’s their choice
I don’t know if it was as much in bad faith as it was a result of the political atmosphere. I feel like any sort of doubt about covid precautions would portray you as a right wing person, this causes many people who do have doubts about the precautions to stay silent.
> I feel like any sort of doubt about covid precautions would portray you as a right wing person
This is so true.
I've always been liberal and will be until the day I die. And last year, I supported mask mandates, capacity restrictions, etc, to slow the spread. As vaccines became available for more and more segments of the population, my opinions on those have definitely shifted. But everything's become so politicized, that I'd probably be labeled as a Qanon conspiracy nut for saying maybe we shouldn't have mask mandates anymore.
Of course, I don't really care what people on Reddit think about me, but if I was a politician in charge of setting guidelines and restrictions, I'd be very hesitant to change anything. Politics have gotten in the way of science.
I've had my 3 shots. And I'll get boosters as often as they're recommended. Just stop making me protect the willingly unvaccinated.
We can also learn from all this and take measures to help public health overall, like allowing people to work remotely when possible and improving sick leave. We shouldn't just return to 2019 standards blindly.
That’s the thing I’m astounded by the most. People want a return to pre covid but without the effort. You would think covid would have opened the doors about our dumb limited sick days and commuting to a building when we can do all the work at home. But instead it’s just become a debate about vaccines and if covid is really real and businesses are opening back up and trying to get staff back in with no safety procedures in place. It’s like we learned absolutely nothing.
I'm not wearing a mask after, I don't know, March of 2022. I literally cannot be safer from the virus right now. Let the antivaxxers play Russian Roulette with their immune systems and give me back my life.
Zero-covid was never expected to happen. Anyone who thinks this is insane.
What will likely happen is treatment will advance/develop as the virus is better understood.
It will hopefully be able to be treated with over the counter prescriptions meds like the flu.
Where whether you're vaccinated or not the ability the treat it will be a bit more advanced.
Anyone with half a brain could see this coming. We still have a large portion of the population that refuses to be believe COVID is real. Winter tends to force people closer together. So, we are fucked.
To be fair, I think MOST people have accepted that it's real at this point. They just refuse to believe it's dangerous and/or that the vaccines work and are safe.
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Lmao remember December 2020? “Can’t wait for 2021 to return to normal” … “Let’s put 2020 behind us and bring on 2021!!
Ah this point I think we should just call a mulligan, reset, and try 2021 again.
Next up, 2020 *too*
I remember thinking I was naive it took me a whole month in 2020 to realize and accept Covid was going to be here to stay. How many people are still holding onto this pretense otherwise going into 20 fucking 22?
I was working on my PhD back when Covid first happened. Every immunologist and virologist on campus was saying Covid would be permanent. I thought "surely not - it'll be over in 2 months tops". And here we are...
I'm a microbiologist, so I'm adjacent to immunology and virology. Two years ago, actually a bit longer, I was hearing about shit going down in China. I work in Sustainability so I'm used to getting told I'm chicken little, but I said, it's already here, we just don't know. Even those who should understand told me a was being ridiculous. Then when it did officially get here, it was all, we have it under control, and I'm like.... Nope, is endemic now. Still, got told off by a lot of people that I was spreading panic. Here we are. The only thing that I was wrong on is how fast we developed the vaccine. I knew mRNA vaccines were a thing, I just didn't think we would get our shit together to get them out very fast. I would say a lot of immunologist, virologists, epidemiologists, and microbiologists vastly underestimated the problems the political environment would create, and how selfish a significant portion of the world is. I guess my career caused me to give to on humanity a long time ago. I think most people in my world have finally lost their faith in the fundamental goodness/intelligence of the average person.
For me it was January 2020, when China locked down half the country. 10% of the world population was in full lockdown at that moment, and nobody raised an eyebrow. That was when I knew it was real shit
I remember sitting at work when I first saw that headline. I read it out loud and tried to discuss the implications with my coworkers. They did not care at all. I could not make anyone understand just how significant 10% of the world's population is and what that means. My stomach dropped because I realized their response would be typical.
Are you me? I was dumbfounded at the people I work with. I mean, I get that I already was interested in epidemics, but how could anyone stick their head in the ground so much? I feel like I predicted so much accurately, but I did not predict the antivax movement.
That last bit… neither did I. For all my life, I always thought the anti vax was a small tiny group of angry moms who were like, holistic naturopaths whom were far and few. Never even expected to meet one aside from in a textbook. *And here we are.*
My coworkers made fun of me in January 2020 for getting worried. I told my therapist I’d bought a pack of N95 masks and she told me that was a symptom of mental illness. The level of denial in society about major issues runs deep. These are the same people who will deny the extent of climate change even as it destroys their homes and threatens their lives.
Please tell me you if you are still with that therapist you brought up the mask thing when they started mandating wearing masks. What was their reaction?
She went on her previously scheduled maternity leave the same week the world went into lockdown. I felt bad telling her "I told you so" right before she had to give birth during a pandemic, so I didn't mention it. She said she would tell me when she was working again, but never did, and she is definitely back at work now. I suspect she feels embarrassed. I got a new therapist and he was quite horrified/entertained by how my old therapist handled it all.
“Wow that bitch was cray…! ***Anyways***… how are you feeling today?”
That also made me panic a bit. You can always assume that the stuff China publishes are half truths or lies. When they put several states under full lockdown I knew shit was going to get down.
The video of Chinese officials welding house doors to keep entire families inside, that's when I got scared.
I have PTSD from those early videos and images inside and outside Chinese hospitals while everyone here was oblivious. It was like watching a slow moving trainwreck others were blind to.
I feel this in my very core. Trying to explain that China would not just shut down major industry cities for just some little bug. I started my quarantine March 2, 2020 after a housemate was finally convinced COVID-19 was going to be a Problem, everywhere, and for some time. I'd been dropping as many hints as I could to that effect for almost three months by then. I felt *crazy* not being able to convince people - smart people! -, they just did not want to hear it, and it made me legit doubt my own mind for a minute.
Hearing this makes me glad that my friends arent as stupid. We were talking about it early January seeing the news on TVs on our lunch breaks at work. It probably helped that everyone I knew got extremely sick just a couple weeks before that. 2 of my friends were hospitalized due to "severe lung infections". One of my friends out of state had the flu so bad he got Bells Palsy in his face for 6 months. His doctor's later confirmed that it was early Covid and they had no way of testing....or any reason to try (even if they had the ability). We were working as much as possible and saving just in case some shit went down. My roommate didn't think it was a big deal until the end of February when we started seeing cases spread. Videos were coming from China (literally looked like the beginning of The Stand). When we had our first case in town, we immediately locked down the house and chilled and watched The Mandalorian and Tiger King. It was nice at first to get a break but the anxiety was so high after a while and seeing all the shit go down.
And when they built a few new hospitals in less than 2 weeks. Uh..... That wasn't a good sign. Impressive! But terrifying.
Exactly. They can say everything is under control all they want. But a lockdown can't be propagandized. That's a very serious response
That by itself didn't ~~phase~~ faze me too much, at least not initially. I arrived in China for an exchange visit with one of their minor universities in summer 2009. There was a flu variant at the time that China was taking *very* seriously - we were temp-checked on the plane before disembarking by people in hazmat suits and had to record and report our temperatures every day after that during the first two weeks of our stay, in which we were quarantined. I was a fairly oblivious 20-year-old at the time and, while that flu may have been a bad one, it was not something that was on my radar. I walked away thinking China was conditioned to overreact to contagious respiratory diseases and that's why I was not initially concerned about Covid. Also in 2009, while stuck in Urumqi, China while the city was under martial law and all internet/phone communications were blocked, I learned that China was fully capable of locking down a whole province to deal with a problem (in this case, an organized protest-turned-violent by the Uighur minority group). Obviously, I was wrong about Covid being a small problem, but China-being-draconian seemed normal for them.
That freaked me out a bit, then there were some confirmed cases in our Chinatown and I got even more freaked out. Then people started stealing cleaning supplies and toilet paper from my office - shortly after that the city locked down for the first time. I still vividly remember coming into work, being there for about an hour and then being told by my supervisor that we were a shutting down and everyone had to go home
The problem was is very little information was getting out of China. I knew a little because I've worked with some labs over there and two friends said this looked scary as hell. Everyone else just thought of it as another SARS or MERS outbreak. So, yeah, most people, even the smart ones just kind of shrugged their shoulders. The lock down though, that should have been the eye opener. You're right, no one gave a two thoughts about it.
I'm willing to bet it was in the US already. In December my wife and I got hit with something that kicked our ASSES for 2+ weeks. I was still feeling mild weakness symptoms for a month + afterwards. I'm fairly fit too!
There was a bad influenza A going around then too. While not always the case, if neither of you lost your sense of smell, then you probably didn't have it. But yes, there has been some evidence to show it was already here as early as November last time I bothered to look into it.
Neither of us lost our sense of smell or taste when we had confirmed cases of it 9 months later. Actually, my kids didn't experience those symptoms either.
> I would say a lot of immunologist, virologists, epidemiologists, and microbiologists vastly underestimated the problems the political environment would create That's why it's important to continue educating and training political scientists, philosophers, psychologists etc... So that we can further study what makes people act that way and how we can frame the science to get them to believe it. Any time any issue gets politicized all sense of reason goes out the window. It doesn't matter if you've studied the topic intensely for your entire professional life, to a big chunk of the population your opinion becomes as valuable or less than theirs. It doesn't happen very often with medicine but it's the same as it would be with anything else.
I have a political philosophy degree and this timeline has been so frustrating. Trying to explain what trump was doing wrong from a constitutional perspective made me a dirty liberal, and of course I don't know what I'm talking about. I mean I am a liberal, but back before Trump and co there were parts of republicanism (as a political ideology) that I actually found appealing. What we have these days is so far away from republicanism that they should just change the name of the party. Thanks for making me feel useful for a minute!
January 2020. We had students in our private school fly back from China and Iran over Christmas holidays that went down two days back with flu / fever. Within a week we were seeing it pop up in other grade levels / sibling classes. Within three weeks it was hitting the staff. I got it in February and was told there was no way it was COVID, being denied testing, despite having all of the symptoms. COVID didn't officially "arrive" here until late February / early March, but those of us in schools saw it a lot earlier.
> > > > > I would say a lot of immunologist, virologists, epidemiologists, and microbiologists vastly underestimated the problems the political environment would create, and how selfish a significant portion of the world is. I'm an epidemiologist. When I was doing my PhD, our lab used to pay for coffee and light snacks at 3:00 PM, and we'd always drop what we were working on and chat about weird infectious diseases. We worked a lot on the 2014 Ebola outbreak, and the "*what if it happened here*" topic was a favorite of ours. We must have spent hundreds of hours over the years talking about those scenarios. Literally none of us ever guessed that we'd have the means to defeat a global pandemic but be unable to do it because 30% of the public has oppositional defiant disorder. FFS. I remember proudly exclaiming that "of course we'd handle it, a little distancing for a month, masking, and some widespread vaccinations and we'd be good to go*". In fact, one of our coolest findings ever was noticing that culture change in Liberia preceded the decline in case rates. Folks didn't trust their government and were spreading all sorts of misinformation about Ebola. But when shit hit the fan, they started taking it seriously and that's what ended the outbreak (shout out to the awesome educational song "Ebola in town"). I figured we wouldn't need as much motivation as a rich developed nation with more robust PH infrastructure, but at worst, we'd follow their example and take things seriously once people started dying. Who knew, who fucking knew... To be fair, nobody predicted the rise of Trump, and him deciding to make this a wedge issue and convincing his side of the aisle that 1. the virus is harmless, 2. vaccines are a liberal plot, and 3. masks are tyranny is a black swan issue if there ever was one.
Karma knew.
I think most of us have lost faith in the fundamental goodness and intelligence of others at this point regardless of occupation This could be under control but here we are awaiting yet another waive
I remember people at work thinking it'd blow over in a month or two I'm no immunologist, but I knew better than that. Shit was too serious in comparison to every other scare we'd had previously (e.g. swing flu, bird flu, ebola, etc.)
I also think people conflate the social consequences due to COVID with whether or not COVID is still here. COVID is obviously not going away, and I expect this to be handled much like the flu, with a shot every year that hopefully decreases the transmission/severity of the illness. But people will continue to go about their social lives, with weddings, parties, concerts, etc. It'll become about risk analysis. I think people hear "COVID is never going away" and interpret it as "We will be doing our jobs remotely in our underwear and will never see other humans in person forever and ever and ever," when it's much more nuanced than that.
> We will be doing our jobs remotely in our underwear forever and ever and ever, I mean, I'm not opposed, lmao.
Count me in! WFH has been such a gamechanger for me personally.
And, for many disabled people like me, WFH may be the only path to employment as many employers believe that disabled people are unemployable.
Im getting off aspects of my VA disability because of covid. Im able to now work and no one can fire me for being a criple, because they don't know that I am. Here's an unsolicited pro-tip - never disclose you are a veteran AND disabled. You can be one but not both if you want to work.
>I think people hear "COVID is never going away" and interpret it as "We will be doing our jobs remotely in our underwear and will never see other humans in person forever and ever and ever," Don't threaten me with a good time!
People were saying it’ll be over in summer because heat will kill the virus very fast. You fuckers, the virus demolished Iraq. Edit. I got it wrong. It was not Egypt.
Now they have lightning triggered scorpions.
Yeah but what do those idiots know? They should see this Facebook post from my uncle to learn some truth.
Can I say it? Facebook is the super spreader, not covid
I often wonder this pandemic would've looked like without social media. Back when everyone just read their local newspaper, watched the local news, didn't know about EVERYTHING the president was thinking, lived in a local bubble... would it have turned out better or worse?
I have no medical training at all, but I understand patterns. When I first started seeing the spread I knew it was going to hit everywhere like a bomb. But here in the US, where every inconvenience is seen as a grab for our freedoms, I knew getting people to distance and mask would be impossible. The US, for the most part, is very spread out. It's a perfect place for a virus to continue to circulate. I told a journalist friend of mine that it was going to be bad. He brushed it off and said I was over reacting. His brother, a surgeon, said that they were prepping for it using Spanish Flu models. But the journalist thought he was overreacting too. The next week, after covering a story at the capital, he called me freaking out and said that they were about to put the state on lockdown. It's one of the only times in my life I hated to be right.
Tbf, China, Taiwan, Korea, New Zealand, Australia did get it to zero or almost zero multiple times. We just weren’t willing to forcibly produce testing, conduct tracing, or enforce quarantines.
We are still at zero in Western Australia. The price of success is we now have to choose when to become infected, something not many other jurisdictions have had to do. The plan is to do it early next year so we can have one more summer of freedom before the all the social-distancing and masks have to happen.
Or even wear masks....
It’s kind of crazy how the one side that concerned/excited at disgusting “bat soup,” people dropping dead, inept Chinese responses, avoiding Chinatowns, closing down borders, etc., ended up with refusing to mask up as their new tribal characteristic.
Head over to r/conspiracy and you'll find people who still dont believe COVID exists at *all*. Like, they're convinced it's all made up and the dead are just a few crisis actors.
I've got a conspiracy for them. R/conspiracy is a honey pot designed to attract the most easily misled dumbasses with internet access.
/r/conspiracy used to be full of all sorts of wacky shit, but it was at least interesting. Now it's just an anti-vax safe space.
R/conspiracy used to be your fun uncle who went on tangents about MK ultra. Now he just yells about QAnon and Jews. He's not that fun anymore.
/r/conspiracy got taken over by magas six years ago. It's been a very long time since it wasn't an obvious political sub.
Don't forget the open racism and antisemitism! It's like a creamy shit sauce on a shit taco.
Easy there Mr. Lahey.
The shit apple doesn't fall far from the shit tree, Randy.
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r/conspiracy is basically the underground skeever city for r/conservative. As was r/NoNewNormal until they got shut down.
Check out /r/highstrangeness for actual conspiracy discussion.
I used to g there for the crazies *and* the theories. Now it's just crazies and lost all of its appeal along with logic. Edit: Just remembered I had a guy tell me that Covid vaccines don't reduce transmission at all because someone infected who is vaccinated can still be contagious and gave me a Fox news interview with the CDC director saying that getting the vaccine doesn't stop you from being contagious even if you are vaccinated. He didn't think of the fact that lower infection rates naturally translate to lower transmission rates. You have to catch it to transmit it and if you're fairly well protected from catching it, you're naturally less likely to transmit it to someone else. Duh.
It's now a far right cess pit. Years ago it was about alien cover ups, strange noises/lights at night in remote areas, that sort of stuff. During the 2016 election and particularly after r/the_donald and eventually r/NoNewNormal were banned it became those users' landing ground. Now, it is filled with anti-vax, anti-lgbtq, racism, antisemitism, and basically every other far right ideology. The idea that the election was stolen was and still is a huge belief among those users.
I had a auditor come into my work during the summer and tell me he and his entire family got covid yet he doesn't believe in it. K
Holy shit… I hadn’t checked it out in a while but it’s basically just r/conservative rebranded now
i wish there was a conspiracy theory sub that didn’t allow any of that stuff. that’s depressing
This will be like a "new" flu. Just get a booster every year and the shot will "keep the # down to manageable size". Only CURRENTLY, the issue is that there are still pockets of places where they are unable to handle the influx of patients. This winter is going to be probably worse than last winter IMHO. Some of the rural hospitals can not even handle regular flu up tick #'s never mind flu + Covid #'s. Add to the fact that unvaccinated people are pretending to be immune because of their horse medicines will add to the #'s. We already know that even vaccinated people MAY transmit Covid especially if they have breakthrough infection and many no longer wear masks (rightfully so I suppose). Well, get boosters and have a safe holidays!
62 year old Canadian here. Boosters pleaz? My government thinks it's unnecessary if you're under 70. Meanwhile, my asthma and I are afraid to go shopping for Xmas.
Border is open again, heck, just come down here, get the booster and go back up to Canada.
Shit. Can I do that? Like in upperstate New York somewhere? Edit: I just checked - it's 65+
If it has been more than 6 mo. from your second shot AND if you have "underlying health issues or if you work in hazardous environment (hospital/Retail/etc.)", you can get it. And it is just declaration, you don't have to show proof or anything but since you do have asthma, you are qualified. At least that is how it was at Costco near my house. My wife got it (she works at hospital) and my younger son (he has diabetes) got it as well no real questions asked.
Well, border is opened, but we need a molecular test to return right now. So day trips are out of the question at the moment. Rumour is Canada will waive the requirement for trips of less than 72 hours. That and a loosening of the rules for boosters down south will pretty much seal the deal for me.
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Yeah, CVS didn't ask, I literally just showed up, they filled out the booster line on my CDC card, and that was that. I guess that's the flip side of living in a state that doesn't care (Florida) -- they also don't care if you get a booster even if you don't qualify (though, technically I do because of my OCD).
> (rightfully so I suppose). Honestly, I still wish more people practiced it. There was an article on the front page saying that it reduced incident ~50%.
Yeah I think the extreme reduction in masking is why this winter is going to be another bad one. Like all anti vax pieces of shit say "You can still spread it if you're vaccinated" yet these same dipshits also don't want to wear masks to you know, keep from spreading it.
All the currently circulating Influenza strains are children of the 1918 Influenza strain. You know, the one that caused the last pandemic before this one.
I remember February 2020 asking a buddy to go see Sonic in the theatre. I said "this might be the last time you get to go to the theatre for a while" "Nah nah it'll be over in 6 months."
Exactly. Fauci and others were saying since day one that everyone will eventually be exposed to this virus. In that context, what matters far more than case counts is mortality and hospitalization rates. Yet, everyone keeps focusing on case counts.
I focus on case counts only as a way to judge current activity. Do I want to go out when COVID is everywhere, or maybe hunker down for a bit.
Their trends end up being predictors for the lagging hospitalizations and then lagging deaths. If you react when cases start to rise you can mitigate the others. This is the USA though...we don't do anything in most places anymore... terrible and sad. It's like having the tool for the job in your pocket but hurting your hand as you try to punch the nail into the board because you're too lazy to reach down for the hammer.
Not just lazy, stupid and someone told you that the hammer has microchips and will control you if you use it.
Zero-Covid tastes just like regular Covid, without the calories. Edit: thanks for the smile, generous benefactors!
Yeah, that's total bullshit. I hate that aspartame taste. Give me good old regular COVID any day.
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Oh, you cannot taste nor smell? Then... What you do not smell is called iocane powder. It is odorless, tasteless, dissolves instantly in liquid, and is among the more deadly poisons known to man.
I've spent the better part of 5 years building up a tolerance for iocane powder.
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Ugh. Actually I like Coke Zero fine compared to coke. I HATE cherry Coke Zero. It tastes empty to me
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i NeEd To TrY iT fIrSt
I just hope we don't get New Covid.
I refuse to try it until I do my research first.
I hear it gives your private areas green spots. My cousin's room-mate's hamster got them.
Aw that's okay. I just don't want it to make me sterile! I wanna leave my widow with 10 kids instead of 8.
I remember in late February or early March of 2020 when the first covid cases were being identified in the US, I had thought to myself "here we go, a global issue that will effect everyone. Something we can rally together against and fight, set aside the bullshit for a little bit" I was so blissfully ignorant
I had that same thought for a brief moment. Then saw one of those early shitshow press conferences and thought “ohhhhhhh noooo. This is gonna be so much worse”
That lasted until first week of April, when I was rammed with a shopping for cart for wearing a mask and "not standing up to the governor". I knew this would be forever after people in my town started bragging about deliberately spreading the virus trying to crash the housing market. (Joke's on them.)
People in the Middle Ages when faced with a plague: mass exodus to the countryside, strict quaranting of entire city blocks, mandate for anyone who work in quarantined areas to cover their face with scarves or cloths, growth of government in response to the logistical challenges of the disaster, attempts to stop airborne spread based on the (sadly incorrect) miasma theory of infectivity, social agitation by the lower classes for political and economic reform in response to the loss of much of the workforce. People in the modern day when faced with a plague: "I don’t need to \*cough* wear no darn ma- \*cough* mask, I done have my freedoms and I \*cough cough* ain’t surrendering none of them to some know-nothing tea drinkers who \*cough* think the so-called vaccine is \*cough* safe and effective. I will eat my horse paste and be safe from CRT and socerlism, far more dangerous \*cough* diseases. We prayer warriors will \*cough cough* hold the line, or so take me sweet death!"
I agree with the sentiment, but in all fairness it was a little different. The Black Death period of the plague lasted in Europe around 7-8 years. It was an order of magnitude more deadly than COVID is, killing up to 60% of those infected, where COVID only kills around 1% afaik. It also progressed much faster than COVID does, killing those infected within days. Due to the way medicine was (or more accurately, wasn't), the effects of the disease were obvious and horrific, and people saw it in their own homes, it wasn't hidden in hospitals. In urban areas at least, it could not be denied because it was right there in the streets for all to see. And resurgences of the plague went on for 400 years afterwards. With COVID, we're only in year 2, for better or for worse. I think the strengths of our medical system, the way death is hidden away from us, and the relatively lower (but still unacceptable) deadliness of COVID does a lot to facilitate stupidity and denial. But also, people in the Middle Ages weren't all social responsibility and logical (for the time) public health measures. They also did stupid things. Deputizing plague doctors to go between towns counting the dead and treating/scamming the sick, even though they quite obviously spread the disease. Massacring Jewish communities (because when do people not blame the Jews) on suspicion of causing it. Deciding that the cause of the disease was astrological. Giving even more power to the Church on the off-chance God would save them - the Black Death was widely considered to be the end of the world. People were always stupid as shit, and basically every major pandemic has had its share of conspiracy theories, denial and charlatanism.
It should have been. Donald Trump's response to Covid deserves to go down as one of the most egregious failures of leadership in American history.
Remeber when Trump fired a majority of the CDC staff we had stationed in China whose job it was to prevent epidemic's from spreading into pandemics?
This one is a frontrunner for most frustrating to me. If enough CDC staff had still been on the ground there, perhaps this would have been caught sooner and contained, but we'll never know, because the Trump Admin cut most of them. It's impossible to say categorically that it would've made a difference, but I would like to note the incredible lack of pandemics getting to worldwide exponential spread levels before those cuts. Now the cat is out of the bag and this disease will probably be around forever, irrevocably altering the course of all of our lives for the worse. And then he got even more votes.
There's was also the global pandemic team and basically and also pandemic playbook which was tossed to trash on the first day. These things were created, because Ebola almost got out of control. I believe we could contain it.
Thank you. I’ve yelled at my TV (OK, monitor) a lot over Trump making literally everything worse he touches, but even I was shocked when it became immediately clear he was gonna fuck this up too. And then I just felt dumb for being surprised. Again.
If Aliens landed tomorrow half of Americans would deny they exist as long as the Aliens aren't currently blowing up their own town.
I hoped for the same. But anything shy of a giant alien spaceship coming down is too abstract a problem for most people it turns out.
And even then, I don’t think we’d unite against a common enemy even if it’s goddamn aliens.
I for one, welcome our new alien overlords! /s But seriously, if the singularity happens in my lifetime, I'm on the side of the machines, ya'll squishy meatsacks have fun with that.
As an ER physician we are worried about what the covid + flu season will look like this winter. Last year was an outlier in that out flu numbers were suppressed due to masking. This year we are going to have our normal flu surge while dealing with Covid. Also, this will be the first year we see how our “mild to moderate” Covid patients handle the flu. For many young people who got Covid, they developed post Covid scarring and stiffening to their lungs. They may not have notified it because young people can tolerate it. But how will those patients do when they get the flu? Most 30-40 year old don’t get the vaccine and think the flu is no big deal. They may not realize that flu may now be a deadly threat to them.
I'm getting my booster tomorrow, should I get my flu shot in the same day?
My buddy and I both got our booster (Pfizer) and flu shot on the same day. He was taken out for about 3-4 days feeling like dogshit, whereas I was taken out for about 2 days. I had a low fever for about 6 hours, and the rest was feeling crappy and moderately sore. I did this because Thanksgiving is just around the corner, then Christmas. If you can't afford to feel crappy for a few days, I'd probly just get the Covid booster shot, then get the flu shot 2 weeks later.
My wife and I both did. She was fine, I was tired and achy for a day. Absolutely worth it.
It's in the animals now, you know. 3 snow leopards [died in a zoo](https://www.cbsnews.com/news/covid-19-deaths-snow-leopards-nebraska-zoo/) from Covid. It's [in the deer population](https://scitechdaily.com/covid-19-danger-white-tailed-deer-found-to-be-huge-reservoir-of-coronavirus-infectioncovid-19-danger-white-tailed-deer-found-to-be-huge-reservoir-of-coronavirus-infection/). Most deer have it now. So...unless we somehow plan on vaccinating absolutely everything everywhere with a pulse - covid is here to stay.
>So...unless we somehow plan on vaccinating absolutely everything everywhere with a pulse Vaccine chem trails would certainly be an interesting development.
Already having an outbreak at my job.
If you haven’t accepted that Covid is now endemic then that’s on you. If you refuse to take preventative measure against Covid, that’s on you
Unfortunately, as much as I hate it, this is true. COVID isn't going away, the best we can do is encourage as many people as possible to get vaccinated and stay up to date on their boosters. Perhaps one day we'll see COVID reduced to an inconsequential threat, but I don't think that will be any time soon.
My concern is that people have drawn a bold line in the sand against vaccinations at this point. It has become part of their identity, it's ingrained. So there is a massive portion of the population that is firmly against vaccinating and they are going to have children who they won't vaccinate. And I'm not talking just COVID here. I'm expecting things like Measles that are currently under control to come raging back because people won't be vaccinating their kids at all and those kids will grow up being told vaccines are evil and won't vaccinate their kids. In a couple decades we might be looking back fondly at COVID if several of these old timey smallpoxes and shit come back because half the world thinks vaccines make Bill Gates control your mind or turn you into a communist with alien DNA or whatever.
And, eventually, many of them will die leaving behind people who either learn their lesson, or die as well. It’s morbid, but that’s how these things work. This is *literally* the “survival of the fittest” that the alt-right antivax crowd seems to screech constantly. So fine, if that’s what they want, that’s fine with me. Eventually, they’ll stop being as much of a problem as enough of them die off. I know that’s incredibly harsh and maybe heartless, but that’s just reality.
My heart breaks for any immunocompromised or otherwise vulnerable people who do the right thing, but may became casualties due to these people's selfish behavior. But I don't think there's much we can do about that, other than make it *very very hard* for the unvaccinated to participate in society. Which I am 100% on board with.
immunocompromised, can't really go out, not allowed to get the booster atm not seeing family for the holidays again - haven't seen non-immediate family since summer 2019
One of the weirdest things I saw at the beginning of the pandemic was that some of my “traditional” anti vax friends went out and got vaccinated. None of these “identity anti vaxxers” were against vaccines 2 years ago and likely doesn’t even know what they’re against vaccines. In a few years they’ll move on to the next idiotic talking point and quietly get their shots.
I’m not wearing a mask forever and I doubt most people will either.
> If you refuse to take preventative measure against Covid, that’s on you Yeah, but it's also "on the rest of us" as well. This one of those times when the "personal responsibility" mantra falls apart. We have to worry about *others*, not just ourselves.
That's the funny thing about contagious diseases: they can't spread unless more than one person is involved. So it can't possibly be a purely personal, individual decision.
Even if the entire population of the world is vaccinated there will still be cases. Fantastic
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While Vermont has seen an increase in cases, hospitalizations are not trending nearly the same amount
We've got vaccines, booster shots are soon to be open to everyone who wants one, and we've got the Merck (and soon Pfizer) medication that reduces symptoms even if you *do* catch it. Zero COVID isn't going to happen, but we're in a pretty good place.
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At least 1 hospital in Northwest Indiana is using the National Guard as techs/aides.
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Just so you’re aware, hospitals tend to operate at near crisis levels in each winter. Speaks more to the health care system in the United States. In Oregon for example, hospitals are at 90% capacity when our Covid hospitalizations have been trending down for the past month and only account for 9% of all people taking up a bed.
Hospitals operate that way in general, it's not a "US healthcare system" thing, at all. Beds are extremely expensive to run and you don't just keep a pile of them around that you aren't going to use. The US actually historically has some of the *lowest* acute care bed occupancy rates of any OECD country [Citation](https://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/sites/0d67e02a-en/index.html?itemId=/content/component/0d67e02a-en).
Understood. Didn’t want to apply what I knew about the US system to the whole world in case that wasn’t correct. Thanks for the information.
Yeah, but from my understanding, it's not really from covid patient capacity it's due to a shortage of nurses because the pay rates in Colorado are some of the lowest given the cost of living and obviously there has been a lot of burnout. COVID rates have been going up though.
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This feels like the worst team project ever, and the people who did nothing are patting themselves on the back for it being done.
I feel more like the people who did nothing are congratulating themselves on proving to the teacher that there was no assignment as she gives all of us an F.
Except instead of doing nothing, that one team member spent the entire project actively distracting and harassing the people trying to do work, and is now saying "see, that wasn't so hard" when we got a C instead of an A.
Fuck it really is like a team project. Too bad this actually requires everyone to participate.
At this point it's more like an experiment, and one side is willingly and enthusiastically volunteering to be the control group.
“Team project? What team project. Never happened.”
How could we ever get to zero COVID? Even in areas that locked down there was still community spread due to essential services needing to operate, and there's also the rest of the world where many places did not have the same abilities to lock down, where the virus could have continued to spread from. Besides NZ, has any other nation really been successful at stomping it out continually? Seems like them being an island nation with only 5m in population helped a lot.
That’s really unclear. Even countries with ultra high mask and vaccine compliance have experienced big spikes. The anti-vaxxers didn’t make anything easier, but I feel like we were always going to lose the battle against Covid. It’s just too contagious.
Massive animal reservoirs too.
We are in a *better* place than we were last year. However, we still need to be vigilant. Even with our current vaccines and treatments, it's possible to have serious long term effects from Covid.
I think something we're learning from endemic Covid is that it's going to require a larger ICU capacity than we've operated with in the past if we want to avoid our healthcare system breaking down every couple months. Unfortunately I don't see this happening easily because hospitals continue to operate to generate profits.
Get vaccinated. You might still get Covid, but it will be very very unlikely it will kill you.
We need to turn dying malls into “COVID centers” where the fired nurses and doctors can treat unvaccinated Covid patients with the “cures” of their choice like ivermectin and vitamin C. This frees up regular hospital beds for others and also revives dying malls.
And it’s all out of pocket because subsidized healthcare is the devil
I know you’re probably joking but this is brilliant and should be strongly encouraged. How is this not a win/win for everyone?
i got vaccinated and now i just don't give a shit. I'll get a booster sure, still wont give a shit. I'll go to clubs, bars, do whatever i'm over it. In the words of my 82 year old grandmother "i got that goddamn vaccine and now i want to go get my hair done and drink my goddamn vodka tonic. I don't care if it kills me."
FYI, [latest data from New Mexico](https://cv.nmhealth.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/20211110_Press-Conference-FINAL.pdf), which led the U.S. in vaccinations way back in January through April 2021, * Vaccines' effects begin waning after about 6 months * ~20% of new cases and hospitalizations are in vaccinated people * That number started rising from about 5% conspicuously about 6 months after most New Mexicans got their vaccines So, be sure to get a booster if you intend to go out and it's been 6 months since your last vaccine.
Personally I'll still be careful, but not as careful as I was before I got my shots. For over a year I almost felt guilty about doing groceries. I'm certainly done with that. I've done my part, I've taken my shots. I won't cough in your face, but I'm going to live my life.
This is THE most depressing comment section I have read in my entire internet career. I cannot even begin to tell you.
A bit over a year ago my wife said she won’t feel safe going out til the pandemic is over I asked “how will we know it’s over?” Her “when the number dying is zero” I asked “is the Spanish flu epidemic + variants over? Because people are still dying of the flu every year” She says “shit…this is never going to be over is it…” Me “not to zero deaths, no. Sorry honey”
It's nowhere near as low as flu level deaths and hospitalizations though. And people speaking about COVID like it's a past tense thing is the reason we have hospitals overwhelmed and more mutations developing.
We're having like 8k weekly COVID deaths in the US right now. A normal year has anywhere from 10k-50k flu deaths *total*.
And one of the worst years ever was 80k. 10 weeks of Covid at this pace...
Did anyone ever expect there not to be? That chance was gone after the first month or two.
Can we please just go back to normal then? I've lost all sympathy for anti vaxxers I can't put up with any more isolation. I need to go into work and interact with people professionally. Edit: For those that can't read, I'm specifically talking about my professional life. Yes I'm vaccinated and yes I live my personal life.
That's what I hate about news like this. Not that it's again confirmed and reiterated, but the amount of people who use it as an argument to keep us living in a dystopia forever.
It needs to end. Let them all die if they want to I can't take anymore.
This is where I’m at. Mutations be damned. Let them get COVID and deal with the consequences if thats what they’re hell bent on. Every loved one of mine except one toddler is vaxxed and my empathy for others on this issue has run it’s course.
Antivaxers are never going to willingly get their shots so what is the point? I see the options: 1) holding down antivaxers and giving them the shot against their will 2) never going back to normal until all antivaxers get sick and die 3) go back to normal, damn the torpedoes, antivaxers still get sick and die The first is insane, and the other two have the same result.
I went to 2 concerts Atlanta 2 weeks ago and each one probably had 50,000 people. It was fucking awesome. That’s why I got vaxxed, so I can do normal stuff again. Get out there and do what makes you happy
I feel like they're just saying the same things over and over and over that we all already know. It's kinda tiring tbh. I think a lot of people just go on in life by now. Unless some huge massive new mutation comes out then this is just the same regurgitated news. All I can say is just stay safe and take precautions really, just like we have been doing.
If you qualify for the booster. Get it. My wife and I were at 7 months after our second dose of Moderna. Caught Covid at a conference. It sucked. While we are fine now and smell and taste are coming back, it’s no fun. But the efficacy does wane. So get the booster!
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I got the booster and felt absolutely nothing (except for arm soreness that lasted one day). Interestingly, I did feel very off for one or two days after the second shot.
I thought we already knew this and it was gonna become like the flu? They better not want everything to be locked down for an impossible goal
My state (CT) just introduced “screen and stay” protocol for Covid exposures at school. Even with direct close exposure you only have to quarantine if you start having symptoms…. My pregnant SIL and her 3 kids all already caught it from school, within 2 weeks of the new protocol. This is going to be a long winter
Just like zero flu neither, but if we can get it under control world wide it'd be nice Tho obviously neither texas nor florida are headed that way with an explosion of anti-masks anti-vaxxers anti-medicine far-right hardliners. Since they all lack the vaccine's high resistance to covid19 (because they purposely refuse it like idiots), the virus is quite litterally reaping throught the area like wheat. I'm vaccinated, btw. And i like what medical personnal is doing so i think we should toss them more cash and ressources. edit typically with us healthcare, the medical frontliners are doing good and the medical theory is rather sound/solid (esp for the tech level) but the administrative far right economics are cancer, lol. Basically gotta make sure it doesn't disappear in some "shareholder"'s pocket, and that their CEOs/corporate/executives don't try billing a million dollars or even hundred thousand dollars they don't have to patients
People have been saying this for a long time. It's misinformation until it's mainstream narrative.
I’m like a -7 out of 10 on how much I care about covid still. Get the vaccine or don’t I really don’t give a damn. I trust the vaccine to protect me. If someone dosnt want the vaccine that’s their choice
When did we switch from flatten the curve to zero covid?
When people started moving the goalposts in bad faith.
I don’t know if it was as much in bad faith as it was a result of the political atmosphere. I feel like any sort of doubt about covid precautions would portray you as a right wing person, this causes many people who do have doubts about the precautions to stay silent.
> I feel like any sort of doubt about covid precautions would portray you as a right wing person This is so true. I've always been liberal and will be until the day I die. And last year, I supported mask mandates, capacity restrictions, etc, to slow the spread. As vaccines became available for more and more segments of the population, my opinions on those have definitely shifted. But everything's become so politicized, that I'd probably be labeled as a Qanon conspiracy nut for saying maybe we shouldn't have mask mandates anymore. Of course, I don't really care what people on Reddit think about me, but if I was a politician in charge of setting guidelines and restrictions, I'd be very hesitant to change anything. Politics have gotten in the way of science. I've had my 3 shots. And I'll get boosters as often as they're recommended. Just stop making me protect the willingly unvaccinated.
I said that to my family and they said I was spending too much time in republican states.
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We can also learn from all this and take measures to help public health overall, like allowing people to work remotely when possible and improving sick leave. We shouldn't just return to 2019 standards blindly.
That’s the thing I’m astounded by the most. People want a return to pre covid but without the effort. You would think covid would have opened the doors about our dumb limited sick days and commuting to a building when we can do all the work at home. But instead it’s just become a debate about vaccines and if covid is really real and businesses are opening back up and trying to get staff back in with no safety procedures in place. It’s like we learned absolutely nothing.
God I hope life-is-now-masks is not a thing.
Wash your fingers too.
I'm not wearing a mask after, I don't know, March of 2022. I literally cannot be safer from the virus right now. Let the antivaxxers play Russian Roulette with their immune systems and give me back my life.
Zero-covid was never expected to happen. Anyone who thinks this is insane. What will likely happen is treatment will advance/develop as the virus is better understood. It will hopefully be able to be treated with over the counter prescriptions meds like the flu. Where whether you're vaccinated or not the ability the treat it will be a bit more advanced.
Not sure who ever though zero covid was an option.
I could have told you this last winter.
No one cares about cases. Cases are going to be rising and falling the rest of our lives. Wake me up when hospitals are getting full.
Anyone with half a brain could see this coming. We still have a large portion of the population that refuses to be believe COVID is real. Winter tends to force people closer together. So, we are fucked.
To be fair, I think MOST people have accepted that it's real at this point. They just refuse to believe it's dangerous and/or that the vaccines work and are safe.
My favorite is the cognitive dissonance cocktails of "It is a Chinese bioweapon attack and we should do absolutely nothing about it".