The variant is called EG.5 and is a descendant of Omicron.
The Center for Disease Control and Prevention estimated that EG.5 accounted for roughly 17.3 per cent — or one in six — of new COVID-19 cases in the U.S. in the past two weeks.
The variant is called EG.5 and is a descendant of Omicron.
The Center for Disease Control and Prevention estimated that EG.5 accounted for roughly 17.3 per cent — or one in six — of new COVID-19 cases in the U.S. in the past two weeks.
Nah, the real danger is the result of repeated cumulative reinfection damage from a still-poorly-understood virus that causes more and more damage to the vascular system and every organ connected to it. Long Covid is only beginning to be recognized for the mass disabling event it is, and the response of governments from the municpal all the way to the federal levels have been to let it rip, stop testing, shut down tracking sites, repeal mask mandates, and declare victory. Literally doing the thing they rightly mocked Trump for suggesting.
Now over a million people have died in the US alone, and our government has decided to force everyone back to work to sustain commercial real estate profits, and in the process condemned us all to a lifetime of body-destroying reinfections by a virus who’s key traits are infectiousness and rapid evolution.
None of this had to happen. We could have had a real quarantine, just a month or two back in 2019, but that would require making slightly less money for a brief period of time, so instead we get to live in eternal plague world. The hobbling of any effective covid response by our ruling class in favor of more lucrative half-measures and non-measures is beyond a humanitarian disaster, it’s a crime of unprecedented scale.
The number of people ignoring this is terrifying. Study after study keeps showing its a problem.
There’s going to be a massive accumulated health crisis in 10-20 years where a quarter of the population has a wrecked vascular system. On par with diabetes, but in this case untreatable which is going to kill millions far earlier than they should.
I’m going to play devil’s advocate to explore my own anxiety about this situation.
My fears are exactly the same as yours.
The part that I cannot reconcile is this: I took my initial doses of vaccine, I had a booster. I did all the right things in terms of minimising exposure and the risk to myself and my family.
I still caught CV19 twice. Maybe it didn’t affect me as intensely as if I had not been vaccinated, who knows, but it fucked me up badly each time.
My entire family have lived the same experience.
Most people’s thinking in my circle now seems to be: why would I expose myself to the risk of cardiovascular complications by being continuously vaccinated, when I am still going to get infected and face those same cumulative cardiovascular risks again.
From a risk management perspective if I am not in a disease cohort likely to face mortality from infection, am I not reducing my total risk by simply reducing my exposure to the spike protein overall and electing to skip vaccine boosters altogether? I am going to get infected either way, that much is clear.
I am massively concerned about the long term consequences of repeated infection with this pathogen but it seems the world has moved on from giving a fuck.
I don’t know a single person who has received a booster in the last 12 months and given the shift in media narrative here it is not hard to see why.
You’re assuming the booster is giving you the same (or anywhere even close) to the vascular damage caused by catching the virus. As far as the studies I’ve read, the vascular impact from catching COVID is dozens of times worse than a booster.
You say “Maybe it didn’t affect me as intensely as if I had not been vaccinated, who knows” The doctors know, that’s why boosters are being offered to everyone for free in Canada.
This is one of the reasons why Canada, which has a much higher vaccination and now booster rate than the US is doing better than the US with it’s abysmally low booster rate. Canada is losing about 50 people per week right now, the US is still at around 2000 (40 times higher, despite only having a little over 8 times the population)
What the world does or doesn’t do is completely irrelevant to your personal choices. If they all jumped off a bridge to their death, would you do it too? I’ve continued masking in crowded public areas, boosted regularly (last Monday was my most recent dose), kept my kids masked at school, boosted them regularly too, none of us have had COVID at all. Make your own choices.
One can do all the right things and still win the bad lottery. It’s about reducing risk on the whole so all our chances are reduced.
Gonna be honest from the perspective of a current critical care nurse, as long as you didn’t end up proned face down in the hospital with a ventilator stuck down you and paralyzed on Nimbex and losing a lobe of your lung then you got out lucky.
I have a damn near knee jerk reaction to talking about covid in which I tell people that “still got it” that as long as they didn’t need serious medical intervention then they should be fucking thankful for not having to endure whatever the fuck fever dream of Hell existed in the first two years of covid in most hospitals in the US. Shit was and still is fucked beyond fucked.
edit: this is also not at all meant to downplay/ be mean everyone that got covid and luckily avoided a vent, many that contracted “mild” covid suffer from long covid with no end in sight.
It was never claimed to stop you getting it. Same as many vaccines it doesn’t give sterilising immunity.
But it’s completely possible it stopped you dying or going to hospital.
The vaccine causes almost no damage but COVID 100% causes massive damage if you aren’t vaccinated.
I remember when vaccines rolled out. I would have to sit down and go over it. But there was a time where I stopped having to process bodies for the morgue at my job and that was a nice change. We still saw lots of sick people, they just didn’t die nonstop. So vaccine all thr way.
At the beginning of the pandemic someone very correctly predicted that America was going to do the plague the same way we did Vietnam: enthusiastically for a little bit, then once we realize how expensive it is we were gonna give up, run away and loudly declare victory.
Funny, I was just going to mention Vietnam; they did the lockdown as it should have been. Closed borders, no gatherings, the whole shebang. And wouldn’t you know it; economic damage from the pandemic was extremely minimal because of all the people (read: workers, read: customers) that didn’t needlessly die or were permanently disabled.
This was the case with Cuba as well. They did the damn thing right and ended up in a position where they were exporting doctors and techniques to the rest of the world.
Yup. Cuba even sent personal to Canada to help us out, all because we’ve imported and adopted the American denier mindset. :(
Everything is beyond fucked man, I know, you’re probably preaching to the choir. Theres no reload, no save, no do over. Find happiness the best you can and pray you die before we turn from sideways to upside down.
That’s my plan at least.
Even if you could have gotten an entire country to agree that this was a good idea and pull it off, you still have other countries to worry about. Stopping it in one country wouldn’t have stopped it anywhere else.
Now, what I do agree with is that the response could’ve been a lot better, and many lives would’ve been saved as a result. But completely defeating COVID was always a fantasy.
When I ask actual doctors, they disagree. Then we laugh about how anti-vax karen-convoy it sounds.
anyone with significant experience (even just as a patient) in the medical system can tell you doctors are not infallible. most medical professionals i’ve encountered in my area don’t even mask anymore and haven’t for about a year and some change now. of the ones that do, most are still just wearing surgical masks (useless)
This isn’t entirely true though. Yes they are far from perfect and yes they are worse than better masks, but they are still better than nothing and do actually reduce transmission.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/do-repeat-covid-infections-increase-the-risk-of-severe-disease-or-long-covid/
You have said it very well.
In Australia even our absolute harshest lockdowns made allowances for millions of “essential” industries.
Unless you owned a business installing styrofoam nuns, you kept going to work in some capacity.
We’re an island for fuck’s sake! We could have stopped this thing in it’s tracks. But no, the flights must keep arriving. Business must business.