10
votes
Weekly coronavirus-related chat, questions, and minor updates - week of January 31
This thread is posted weekly, and is intended as a place for more-casual discussion of the coronavirus and questions/updates that may not warrant their own dedicated topics. Tell us about what the situation is like where you live!
Seems like the Omicron wave is dying down in my area. It feels like it came and went a lot faster than our similar spike last winter, but it’s hard to tell if that’s really the case or if it’s just due to changes in my perception. One month of pandemic time back then felt far different than one month of pandemic time now.
As a positive (which I’m trying to actively consider and look for more of moving forward), I had a few periods of full classes this week, with no absences. That hasn’t happened in, well, I can’t remember how long? Literal years at this point, probably. It felt weird having every seat filled — the classroom felt so full! It made my heart sing a little bit.
The great gaslighting: how Covid longhaulers are still fighting for recognition
[...]
[...]
My mom fell ill in March of 2020, and afterwards had a variety of symptoms that lingered. She tested negative for covid, but she joined a COVID long hauler support group and was sure she had found an answer and a community that could help her feel better. After extensive treatment of the symptoms and lots of tests, it turns out it was ALS (a long term degenerative disease) all along, and had been creeping up on her even before her illness. It was only in retrospect that the symptoms were clear.
This anecdote is only that. I am not saying in any way that people aren't ill. But the cluster of symptoms is broad, and it's not the only illness out there. Diagnosis isn't always easy.
I'm sorry about your mom's diagnosis - I can't imagine how difficult that is.
I agree, diagnosis is often hard, and there are certainly some people with other conditions who coincidentally noticed their symptoms after a COVID infection (suspected or confirmed). The article is more about the tendency for doctors to dismiss vague/seemingly not connected symptoms as psychological, which stops the diagnostic process in its tracks.
Devine is quoted talking about the situation your mom found herself in (another condition mistaken as long COVID), but doesn't realize that the other explanation he presents (long COVID is psychological) actively harms those people, too. Someone with MS, cancer, ALS, etc who is dismissed as having long COVID and sent to a psychologist won't get the testing they need. And of course people who do have post-COVID issues likewise won't get testing to confirm the illnesses common to that cohort (MCAS, POTS, ME/CFS, blood clotting disorders, lung damage, cervical instability, etc).
Absolutely. I'm incredibly grateful for the physicians who never dismissed her issues as psychological. She spoke with a number of specialists ruling out other options, and never (as far as I know) was dismissed as it being in her head despite her ongoing treatment for unrelated mental illness. That doctors would do so in order to dodge responsibility for the health of their patients is reprehensible. It's fortunate, perhaps, that her care is through a larger medical provider that provides both her physical and mental healthcare and so the buck couldn't be passed very far.
Huh, just lost a grandparent to the virus earlier this week and I don't really have any emotional stamina to process it. I'll probably deal with it next month.
But if anecdata is worth a damn, several of my close friends/relatives got the virus since omicron became widespread, so that infectiousness thing checks out.
State of Affairs: Jan 31 (Your Local Epidemiologist)
(See the article for the chart.)
[...]
(However, I notice that in the table, the confidence interval for BA.2 is very wide. The range is 58% to 79% and entirely overlaps the range given for BA.1. Presumably that will narrow when they get more data.)
[...]
I live in a country with > 90% vaccination, plus high uptake of boosters, and tight restrictions. Mask everywhere outside your home (including outdoors alone), social distancing everywhere no more than five per social group, full vaccination required to get in to malls and eateries, restricted eateries (~half capacity, no loud or live music, no sports playing, no singing, etc), zero nightlife and barely any organized sports, fairly tight national borders, a very compliant population, etc. I'm a healthy person, 20-40yr age range, exercise regularly. I work from home, generally only leave the house a few times a week for things like groceries, and diligently follow all of the protocols. I've been vaccinated, plus the booster, as has my entire immediate household and social network. Close to the best case scenario in terms of covid safety both nationally and personally.
I tested positive for covid yesterday. Thankfully, so far symptoms for me have been those of a cold.
Some may hear this and say "see, the vaccine and all of that didn't help you. And it's mild!". This is the wrong take away. What it actually means is that if Covid (omicron in particular) is so infectious to break through the boosted vaccine and all of that for a healthy, mostly isolating individual, think about the chances without those protections. Covid is so strong that even with vaccination, if you do catch it, you can still get noticeable symptoms. Others in my household, thanks to the vaccine both in me and them, have not gotten it despite the extremely close and confined contact with me before my symptoms appeared.
Vaccines are free. Vaccines are readily available. Vaccines are relatively low-impact for most people. Vaccines significantly lower your chance of getting it, even as a young healthy individual, and significantly reduce both your short and long-term symptoms (often to nothing) if you are a breakthrough case. Vaccines protect everyone you come in contact with. Vaccine doses been administered over 10 BILLION times globally and mRNA technology has been studied for decades before this was developed.
There is no reason not to get vaccinated and every reason to get vaccinated at this point
I think vaccination has two aspects to it: personal benefit and societal benefit.
The personal benefits are that you are less likely to:
For you, these benefits might seem rather small. But then there are also the societal benefits.
There are many, but here are a few off the top of my head:
For me personally, I'm worried about getting long Covid and I also feel awful for those who are suffering because of the virus, whether because they've lost someone they love, lost their business, lost out on precious life experiences (imagine being a high-risk first-year in university right now :( ), or suffered some other terrible loss. It's a bad time right now for a lot of people.
Why don't you want to?
Don't get me wrong, you aren't going to prevent yourself from getting sick all the time. It is natural to get sick. But there are plenty of situations where I wish I had been proactive in the past about lessening or preventing a bad outcome, that I wish I had done. Look, I ride a motorcycle and understand the severe risk with that, but it doesn't mean that I don't do everything I can to protect myself by wearing the appropriate gear. Getting a vaccine will take an hour of your time, which if you are symptomatic, will reduce the chances of having an illness for many days. I think the risk/reward ratio is there.
I know I'm a complete stranger who doesn't know you, so my words won't necessarily carry any weight, but I say this with complete and thorough sincerity: your life matters; your life has value; and your life is worth protecting. The vaccine is, at present, the absolute best way you can do that.
What are your circumstances so that you can be so sure?
Also, what is your risk/benefit calculations that let you conclude this?
I don't think so for two reasons:
From a purely selfish perspective, except if you are living with no contact with other human being or live in a special place (island, desert, ...), then you never know who could got it. It's like a seatbelt: you may drive safely but other factors (other drivers, animals, ...) may cause you to crash.
From a public health perspective, we have empirical data from multiple countries that the worst case of COVID comes from the unvaccinated population, and those worst case would clog up the health system. So in a sense, if you end up in hospital because of COVID you would be a double-burden to the society: not only you are taking an hospital bed, but you are taking an hospital bed someone else could use (for a non-COVID reason, such as surgery, etc..).
More than half of the planet is vaccinated; you will not die from it. Other concerns: Sure, pharma companies makes money out of it, but then people makes money out of every situation under the sun. And for you personally, it's probably free.
Probably nothing. We're stranger on the Internet, probably living in a very different place, under very different circumstances. Still, I'd like to convince you, not particularly to flatter my tribalism (although I've learned that's always a factor), but because I've directly seen people affected in a negative way to COVID.
First a logical argument: Health, like weather prediction, quality assurance or public policies is always a matter of statistics. Your particular case may go contrary to the trend. They are always some miracles cases: I severally neglected my dental hygiene for several years; and I only got one tooth removed (one in the very back of my mouth; I think it's a good outcome); that's doesn't mean that brushing your teeth is useless. That doesn't mean that the whole trend is meaningless. Especially if the trend is backed by basically the whole planet.
But people are often more receptive to personal anecdotes, so here's a report of people I know getting COVID. Tildes is a much smaller community than the vast swathes of anonymous peoples of Twitter, Reddit and Facebook. Hopefully that will sound more truthful than some stories you can read.
So yeah, you'll probably end up fine if you get covid while unvaccinated (where I live, the vast majority of death is for people over 40), but in my experience there's a real possibility of this screwing you up.
Since nothing else said here seems to be convincing for you, how about another angle:
Why continue to burden yourself with the weighing of possibilities, probabilities, and risk assessing, when all it takes is under an hour of your time to go get the vaccination? Just go get it over with and you won't have to waste any more of your mental energy on this issue.
If I understand you correctly, the main source of your hesitation is that you're waiting for something/someone to show you something that gives you 100% confidence (a fact, as you phrased it)?
I'm curious: What is important to you? Why is it important to you?
My story: I lead a fairly hermitic life (in a city) and I got the vaccine as soon as it became easy enough for me to get. I guess it was an attempt to tilt the odds in favor of my health and survival. I try to think of my eventual death every day, but I still value life, and I tend to be pessimistic/conservative when it comes to taking risk.
Desire to do my part in the collective effort to survive against this pandemic was also a non-zero factor.
New Zealand to end quarantine stays and reopen its borders