Weekly coronavirus-related chat, questions, and minor updates - week of February 7

After being practically militant with keeping on top of isolation, distancing, masking, and vaccination, yesterday me and my wife broke. We're done. COVID-19 is just another fact of life now, and we're gonna stop putting life on hold because of it.

We're still going to avoid eating indoors, and wear masks in public spaces till late spring. But we're gonna start bringing our kids back into public spaces in a way we hadn't been.

Part of it the vaccine for young kids being in the rubber-stamp-approval process. It'll get rolled out quickly and 90% of our fear vanishes in < 2 weeks.

But also, there's a deeper tale for why, the one of when we started lockdown. Almost 2 years to the day. We lived in a fairly high-density area. My wife had just taken our child to a public play space, and she and my child connected with another mom/child and exchanged contact info (a big deal for us due to social anxiety). They got home ecstatic about meeting them again, and that night we got news that the town they just played in had their first outbreak in cases. I went full-time WFH the next day, began stockpiling various home goods and building supplies. Within the month the rest of the country began locking down, and the rest is history. We got notifications of the pictures from that day, and the memory hurt.

I've moved beyond disdain, I now hate the utter failure of the federal (and lotta state govt too.. glares at PA house/senate) government, the Republicans in particular. The Biden liberalism bullshit is not helping for long term stability and recovery in the aftermath, which I wager is just beginning. But now, that rage is also extended to their enablers, the voters. People who have, for this entire time, whined and complained about such minor inconveniences which could have drastically altered the course of this pandemic for the better. That had record turnout for the 2020 Trump re-election.

Fuck all of you for crippling 2 years of my children's development. Whose greatest wish now is for their younger sibling to enjoy riding in a car-shaped shopping cart, because that's the greatest joy inside public spaces they can remember before the pandemic. To those who say "well you made that worse:" You're wrong. Because we, and all of the family and friends we trusted and saw over that time, never caught it. Over 1/2 of them were ultra-high risk. So now my children can actually continue seeing their aunts, uncles, grandparents, and many friends. Because we cared while so many didn't.

So, we're done protecting all of the ignorant asses out there whom are only making it worse for everyone. I weep for their children. Hopefully vaccine mandates will be swift and protect them from themselves.

I wish everyone luck in the coming economic collapse and political instability that will follow. Please stockpile at least 6 months of supplies and to help those who don't.

The first human “challenge trial” for covid has given some helpful insights into how infection progresses.

The 36 volunteers, all aged 18 to 30, were exposed to a low dose of the original SARS-CoV-2 virus in the nose, the equivalent of the amount found in just a single drop of nasal fluid. Half the participants developed covid symptoms; they became infectious within just two days, with levels of infectious virus peaking at five days. It has previously been estimated that the time from exposure to first symptoms was about five days. Participants in the study remained infectious for an average of nine days and still had detectable levels of virus in their nose 12 days after initial exposure.

Almost all the volunteers lost their sense of smell and experienced cold-like symptoms such as a runny nose and sore throat. None reported serious symptoms. Some of the patients were also given the antiviral drug remdesivir before they were infected, but the trial didn’t pick up any noticeable difference in the severity of the symptoms.

I just built a Corsi-Rosenthal box for use in my home. I'm hoping the box will help to lessen the chances of transmission to me if anyone in my family gets infected (and reduce my anxiety regarding same). One of my family members works in high-risk conditions (grocery stocking) and we're in Florida, so none of her coworkers wear masks, take the pandemic seriously, etc. I'm mostly hunkering down and avoiding going outside where possible until the surge ends (thankfully I can afford to do so).

Looks like the end of the Omicron wave is well under way in the US. Looking at the Washington Post statistics, the only state where cases are increasing is Mississippi. I’ve been using 100 cases per 100,000 as my arbitrary threshold for “wow that’s really high” and 17 states are above that. California dropped to 97.

Hospitalizations and deaths lag cases. Hospitalizations are down. Deaths aren’t yet.

Hopefully in a couple more weeks, things will look a lot better.

Patrick McKenzie on Twitter:

I know this has been well reported, a PSA: rapid deterioration after a covid infection continues to be a thing, including in relatively young and healthy people, and if you have folks close to you with it keep an eye on them.

The sad anecdote motivating this PSA [...]

This is obviously not specific to COVID. I could tell you sad stories of elderly relatives living alone who fell and this wasn't noticed for some time.

Health checks are a good thing. It could be as simple as a daily or twice-daily text.

(See also: the buddy system.)