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What’s the coronavirus like where you are?
What are things like in your corner of the world?
Previous threads:
February 2020
March 2020
September 2020
May 2021
September 2021
January 2022
What are things like in your corner of the world?
Previous threads:
February 2020
March 2020
September 2020
May 2021
September 2021
January 2022
I'm in Knoxville, TN. Typically, this area is well behind the curve of the larger cities, but we're in some of our lowest reported cases ever. It's pretty much done here. Most of the area is conservative and 40-50% of the population refused to wear masks ever beyond the initial few months of the pandemic. The calm is nice, but it feels similar to the summer of 2021, when people were getting vaccinated, cases were way, way down, and everything seemed hopeful. Then delta hit.
Is there concern about insufficient vaccinations for 75+, given what happened in Hong Kong?
I was about to ask: did the pandemic end? I saw some people using the past tense to refer to it. I'm still using a mask when I leave the house, and I believe there are talks of a fourth shot at some point. Or did the Ukraine invasion just took its place in the news?
Further question... In the years to come, we're all simply vaccinating for new strands once a year or something?
The news cycle has definitely moved on as most countries relaxed their restrictions and frankly, people became bored of COVID related news, but as someone who's immunocompromised, I have not let my guard down at all -- in fact, quite the opposite.
I used to not have any qualms about going out as long as I was masked because everyone else was masked too and there's little chance of catching COVID when you're outside anyway, but now that mask mandates have been lifted where I am, I am trying to avoid going out as much as I can and when I do, I am wearing only N95 masks. Needless to say, I got my BioNTech booster four months ago and waiting to get my second booster soon.
I hope this will be the case, similar to flu shots. Some companies were working on a pill and even a spray versions of the vaccine but I don't know where we are with that.
I see. Well, I see no reason to stop wearing a mask now. It's a minor discomfort that is justifiable even with greatly reduced exposition. People in my city remain using masks even outside of enclosed spaces, and I'm following suit.
I can't say I look forward to the increase in socialization, these two years were kind of a blessing for the socially inept. Things are so much simpler and less stressful for me right now, and wearing a mask reduces the exposure of my lacking and grossly misunderstood facial expressions.
But that's another issue entirely. Looking forward to the annual shots. And since we'll be taking shots anyway, I imagine some governments will use the opportunity to increase our protections in general. Having that kind of structure will probably bode well for our survival as a species, regardless of covid strands.
Yeah, there's simply no downside to wearing masks regardless of what type you're using so why not use them. People in my town haven't stopped wearing masks all together either but because the mandates are gone, the number of maskless people have increased which means extra risk. That's why I switched from wearing regular masks to N95 masks, since regular masks don't really protect you as well from incoming particles and droplets.
Heh, this is exactly how I feel. I'm lucky enough to be working remotely so I can still limit my socialization if I want to, but it was certainly less awkward to do so when everyone was in self-isolation.
All that being said, I do miss going outside without wearing masks, not worrying about the person I'll be speaking to might be the end of me. I hope the annual shots, when and if they do arrive, will bring that life back to us.
I think with different vaccine technologies coming online you might(!) see a stronger effect and broader immunity, hence less needs for updates. Covid mutates relatively slowly, all things considered, and there's vaccine tech like LAIV that will give, as far as I know, a stronger immunity that could(!) protect better against variants. (Source: vague recollections of listening to hours and hours of Prof. Drosten's podcast.)
As for whether the pandemic did end: You could argue that the disease is endemic in certain parts of the world. Picking US, UK and Germany as examples, all have had 25-30% of their population in confirmed case numbers. Add in a fudge factor of your choosing for undetected transmissions, account for the vaccine's effect, and this is pretty close to the long-term, endemic state. Thus, not actually a pandemic or epidemic anymore.
"Covid mutates relatively slowly" doesn't sound right, although I suppose it depends what you compare it to?
From: https://twitter.com/trvrb/status/1511871593940545536
I was operating under a few assumptions that change from a pandemic to an endemic situation:
Covid has that proofreading mechanism going on. Initially it was expected that evolution would thus be slow.
Covid was initially not adapted to humans. Evolution will, modeled very simply, follow an exponential convergence towards some optimum. We thus expect a initial, fast burst of evolution.
Covid had huge infection numbers. Huge numbers lead to more mutations being generated. The viable ones will be selected and become new variants. Fewer infections, fewer variants.
All of which to say that I would expect, from possibly outdated/conjectured info, that in an endemic situation, the virus will mutate more slowly than we have seen, possibly slower than the flu. The burst of mutation we have seen in the pandemic was to do with it being a pandemic.
That said, I might be wrong. And my initial phrasing above was definitely misleading. Apologies. Maybe I will have to adjust my beliefs too. Maybe someone has pulled those confounders apart.
I am comfortable saying we're post-pandemic, and not because cities are going mask-off. It's here forever, not some new super bug that threatens global society anymore. We still need to ride this dangerous wave until it settles however. I frankly thing we should be globally masking longer still because if it's good enough to bring numbers down, it's even better to minimize them as low as possible, because of our most vulnerable people.
As far as annual shots, the estimation seems to be an annual shot like flu, but we don't know on what timescale this will happen. COVID has sort of been following a similar trend, but I think the tipping point will be when it stops hospitalizing unvaccinated people with non-immune comorbitities to the degree it seems to be. I believe I've seen suggestions that some companies are considering flu and coronavirus as a single shot.
Nobody cares in the Midwest. I’m vaccinated, my whole family had covid and no one was hospitalized thankfully. I realize it’s still a thing and will probably always be a thing, but at this point I feel like most people are just okay with taking the risks to live like they used too now and don’t really care for the safety of others, and to be completely honest I am at that point myself. It’s died down enough that it’s not a huge issue anymore, I’ve been around countless people less than 6 feet away and haven’t had any problems. If I were going to get a serious case of covid I would’ve had it by now. I do believe that I have some long covid symptoms though being that I have asthma. Every once in a while I’ll just have an asthma attack and need a rescue inhaler when I didn’t before, but that’s not a huge deal.
In the midwest as well, Can concur that no one cares or is doing much about it until you get closer to inner cities. In rural areas the majority of people haven't been wearing masks for over a year except a few people you notice going through grocery stores. Live music has required vax cards or negative tests, but since last fall I have noticed less and less masks in the crowds. Last time I heard anyone nearby directly having covid was between November and January, so likely holidays caused some spreading.
Done. California's mask mandate is closed, Disneyland doesn't require masks for guests anymore, the only major holdouts are medical facilities, and customer-facing employees.
Obviously it's not quite over yet, but as ignorant as I am on what's going on the general vibe seems to be that we're out of the woods.
I still mask anywhere I go, and plan to until employee masks go away everywhere. And if I'm ever on mass transit, because people can be gross.
On the uptick here. Things are opening and there's a strong mix of "over covid" and still "covid cautious" now, with the former being new. The are just moved out of "low" transmission rates and into "moderate." Which honestly isn't surprising. Thankfully I've dodged an infection thus far. The friends in my bubble were forced to return to the office and get exposure notifications regularly so at this point we're just kind of living our lives and hoping for the best.
The UK basically declared the pandemic over a couple of months back, all restrictions are gone. It's an odd situation to be in - rates are higher than ever, with just under 5m people believed to be currently infected and around a third of the population (~22M) having had it at some point, but basically everyone is vaccinated now and there's a definite air of "had to get back to normal at some point".
Pretty much everyone I know, myself included, has been infected in the last month or two. We're all vaccinated and boosted, and most people have just had a shitty week or two and then bounced back. As it happens I was one of the unluckiest (travelling, so may have picked up a nastier variant) and it looks like I've still got a month or more of reduced capacity ahead of me, but the doctors still don't expect any lasting damage.
In the here and now, it seems fairly reasonable: the virus is here to stay, we bought time to develop and distribute the vaccines, at some point normality has to resume. But I am speaking from two years of fatigue, and I honestly don't know if that's actually reasonable or just wishful thinking. I don't know how that affects the vulnerable in comparison to other endemic diseases like the flu. I also don't know what the endgame plan is for countries that have taken a more cautious approach throughout, and how that compares.
We've had one of the more erratic approaches throughout - with an overall pretty blasé attitude from both the government and the people, interspersed with the occasional fairly strict and reasonably well-respected lockdown - and looking at both death rates and economic impact it's pretty clear that the overall handling has been poor. I'll never not be angry at the current government for that. But I also recognise that some route out is needed, and I'd be interested to know how that looks in countries that have handled it better up to now.
Numbers are way down across the board here—feels a lot like last summer, which somebody else in this thread mentioned. I still mask if I see employees masking in a public place. That tends to be non-restaurants places like grocery stores and the like. I figure immunocompromised folks are avoiding restaurants and bars anywho. I’ll be happy to get my second booster whenever that becomes available. I need to start wearing my mask outside when I bike because the pollen is so bad here.
Canada data: https://health-infobase.canada.ca/covid-19/epidemiological-summary-covid-19-cases.html