I get this, but I'm going to say something controversial: I don't care about COVID anymore. I and all of my family are fully vaccinated and we all received another booster around November 2023; I...
I get this, but I'm going to say something controversial: I don't care about COVID anymore. I and all of my family are fully vaccinated and we all received another booster around November 2023; I have two small children, 3 and 6, both in school and since 2020, we've had COVID in the house once.
It was extremely minor, lasting only a day for my wife and kids, I didn't even catch it, in spite of being in close proximity and intimately caring for everyone affected in my house. It was extremely minor, with maybe some fatigue, but otherwise my kids were bouncing off the walls as usual.
My immunocompromised, severe health issues father (Heart and Lungs) had it and while it knocked him on his butt, didn't even send him to the hospital and he's well into his 70s.
Meanwhile, the RSV or whatever respiratory illness we had just prior to COVID hit us all very hard and knocked the entire household on their butts for about 5-7 days a piece. We've had numerous illnesses since then (again, kids in school) that have all been much more severe than COVID. My Dad just recently was released from the hospital after getting RSV, which turned into pneumonia; I was sick with a stomach bug in early December that saw me vomiting for a night and then general fatigue and dizziness for the next two weeks. Immediately after that, at the end of December, I had some other low level illness that lasted a week or so, which was worse than COVID. Each time we've gotten sick, we test for COVID, to the point that we're now all out of the test kits our state had been giving away for free.
I guess what I'm trying to illustrate here: I'm aware COVID is still an issue, I still get myself and my family all the vaccinations, but I'm just not concerned about it anymore. We've had about 8-10 illnesses of varying degrees through the house in 2023 and all were worse than when we had COVID around 2022.
Mine and my family's COVID experience was the opposite of yours. Comment of mine from Oct: It took me 2 full weeks to feel remotely normal again, but even for weeks after that I would still get...
My entire immediate family finally got COVID. So for the last 5 days all of us have basically been doing nothing but sleeping for 12+ hours a day, in between coughing fits, in between bouts of fever, chills, vomiting, and diarrhea. This is easily the sickest I have been in a very very long time, and also the sorest my throat has been since I got Strep as a teen. Every time I cough it feels like there are shards of glass rattling around in my throat. It's also the first time I've shat myself in a very long time too... and not just once, but multiple times over the last few days. And apparently I am not alone in having that happen either. So yeah, fun times all around for me and my family! :(
And we are all vaxxed and triple boosted, so I can't even imagine how bad it would have been had we not been.
It took me 2 full weeks to feel remotely normal again, but even for weeks after that I would still get properly winded just walking up the stairs. And it's only recently that I've finally felt fully recovered, enough to start biking and working out regularly again. :/
This is what I find most concerning about COVID-19. Its effects, both short and long-term, vary wildly between individuals with the extremes being, well, extreme. It doesn’t even necessarily...
This is what I find most concerning about COVID-19. Its effects, both short and long-term, vary wildly between individuals with the extremes being, well, extreme.
It doesn’t even necessarily follow family lines cleanly. Among my immediate family, one sibling was thoroughly wrung out by it a couple years ago (and they’re still recovering), but nobody else has experienced a severe illness during that time (knock on wood) and I find it hard to believe that all four of us have managed to evade infection entirely with how virulent this thing is.
It’s unpredictable, and that’s what makes it scary.
Yeah, it is weird, and scary. We think my sister got it first and was probably the one who gave it to the rest of us, but oddly neither my nephew or BiL were ever infected despite them all living...
Yeah, it is weird, and scary. We think my sister got it first and was probably the one who gave it to the rest of us, but oddly neither my nephew or BiL were ever infected despite them all living in the same house, and also all traveling together to Florida (which is probably where she got infected). My sister was mildly sick for a few days, but then was right as rain again afterwards. The only reason she even knew it was COVID (rather than a cold) was because she tested multiple times once she showed any symptoms, and the tests came back positive each time.
Then I, and both my parents, started showing symptoms about a week afterwards, and our COVID tests also came up positive as well. They got just as sick as I did, but despite being in their 70s they both seemed to bounce back way quicker, and with seemingly no long term effects whatsoever.
So there is clearly a ton of variability when it comes to the effects of COVID, even amongst close family members, and those infected with the same strain. I guess I just got unlucky, since I was the one seemingly most effected, and taking the longest to recover. :/
That actually makes perfect sense. When someone gets a virus exposure in public, they've usually inhaled a few hundred virus particles. Their presumably healthy immune system has time to catch up,...
That actually makes perfect sense. When someone gets a virus exposure in public, they've usually inhaled a few hundred virus particles. Their presumably healthy immune system has time to catch up, and their symptoms will be shorter and milder.
People living in the same household as that sick person get exposed to millions or billions of virus particles. You probably had more contact with your sister than your elder parents did. (I can't explain your BIL and nephew, but they're not as closely related to you as your immediate family.)
By the time immune responses crank up, more virions have infected cells far more widely. That results in more acute illness. Vaccines give immunity a head start, but a big enough army can overcome any defense. This is part of the reason healthcare workers had such high mortality rates at the beginning of the pandemic.
So, even if you're vaccinated, it's a good idea to isolate sick household members as much as possible, wear N95 masks, wash hands, etc.
Initial exposure is a factor that doesn’t get enough attention in discussion. It’s why masking has an effect; you’re no doubt still inhaling some virus particles, but especially a properly worn...
Initial exposure is a factor that doesn’t get enough attention in discussion. It’s why masking has an effect; you’re no doubt still inhaling some virus particles, but especially a properly worn N95 cuts down on the number dramatically which can determine if your immune system has to deal with a barely notable skirmish or a full-on onslaught.
Viral load, which is the amount of virus found in a patient's test results, isn't the same as initial virus exposure. One of the wacky things about COVID-19 is that identical viral loads have been...
Viral load, which is the amount of virus found in a patient's test results, isn't the same as initial virus exposure. One of the wacky things about COVID-19 is that identical viral loads have been found in asymptomatic and symptomatic people.
Much of the damage done is actually due to over-aggressive host immune response. That's another reason to minimize exposure where possible, so you don't trigger that "destroy the village to save it" immune reaction to an established, disseminated infection.
Very interesting. I've never framed an infection this way, but it makes intuitive sense to me. Even more interesting is how it may serve to entrench people's opposing views on the issue. If you're...
Very interesting. I've never framed an infection this way, but it makes intuitive sense to me. Even more interesting is how it may serve to entrench people's opposing views on the issue. If you're the type to shrug off the risk of infection, it stands to reason you'll also put yourself in a more situations where you receive a smaller load. And vice versa. If you're risk adverse and have been isolating, perhaps you've reduced the chances of receiving a small load and as a result you're more likely to get hammered by a large load while in a small group. Idk
Can vouch for how it varies. My mom and I got it this year, and had to be the same strain. She had bad migraines and was stuck in bed out of commission, while I basically just had brain fog and a...
Can vouch for how it varies. My mom and I got it this year, and had to be the same strain. She had bad migraines and was stuck in bed out of commission, while I basically just had brain fog and a cold from hell with an endlessly runny nose. (Seriously, I went through probably an entire box of kleenex in one day.) The only shared symptom I know of was that we'd both woken up with a painful congestion on the same day, so I knew we probably had the same whatever. My dad was surprised I tested positive because my case was so mild and different from hers.
My theory on how we got it was that my aunt contracted it in the airport and spread it to us. She spent the first night at our house before going to my grandmother's apartment for the majority of her trip, and our symptoms popped up about a week later. They both tested positive for Covid, yet neither had any symptoms.
Meanwhile putting aside my personal experience, there have been all sorts of experiences shared. I've seen tales of fully vaccinated and boosted people die from Covid. The strains are forever changing, with some more dangerous than others.
The biggest concern really is the longterm effects, which we can't determine yet. Back when monkey pox suddenly showed up a friend mentioned there was a theory that Covid may have reset T-cells, which would basically means age-old immunity to various diseases is now gone. At the time of the discussion studies had suggested it wasn't permanent damage so much as them "forgetting" the key, so they could be fixed with a vaccine. But... Well, we've seen how well vaccines went over with Covid.
This variation in how people respond scares me given that I've yet to catch it, nor has my wife. We were working from home before COVID started, so continuing to do so was easy enough through the...
This variation in how people respond scares me given that I've yet to catch it, nor has my wife. We were working from home before COVID started, so continuing to do so was easy enough through the worst of it. I felt guilty ordering groceries online, but justified it in that it was safer for everybody to have one person taking special precautions pick up the bags than having us wandering around the store and adding to the crowd, so for over a year we had zero outside contact, traveling in our campervan on weekends, only buying gas.
...for the last 1.5 yrs we've been back to normal, flying long distances without masks, spending time in public, hosting and attending crowded indoor parties with our neighbors, working now and then in coffee shops, etc... still haven't caught it to our knowledge, and we test whenever going to visit our son who has a baby, so we test somewhat frequently.
So, either we're the lucky ones for whom the vaccines have worked and either caught a super minor version of it or haven't caught it at all, or we're going to be in for a big surprise some day. I'm hoping the former, but wonder how long this can continue and what will our experiences be once it finally does catch up with us.
Same. The wife and I are vaccinated, boostered, all that good stuff. It still whipped our asses. I still just don't care anymore though. Short of shining sunlight up my ass or going back into a...
Same. The wife and I are vaccinated, boostered, all that good stuff. It still whipped our asses.
I still just don't care anymore though. Short of shining sunlight up my ass or going back into a self-imposed lock-down there's nothing else I can do. I'll get it or I won't. It'll suck or it won't. I'm just along for the ride hoping for the best at this point. I can't spend every day perpetually in fear of it.
Thanks! And yeah, it was misery. I can absolutely see why it killed so many people, especially before the vaccine was available, and why so many people end up with long-COVID too. I'm...
Thanks! And yeah, it was misery. I can absolutely see why it killed so many people, especially before the vaccine was available, and why so many people end up with long-COVID too. I'm vaccinated+3xboosted and not immunocompromised (AFAIK), but it still absolutely wrecked me, and took me way way way longer than I expected to recover.
Isn't this a survivor bias? "I'm alive so obviously it isn't that bad " It is that bad. I held my mom's hand as she died from covid. I have wild anxiety from it. Dying from covid is horrifying....
Isn't this a survivor bias? "I'm alive so obviously it isn't that bad "
It is that bad. I held my mom's hand as she died from covid. I have wild anxiety from it. Dying from covid is horrifying.
Thank you, and your family, for doing all you have to keep others safe and alive! Please continue to be safe during peaks. It just isn't something I'd take chances with.
It would probably be better if you did care, if not for your family than for the sake of simple human empathy. You got lucky with COVID exposure, not everyone is that fortunate.
It would probably be better if you did care, if not for your family than for the sake of simple human empathy. You got lucky with COVID exposure, not everyone is that fortunate.
What would change if they did care more? Getting vaccinated, wearing masks and avoiding social spaces when sick, seem like reasonable expectations. What more could they realistically do? I suspect...
What would change if they did care more? Getting vaccinated, wearing masks and avoiding social spaces when sick, seem like reasonable expectations. What more could they realistically do?
I suspect their "I don't care" attitude is less one of "I don't care that this infectious disease is still killing people" and more "I don't care to hear more news about how bad COVID is 4 years after the pandemic started when there is little I can do to change that". I fall in the latter camp, on a lot of issues. The seemingly non-stop deluge of negative news about things I have no control over has lead me to simply tune out most current events over the last few years, for the sake of my own wellbeing.
This is correct and the original response to me is absolutely clueless. I keep my kids out of school when they're coughing, have a fever or generally not feeling well. I avoid going out or...
This is correct and the original response to me is absolutely clueless.
I keep my kids out of school when they're coughing, have a fever or generally not feeling well. I avoid going out or inviting family and friends over when I'm not feeling well, I'm vaccinated, my kids are constantly getting poked (to their chagrin) whenever our doctor says we need updated vaccines and on and on. I've done what I can do, I continue to do it, so I don't care to hear anything else about it.
And yes, the same goes for other shitty news. I'm doing what I, a little man living in a large, populace city can do. I interface with my community, I'm friendly to people and I help them out where I can. I don't need more news about how the world is on fire when I can do shit all about it, so I'll focus on my own little world and the stuff I can.
Thank God for understanding people like you, babypuncher.
I'm just going to put this out there, since you're clearly doing many things right. The things you can do to avoid COVID are the same things that will help you avoid RSV and other airborne...
I'm just going to put this out there, since you're clearly doing many things right. The things you can do to avoid COVID are the same things that will help you avoid RSV and other airborne diseases: stay home when sick, mask up (N95), clean air.
The particular danger with COVID is that (at least initially, not sure about current variants) it's highly transmissible before symptoms start. Also just because you had a mild case doesn't necessarily mean you won't catch it again and have a much worse time. Definitely stay up to date on the vaccines.
Yes. Initial measures to prevent COVID spread actually eliminated a whole lineage of flu virus. B/Yamagata hasn't been seen in the wild since 2020, and it's been one of the more common ones to be...
Yes. Initial measures to prevent COVID spread actually eliminated a whole lineage of flu virus. B/Yamagata hasn't been seen in the wild since 2020, and it's been one of the more common ones to be included in the annual quadrivalent vaccine.
Imagine if the rate people got the flu vaccine wasn't fucking pathetic and people didn't borderline intentionally spread it every year...
I imagine that there’d be a measurable reduction in transmission rates across the board in the US if we were given more than a handful of sick days per year, especially in public service...
I imagine that there’d be a measurable reduction in transmission rates across the board in the US if we were given more than a handful of sick days per year, especially in public service industries. Nobody who’s sick should ever feel like they’re forced to come in and work anyway at the risk of the health of their coworkers and customers.
Just adding to the anecdata here but I’ve been sick since late October. It wasn’t one continuous illness, but a series of ups and downs with distinct phases. I had basically all the symptoms of...
Just adding to the anecdata here but I’ve been sick since late October. It wasn’t one continuous illness, but a series of ups and downs with distinct phases. I had basically all the symptoms of respiratory disease: a horrible cough, congestion, sore throat, intense fatigue, chills, fever, foggy head, loss of voice, diminished sense of smell, mucus drainage, migraines, insomnia. Not all of these at once but over the course of two months I experienced everything. I ended up going to my primary doctor once, urgent care twice, and the emergency room twice. I had an MRI and multiple chest x-rays.
It’s hard to assemble a timeline of what happened when, or even exactly what I was afflicted with, but the docs concluded it began as bronchitis, then I developed lingular pneumonia, then I got hit with a nasty sinus infection. After a ton of rest and meds and several rounds of antibiotics I think I’m basically through it now, feeling 95% normal again with just a slight runny nose and lingering cough. But for a significant part of time stretching through the holidays I was physically, emotionally, and mentally wrecked by this thing. Beyond the health aspect it took a big toll on my marriage and my employment. Normal household functions ground to a halt and we are still picking up the pieces. It sucked.
But it wasn’t covid. Hospital tests ruled that out conclusively. I’m fully vaccinated and boosted for that. And I’ve had covid once before, and it majorly sucked too, but it only affected me for a couple weeks. It didn’t just… persist on and on like this thing did. So all of this is just to say, stay safe out there. Covid is still a real threat, but it’s not the only one to look out for.
Pretty much the same happened to me last spring with the human metapneumovirus outbreak. It was easily a month before I could climb a flight of stairs without hacking and wheezing. There are so...
Pretty much the same happened to me last spring with the human metapneumovirus outbreak. It was easily a month before I could climb a flight of stairs without hacking and wheezing.
There are so many miserable respiratory viruses that haven't gotten any research attention because they don't generally kill people and won't result in blockbuster drugs that bill hundreds or thousands of dollars a dose.
Pneumonia is terrible and kills people. It's also insidious and sneaks up on you. My mom had it and if she lived alone, she might not have survived. By the time she realized she needed medical...
Pneumonia is terrible and kills people. It's also insidious and sneaks up on you. My mom had it and if she lived alone, she might not have survived. By the time she realized she needed medical attention, she was unable to focus will and attention and energy on getting help, even calling 911. Fortunately, she wasn't alone.
Absolutely. At the peak of my misery and lethargy I wanted nothing more than to stay in bed and sleep all day. I certainly didn’t have the willpower to get myself to the ER. I’m grateful my spouse...
Absolutely. At the peak of my misery and lethargy I wanted nothing more than to stay in bed and sleep all day. I certainly didn’t have the willpower to get myself to the ER. I’m grateful my spouse was supportive and cared for me, and took me in. There I was able to get the chest x-ray and pneumonia diagnosis, and the antibiotics to knock it out. If I had been alone, who knows how things would have progressed.
Thankfully it was only lingular pneumonia, which as I understand it is a pretty minor type and easily treated. Still was pretty scary to know I had it, and in the throes of fever dreams I reckoned with my mortality. Not an experience I’m eager to have again.
Yeah that happens sometimes unfortunately. Back around 2003 in the first semester of 10th grade in high school I caught something like that that just dragged on for 3-4 months… ran out of sick...
Yeah that happens sometimes unfortunately. Back around 2003 in the first semester of 10th grade in high school I caught something like that that just dragged on for 3-4 months… ran out of sick days and had to come to class anyway. Cough, sinus infection, the works. It was miserable.
From the article: Here is the WHO dashboard. The top three are 5k in the US, 1k in Italy, and 499 in Sweden. For context, I looked at US flu deaths here. 1.3% of deaths are attributed to the flu....
From the article:
Almost 10,000 coronavirus deaths were reported in December, and admissions to hospitals and intensive care units surged, World Health Organization Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said — with data indicating that holiday gatherings fueled increased transmission of the virus.
Here is the WHO dashboard. The top three are 5k in the US, 1k in Italy, and 499 in Sweden.
For context, I looked at US flu deaths here. 1.3% of deaths are attributed to the flu. This dashboard has about 4% of all deaths due to COVID in the US. (That would imply 125k total deaths in the US for December, which seems a bit low since there are over 3 million a year, but these are rough numbers.)
Continuing on with the article:
There was a 42 percent increase in hospitalizations and a 62 percent increase in ICU admissions from the previous month. Trends are based on data reported to the WHO from fewer than 50 countries, mostly in Europe and the Americas, said Tedros, who noted that this is not the full picture.
(Cases not reported for the US.)
The JN.1 variant is now the most commonly reported globally, Tedros said. The new dominant variant appears to be much more adept than earlier ones at infecting those who are vaccinated or who have been previously infected, The Washington Post [previously] reported.
While photos of positive coronavirus tests are once again proliferating across social media, fewer people are going to the hospital than a year ago. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported 29,000 covid hospitalizations in the week before Christmas, the most recent data, compared with 39,000 the previous year. The agency has reported an average of 1,400 weekly deaths since Thanksgiving, less than half of the fatalities at the same point last year.
...
“Of the three major viruses, it is still the virus putting people in the hospital most and taking their life,” CDC Director Mandy Cohen said in an interview Wednesday.
...
“If you are looking at very sick people in the ICUs, it’s more likely flu than covid,” said Bruce Farber, an infectious disease physician and the system’s chief of public health and epidemiology. “If you are looking at total population in the hospital with people with some respiratory illness, it’s overwhelmingly covid.”
Mortality rates from COVID-19 infection are still almost double those from seasonal influenza in a bad 'flu year, even with widespread partial immunity and available treatments. It's politically...
Mortality rates from COVID-19 infection are still almost double those from seasonal influenza in a bad 'flu year, even with widespread partial immunity and available treatments.
It's politically invisible because it mostly kills older and sicker people, ignoring the morbidity of long COVID and other consequences throughout the population.
I’m hopeful that there will be better vaccines that work against all variants, and maybe even all coronaviruses. (Haven’t checked on progress in a while though.)
I’m hopeful that there will be better vaccines that work against all variants, and maybe even all coronaviruses. (Haven’t checked on progress in a while though.)
I think this is vastly overestimating the degree to which conscious, deliberate reasoning is responsible for anti-vax sentiments. Even supposing that current anti-vaxxers would have trusted an...
Especially with an attenuated virus vaccine because it's generally what boomers trust and expect.
I think this is vastly overestimating the degree to which conscious, deliberate reasoning is responsible for anti-vax sentiments. Even supposing that current anti-vaxxers would have trusted an attenuated-virus vaccine had it been introduced first (which I doubt), the well is too poisoned at this point. They're all just dangerous COVID vaccines now.
Not really. Lower lethality is almost entirely caused by mass vaccination - reducing both the spread and the severity of infection. We don't really have enough data to say whether new variants are...
It mutated to be less deadly
Not really. Lower lethality is almost entirely caused by mass vaccination - reducing both the spread and the severity of infection.
We don't really have enough data to say whether new variants are more lethal or less lethal. The UK is currently only genetically testing variants for people who are hospitalised, so we can't say what the hospitalisation rate is for the variant because we don't know what the community rates are.
Americans in this thread may find this feed useful or interesting. Each Friday the total number of Americans killed by Covid 19 is updated. Each Friday the number of Americans killed in the last...
Americans in this thread may find this feed useful or interesting.
Each Friday the total number of Americans killed by Covid 19 is updated.
Each Friday the number of Americans killed in the last week by Covid 19 is posted.
This is a major reason why during holidays, I'm choosing to stay at home. Too many people traveling means that illness and disease is extremely easy to spread. Some may say that leads to a boring...
This is a major reason why during holidays, I'm choosing to stay at home. Too many people traveling means that illness and disease is extremely easy to spread. Some may say that leads to a boring lifestyle... But I'm at a point of "better safe than sorry"- I hope that I'm not alone when I say I HATE being sick
Then again, I also live by myself and have no family to worry about either, for either prevention or spreading.
I also have a story that proves my point about staying home: a co-worker of mine went traveling with friends to another country during our winter vacation. During the trip, she managed to get pneumonia somehow- and she's only in her 20's! Though now she is fully recovered.
There was a sniffling child at my family's NYE gathering and I was badly ill from the 2nd to about the 12th/13th of January. It's been a terrible start to the year. About half of the people there...
There was a sniffling child at my family's NYE gathering and I was badly ill from the 2nd to about the 12th/13th of January. It's been a terrible start to the year. About half of the people there have had the same experience. I think simply walking out would have been impossible, unless I had also been willing to torpedo all of these family relationships. But another year, I'm going to fake a rapid-onset headache and make my excuses to leave. We'll all know it's a white lie, and I'd rather just call out the mother who brought her sick child rather than them both staying at home, but that would be an explosion of recrimination and counter-recrimination, so it's really not on the table.
I get this, but I'm going to say something controversial: I don't care about COVID anymore. I and all of my family are fully vaccinated and we all received another booster around November 2023; I have two small children, 3 and 6, both in school and since 2020, we've had COVID in the house once.
It was extremely minor, lasting only a day for my wife and kids, I didn't even catch it, in spite of being in close proximity and intimately caring for everyone affected in my house. It was extremely minor, with maybe some fatigue, but otherwise my kids were bouncing off the walls as usual.
My immunocompromised, severe health issues father (Heart and Lungs) had it and while it knocked him on his butt, didn't even send him to the hospital and he's well into his 70s.
Meanwhile, the RSV or whatever respiratory illness we had just prior to COVID hit us all very hard and knocked the entire household on their butts for about 5-7 days a piece. We've had numerous illnesses since then (again, kids in school) that have all been much more severe than COVID. My Dad just recently was released from the hospital after getting RSV, which turned into pneumonia; I was sick with a stomach bug in early December that saw me vomiting for a night and then general fatigue and dizziness for the next two weeks. Immediately after that, at the end of December, I had some other low level illness that lasted a week or so, which was worse than COVID. Each time we've gotten sick, we test for COVID, to the point that we're now all out of the test kits our state had been giving away for free.
I guess what I'm trying to illustrate here: I'm aware COVID is still an issue, I still get myself and my family all the vaccinations, but I'm just not concerned about it anymore. We've had about 8-10 illnesses of varying degrees through the house in 2023 and all were worse than when we had COVID around 2022.
Mine and my family's COVID experience was the opposite of yours. Comment of mine from Oct:
It took me 2 full weeks to feel remotely normal again, but even for weeks after that I would still get properly winded just walking up the stairs. And it's only recently that I've finally felt fully recovered, enough to start biking and working out regularly again. :/
This is what I find most concerning about COVID-19. Its effects, both short and long-term, vary wildly between individuals with the extremes being, well, extreme.
It doesn’t even necessarily follow family lines cleanly. Among my immediate family, one sibling was thoroughly wrung out by it a couple years ago (and they’re still recovering), but nobody else has experienced a severe illness during that time (knock on wood) and I find it hard to believe that all four of us have managed to evade infection entirely with how virulent this thing is.
It’s unpredictable, and that’s what makes it scary.
Yeah, it is weird, and scary. We think my sister got it first and was probably the one who gave it to the rest of us, but oddly neither my nephew or BiL were ever infected despite them all living in the same house, and also all traveling together to Florida (which is probably where she got infected). My sister was mildly sick for a few days, but then was right as rain again afterwards. The only reason she even knew it was COVID (rather than a cold) was because she tested multiple times once she showed any symptoms, and the tests came back positive each time.
Then I, and both my parents, started showing symptoms about a week afterwards, and our COVID tests also came up positive as well. They got just as sick as I did, but despite being in their 70s they both seemed to bounce back way quicker, and with seemingly no long term effects whatsoever.
So there is clearly a ton of variability when it comes to the effects of COVID, even amongst close family members, and those infected with the same strain. I guess I just got unlucky, since I was the one seemingly most effected, and taking the longest to recover. :/
That actually makes perfect sense. When someone gets a virus exposure in public, they've usually inhaled a few hundred virus particles. Their presumably healthy immune system has time to catch up, and their symptoms will be shorter and milder.
People living in the same household as that sick person get exposed to millions or billions of virus particles. You probably had more contact with your sister than your elder parents did. (I can't explain your BIL and nephew, but they're not as closely related to you as your immediate family.)
By the time immune responses crank up, more virions have infected cells far more widely. That results in more acute illness. Vaccines give immunity a head start, but a big enough army can overcome any defense. This is part of the reason healthcare workers had such high mortality rates at the beginning of the pandemic.
So, even if you're vaccinated, it's a good idea to isolate sick household members as much as possible, wear N95 masks, wash hands, etc.
Initial exposure is a factor that doesn’t get enough attention in discussion. It’s why masking has an effect; you’re no doubt still inhaling some virus particles, but especially a properly worn N95 cuts down on the number dramatically which can determine if your immune system has to deal with a barely notable skirmish or a full-on onslaught.
Viral load, which is the amount of virus found in a patient's test results, isn't the same as initial virus exposure. One of the wacky things about COVID-19 is that identical viral loads have been found in asymptomatic and symptomatic people.
Much of the damage done is actually due to over-aggressive host immune response. That's another reason to minimize exposure where possible, so you don't trigger that "destroy the village to save it" immune reaction to an established, disseminated infection.
There's a nice graphic here.
Good catch, edited post.
Very interesting. I've never framed an infection this way, but it makes intuitive sense to me. Even more interesting is how it may serve to entrench people's opposing views on the issue. If you're the type to shrug off the risk of infection, it stands to reason you'll also put yourself in a more situations where you receive a smaller load. And vice versa. If you're risk adverse and have been isolating, perhaps you've reduced the chances of receiving a small load and as a result you're more likely to get hammered by a large load while in a small group. Idk
Can vouch for how it varies. My mom and I got it this year, and had to be the same strain. She had bad migraines and was stuck in bed out of commission, while I basically just had brain fog and a cold from hell with an endlessly runny nose. (Seriously, I went through probably an entire box of kleenex in one day.) The only shared symptom I know of was that we'd both woken up with a painful congestion on the same day, so I knew we probably had the same whatever. My dad was surprised I tested positive because my case was so mild and different from hers.
My theory on how we got it was that my aunt contracted it in the airport and spread it to us. She spent the first night at our house before going to my grandmother's apartment for the majority of her trip, and our symptoms popped up about a week later. They both tested positive for Covid, yet neither had any symptoms.
Meanwhile putting aside my personal experience, there have been all sorts of experiences shared. I've seen tales of fully vaccinated and boosted people die from Covid. The strains are forever changing, with some more dangerous than others.
The biggest concern really is the longterm effects, which we can't determine yet. Back when monkey pox suddenly showed up a friend mentioned there was a theory that Covid may have reset T-cells, which would basically means age-old immunity to various diseases is now gone. At the time of the discussion studies had suggested it wasn't permanent damage so much as them "forgetting" the key, so they could be fixed with a vaccine. But... Well, we've seen how well vaccines went over with Covid.
This variation in how people respond scares me given that I've yet to catch it, nor has my wife. We were working from home before COVID started, so continuing to do so was easy enough through the worst of it. I felt guilty ordering groceries online, but justified it in that it was safer for everybody to have one person taking special precautions pick up the bags than having us wandering around the store and adding to the crowd, so for over a year we had zero outside contact, traveling in our campervan on weekends, only buying gas.
...for the last 1.5 yrs we've been back to normal, flying long distances without masks, spending time in public, hosting and attending crowded indoor parties with our neighbors, working now and then in coffee shops, etc... still haven't caught it to our knowledge, and we test whenever going to visit our son who has a baby, so we test somewhat frequently.
So, either we're the lucky ones for whom the vaccines have worked and either caught a super minor version of it or haven't caught it at all, or we're going to be in for a big surprise some day. I'm hoping the former, but wonder how long this can continue and what will our experiences be once it finally does catch up with us.
Same. The wife and I are vaccinated, boostered, all that good stuff. It still whipped our asses.
I still just don't care anymore though. Short of shining sunlight up my ass or going back into a self-imposed lock-down there's nothing else I can do. I'll get it or I won't. It'll suck or it won't. I'm just along for the ride hoping for the best at this point. I can't spend every day perpetually in fear of it.
It was a jab and some of Trump's great ideas on how to handle covid early-on.
Gad-dam that sounds horrible. Glad you're all doing better!
Thanks! And yeah, it was misery. I can absolutely see why it killed so many people, especially before the vaccine was available, and why so many people end up with long-COVID too. I'm vaccinated+3xboosted and not immunocompromised (AFAIK), but it still absolutely wrecked me, and took me way way way longer than I expected to recover.
Isn't this a survivor bias? "I'm alive so obviously it isn't that bad "
It is that bad. I held my mom's hand as she died from covid. I have wild anxiety from it. Dying from covid is horrifying.
Thank you, and your family, for doing all you have to keep others safe and alive! Please continue to be safe during peaks. It just isn't something I'd take chances with.
It would probably be better if you did care, if not for your family than for the sake of simple human empathy. You got lucky with COVID exposure, not everyone is that fortunate.
What would change if they did care more? Getting vaccinated, wearing masks and avoiding social spaces when sick, seem like reasonable expectations. What more could they realistically do?
I suspect their "I don't care" attitude is less one of "I don't care that this infectious disease is still killing people" and more "I don't care to hear more news about how bad COVID is 4 years after the pandemic started when there is little I can do to change that". I fall in the latter camp, on a lot of issues. The seemingly non-stop deluge of negative news about things I have no control over has lead me to simply tune out most current events over the last few years, for the sake of my own wellbeing.
This is correct and the original response to me is absolutely clueless.
I keep my kids out of school when they're coughing, have a fever or generally not feeling well. I avoid going out or inviting family and friends over when I'm not feeling well, I'm vaccinated, my kids are constantly getting poked (to their chagrin) whenever our doctor says we need updated vaccines and on and on. I've done what I can do, I continue to do it, so I don't care to hear anything else about it.
And yes, the same goes for other shitty news. I'm doing what I, a little man living in a large, populace city can do. I interface with my community, I'm friendly to people and I help them out where I can. I don't need more news about how the world is on fire when I can do shit all about it, so I'll focus on my own little world and the stuff I can.
Thank God for understanding people like you, babypuncher.
I'm just going to put this out there, since you're clearly doing many things right. The things you can do to avoid COVID are the same things that will help you avoid RSV and other airborne diseases: stay home when sick, mask up (N95), clean air.
The particular danger with COVID is that (at least initially, not sure about current variants) it's highly transmissible before symptoms start. Also just because you had a mild case doesn't necessarily mean you won't catch it again and have a much worse time. Definitely stay up to date on the vaccines.
Yes. Initial measures to prevent COVID spread actually eliminated a whole lineage of flu virus. B/Yamagata hasn't been seen in the wild since 2020, and it's been one of the more common ones to be included in the annual quadrivalent vaccine.
Imagine if the rate people got the flu vaccine wasn't fucking pathetic and people didn't borderline intentionally spread it every year...
I imagine that there’d be a measurable reduction in transmission rates across the board in the US if we were given more than a handful of sick days per year, especially in public service industries. Nobody who’s sick should ever feel like they’re forced to come in and work anyway at the risk of the health of their coworkers and customers.
Just adding to the anecdata here but I’ve been sick since late October. It wasn’t one continuous illness, but a series of ups and downs with distinct phases. I had basically all the symptoms of respiratory disease: a horrible cough, congestion, sore throat, intense fatigue, chills, fever, foggy head, loss of voice, diminished sense of smell, mucus drainage, migraines, insomnia. Not all of these at once but over the course of two months I experienced everything. I ended up going to my primary doctor once, urgent care twice, and the emergency room twice. I had an MRI and multiple chest x-rays.
It’s hard to assemble a timeline of what happened when, or even exactly what I was afflicted with, but the docs concluded it began as bronchitis, then I developed lingular pneumonia, then I got hit with a nasty sinus infection. After a ton of rest and meds and several rounds of antibiotics I think I’m basically through it now, feeling 95% normal again with just a slight runny nose and lingering cough. But for a significant part of time stretching through the holidays I was physically, emotionally, and mentally wrecked by this thing. Beyond the health aspect it took a big toll on my marriage and my employment. Normal household functions ground to a halt and we are still picking up the pieces. It sucked.
But it wasn’t covid. Hospital tests ruled that out conclusively. I’m fully vaccinated and boosted for that. And I’ve had covid once before, and it majorly sucked too, but it only affected me for a couple weeks. It didn’t just… persist on and on like this thing did. So all of this is just to say, stay safe out there. Covid is still a real threat, but it’s not the only one to look out for.
Pretty much the same happened to me last spring with the human metapneumovirus outbreak. It was easily a month before I could climb a flight of stairs without hacking and wheezing.
There are so many miserable respiratory viruses that haven't gotten any research attention because they don't generally kill people and won't result in blockbuster drugs that bill hundreds or thousands of dollars a dose.
Pneumonia is terrible and kills people. It's also insidious and sneaks up on you. My mom had it and if she lived alone, she might not have survived. By the time she realized she needed medical attention, she was unable to focus will and attention and energy on getting help, even calling 911. Fortunately, she wasn't alone.
Absolutely. At the peak of my misery and lethargy I wanted nothing more than to stay in bed and sleep all day. I certainly didn’t have the willpower to get myself to the ER. I’m grateful my spouse was supportive and cared for me, and took me in. There I was able to get the chest x-ray and pneumonia diagnosis, and the antibiotics to knock it out. If I had been alone, who knows how things would have progressed.
Thankfully it was only lingular pneumonia, which as I understand it is a pretty minor type and easily treated. Still was pretty scary to know I had it, and in the throes of fever dreams I reckoned with my mortality. Not an experience I’m eager to have again.
Yeah that happens sometimes unfortunately. Back around 2003 in the first semester of 10th grade in high school I caught something like that that just dragged on for 3-4 months… ran out of sick days and had to come to class anyway. Cough, sinus infection, the works. It was miserable.
From the article:
Here is the WHO dashboard. The top three are 5k in the US, 1k in Italy, and 499 in Sweden.
For context, I looked at US flu deaths here. 1.3% of deaths are attributed to the flu. This dashboard has about 4% of all deaths due to COVID in the US. (That would imply 125k total deaths in the US for December, which seems a bit low since there are over 3 million a year, but these are rough numbers.)
Continuing on with the article:
(Cases not reported for the US.)
Here's that article:
Another covid wave hits U.S. as JN.1 becomes dominant variant
...
...
Mortality rates from COVID-19 infection are still almost double those from seasonal influenza in a bad 'flu year, even with widespread partial immunity and available treatments.
It's politically invisible because it mostly kills older and sicker people, ignoring the morbidity of long COVID and other consequences throughout the population.
I’m hopeful that there will be better vaccines that work against all variants, and maybe even all coronaviruses. (Haven’t checked on progress in a while though.)
I think this is vastly overestimating the degree to which conscious, deliberate reasoning is responsible for anti-vax sentiments. Even supposing that current anti-vaxxers would have trusted an attenuated-virus vaccine had it been introduced first (which I doubt), the well is too poisoned at this point. They're all just dangerous COVID vaccines now.
Not really. Lower lethality is almost entirely caused by mass vaccination - reducing both the spread and the severity of infection.
We don't really have enough data to say whether new variants are more lethal or less lethal. The UK is currently only genetically testing variants for people who are hospitalised, so we can't say what the hospitalisation rate is for the variant because we don't know what the community rates are.
Americans in this thread may find this feed useful or interesting.
Each Friday the total number of Americans killed by Covid 19 is updated.
Each Friday the number of Americans killed in the last week by Covid 19 is posted.
https://mastodon.social/@WeeklyAmericanPandemicDeaths
Mirror, for those hit by the paywall:
https://archive.is/oG6ww
This is a major reason why during holidays, I'm choosing to stay at home. Too many people traveling means that illness and disease is extremely easy to spread. Some may say that leads to a boring lifestyle... But I'm at a point of "better safe than sorry"- I hope that I'm not alone when I say I HATE being sick
Then again, I also live by myself and have no family to worry about either, for either prevention or spreading.
I also have a story that proves my point about staying home: a co-worker of mine went traveling with friends to another country during our winter vacation. During the trip, she managed to get pneumonia somehow- and she's only in her 20's! Though now she is fully recovered.
There was a sniffling child at my family's NYE gathering and I was badly ill from the 2nd to about the 12th/13th of January. It's been a terrible start to the year. About half of the people there have had the same experience. I think simply walking out would have been impossible, unless I had also been willing to torpedo all of these family relationships. But another year, I'm going to fake a rapid-onset headache and make my excuses to leave. We'll all know it's a white lie, and I'd rather just call out the mother who brought her sick child rather than them both staying at home, but that would be an explosion of recrimination and counter-recrimination, so it's really not on the table.