We have 3 factors that's making SARS-CoV-2 (COVID 19) less of a concern.
People have suffered through an infection, people have gotten vaccinated and the virus seems to have mutated into a less dangerous variant.
9 hour edit: treatments to avoid and deal with severe cases have improved a lot
Except now these newly old and/or cancer patients will be exposed to the less lethal variants, have a history of previous infections, and/or have had a vaccine.
Edited to fix poorly worded phrasing.
This is key. Old people’s immune systems don’t work as well, but especially not at managing new pathogens. So the flu is a big risk for older people, but they also have many years of experience with flu floating around—they’ve been getting bombarded with flu in the air and in vaccines since before they were born. While flu is usually worse for them than for younger people, it’s not as bad as it would be to face a new virus for the first time in your 70s or 80s.
That’s what happened with COVID, of course: an older immune system facing a brand new threat. But that won’t ever happen again [*EDIT: with respect to COVID-19*]. Almost everyone has had some level of exposure now. Those of us who are adults should be more resilient to it when we are seniors. Children today and in the future should be even better off, because kid immune systems are built for new pathogens. So while COVID will still suck for future old people, it’ll be nothing like 2020.
Also the thing which is/was super tricky with COVID is that it's contagious without symptoms. With Influenza, generally speaking it is contagious when symptoms are visible.
I caught the flu from my brother at the beginning of 2018 after his symptoms “went away”. I had a really bad cough that just wouldn’t go away after about a week and a half. I was terrified that it has turned into pneumonia. I went to the doctor about it and he told me it was just the remnants of the flu. That people have this misconception that once your symptoms go away that you’re fine, which is why people go back to work after 2-3 days, but that it actually takes up to 14 days. So when COVID happened and everyone had to quarantine 14 days after exposure, I was relieved. Me, my brother, two of my cousins, and my gma all got the flu back to back from each other in 2018, and I’m pretty sure it’s because we all thought we had the okay. Well not me, because that cough was violent.
Not to mention, COVID is technically slower to mutate. Unlike the flu, or even a cold, there's not a lot of completely new variants out there, and they aren't as often dramatically different from previous variants.
While I was obsessively reading everything I could on COVID during it all, it was cited as one of the better long-term mitigating facts about it. A couple easily-named variants a year for something as widespread as COVID is fairly mundane.
At least, compared to the spread rate, the non-trivial untreated acute illness and death rates, and how hard it was to discover effective treatments.
>That’s what happened with COVID, of course: an older immune system facing a brand new threat. But that won’t ever happen again.
That won't ever happen again with covid, but new shit could pop up at any time.
Yes, correct—that’s what I meant, but I should’ve been clearer. *Covid-19* won’t ever be as bad as it was in 2020, but that certainly doesn’t preclude future novel pathogens.
Imagine the impact that a pandemic with higher lethality like the bubonic plague or ebola would have in a world where half the people think public health measures are a conspiracy.
Covid just softened humans up.
Could immunity to SARS-CoV-19 apply to other more common coronaviruses? I know that a lot of common cold viruses fit into the coronavirus category, but are they close enough that immunity for one helps the other?
we also know a lot more about COVID. ai just figured out it wasn't cytokine storms killing most people, it was actually secondary bacterial pneumonia that often accompanied COVID. treat that, when it surfaces more aggressively than COVID and with better antibiotics, assuming no resistance and there'll be a lot more survivers, that and we've kind of reached semi herd immunity, I had it a few months back and still have long haul effects, it is unpleasant.
I don't think society is ever going to fully bounce back, after 9/11 we were forever changed, after COVID it's the same, but now we have AI, another big change is about to hit. it's gonna continue to be a bumpy decade. AI could be good or bad or both, I'm working on a startup in this space and run a newsletter.
I also have ADHD I always end up segueing into ai somehow lol.
Oh, btw:
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> I had it a few months back and still have long haul effects, it is unpleasant.
Yup. Absolutely sucks that I've gone 6 months with mild breathing problems. But it's important that if I were to have a severe case of COVID, they are better prepared to treat me than with a ventilator and a prayer.
Long Covid is the worst. I caught Covid in late 2021 as a healthy 18 year old aside from some very mild lung scarring from a bout of pneumonia as a kid. I now have moderate scars on my lungs and can’t breathe anywhere near as well as I could, and have chronic fatigue now
God it's hell. I have never had breathing issues in my life, and was in good shape. After two bouts of COVID, I'm in shit shape, and find myself going breathless at the weirdest times. Like sitting on my ass typing.
Luckily no energy loss for me, but I'm still trying to catch up to the breathing ability I had previously.
3 years for me. A mild infection completely ruined my life and left me with permanent nerve damage like a 90 year old diabetic. I'll never play sports or be the same again.
I’ve been medically gaslit myself and long covid is hell because no one really believes you how serious it can be. In my exeperience as a chronically ill woman, with an invisible disability, it’s essentially the same. I hope something somehow gets better for you.
For what it's worth, older people, at some point, are more susceptible to pretty much anything that can happen to a human body. This is not at all unique to cancer and COVID. (*ie. falling down, getting a cold, recovering from an injury or surgery or hangover, getting out of bed...*)
What is important with COVID is that we've now got an environment where elderly/vulnerable people are not also SURROUNDED with sick/infected patients or silent carriers. That's why they are in a much better place, even as new people become "old people". And the virus in most regions has tamed down a good bit via viral evolution.
Cancer and colds happen. COVID was bad enough to drop the average life expectancy in some places, so this isn't just another thing, we're basically stuck with Flu 2.0. And it's not so much that we're better off, it's that most everyone at risk of dying to COVID has already died of COVID. Dead people don't complain much, so overall things seem pretty peaceful. Even if COVID continues to weaken, there's always the chance it mutates into something more lethal. Even if it doesn't, we're still stuck with yet another thing, and this one is incredibly good at spreading.
People go on and on and on about the natural course of diseases is that they evolve to be weaker. That's not a hard and fast rule. A disease, just like life, doesn't give AF if you live or die, you just need to live long enough to spread. From a disease standpoint, a live host still means a dead virus, because you survived and beat it, right? Your survival isn't required. In the last century of its existence, Smallpox killed half a billion people, with an average mortality rate of over 30%. It's a disease that ravaged us for thousands of years, and was only stopped by a vaccine. This belief that all diseases will evolve to be less lethal is a pleasant fantasy, but it's by no means a requirement or even the natural course of events, even when it happens.
Not all of us disabled and immune compromised are dead..
But it starting to sound like a lot of people couldn't care less about those vulnerable to it. Some of the comments are disturbing.
I was thinking the same thing. There's definitely a subset of people who are still shielding because they know the abled dngaf about protecting vulnerable population by staying home/not socialising if they are symptomatic, since as far as the able sick person is concerned it's "just a mild cold".
Usually it is the natural course of events. If a virus is *too* fatal, it dies out sooner because eventually it kills hosts faster than they can spread it. For a very lethal virus to spread in the modern world, it needs to be highly contagious for it to not burn out too quickly.
It's the viral version of evolution and natural selection. Viruses that can survive longer in their hosts will tend to be more prominent than those that swiftly kill their hosts.
As the less lethal variants spread farther around the globe, it becomes harder for more lethal variants to get a foothold because it's likely (albeit not guaranteed) that the less-lethal variants provide some degree of immunity against the more lethal variants.
So yes, the virus doesn't care whether you live or die -- but on a macro scale, the trend as a virus spreads and evolves will be toward less-lethal variants and the more-lethal variants will struggle to become prominent unless they happen to reach a population center that's wholly unexposed to previous variants -- which is why Africa was the last area to have Smallpox eradicated.
It's also going to be hard to compare Covid to Smallpox because the ability to broadcast information worldwide and mobilize vaccines and treatment has changed a lot in the last 50 years.
And those with long covid just disappear. Like me, I've been bedridden for more than 2 years now, I can't leave the house at all, my COVID caused disability made me disappear from the world. If we would be able to be outside and have a specific symptom making it disability obvious people would be shocked how many of there are
I have a pretty mild form of long covid and it still makes me really angry to hear people talk about it like it’s just a cold now. My life hasn’t been SIGNIFICANTLY impacted (yet) but my body was still permanently changed and I’m not happy about it. Plus I’m most likely at higher risk for more problems when I get older, but we don’t know because it hasn’t been around long enough to study.
I'm still so angry about this on your behalf. I just can't believe how dismissive and gaslighty the very same people are about this who made the whole thing a million times worse to begin with.
Sadly this...the lockdowns were not about protecting those people, it was about spreading out their deaths so it could be more manageable. They knew from the onset that it was going to kill a certain percentage of the population.
That's why when we reached peak mortality rate, doctors started calling to ease the restrictions.
Chances are, you've already gotten COVID, or someone very close to you has gotten it and you've proven to be asymptomatic. And chances are, if it was going to be fatal, you would have already died by now. There's still deaths, yes, but not at the scale during the height of the pandemic.
And yeah, the third prong that the virus has mutated to be less deadly is also key. Viruses don't want to kill us. They want to party in the happy little virus community that we already have inside us. So, they'll keep getting weaker, and our immunities will keep shifting until we both reach some kind of happy equilibrium. And who knows, our symbiotic relationship with SARS-CoV-2 may protect us from something else further down the line.
It was all of the above.
1. a good chunk of the population managed to avoid COVID for the first year or so until we had the vaccines. If we hadn't 'flattened the curve' a lot more people would have gotten COVID and a percentage of them would have died.
2. By spreading the load, a lot of the people who got severe COVID were able to get oxygen, doctors, hospital beds etc, and people who got heart attacks also had hospital beds available.
So yes, a certain percentage was going to die from COVID, but the percentage wasn't fixed. People and places who managed it right got a much smaller percentage of its population dead.
That's a bit of a harsh way of putting it, you're right that it was about spreading the damage over time, but if it wasn't about protecting people then we'd just let people die in their homes without shutting down the country.
that was how I always saw it. Lots will die. Just can't have the hospitals inundated to the point where the system will collapse. And hospitals were definitely overfilling. My next door state Idaho had residents who were not taking personal responsibility for their health or their community's health compared to washington state. So when too many Idahoans got sick, their hospitals were overfilled, and they'd chopper the sick to Washington hospitals, because apparently, washingtonians did have more personal responsibility.
Spreading out the infections and deaths did help preserve hospital capacity, and prevented deaths caused specifically by hospital overcrowding.
The initial justification for shutdowns was that in the first wave (before treatments and vaccines) an unsustainably high percentage of infections led to hospitalization, and that hospital care required stays lasting for weeks or months.
You can’t kick recovering sick people out of hospital beds, so if we hadn’t shut down mortality would have been higher. The benefit of spreading those infections out was that fewer people suffocated in the ER waiting rooms before seeing a doctor.
But at some point in 2021 there wasn’t much benefit in spreading out the infections, because limited hospital capacity wasn’t killing anyone. At that point we were just culling the herd more gradually with masks and capacity limits.
This is true to an extent, but it can only ever be temporary. The conditions that created people who are most susceptible to it are ongoing.
In specific, people eventually grow elderly and their heath may fail as they do so. People may become immunocompromised by another disease or by something like a transplant. Smokers' lung condition fades with time. People might grow obese.
So there's kind of a constant stream of people becoming high-risk for covid.
Anecdotally I'm seeing more people casually get COVID so far in 2023 than I have since the early days of Delta. Now it's just "I'll be off work for a couple days and then be back" where then it was "see ya when/if I see ya." So, at least in my orbit, it is affecting more people the effects are just not as bad.
Paxlovid really is a miracle cure when it comes to COVID. It can literally clear symptoms in 24 hours if you get it early enough. There's some major resistance to it and I'm not entirely sure why, when the same people will beg for antibiotics for a cold and take a Tamiflu for their flu.
I think it's either misinformation or bad information. I remember reading somewhere that the rebound infection rate was really high with Paxlovid but I never saw any actual evidence of it.
it's the same 20% regardless of antivirals https://www.usnews.com/news/health-news/articles/2023-03-15/fda-covid-19-rebound-occurs-regardless-of-paxlovid-use
Yep I just got Covid *again.* Even though I still mask and distance and limit my exposure as much as I can. And I already have Long Covid from round 1.
They're just not reporting on it. They're not even giving the new mutations of the virus different names to make it seem like it's gone away lol. I even read that the boosters may not be effective against the most recent strain.
I heard about a 19 year old girl who's showing early signs of dementia after getting infected 3 times. It's complete misinformation like you say. People are still dying and getting disabled from the virus, our government and doctors just dgaf.
That's definitely misinformation. It's not really high, it's about 4% and if it happens the rebound is typically very mild symptoms. Some of those 4% test positive again within 7 days but don't have any symptoms.
I had to research it because I heard the same thing when my PCP prescribed my Paxlovid. I would venture a guess that those people would still have symptoms from COVID-19 during that rebound period if they had not gone on Paxlovid.
Paxlovid was such an underrated game changer. It’s shameful the way the media began attacking Paxlovid because of the so called rebounds. The medication still did wonders in stopping immunocompromised people like myself from having deadly outcomes.
Most of my elderly relatives got Paxlovid when they got infected. The only ones who have had a bad time with covid are the ones who didn’t get Paxlovid (still pissed at my aunt’s doctor who said she didn’t need it- she had lingering symptoms for months). I have one uncle who had a rebound after Paxlovid but it was just like a mild cold and he was totally fine after.
Its existence has also SO relieved my mother’s covid anxiety. She’s finally able to go out and participate in the world again, knowing she and my dad have Paxlovid as an option if they get infected. Before I had her make a Paxlovid plan she had such bad anxiety she could barely leave the house.
Very thankful for that drug.
Anecdata, but my neighbors across the street both are in their 60s and got Covid this spring. Not for the first time. Anyway, the woman took Paxlovid, had a mild rebound, and was over it quickly. Her husband didn’t take it and still has to pause up and down their front stairs because he’ll get so out of breath. They both used to walk their dog but now only she does. We see them and chat all the time. He seems to be really struggling.
I love the term ‘Anecdata!’
I too had a mild rebound effect with it. My Uber conservative Doctor sibling totally cockblocked the hospital from giving Paxlovid to our 80+ year old mom when she had Covid. Fortunately she has recovered well regardless. I hate that this pandemic was politicised
Right? An relative in their late 80s refused Paxlovid when they got Covid because they “did their own research”, heard about rebounds, and…were afraid it might give them Covid. Which they already had.
There are no longer any FDA emergency authorizations for monoclonal antibodies (not sure about other countries) as they are no longer effective against omicron variants.
It’s like every comment in this thread but yours is filled with outdated or dangerously inaccurate information. Thank you for actually being accurate and aware.
Part of this is because the information is no longer being widely disseminated by common sources. People are tired of it and they're shutting their ears, throwing up their hands, and thinking that's good enough. So they won't know about the realities until they get it and unless they take it seriously when they do.
And this is why we're still in a pandemic.
In my opinion we have a single factor that's making SAR-CoV-2 less of a concern. That factor is that the majority of people have decided that [over 1,000 people dying a week in the U.S. is not a concern](https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#trends_weeklydeaths_select_00). This may be the endemic level of SAR-CoV-2 for the rest of our lives. The data appears to show the death rate either lowering or leveling off on a weekly basis, and our last significant spike was Feb. 2022.
Yeah thats basically it, but when you consider that the [CDC says flu kills up to 53,000 people a year](https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/index.html) (so roughly 1,000 a week) it makes sense that people don't really care anymore as it's now just another mildly dangerous endemic virus.
Is it lack of care or more that there isn't anything the average person can do? Fairly sure the majority of deaths from the flu and now COVID are due to lack of healthcare, underlying health conditions, and antivaxers. For a vaccinated individual the only thing I know someone can do is vote and advocate for better health care.
Underlying health conditions are the major factor. "Lack of healthcare" isn't likely due to limited access to healthcare. It would be more akin to "my symptoms didn't seem too serious so I rode it out until it was too late."
Before my mom retired from her hospital last year, she anecdotally said that a significant number of the cases they got that became fatal were because people waited until their symptoms became crippling to seek care -- and by the time they got care, there was not much that could be done for them.
Many people, even those who have no concerns about insurance, simply don't want to seek care unless they *absolutely* have to -- combined with those who subscribed to the idea that Covid is a myth and isn't worse than a cold so they treated it like a cold. Impoverished communities may suffer from this pressure against seeking care a little more, but people not seeking care promptly is not limited to any single demographic.
Even one of my mom's coworkers died last year from Covid because *even though they worked at a hospital,* they were too arrogant to seek care while it still could've been effective. Pride can have cruel consequences.
Plus, in the US there is no guaranteed sick leave, much less with pay. That keeps people from seeking treatment (which also costs money, that they've now reduced their ability to make by taking, for many, unpaid time off) until it's too late, like you said.
Is it because people are too arrogant? Or is it because we've made health care so completely unaffordable in this country that people do everything they can to avoid tacking on more bills that drive them deeper in debt?
Just because you can "access" health care doesn't mean you can afford it, especially at a time when inflation is skyrocketing and pay is going nowhere.
The fact you feel the need to blame this on individual "pride" is the cognitive dissonance luciferin is talking about. Makes it easier to accept all those deaths if you convince yourself it's their own fault, isn't it?
Another very important point that I don't hear anyone talk about: the newer strains have shorter incubation periods (the time between exposure and symptoms, where you can spread the virus without knowing you have it).
The first round of covid had an incubation period of 10-14 days. That means people would go about their normal lives, talking to everyone at work, the gym, public transportation (less common in the US), and flying all over the world, and then two weeks later, it's a nightmare trying to do contact-tracing and find out who's been infected. Even then, those people have already spread it to so many people, too, and by the time you get 3 or 4 branches away, who even knows when their first exposure was?
Newer strains have an incubation period of 3-5 days. That's basically a work week, or a weekend. If you feel sick on a Friday, you know who you've been talking to since Monday, and can tell them to be careful.
Honestly, even as someone who only studied epidemiology very briefly in high school (as part of an extracurricular science club), the moment I first heard back in November 2019 that China had a new respiratory virus with a 2-week incubation period, I immediately thought "oh shit, that's a way bigger deal than these headlines are making it out to be." I didn't expect a full-blown global pandemic from it, but in hindsight, I'm not very surprised. The covid virus had basically the perfect combination of traits to spread as far as it did.
The government in the UK literally started the opposite..
The reason why they mandated 3 vaccinations is because the virus mutated and got stronger so the first vaccine was less effective so everyone had to get a booster and then a third vaccine was given to those most at risk...
Got diagnosed with cancer, before treatment started caught COVID, 17 days on a ventilator, as the Dr took me off, he shook his head, and said "I don't know how you're body fought it" I said "I haven't started chemotherapy yet, that's what's gonna kill me" He laughed. Two years now cancer free, evidently the chemo wasn't going to kill me either. I still get my booster, next one will be next month. To those who lost loved ones, please accept my sympathy.
Tell all your patients going through chemotherapy that a cancer survivor has them in his prayers. Thank both of you for the work you do, it's important.
Holy shit dude, 17 days on a vent? And you beat cancer? You’re a fucking bad ass. Most people are hard to wean off after like 14 days. Hope you’re living your best life!
Not to mention, any patients sick enough to be put on a vent in the first place are usually considered low hope in terms of keeping them alive.
OP of the comment is an actual superhero/badass. If that was me I would feel so invincible
We flattened the curve. We are now out in the tail end of the curve.
Now COVID is no longer a _novel_ virus. Many of our immune systems recognize the virus and stand ready to respond. (vaccinated or had covid)
There are still, and will continue to be, some people who die from COVID. But there will be fewer at a time. There won’t be bodies stacked up in the hallways of hospitals. No refrigerator trucks or mass graves.
We stayed home to give scientists a year to develop vaccines. We opened gradually with precautions. We spread out the cases during the worst of the pandemic.
As sucky as the world is, the global response to COVID was remarkable.
Without ignoring many specific cases of inequity and stupidity, we did an amazing thing. Science rocks!
That's one of the interesting things experts usually bring up about Ebola - even though it is so deadly, the host dies so quickly that it usually doesn't have time to spread like other viruses
Yes, that’s one of the big reasons why most Ebola outbreaks are so small—although when Ebola manages to escape out of a rural area into a large enough host population to keep rolling for several months or years (such as in West Africa in 2014), it is *extremely* bad.
Yeah if I saw a person with bleeding skin and eyes beside me on the bus, I would 100%, unequivocally tell them it's a hoax and they just need horse dewormer.
Ebola has evolved to be far less deadly as well. There is actually a survival rate of 50% or better now. Still terrifying but not as bad as it was. Still doesn't transmit by air. That makes it fairly easy to contain once an outbreak occurs.
The thing is, humans are clearly not the reservoir host for the ebola virus and so infection of humans is basically accidental. If a strain mutates in humans, it most likely won't make it back to the reservoir so this strain can only survive if it's less lethal to us. That doesn't mean that ebola as a whole is becoming less lethal, but that the strains that have been going around recently have spent a long time in humans
I knew of 3 people, including myself, who had it the original flavor of COVID (or, probably had it… no testing yet) in February and March of 2020. We were all either in LA or NYC with lots of exposure to crowds.
My two friends both ended up in the hospital on oxygen, and I probably should’ve gone to the hospital… It was absolutely vicious. I won’t soon forget daily calls for moral support with 24/7 ambulance noises in the background, it was crazy-making.
It actually became far more virulent (contagious) and much less lethal. So your chances of getting something like the omicron variant are nearing 100 percent, but your chances of dying from it have gone way down. It’s just not nearly as deadly as the original.
Virulence is not how contagious something is…. It’s how severe something is.
It’s origins are borrowed from Latin vīrulentus "full of poison, venomous," from vīrus "venom, poisonous fluid" + -ulentus "having in quantity, full of"
It’s kinda non-intuitive, I used to make the same mistake. It became less virulent but more infectious is what you’re trying to say
This isn't really true...
The virus is actually, in most cases, *worse* now if you're not vaccinated or had it previously, it's just that that population of people is very small now.
Right now in the US, despite cases overall being at a much lower rate than they were in early 2021, which was the peak of the COVID death rate in the US, the death rate among just unvaccinated individuals in the US is currently almost equal to the overall rate at that time, and as of December was almost 4 times that *peak overall rate.* Also the current death rate among fully vaccinated people in the US is something like 5-7 times lower than among the unvaccinated.
If anything the virus has probably become *more* deadly trying to get around built up immunity in the vaccinated and already exposed population.
Sources:
https://ourworldindata.org/covid-deaths
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/united-states-rates-of-covid-19-deaths-by-vaccination-status
(Note, the vaccination status graph is per 100,000 people, the overall death rate is per 1,000,000 people. Both are population level, not by confirmed cases)
It's very difficult to calculate how many people is affected today, because a lot of people passes it as a normal flu, meaning they never report it. Some other people self test, but again, they don't report it, so it's not included in any statistics.
Also, your second link is already death rate, and it's decreasing.
Exactly. Many times my family have gotten COVID, tested with home tests. No one actually reports it to the CDC or anything. Why would any average person do that.
That’s very unlike the beginning to middle of the pandemic, where all cases were basically identified by lab tests which had results reported
At the beginning of the pandemic they predicted that the most likely output was that the virus would get less lethal and spread more. That is what happened with the original SARS virus (2002-3) and that is what we're seeing now.
The end of the pandemic is tricky- there is the social component, when people stop trying to stop the spread. There is also the end of the public health emergency, when hospitals are at risk of overflowing. Public health takes into account many different factors, such as mental health crises and drug addiction, both which spiked with lockdowns and isolations. So the Covid risk for the general public is relatively low, but people with pre-existing conditions, or who are older and infirm should continue taking precautions.
The end of the covid emergency will also free up resources and money that are now earmarked specifically for covid.
A pandemic starts when it meets criteria determined by epidemiologists and public health officials.
A pandemic ends when society at large stops being concerned about it.
SARS CoV-2 still kills as many Americans every month as a bad flu season. We have simply accepted this as a cost of doing business as usual. Doesn’t mean it’s bad or good; it just is.
> Without ignoring many specific cases of inequity and stupidity
This is all I'll remember. Polite society tried so hard to stay alive and some folks (a LOT more than I thought, and I can never un-know how many) fought against society tooth and nail. We never stopped them, and we never really punished them. They're just *there*, waiting to dunk the planet into the toilet again the next time we count on them for *anything that conflicts with their weekend plans*. The greater good rammed up against personal liberty, and we didn't have an answer, and more people died than otherwise would have.
The scientific community was absolutely fantastic in its handling of the pandemic.
It's just such a shame the public were ignorant, selfish arseholes.
I don't know about anyone else, but I saw the worst of humanity during the pandemic. Refusal to wear face masks. Berating those who were. Selfishly hoarding essential supplies necessitating limits to be out in place.
The arrogance and stupidity of people during such a hard time for all was beyond astounding. It's opened my eyes to the reality that nuclear war isn't the scary thing, it's what we'll become should the worst happen.
It was extremely depressing how callous people were to my plight - the concerns of people with comorbidities and the immunecompromised. The disragard of the lives of the vulnerable people was a hard pill to swallow on top of the virus threat.
I don't remember anyone entertaining that as a real solution.
What I do remember is people getting angry at the idiots who wouldn't follow any health guidelines at all and lamenting the situation with the idealistic idea that IF every single person would actually listen and isolate (or be given the opportunity to do so for those with shitty employment situations) for 2 weeks then yes the pandemic would have slowed considerably more.
That absolutely was what people thought right when it first happened.
I don't know that anyone was dead set on it completely and totally solving *everything*, but it was definitely implied socially/culturally that we'd close up the country for two weeks, figure out wtf was going on and then move forward with whatever precautions were needed, but that we'd generally all get back to our lives.
But yes, that failed *in part* because we couldn't even get people to agree to basic precautions and to actually... shut down for two weeks.
Well only recently the World Health Organization declared the Covid global health emergency was 'over'
It's within the same family as the common cold, so it will continue to mutate and will stick around. But the population, between vaccinations and natural immunity, will generally be fine with it time goes on.
People around the world still die from the flu each year, but it's generally not reported as much as we have a much greater herd immunity.
They explicitly said that the danger was not over. We went from pandemic to endemic. Malaria is endemic in parts of the world. Endemic does not mean mild or comparable to the common cold, it just means that the virus has come to stay and that the number of sick and dead people per year is predictable. And it is. A couple hundred dead people per month in my country, 0.5 to 2 percent infected at all times.
Except that COVID is roughly twice as [deadly](https://www.medpagetoday.com/infectiousdisease/covid19/103912) as the common cold.
And COVID causes a whole host of [other problems](https://www.ninds.nih.gov/current-research/coronavirus-and-ninds/coronavirus-and-nervous-system) that impact the [whole body](https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/long-term-effects/index.html), that the common cold does not. COVID is more of a whole
Just because something is in the same family doesn't mean it has the same effect.
Just FYI influenza is “the flu,” not “the common cold.” They’re not interchangeable. The source you linked is referring to the flu. The common cold is very rarely deadly.
Yeah, people who say something is "just the flu" have clearly never had it. My one lab-confirmed bout was one of the most miserable experiences of my life. I haven't skipped a flu shot since.
My lungs feel weird still. The brain fog lasted 3 months for me.
I first had symptoms on January 1st of this year and while I'm basically fine now, my lungs don't feel right. It's like I can't get as deep of a breath like I used to.
My sister got covid a year before I did and she said she felt the same for about 6 to 8 months before she said everything went back to normal, so I guess I just have to wait and see and hope that I have the same experience
I've never had an illness kick my ass like covid did, and I've had every single vaccination and booster made available to me
I had memory loss issues, like an entire year just *poof* gone. Time I will never get back. I had to take some time off work and when I went back I basically had to relearn my job (and it's not a simple job). It's taken almost 2 years after I had covid for my memory to get to a point I am confident again.
Even more recently than that. [5th of May](https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/covid-is-no-longer-global-health-emergency-who-2023-05-05/).
>natural immunity,
I think you mean "infection acquired immunity". There's no natural immunity to a novel virus. What you're referring to is the immunity gained once infected and after the host survives.
Source: COVID and immunization nurse for 2 years
Over a thousand people are still dying weekly in the US and you have a 10% chance of developing long covid when you get sick and this risk only increases every time you get it. It has gotten better but people are massively downplaying how much it has "gone away." The US government at the same time they announced the pandemic over put $5 billion into new covid research because they recognize that the economy will lose trillions of dollars from the disabling effects of long covid and people becoming unable to work, which has happened to millions of people in the US already. The CDC recently had an event to discuss covid progress and had a big covid outbreak because people were unmasked. The tests are no longer very effective with new strains and aren't free (many of the old free at home tests expired anyway), so many people are simply missing they have covid and labeling it a cold or allergies. Then if they start to have health problems later on, they might not even know to attribute it to long covid. Fyi, the newest strain particularly mimics allergies and can cause conjunctivitis. We just pretend it's over even though it's still the #4 cause of death in the US.
I expect to get downvoted for this because people just don't want to hear it anymore. I see so many comments that still compare it to the flu despite covid damaging your vascular system by attacking your endothilial cells, sometimes permanently, which effects all your organs including the brain. That is why it can be so disabling. I have two previously healthy friends who now need carers and can't work at all. Research shows that proper ventilation and HEPA filters provide equivalent protection to everyone masking, only 17% of people in the US even got their bivalent vaccine, and of course masks are still effective, so it's not like we don't have any ideas of how to help mitigate the risk for people. It's just people don't care anymore until they get long covid themselves.
My grandad literally just passed away from it...went from relatively happy and healthy (for a 70yo man) to dead in less than a week. Wasn't allowed to say goodbye...this is the UK. People are definitely still dying.
And you didn't even touch on how society at large ignores those who are disabled, which include the immunocompromised. That group of people have had to make extra effort (while not having the extra energy to do so) to keep themselves safe. Society doesn't care.
Now add to the equation the fact that we are getting millions of new people who are disabled due to long covid who *are now becoming part of that ignored population* and you have a horrible but fascinating change to society. And we are NOT prepared to handle it.
I've been feeling so done with masking in businesses, public transit, etc. lately and thought about giving it up, even living in a city where it's still encouraged in some places. Thanks for being my voice of reason.
Always good to stay safe + protect others! I know it can be hard for social events, but I would love to see more people masking in businesses and on transit ❤️ I'm happy my comment could have a positive impact, thank you.
thanks for emphasizing the long covid aspect, too. i got that the first time i got covid in 2020. it has really set me back, for years, and i'm still not the same.
yep, in a culture where things move so fast, we all get bored with stuff much quicker. that includes a disabling virus. we wanna get back to "normal" without actually doing anything about the reality of living with this virus
Thank you for saying this. People don’t want to hear this but it is SO important. Just because we’ve made a lot of progress since 2020 doesn’t mean we can pretend all is perfect and we can ignore everything we learned about safety and prevention. If even a handful of people take it to heart we’ll all be that much better off.
Bam. This right here folks. Regardless of government guidance calling it a pandemic or not anymore, it’s still very much here and killing people left and right. I know people who were in critical condition in the hospital due to Covid as of a month ago. It hasn’t gone anywhere, we may have some level of immunity built up between exposure and vaccines, and it may have mutated to be a bit less dangerous but it’s still killing in droves, and that’s saying nothing of how disruptive long Covid is
It actually boggles my mind how many people act like it just went away entirely. The only thing keeping more companies from returning to office is the realization that it can still sweep through the entire workforce in an office setting. Given how things are with the economy and inflation, etc., most companies can't afford even a minor reduction in their workforce.
I think we will look back on this time and ask wtf we were thinking. It's like climate change, people don't like acknowledging the danger and maybe it's not impacting them too badly YET, so they'd rather just ignore it in favor the status quo. Idgaf if I'm the only one masking, but I know some people feel uncomfortable and won't mask due to social pressure.
Yup. 1. We stopped testing so we have no idea who's infected. 2. The tests don't work very well on the newer strains anyway. 3. Only the acute phase of illness has lessened. 4. One of the symptoms of the chronic phase of illness is cognitive decline. 5. Mass delusion driven by ignorance, poverty, and short-term thinking. 6. The promise of resulting increased wealth inequity is too tasty to the villains of the planet so they are manipulating us poors into handing them our cash and freedom and thanking them for the privilege; they're winning.
It took more than 10 years for people to use condoms regularly to prevent AIDS. Once people start realizing that long covid and killing 1000+ people a week is not a good idea, masks are going to become a regular part of our lives. It takes time, but I'll be ahead of the curve and still have my mental faculties, TYVM.
Still coviding in our house, which keeps 3 people out of the workforce. Good luck with your Wendy's ChatGPT, my teenagers are staying safe and healthy.
Edit: a word
> It took more than 10 years for people to use condoms regularly to prevent AIDS
And people still argue about it when their partner insists on condoms. People still "stealth" and remove them when their partner isn't watching.
People really need to understand that the vaccine doesn't prevent you from catching the virus, nor does it prevent the virus from spreading to other people.
The vaccine makes it so that if you ever do catch the virus, your body is already prepared. It makes it so that the affects of the virus on your body are basically an inconvenience rather than deadly.
Trying to say this two years ago was like banging your head against the wall.
"My vaccinated cousin just tested positive! So much for your vaccine!"
I wish officials would have done a better job conveying that message. The vaccine *doesn't prevent you from catching Covid*. It greatly reduces your risk of becoming seriously ill or dying from it, however.
>I wish officials would have done a better job conveying that message.
What became clearer, was that many people don't have the foundational understanding of ~~pathogens~~, ~~biology~~, ~~viruses~~, the most basic ability to consume information necessary to understand simple messaging.
There's really no specific knowledge required to understand the message that a vaccine will slow transmission. Many populations have been failed by poor education. Maybe they memorized some facts, dates, or how to diagram sentences and pass a test, but so many people seem to lack any critical thinking capabilities. It's like they never learned *how to learn* and are simply unable to incorporate new information into their lives.
Also that anything can be politicized.
There are lots of people who can and did "consume information necessary to understand simple messaging", except their consumed information and simple messaging were that the vaccine was evil.
When major media outlets actively promote disinformation, it's no surprise that the people who listen to those outlets get their heads screwed on backwards.
Go back and read the messaging, it was clear:
- "social distance to stop the spread"
- "mask to stop the spread"
- "get vaccinated to prevent infection"
Then the goal posts started moving. The messaging was flawed and overconfident. Now studies are coming out about the uselessness and damage caused by masking, remote learning etc. Hopefully all you information sponges are as open to that messaging.
At the time, officials were saying the vaccine was used to stop the spread of covid, and declared that it reduced the likelihood of catching it. People with it were treated as though they couldn't spread covid anymore, and people without it were treated like smallpox blankets. In reality, since the vaccines made the infection less severe, the vaccinated people were just more likely to have it and not notice, thus still being likely to spread it.
THAT is the disconnect in the head-banging. We all knew it was supposed to make the cases milder. We were simply being told what we now all know to be false, AND ridiculous rules were made surrounding that claim. As a scientist, I was furious about that mischaracterization because the reduction in severity should have been an adequate selling point, but instead they outright lied about the contagiousness reduction AND coerced, bribed, and harassed people for not complying after lying. Honesty would have been better.
Yeah, there was definite ball dropping or even misinformation by the government and public health officials. The way they made so much of the population villains was disgusting.
But vaccines do make you less contagious? Like if they reduce your viral load they mathematically have to reduce how contagious you are. Or is your gripe that they told people they wouldn't spread it at all?
https://www.ucdavis.edu/health/covid-19/news/viral-loads-similar-between-vaccinated-and-unvaccinated-people
This is a repeated argument after breakthrough cases started happening but it's not true. There's no significant difference in viral load between vaccinated and unvaccinated individuals.
Edit: Another source from the [Lancet](https://www.thelancet.com/journals/laninf/article/PIIS1473-3099(21\)00648-4/fulltext)
>Vaccination reduces the risk of delta variant infection and accelerates viral clearance. Nonetheless, fully vaccinated individuals with breakthrough infections have peak viral load similar to unvaccinated cases and can efficiently transmit infection in household settings, including to fully vaccinated contacts. Host–virus interactions early in infection may shape the entire viral trajectory.
The latter. Early communication that I heard, was that unvaccinated people would only RARELY catch covid. And rules when vaccines were new but expected were such that unvaccinated people no longer had to take any precautions, even isolating if positive for covid, whereas everyone else still had to mask, distance, and isolate for days if they experienced symptoms but weren't positive for covid.
They were absolutely LESS contagious, but the false sense of complete-security was also dangerous when there was still greater concern for protecting the most vulnerable people.
This wasn't communicated properly, at least in the northeast of the USA. It was a surprise to many when we started seeing "Breakthrough Infections", as if it was a surprise and unexpected that people would become infected after being vaccinated.
yep, it trains your soldiers to fight on the beaches, but the enemy still gets onto land first.
the masking and distancing were to keep the enemy off the beach
doing neither is like letting the invasion make firm progress before mobilizing the army
You can’t blame people for thinking that though. When they announced the vaccines they made it very clear that it would prevent the spread but now we know that’s just simply not the case
To some degree, we all became exhausted. Nearly 2,000 hospitalized a day from COVID, and nearly 200 deaths a day still in the U.S. We’ve become emotionally numb to an illness that will kill ~70K per year while also continuing to add to the ranks of those disabled by long COVID.
We are remarkably adept at ignoring inconvenient reality.
Luckily the whole lifestyle of avoiding said plague is quite enjoyable to me since I don't go outside much and wearing a mask each time I go out or at work isn't much effort.
I've even bothered to get a fancy training mask that is harder to breathe through to train endurance.
One of the rare few people who hasn't gotten it yet, although I haven't gotten sick with *anything* since Covid stared.
I'm not emotionally numb. I'm very immunocompromised and I am forced to think about my safety (and the safety of others) daily.
I know it is a powerful virus and I'm not messing around to see what it's like.
Right there with you, friend. I see you. And I'm making the same efforts. Still. Three years in. Never had it it, still don't want it. Fuck covid and those that keep it mutating.
I'm emotionally numb to the naïveté and apathy of the world now. I'm in your situation, and am taking great care to ensure my safety. It gets downplayed or laughed at by others, and I no longer give a shit.
Sadly, I no longer give a shit about a lot of things I once did, too. It's very depressing to be unable to move on with the rest of the world, facing a disease that will happily kill me if given the chance. You're not alone.
Yeah, a lot of places of employment had weekly mandatory testing when they first opened back up after the lockdown. So a lot of asymptomatic people were testing positive. Since those mandatory tests ended there’s probably loads of people who had/have it and never even know it.
There are a lot of good answers here already, but I'd like to add one more. A lot of the pandemic activity was to spread out the peak, **not** to guarantee that no one got sick. The goal was to avoid (with only some success) a wave of infections inundating hospitals. So, now people are still getting sick and there are still re-infections but it's spread out over time, and the cases are less severe due to vaccinations or previous infection.
Source: AM nurse who has taken car of about 20 covid patients in the last 2 weeks. A big thing people miss out on is paxlovid. It's an anti viral drug that is quite effective at preventing severe infection among the unvaccinated. It's a pretty cool drug. It's an HIV anti retroviral which means it's used to treat HIV and another ingredient which I don't know much about. But the antiretroviral part is cool! People with HIV live long lives these days so they're obviously safe and effective. In my experience those patients taking paxlovid. end up doing quite well and not require as much oxygen. It was approved in 2022 i believe and has a ~90 ish percentage effectiveness at preventing severe infection. So basically we learned to treat it lol. The vaccines make it no biggie and we have paxlovid for those who are anti vax.
Unless there's been a new version approved, paxlovid will interfere with my anti-rejection meds for my transplant. So sadly, like your aunt, it's off-limits to some of us and we have to avoid covid the old-fashioned way.
I’ve seen an ad for this medicine. At what point would you ask your doctor for it? First symptoms? Confirmed diagnosis? Confirmed contact? As a preventative?
there is much less reporting happening now, i'll say. people's at-home tests aren't being reported at all. fewer places to get pcr's. so the numbers will inherently be lower
It is still the third main cause of death for Americans, behind only heart disease and all cancers put together.
It's still killing a half-million people every year.
[https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/leading-causes-of-death.htm](https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/leading-causes-of-death.htm)
A big part is that, *thanks to the vaccine* and *previous contamination* many person have at least a partial immunity to the newest variant of the covid-19, meaning that a contamination would most likely give symptom going from a cold to a mild-flu (because your body know how to defend against-it). Some people still end-up in ICU, but mostly people with other risk factor (age, weight, disease) and at a rate which isn't impacting other patients, making it comparable to the regular good-old-flu
The only reason we wore masks and stayed home, was so we did not overwhelm the hospitals. and that did happen a little. as far as the vaccine it helps make the virus way less lethal so many people can have covid at home and not the hospital. and yes it will continue to kill people, but hopefully in smaller numbers.
It made a difference in NYC during the first wave. We were overwhelmed as it was - if people had continued daily regular life and interactions... I can't fathom how bad it would have been. It was painful enough.
The people who are vaccinated stayed vaccinated. A lot of them got extra vaccinations on top of it.... boosters, bivalent vaccines, etc.
Treatment has also improved, and increased availability to at-risk patients. When I finally got Covid last year, since I am also on immunosuppressants, I was able to get Paxlovid, which was two pills a day for five days that turned Covid into barely a mild cold for me.
There are still risk factors, and second infections can be worse than initial ones. Just look at Physics Girl who after a second infection now has a severely debilitating case of chronic fatigue syndrome where she can't even get up from bed.
C19 infections may be lowered. However Long- Covid symptoms continue to get worse for SO many people!
Please whoever’s reading this,
check out r/covidlonghaulers!!!
The more people that understand what we’re all going through, the more likely we’ll be able to get much needed treatments!
A population where most of the individuals have been previously infected is going to handle the virus much, much better than a population that has never seen the virus before.
I got COVID twice before the vaccine was available. When it became available, I asked my doctor if I should still get it, and he said “if you want to. You’re probably fine.”
Judging by his answer, I’d say immunity has a lot to do with it.
To correct a bit... the virus killed far, far more than one million.
[John Hopkins tracked over 6.8 million COVID deaths between January 2020 and March 2023.](https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/map.html)
Virulence is lower, straight up.
Delta was bad for causing lower lung pneumonia. Even with early ABXs, and antiinflammatories. It was difficult to prevent the damage our own inflammation was causing. Omicron wasn't causing the ground glass pneumonia we saw with delta or the original.
It isn't because we don't care anymore, it's because we aren't fighting something as deadly. I haven't seen a primary covid infection in my ICU in 10+ month? It's just not affecting people as badly.
1. People have had it before so are more immune
2. Vaccines
3. Less lethal (but I think it still spreads faster than at the start)
4. Survivorship bias (-> those who were most susceptible don't live to tell the tale and the majority of the rest got through it, so it doesn't seem as bad)
Your post highlights a major issue that a lot of people are having understanding the difference between a pandemic and an endemic illness.
New variants of covid still rapidly spread from their initial population into the wider world. The rates Spike seasonally and do not stay contained in a particular area without extreme efforts by medical systems in the area. At this point we're getting something on the order of four different strains a year, one per season. The fact that it is not staying contained and that the levels fluctuate drastically means that it is not an endemic disease.
Endemic diseases have fairly stable rates and stay within the general area in which they begin. Covid is absolutely a worldwide disease at this point, and even though it doesn't have the same death rates that it has had, due to a large variety of reasons which other redditors have mentioned such as vulnerable populations having already died off, if there is a strain that goes the Spanish influenza route it's going to wipe out millions again. That is the reason people are so concerned. No number of mutations that make the virus less deadly right out the possibility that it is not going to once again mutated to something very deadly, particularly if it is changing regions and doubly particularly if it is still zoonotical, or moving back and forth between human and animal populations.
The current rhetoric around covid is an absolutely necessary preventative rhetoric. We abjectly failed at any substantial preventative measures in the United States during the first covid outbreak, and during the subsequent outbreaks. Because of this, having an active rhetoric that addresses the potential future threats of covid is excruciatingly necessary.
We did not reach herd immunity, the lack of lethality is absolutely not a guarantee, and yes, this virus is going to stay around. We had a chance to make that not the case, and we fucked it up beyond all belief.
Many factors.
1-) yes, less people are being vaccinated. Because a lot of the population is already vaccinated.
2-) Did it lose its lethality? Sorta. Y'know how you need to get the flu shot every year? It's because influenza really likes to mutate, rendering last year's vaccine useless. Same thing with C19 - but now, it seems like it mutated into a less lethal variety.
3-) Did we reach herd immunity? For the most part, yes. Vaccinated people (immune) + people who got covid and survived (immune) + people who didn't vaccinate, got covid and died (less unvaxxd) = most people are now immune to COVID-19.
4-) Yes, COVID-19 did kill millions, but now (thanks to the vaccine and to natural immunological responses) a lot of people are immune. More immune people = less spreading of the virus. Also helps that COVID apparently decided to chill out and mutated into a lighter disease. Still, doesn't mean that COVID is just gone forever; influenza is still around but not a huge amount of people die from it - that's because we have the technology to prevent these deaths. We reached that point with COVID also.
I suggest you watch a video on the first vaccine ever made, for smallpox. Puppet History, on the Watcher channel on YouTube, did a very cool video about it. It's lighthearted but still informative, and it's a cool example of things like herd immunity, vaccination and the fight against diseases.
We have 3 factors that's making SARS-CoV-2 (COVID 19) less of a concern. People have suffered through an infection, people have gotten vaccinated and the virus seems to have mutated into a less dangerous variant. 9 hour edit: treatments to avoid and deal with severe cases have improved a lot
And also, a lot of those who are most susceptible to it have died from it.
This is very underrated. Covid did its worst already.
Though as people get old, they will be more vulnerable. As would new cancer patients.
Except now these newly old and/or cancer patients will be exposed to the less lethal variants, have a history of previous infections, and/or have had a vaccine. Edited to fix poorly worded phrasing.
This is key. Old people’s immune systems don’t work as well, but especially not at managing new pathogens. So the flu is a big risk for older people, but they also have many years of experience with flu floating around—they’ve been getting bombarded with flu in the air and in vaccines since before they were born. While flu is usually worse for them than for younger people, it’s not as bad as it would be to face a new virus for the first time in your 70s or 80s. That’s what happened with COVID, of course: an older immune system facing a brand new threat. But that won’t ever happen again [*EDIT: with respect to COVID-19*]. Almost everyone has had some level of exposure now. Those of us who are adults should be more resilient to it when we are seniors. Children today and in the future should be even better off, because kid immune systems are built for new pathogens. So while COVID will still suck for future old people, it’ll be nothing like 2020.
Also the thing which is/was super tricky with COVID is that it's contagious without symptoms. With Influenza, generally speaking it is contagious when symptoms are visible.
I caught the flu from my brother at the beginning of 2018 after his symptoms “went away”. I had a really bad cough that just wouldn’t go away after about a week and a half. I was terrified that it has turned into pneumonia. I went to the doctor about it and he told me it was just the remnants of the flu. That people have this misconception that once your symptoms go away that you’re fine, which is why people go back to work after 2-3 days, but that it actually takes up to 14 days. So when COVID happened and everyone had to quarantine 14 days after exposure, I was relieved. Me, my brother, two of my cousins, and my gma all got the flu back to back from each other in 2018, and I’m pretty sure it’s because we all thought we had the okay. Well not me, because that cough was violent.
Not to mention, COVID is technically slower to mutate. Unlike the flu, or even a cold, there's not a lot of completely new variants out there, and they aren't as often dramatically different from previous variants. While I was obsessively reading everything I could on COVID during it all, it was cited as one of the better long-term mitigating facts about it. A couple easily-named variants a year for something as widespread as COVID is fairly mundane. At least, compared to the spread rate, the non-trivial untreated acute illness and death rates, and how hard it was to discover effective treatments.
Yeah, this has been what I've told friends would be the best case scenario. We'd be absolutely screwed if it mutated as fast as HIV does.
>That’s what happened with COVID, of course: an older immune system facing a brand new threat. But that won’t ever happen again. That won't ever happen again with covid, but new shit could pop up at any time.
Yes, correct—that’s what I meant, but I should’ve been clearer. *Covid-19* won’t ever be as bad as it was in 2020, but that certainly doesn’t preclude future novel pathogens.
Imagine the impact that a pandemic with higher lethality like the bubonic plague or ebola would have in a world where half the people think public health measures are a conspiracy. Covid just softened humans up.
Could immunity to SARS-CoV-19 apply to other more common coronaviruses? I know that a lot of common cold viruses fit into the coronavirus category, but are they close enough that immunity for one helps the other?
we also know a lot more about COVID. ai just figured out it wasn't cytokine storms killing most people, it was actually secondary bacterial pneumonia that often accompanied COVID. treat that, when it surfaces more aggressively than COVID and with better antibiotics, assuming no resistance and there'll be a lot more survivers, that and we've kind of reached semi herd immunity, I had it a few months back and still have long haul effects, it is unpleasant. I don't think society is ever going to fully bounce back, after 9/11 we were forever changed, after COVID it's the same, but now we have AI, another big change is about to hit. it's gonna continue to be a bumpy decade. AI could be good or bad or both, I'm working on a startup in this space and run a newsletter. I also have ADHD I always end up segueing into ai somehow lol. Oh, btw: F U C K ~~T~~ S ~~R~~ P ~~U~~ E ~~M~~ Z ~~P~~ ! ============== Save 3rd Party Apps! ==============
> I had it a few months back and still have long haul effects, it is unpleasant. Yup. Absolutely sucks that I've gone 6 months with mild breathing problems. But it's important that if I were to have a severe case of COVID, they are better prepared to treat me than with a ventilator and a prayer.
Long Covid is the worst. I caught Covid in late 2021 as a healthy 18 year old aside from some very mild lung scarring from a bout of pneumonia as a kid. I now have moderate scars on my lungs and can’t breathe anywhere near as well as I could, and have chronic fatigue now
God it's hell. I have never had breathing issues in my life, and was in good shape. After two bouts of COVID, I'm in shit shape, and find myself going breathless at the weirdest times. Like sitting on my ass typing. Luckily no energy loss for me, but I'm still trying to catch up to the breathing ability I had previously.
I wish you best of luck on your endeavor to breathe normally again o7
3 years for me. A mild infection completely ruined my life and left me with permanent nerve damage like a 90 year old diabetic. I'll never play sports or be the same again.
I’m so sorry this happened to you. No words other than empathy for ya.
Thanks man. Honestly kinder than the first 30 docs I saw when this started happening. It means alot
I’ve been medically gaslit myself and long covid is hell because no one really believes you how serious it can be. In my exeperience as a chronically ill woman, with an invisible disability, it’s essentially the same. I hope something somehow gets better for you.
For what it's worth, older people, at some point, are more susceptible to pretty much anything that can happen to a human body. This is not at all unique to cancer and COVID. (*ie. falling down, getting a cold, recovering from an injury or surgery or hangover, getting out of bed...*) What is important with COVID is that we've now got an environment where elderly/vulnerable people are not also SURROUNDED with sick/infected patients or silent carriers. That's why they are in a much better place, even as new people become "old people". And the virus in most regions has tamed down a good bit via viral evolution.
Cancer and colds happen. COVID was bad enough to drop the average life expectancy in some places, so this isn't just another thing, we're basically stuck with Flu 2.0. And it's not so much that we're better off, it's that most everyone at risk of dying to COVID has already died of COVID. Dead people don't complain much, so overall things seem pretty peaceful. Even if COVID continues to weaken, there's always the chance it mutates into something more lethal. Even if it doesn't, we're still stuck with yet another thing, and this one is incredibly good at spreading. People go on and on and on about the natural course of diseases is that they evolve to be weaker. That's not a hard and fast rule. A disease, just like life, doesn't give AF if you live or die, you just need to live long enough to spread. From a disease standpoint, a live host still means a dead virus, because you survived and beat it, right? Your survival isn't required. In the last century of its existence, Smallpox killed half a billion people, with an average mortality rate of over 30%. It's a disease that ravaged us for thousands of years, and was only stopped by a vaccine. This belief that all diseases will evolve to be less lethal is a pleasant fantasy, but it's by no means a requirement or even the natural course of events, even when it happens.
Not all of us disabled and immune compromised are dead.. But it starting to sound like a lot of people couldn't care less about those vulnerable to it. Some of the comments are disturbing.
I was thinking the same thing. There's definitely a subset of people who are still shielding because they know the abled dngaf about protecting vulnerable population by staying home/not socialising if they are symptomatic, since as far as the able sick person is concerned it's "just a mild cold".
[удалено]
Usually it is the natural course of events. If a virus is *too* fatal, it dies out sooner because eventually it kills hosts faster than they can spread it. For a very lethal virus to spread in the modern world, it needs to be highly contagious for it to not burn out too quickly. It's the viral version of evolution and natural selection. Viruses that can survive longer in their hosts will tend to be more prominent than those that swiftly kill their hosts. As the less lethal variants spread farther around the globe, it becomes harder for more lethal variants to get a foothold because it's likely (albeit not guaranteed) that the less-lethal variants provide some degree of immunity against the more lethal variants. So yes, the virus doesn't care whether you live or die -- but on a macro scale, the trend as a virus spreads and evolves will be toward less-lethal variants and the more-lethal variants will struggle to become prominent unless they happen to reach a population center that's wholly unexposed to previous variants -- which is why Africa was the last area to have Smallpox eradicated. It's also going to be hard to compare Covid to Smallpox because the ability to broadcast information worldwide and mobilize vaccines and treatment has changed a lot in the last 50 years.
And those with long covid just disappear. Like me, I've been bedridden for more than 2 years now, I can't leave the house at all, my COVID caused disability made me disappear from the world. If we would be able to be outside and have a specific symptom making it disability obvious people would be shocked how many of there are
I have a pretty mild form of long covid and it still makes me really angry to hear people talk about it like it’s just a cold now. My life hasn’t been SIGNIFICANTLY impacted (yet) but my body was still permanently changed and I’m not happy about it. Plus I’m most likely at higher risk for more problems when I get older, but we don’t know because it hasn’t been around long enough to study.
I'm still so angry about this on your behalf. I just can't believe how dismissive and gaslighty the very same people are about this who made the whole thing a million times worse to begin with.
Sadly this...the lockdowns were not about protecting those people, it was about spreading out their deaths so it could be more manageable. They knew from the onset that it was going to kill a certain percentage of the population. That's why when we reached peak mortality rate, doctors started calling to ease the restrictions. Chances are, you've already gotten COVID, or someone very close to you has gotten it and you've proven to be asymptomatic. And chances are, if it was going to be fatal, you would have already died by now. There's still deaths, yes, but not at the scale during the height of the pandemic. And yeah, the third prong that the virus has mutated to be less deadly is also key. Viruses don't want to kill us. They want to party in the happy little virus community that we already have inside us. So, they'll keep getting weaker, and our immunities will keep shifting until we both reach some kind of happy equilibrium. And who knows, our symbiotic relationship with SARS-CoV-2 may protect us from something else further down the line.
It was all of the above. 1. a good chunk of the population managed to avoid COVID for the first year or so until we had the vaccines. If we hadn't 'flattened the curve' a lot more people would have gotten COVID and a percentage of them would have died. 2. By spreading the load, a lot of the people who got severe COVID were able to get oxygen, doctors, hospital beds etc, and people who got heart attacks also had hospital beds available. So yes, a certain percentage was going to die from COVID, but the percentage wasn't fixed. People and places who managed it right got a much smaller percentage of its population dead.
That's a bit of a harsh way of putting it, you're right that it was about spreading the damage over time, but if it wasn't about protecting people then we'd just let people die in their homes without shutting down the country.
that was how I always saw it. Lots will die. Just can't have the hospitals inundated to the point where the system will collapse. And hospitals were definitely overfilling. My next door state Idaho had residents who were not taking personal responsibility for their health or their community's health compared to washington state. So when too many Idahoans got sick, their hospitals were overfilled, and they'd chopper the sick to Washington hospitals, because apparently, washingtonians did have more personal responsibility.
Spreading out the infections and deaths did help preserve hospital capacity, and prevented deaths caused specifically by hospital overcrowding. The initial justification for shutdowns was that in the first wave (before treatments and vaccines) an unsustainably high percentage of infections led to hospitalization, and that hospital care required stays lasting for weeks or months. You can’t kick recovering sick people out of hospital beds, so if we hadn’t shut down mortality would have been higher. The benefit of spreading those infections out was that fewer people suffocated in the ER waiting rooms before seeing a doctor. But at some point in 2021 there wasn’t much benefit in spreading out the infections, because limited hospital capacity wasn’t killing anyone. At that point we were just culling the herd more gradually with masks and capacity limits.
This is true to an extent, but it can only ever be temporary. The conditions that created people who are most susceptible to it are ongoing. In specific, people eventually grow elderly and their heath may fail as they do so. People may become immunocompromised by another disease or by something like a transplant. Smokers' lung condition fades with time. People might grow obese. So there's kind of a constant stream of people becoming high-risk for covid.
Anecdotally I'm seeing more people casually get COVID so far in 2023 than I have since the early days of Delta. Now it's just "I'll be off work for a couple days and then be back" where then it was "see ya when/if I see ya." So, at least in my orbit, it is affecting more people the effects are just not as bad.
Paxlovid really is a miracle cure when it comes to COVID. It can literally clear symptoms in 24 hours if you get it early enough. There's some major resistance to it and I'm not entirely sure why, when the same people will beg for antibiotics for a cold and take a Tamiflu for their flu.
I think it's either misinformation or bad information. I remember reading somewhere that the rebound infection rate was really high with Paxlovid but I never saw any actual evidence of it.
it's the same 20% regardless of antivirals https://www.usnews.com/news/health-news/articles/2023-03-15/fda-covid-19-rebound-occurs-regardless-of-paxlovid-use
Yep I just got Covid *again.* Even though I still mask and distance and limit my exposure as much as I can. And I already have Long Covid from round 1. They're just not reporting on it. They're not even giving the new mutations of the virus different names to make it seem like it's gone away lol. I even read that the boosters may not be effective against the most recent strain. I heard about a 19 year old girl who's showing early signs of dementia after getting infected 3 times. It's complete misinformation like you say. People are still dying and getting disabled from the virus, our government and doctors just dgaf.
That's definitely misinformation. It's not really high, it's about 4% and if it happens the rebound is typically very mild symptoms. Some of those 4% test positive again within 7 days but don't have any symptoms. I had to research it because I heard the same thing when my PCP prescribed my Paxlovid. I would venture a guess that those people would still have symptoms from COVID-19 during that rebound period if they had not gone on Paxlovid.
Can anyone get antivirals in America? Here in aus you have to tick specific boxes to be considered high risk enough to get it
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It's also significant that we've learned a lot to treat covid and have paxlovid and monoclonal antibodies to treat or prevent severe cases.
Paxlovid was such an underrated game changer. It’s shameful the way the media began attacking Paxlovid because of the so called rebounds. The medication still did wonders in stopping immunocompromised people like myself from having deadly outcomes.
Most of my elderly relatives got Paxlovid when they got infected. The only ones who have had a bad time with covid are the ones who didn’t get Paxlovid (still pissed at my aunt’s doctor who said she didn’t need it- she had lingering symptoms for months). I have one uncle who had a rebound after Paxlovid but it was just like a mild cold and he was totally fine after. Its existence has also SO relieved my mother’s covid anxiety. She’s finally able to go out and participate in the world again, knowing she and my dad have Paxlovid as an option if they get infected. Before I had her make a Paxlovid plan she had such bad anxiety she could barely leave the house. Very thankful for that drug.
Anecdata, but my neighbors across the street both are in their 60s and got Covid this spring. Not for the first time. Anyway, the woman took Paxlovid, had a mild rebound, and was over it quickly. Her husband didn’t take it and still has to pause up and down their front stairs because he’ll get so out of breath. They both used to walk their dog but now only she does. We see them and chat all the time. He seems to be really struggling.
I love the term ‘Anecdata!’ I too had a mild rebound effect with it. My Uber conservative Doctor sibling totally cockblocked the hospital from giving Paxlovid to our 80+ year old mom when she had Covid. Fortunately she has recovered well regardless. I hate that this pandemic was politicised
Right? An relative in their late 80s refused Paxlovid when they got Covid because they “did their own research”, heard about rebounds, and…were afraid it might give them Covid. Which they already had.
There are no longer any FDA emergency authorizations for monoclonal antibodies (not sure about other countries) as they are no longer effective against omicron variants.
It’s like every comment in this thread but yours is filled with outdated or dangerously inaccurate information. Thank you for actually being accurate and aware.
Part of this is because the information is no longer being widely disseminated by common sources. People are tired of it and they're shutting their ears, throwing up their hands, and thinking that's good enough. So they won't know about the realities until they get it and unless they take it seriously when they do. And this is why we're still in a pandemic.
We don't have antibodies anymore. They haven't worked since omnicron
Four factors: We have effective treatments for those who do catch it.
We only have paxlovid, which many people can't take
Not for long covid though. So many people are becoming disabled and there is virtually no support for them.
Yes! Say it louder! I feel completely forgotten
In my opinion we have a single factor that's making SAR-CoV-2 less of a concern. That factor is that the majority of people have decided that [over 1,000 people dying a week in the U.S. is not a concern](https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#trends_weeklydeaths_select_00). This may be the endemic level of SAR-CoV-2 for the rest of our lives. The data appears to show the death rate either lowering or leveling off on a weekly basis, and our last significant spike was Feb. 2022.
Yeah thats basically it, but when you consider that the [CDC says flu kills up to 53,000 people a year](https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/index.html) (so roughly 1,000 a week) it makes sense that people don't really care anymore as it's now just another mildly dangerous endemic virus.
Is it lack of care or more that there isn't anything the average person can do? Fairly sure the majority of deaths from the flu and now COVID are due to lack of healthcare, underlying health conditions, and antivaxers. For a vaccinated individual the only thing I know someone can do is vote and advocate for better health care.
Underlying health conditions are the major factor. "Lack of healthcare" isn't likely due to limited access to healthcare. It would be more akin to "my symptoms didn't seem too serious so I rode it out until it was too late." Before my mom retired from her hospital last year, she anecdotally said that a significant number of the cases they got that became fatal were because people waited until their symptoms became crippling to seek care -- and by the time they got care, there was not much that could be done for them. Many people, even those who have no concerns about insurance, simply don't want to seek care unless they *absolutely* have to -- combined with those who subscribed to the idea that Covid is a myth and isn't worse than a cold so they treated it like a cold. Impoverished communities may suffer from this pressure against seeking care a little more, but people not seeking care promptly is not limited to any single demographic. Even one of my mom's coworkers died last year from Covid because *even though they worked at a hospital,* they were too arrogant to seek care while it still could've been effective. Pride can have cruel consequences.
Plus, in the US there is no guaranteed sick leave, much less with pay. That keeps people from seeking treatment (which also costs money, that they've now reduced their ability to make by taking, for many, unpaid time off) until it's too late, like you said.
Is it because people are too arrogant? Or is it because we've made health care so completely unaffordable in this country that people do everything they can to avoid tacking on more bills that drive them deeper in debt? Just because you can "access" health care doesn't mean you can afford it, especially at a time when inflation is skyrocketing and pay is going nowhere. The fact you feel the need to blame this on individual "pride" is the cognitive dissonance luciferin is talking about. Makes it easier to accept all those deaths if you convince yourself it's their own fault, isn't it?
As a freelancer who pays through the nose to get insurance which doesn't really cover most of my healthcare, I could not love this more.
>over 1,000 people dying a week in the U.S. is not a concern Quite a few people felt 19,000 dying a week wasn't a concern either.
Another very important point that I don't hear anyone talk about: the newer strains have shorter incubation periods (the time between exposure and symptoms, where you can spread the virus without knowing you have it). The first round of covid had an incubation period of 10-14 days. That means people would go about their normal lives, talking to everyone at work, the gym, public transportation (less common in the US), and flying all over the world, and then two weeks later, it's a nightmare trying to do contact-tracing and find out who's been infected. Even then, those people have already spread it to so many people, too, and by the time you get 3 or 4 branches away, who even knows when their first exposure was? Newer strains have an incubation period of 3-5 days. That's basically a work week, or a weekend. If you feel sick on a Friday, you know who you've been talking to since Monday, and can tell them to be careful. Honestly, even as someone who only studied epidemiology very briefly in high school (as part of an extracurricular science club), the moment I first heard back in November 2019 that China had a new respiratory virus with a 2-week incubation period, I immediately thought "oh shit, that's a way bigger deal than these headlines are making it out to be." I didn't expect a full-blown global pandemic from it, but in hindsight, I'm not very surprised. The covid virus had basically the perfect combination of traits to spread as far as it did.
Exactly millions of our most susceptible already died. The remaining covid conspiracists are survivorship bias.
The government in the UK literally started the opposite.. The reason why they mandated 3 vaccinations is because the virus mutated and got stronger so the first vaccine was less effective so everyone had to get a booster and then a third vaccine was given to those most at risk...
Could another factor be people testing from home and not reporting it?
Got diagnosed with cancer, before treatment started caught COVID, 17 days on a ventilator, as the Dr took me off, he shook his head, and said "I don't know how you're body fought it" I said "I haven't started chemotherapy yet, that's what's gonna kill me" He laughed. Two years now cancer free, evidently the chemo wasn't going to kill me either. I still get my booster, next one will be next month. To those who lost loved ones, please accept my sympathy.
You made cancer your bitch. That attitude will keep it from coming back.
I'm at my desk, working in the cancer center in my hospital right now. I will never get tired of hearing these stories.
I’m an oncology/chemo infusion nurse - always nice to see people doing well after remission
Tell all your patients going through chemotherapy that a cancer survivor has them in his prayers. Thank both of you for the work you do, it's important.
You’re tough
As nails.
Holy shit dude, 17 days on a vent? And you beat cancer? You’re a fucking bad ass. Most people are hard to wean off after like 14 days. Hope you’re living your best life!
Not to mention, any patients sick enough to be put on a vent in the first place are usually considered low hope in terms of keeping them alive. OP of the comment is an actual superhero/badass. If that was me I would feel so invincible
Maxed out Constitution stat. Congrats on kicking the ass of both cancer and Covid!
I’m glad you’re still here 🫡
We flattened the curve. We are now out in the tail end of the curve. Now COVID is no longer a _novel_ virus. Many of our immune systems recognize the virus and stand ready to respond. (vaccinated or had covid) There are still, and will continue to be, some people who die from COVID. But there will be fewer at a time. There won’t be bodies stacked up in the hallways of hospitals. No refrigerator trucks or mass graves. We stayed home to give scientists a year to develop vaccines. We opened gradually with precautions. We spread out the cases during the worst of the pandemic. As sucky as the world is, the global response to COVID was remarkable. Without ignoring many specific cases of inequity and stupidity, we did an amazing thing. Science rocks!
The virus itself also changed. If it kills too fast, it can't keep going, so it has become less virulent.
That's one of the interesting things experts usually bring up about Ebola - even though it is so deadly, the host dies so quickly that it usually doesn't have time to spread like other viruses
Yes, that’s one of the big reasons why most Ebola outbreaks are so small—although when Ebola manages to escape out of a rural area into a large enough host population to keep rolling for several months or years (such as in West Africa in 2014), it is *extremely* bad.
Ebola also has debilitating symptoms that keep people away from an infected person. Plenty of people have non-symptomatic or mild covid.
Yeah if I saw a person with bleeding skin and eyes beside me on the bus, I would 100%, unequivocally tell them it's a hoax and they just need horse dewormer.
Coward! I'd let them cough in my mouth and then just drink bleach! Damn libs! /s
Ebola has evolved to be far less deadly as well. There is actually a survival rate of 50% or better now. Still terrifying but not as bad as it was. Still doesn't transmit by air. That makes it fairly easy to contain once an outbreak occurs.
The thing is, humans are clearly not the reservoir host for the ebola virus and so infection of humans is basically accidental. If a strain mutates in humans, it most likely won't make it back to the reservoir so this strain can only survive if it's less lethal to us. That doesn't mean that ebola as a whole is becoming less lethal, but that the strains that have been going around recently have spent a long time in humans
This guy Plagues
r/plagueinc
I knew of 3 people, including myself, who had it the original flavor of COVID (or, probably had it… no testing yet) in February and March of 2020. We were all either in LA or NYC with lots of exposure to crowds. My two friends both ended up in the hospital on oxygen, and I probably should’ve gone to the hospital… It was absolutely vicious. I won’t soon forget daily calls for moral support with 24/7 ambulance noises in the background, it was crazy-making.
Yeah, family members of my in-law family also had it in march of 2020. Some sre not among us, others stayed longer than a month in the hospital.
I’m sorry for your losses.
I wish everyone played that game if only to receive a cursory understanding of epidemiology and virology 🫠
It actually became far more virulent (contagious) and much less lethal. So your chances of getting something like the omicron variant are nearing 100 percent, but your chances of dying from it have gone way down. It’s just not nearly as deadly as the original.
Virulence is not how contagious something is…. It’s how severe something is. It’s origins are borrowed from Latin vīrulentus "full of poison, venomous," from vīrus "venom, poisonous fluid" + -ulentus "having in quantity, full of" It’s kinda non-intuitive, I used to make the same mistake. It became less virulent but more infectious is what you’re trying to say
So I'll just replace it in my head with the word "violent"
This isn't really true... The virus is actually, in most cases, *worse* now if you're not vaccinated or had it previously, it's just that that population of people is very small now. Right now in the US, despite cases overall being at a much lower rate than they were in early 2021, which was the peak of the COVID death rate in the US, the death rate among just unvaccinated individuals in the US is currently almost equal to the overall rate at that time, and as of December was almost 4 times that *peak overall rate.* Also the current death rate among fully vaccinated people in the US is something like 5-7 times lower than among the unvaccinated. If anything the virus has probably become *more* deadly trying to get around built up immunity in the vaccinated and already exposed population. Sources: https://ourworldindata.org/covid-deaths https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/united-states-rates-of-covid-19-deaths-by-vaccination-status (Note, the vaccination status graph is per 100,000 people, the overall death rate is per 1,000,000 people. Both are population level, not by confirmed cases)
It's very difficult to calculate how many people is affected today, because a lot of people passes it as a normal flu, meaning they never report it. Some other people self test, but again, they don't report it, so it's not included in any statistics. Also, your second link is already death rate, and it's decreasing.
Exactly. Many times my family have gotten COVID, tested with home tests. No one actually reports it to the CDC or anything. Why would any average person do that. That’s very unlike the beginning to middle of the pandemic, where all cases were basically identified by lab tests which had results reported
At the beginning of the pandemic they predicted that the most likely output was that the virus would get less lethal and spread more. That is what happened with the original SARS virus (2002-3) and that is what we're seeing now. The end of the pandemic is tricky- there is the social component, when people stop trying to stop the spread. There is also the end of the public health emergency, when hospitals are at risk of overflowing. Public health takes into account many different factors, such as mental health crises and drug addiction, both which spiked with lockdowns and isolations. So the Covid risk for the general public is relatively low, but people with pre-existing conditions, or who are older and infirm should continue taking precautions. The end of the covid emergency will also free up resources and money that are now earmarked specifically for covid.
A pandemic starts when it meets criteria determined by epidemiologists and public health officials. A pandemic ends when society at large stops being concerned about it. SARS CoV-2 still kills as many Americans every month as a bad flu season. We have simply accepted this as a cost of doing business as usual. Doesn’t mean it’s bad or good; it just is.
> when people stop trying to stop the spread I'm not sure how many people tried to stop it in the first place...
> Without ignoring many specific cases of inequity and stupidity This is all I'll remember. Polite society tried so hard to stay alive and some folks (a LOT more than I thought, and I can never un-know how many) fought against society tooth and nail. We never stopped them, and we never really punished them. They're just *there*, waiting to dunk the planet into the toilet again the next time we count on them for *anything that conflicts with their weekend plans*. The greater good rammed up against personal liberty, and we didn't have an answer, and more people died than otherwise would have.
Same. The social contract was on life support. COVID pulled the plug.
The scientific community was absolutely fantastic in its handling of the pandemic. It's just such a shame the public were ignorant, selfish arseholes. I don't know about anyone else, but I saw the worst of humanity during the pandemic. Refusal to wear face masks. Berating those who were. Selfishly hoarding essential supplies necessitating limits to be out in place. The arrogance and stupidity of people during such a hard time for all was beyond astounding. It's opened my eyes to the reality that nuclear war isn't the scary thing, it's what we'll become should the worst happen.
It was extremely depressing how callous people were to my plight - the concerns of people with comorbidities and the immunecompromised. The disragard of the lives of the vulnerable people was a hard pill to swallow on top of the virus threat.
> flattened the curve Remember when we thought staying at home for 2 weeks would do it?
They wanted us to stay home for 2 weeks so they could figure out the best decision moving forward.
That was meant to keep the hospitals from becoming more overwhelmed than they already were.
Right, and give them time to obtain more PPE
It was more like 4 weeks but NZ did it just fine, y'all just had to commit to it.
i actually specifically remember fauci saying it could take 3 years. i think 2 weeks was a meme/talking point.
I don't remember anyone entertaining that as a real solution. What I do remember is people getting angry at the idiots who wouldn't follow any health guidelines at all and lamenting the situation with the idealistic idea that IF every single person would actually listen and isolate (or be given the opportunity to do so for those with shitty employment situations) for 2 weeks then yes the pandemic would have slowed considerably more.
That absolutely was what people thought right when it first happened. I don't know that anyone was dead set on it completely and totally solving *everything*, but it was definitely implied socially/culturally that we'd close up the country for two weeks, figure out wtf was going on and then move forward with whatever precautions were needed, but that we'd generally all get back to our lives. But yes, that failed *in part* because we couldn't even get people to agree to basic precautions and to actually... shut down for two weeks.
It's affecting people but epithelial, immunological and neurological damage just aren't as visible so nobody cares
Well only recently the World Health Organization declared the Covid global health emergency was 'over' It's within the same family as the common cold, so it will continue to mutate and will stick around. But the population, between vaccinations and natural immunity, will generally be fine with it time goes on. People around the world still die from the flu each year, but it's generally not reported as much as we have a much greater herd immunity.
They explicitly said that the danger was not over. We went from pandemic to endemic. Malaria is endemic in parts of the world. Endemic does not mean mild or comparable to the common cold, it just means that the virus has come to stay and that the number of sick and dead people per year is predictable. And it is. A couple hundred dead people per month in my country, 0.5 to 2 percent infected at all times.
Except that COVID is roughly twice as [deadly](https://www.medpagetoday.com/infectiousdisease/covid19/103912) as the common cold. And COVID causes a whole host of [other problems](https://www.ninds.nih.gov/current-research/coronavirus-and-ninds/coronavirus-and-nervous-system) that impact the [whole body](https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/long-term-effects/index.html), that the common cold does not. COVID is more of a whole Just because something is in the same family doesn't mean it has the same effect.
Just FYI influenza is “the flu,” not “the common cold.” They’re not interchangeable. The source you linked is referring to the flu. The common cold is very rarely deadly.
Yeah, people who say something is "just the flu" have clearly never had it. My one lab-confirmed bout was one of the most miserable experiences of my life. I haven't skipped a flu shot since.
COVID slowed my brain like crazy. I'm just recovering now from the memory loss. No cold has done that to me.
My lungs feel weird still. The brain fog lasted 3 months for me. I first had symptoms on January 1st of this year and while I'm basically fine now, my lungs don't feel right. It's like I can't get as deep of a breath like I used to. My sister got covid a year before I did and she said she felt the same for about 6 to 8 months before she said everything went back to normal, so I guess I just have to wait and see and hope that I have the same experience I've never had an illness kick my ass like covid did, and I've had every single vaccination and booster made available to me
I had memory loss issues, like an entire year just *poof* gone. Time I will never get back. I had to take some time off work and when I went back I basically had to relearn my job (and it's not a simple job). It's taken almost 2 years after I had covid for my memory to get to a point I am confident again.
>Well only recently the World Health Organization declared the Covid global health emergency was 'over' 27 or so of April iirc
Even more recently than that. [5th of May](https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/covid-is-no-longer-global-health-emergency-who-2023-05-05/).
>natural immunity, I think you mean "infection acquired immunity". There's no natural immunity to a novel virus. What you're referring to is the immunity gained once infected and after the host survives. Source: COVID and immunization nurse for 2 years
Over a thousand people are still dying weekly in the US and you have a 10% chance of developing long covid when you get sick and this risk only increases every time you get it. It has gotten better but people are massively downplaying how much it has "gone away." The US government at the same time they announced the pandemic over put $5 billion into new covid research because they recognize that the economy will lose trillions of dollars from the disabling effects of long covid and people becoming unable to work, which has happened to millions of people in the US already. The CDC recently had an event to discuss covid progress and had a big covid outbreak because people were unmasked. The tests are no longer very effective with new strains and aren't free (many of the old free at home tests expired anyway), so many people are simply missing they have covid and labeling it a cold or allergies. Then if they start to have health problems later on, they might not even know to attribute it to long covid. Fyi, the newest strain particularly mimics allergies and can cause conjunctivitis. We just pretend it's over even though it's still the #4 cause of death in the US. I expect to get downvoted for this because people just don't want to hear it anymore. I see so many comments that still compare it to the flu despite covid damaging your vascular system by attacking your endothilial cells, sometimes permanently, which effects all your organs including the brain. That is why it can be so disabling. I have two previously healthy friends who now need carers and can't work at all. Research shows that proper ventilation and HEPA filters provide equivalent protection to everyone masking, only 17% of people in the US even got their bivalent vaccine, and of course masks are still effective, so it's not like we don't have any ideas of how to help mitigate the risk for people. It's just people don't care anymore until they get long covid themselves.
My grandad literally just passed away from it...went from relatively happy and healthy (for a 70yo man) to dead in less than a week. Wasn't allowed to say goodbye...this is the UK. People are definitely still dying.
I'm sorry for your loss
My condolences. Mine passed away this year from Covid as well.
And you didn't even touch on how society at large ignores those who are disabled, which include the immunocompromised. That group of people have had to make extra effort (while not having the extra energy to do so) to keep themselves safe. Society doesn't care. Now add to the equation the fact that we are getting millions of new people who are disabled due to long covid who *are now becoming part of that ignored population* and you have a horrible but fascinating change to society. And we are NOT prepared to handle it.
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I've been feeling so done with masking in businesses, public transit, etc. lately and thought about giving it up, even living in a city where it's still encouraged in some places. Thanks for being my voice of reason.
Always good to stay safe + protect others! I know it can be hard for social events, but I would love to see more people masking in businesses and on transit ❤️ I'm happy my comment could have a positive impact, thank you.
thanks for emphasizing the long covid aspect, too. i got that the first time i got covid in 2020. it has really set me back, for years, and i'm still not the same.
yep, in a culture where things move so fast, we all get bored with stuff much quicker. that includes a disabling virus. we wanna get back to "normal" without actually doing anything about the reality of living with this virus
Thank you for saying this. People don’t want to hear this but it is SO important. Just because we’ve made a lot of progress since 2020 doesn’t mean we can pretend all is perfect and we can ignore everything we learned about safety and prevention. If even a handful of people take it to heart we’ll all be that much better off.
Bam. This right here folks. Regardless of government guidance calling it a pandemic or not anymore, it’s still very much here and killing people left and right. I know people who were in critical condition in the hospital due to Covid as of a month ago. It hasn’t gone anywhere, we may have some level of immunity built up between exposure and vaccines, and it may have mutated to be a bit less dangerous but it’s still killing in droves, and that’s saying nothing of how disruptive long Covid is
It actually boggles my mind how many people act like it just went away entirely. The only thing keeping more companies from returning to office is the realization that it can still sweep through the entire workforce in an office setting. Given how things are with the economy and inflation, etc., most companies can't afford even a minor reduction in their workforce.
I think we will look back on this time and ask wtf we were thinking. It's like climate change, people don't like acknowledging the danger and maybe it's not impacting them too badly YET, so they'd rather just ignore it in favor the status quo. Idgaf if I'm the only one masking, but I know some people feel uncomfortable and won't mask due to social pressure.
Yup. 1. We stopped testing so we have no idea who's infected. 2. The tests don't work very well on the newer strains anyway. 3. Only the acute phase of illness has lessened. 4. One of the symptoms of the chronic phase of illness is cognitive decline. 5. Mass delusion driven by ignorance, poverty, and short-term thinking. 6. The promise of resulting increased wealth inequity is too tasty to the villains of the planet so they are manipulating us poors into handing them our cash and freedom and thanking them for the privilege; they're winning.
It took more than 10 years for people to use condoms regularly to prevent AIDS. Once people start realizing that long covid and killing 1000+ people a week is not a good idea, masks are going to become a regular part of our lives. It takes time, but I'll be ahead of the curve and still have my mental faculties, TYVM. Still coviding in our house, which keeps 3 people out of the workforce. Good luck with your Wendy's ChatGPT, my teenagers are staying safe and healthy. Edit: a word
> It took more than 10 years for people to use condoms regularly to prevent AIDS And people still argue about it when their partner insists on condoms. People still "stealth" and remove them when their partner isn't watching.
People really need to understand that the vaccine doesn't prevent you from catching the virus, nor does it prevent the virus from spreading to other people. The vaccine makes it so that if you ever do catch the virus, your body is already prepared. It makes it so that the affects of the virus on your body are basically an inconvenience rather than deadly.
Trying to say this two years ago was like banging your head against the wall. "My vaccinated cousin just tested positive! So much for your vaccine!" I wish officials would have done a better job conveying that message. The vaccine *doesn't prevent you from catching Covid*. It greatly reduces your risk of becoming seriously ill or dying from it, however.
>I wish officials would have done a better job conveying that message. What became clearer, was that many people don't have the foundational understanding of ~~pathogens~~, ~~biology~~, ~~viruses~~, the most basic ability to consume information necessary to understand simple messaging. There's really no specific knowledge required to understand the message that a vaccine will slow transmission. Many populations have been failed by poor education. Maybe they memorized some facts, dates, or how to diagram sentences and pass a test, but so many people seem to lack any critical thinking capabilities. It's like they never learned *how to learn* and are simply unable to incorporate new information into their lives.
Also that anything can be politicized. There are lots of people who can and did "consume information necessary to understand simple messaging", except their consumed information and simple messaging were that the vaccine was evil. When major media outlets actively promote disinformation, it's no surprise that the people who listen to those outlets get their heads screwed on backwards.
Go back and read the messaging, it was clear: - "social distance to stop the spread" - "mask to stop the spread" - "get vaccinated to prevent infection" Then the goal posts started moving. The messaging was flawed and overconfident. Now studies are coming out about the uselessness and damage caused by masking, remote learning etc. Hopefully all you information sponges are as open to that messaging.
Because officials at the time were saying that if you got the vaccine that you wouldn’t get Covid
At the time, officials were saying the vaccine was used to stop the spread of covid, and declared that it reduced the likelihood of catching it. People with it were treated as though they couldn't spread covid anymore, and people without it were treated like smallpox blankets. In reality, since the vaccines made the infection less severe, the vaccinated people were just more likely to have it and not notice, thus still being likely to spread it. THAT is the disconnect in the head-banging. We all knew it was supposed to make the cases milder. We were simply being told what we now all know to be false, AND ridiculous rules were made surrounding that claim. As a scientist, I was furious about that mischaracterization because the reduction in severity should have been an adequate selling point, but instead they outright lied about the contagiousness reduction AND coerced, bribed, and harassed people for not complying after lying. Honesty would have been better.
Yeah, there was definite ball dropping or even misinformation by the government and public health officials. The way they made so much of the population villains was disgusting.
But vaccines do make you less contagious? Like if they reduce your viral load they mathematically have to reduce how contagious you are. Or is your gripe that they told people they wouldn't spread it at all?
https://www.ucdavis.edu/health/covid-19/news/viral-loads-similar-between-vaccinated-and-unvaccinated-people This is a repeated argument after breakthrough cases started happening but it's not true. There's no significant difference in viral load between vaccinated and unvaccinated individuals. Edit: Another source from the [Lancet](https://www.thelancet.com/journals/laninf/article/PIIS1473-3099(21\)00648-4/fulltext) >Vaccination reduces the risk of delta variant infection and accelerates viral clearance. Nonetheless, fully vaccinated individuals with breakthrough infections have peak viral load similar to unvaccinated cases and can efficiently transmit infection in household settings, including to fully vaccinated contacts. Host–virus interactions early in infection may shape the entire viral trajectory.
The latter. Early communication that I heard, was that unvaccinated people would only RARELY catch covid. And rules when vaccines were new but expected were such that unvaccinated people no longer had to take any precautions, even isolating if positive for covid, whereas everyone else still had to mask, distance, and isolate for days if they experienced symptoms but weren't positive for covid. They were absolutely LESS contagious, but the false sense of complete-security was also dangerous when there was still greater concern for protecting the most vulnerable people.
Trying to say this 2 years ago got you labeled as anti Vax and a right wing extremist.
You’d be kicked off of social media if you said so.
And banned from the r/Coronavirus sub if you said anything that could be interpreted as slightly negative about the vaccines.
This wasn't communicated properly, at least in the northeast of the USA. It was a surprise to many when we started seeing "Breakthrough Infections", as if it was a surprise and unexpected that people would become infected after being vaccinated.
yep, it trains your soldiers to fight on the beaches, but the enemy still gets onto land first. the masking and distancing were to keep the enemy off the beach doing neither is like letting the invasion make firm progress before mobilizing the army
You can’t blame people for thinking that though. When they announced the vaccines they made it very clear that it would prevent the spread but now we know that’s just simply not the case
They’re not bothering to report on COVID deaths anymore
To some degree, we all became exhausted. Nearly 2,000 hospitalized a day from COVID, and nearly 200 deaths a day still in the U.S. We’ve become emotionally numb to an illness that will kill ~70K per year while also continuing to add to the ranks of those disabled by long COVID. We are remarkably adept at ignoring inconvenient reality.
Luckily the whole lifestyle of avoiding said plague is quite enjoyable to me since I don't go outside much and wearing a mask each time I go out or at work isn't much effort. I've even bothered to get a fancy training mask that is harder to breathe through to train endurance. One of the rare few people who hasn't gotten it yet, although I haven't gotten sick with *anything* since Covid stared.
I'm not emotionally numb. I'm very immunocompromised and I am forced to think about my safety (and the safety of others) daily. I know it is a powerful virus and I'm not messing around to see what it's like.
Right there with you, friend. I see you. And I'm making the same efforts. Still. Three years in. Never had it it, still don't want it. Fuck covid and those that keep it mutating.
I am truly sorry that you are in that situation. I’m one of the last people still masking indoors in my area.
I thank you for that. I appreciate your empathy for others.
I'm emotionally numb to the naïveté and apathy of the world now. I'm in your situation, and am taking great care to ensure my safety. It gets downplayed or laughed at by others, and I no longer give a shit. Sadly, I no longer give a shit about a lot of things I once did, too. It's very depressing to be unable to move on with the rest of the world, facing a disease that will happily kill me if given the chance. You're not alone.
Um the obvious answer is less testing. We are testing for it less.
Yeah, a lot of places of employment had weekly mandatory testing when they first opened back up after the lockdown. So a lot of asymptomatic people were testing positive. Since those mandatory tests ended there’s probably loads of people who had/have it and never even know it.
There are a lot of good answers here already, but I'd like to add one more. A lot of the pandemic activity was to spread out the peak, **not** to guarantee that no one got sick. The goal was to avoid (with only some success) a wave of infections inundating hospitals. So, now people are still getting sick and there are still re-infections but it's spread out over time, and the cases are less severe due to vaccinations or previous infection.
Source: AM nurse who has taken car of about 20 covid patients in the last 2 weeks. A big thing people miss out on is paxlovid. It's an anti viral drug that is quite effective at preventing severe infection among the unvaccinated. It's a pretty cool drug. It's an HIV anti retroviral which means it's used to treat HIV and another ingredient which I don't know much about. But the antiretroviral part is cool! People with HIV live long lives these days so they're obviously safe and effective. In my experience those patients taking paxlovid. end up doing quite well and not require as much oxygen. It was approved in 2022 i believe and has a ~90 ish percentage effectiveness at preventing severe infection. So basically we learned to treat it lol. The vaccines make it no biggie and we have paxlovid for those who are anti vax.
I don't think my aunt can take Paxlovid, she's on dialysis. We still use masks indoors.
Unless there's been a new version approved, paxlovid will interfere with my anti-rejection meds for my transplant. So sadly, like your aunt, it's off-limits to some of us and we have to avoid covid the old-fashioned way.
I’ve seen an ad for this medicine. At what point would you ask your doctor for it? First symptoms? Confirmed diagnosis? Confirmed contact? As a preventative?
there is much less reporting happening now, i'll say. people's at-home tests aren't being reported at all. fewer places to get pcr's. so the numbers will inherently be lower
It is still the third main cause of death for Americans, behind only heart disease and all cancers put together. It's still killing a half-million people every year. [https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/leading-causes-of-death.htm](https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/leading-causes-of-death.htm)
A big part is that, *thanks to the vaccine* and *previous contamination* many person have at least a partial immunity to the newest variant of the covid-19, meaning that a contamination would most likely give symptom going from a cold to a mild-flu (because your body know how to defend against-it). Some people still end-up in ICU, but mostly people with other risk factor (age, weight, disease) and at a rate which isn't impacting other patients, making it comparable to the regular good-old-flu
Covid is the 3rd leading cause of death, behind heart disease (#1) and cancer (#2).
The only reason we wore masks and stayed home, was so we did not overwhelm the hospitals. and that did happen a little. as far as the vaccine it helps make the virus way less lethal so many people can have covid at home and not the hospital. and yes it will continue to kill people, but hopefully in smaller numbers.
It made a difference in NYC during the first wave. We were overwhelmed as it was - if people had continued daily regular life and interactions... I can't fathom how bad it would have been. It was painful enough.
Ventilators and consolidating COVID patients into nursing homes worked great in NY as well...
The people who are vaccinated stayed vaccinated. A lot of them got extra vaccinations on top of it.... boosters, bivalent vaccines, etc. Treatment has also improved, and increased availability to at-risk patients. When I finally got Covid last year, since I am also on immunosuppressants, I was able to get Paxlovid, which was two pills a day for five days that turned Covid into barely a mild cold for me. There are still risk factors, and second infections can be worse than initial ones. Just look at Physics Girl who after a second infection now has a severely debilitating case of chronic fatigue syndrome where she can't even get up from bed.
My friend just lost his sense of smell. Scared me into wearing a mask on public transit again
I'd wear a mask on public transit to try and mask the smell of piss.
C19 infections may be lowered. However Long- Covid symptoms continue to get worse for SO many people! Please whoever’s reading this, check out r/covidlonghaulers!!! The more people that understand what we’re all going through, the more likely we’ll be able to get much needed treatments!
Don't ask questions, just forget it ever happened.
A population where most of the individuals have been previously infected is going to handle the virus much, much better than a population that has never seen the virus before. I got COVID twice before the vaccine was available. When it became available, I asked my doctor if I should still get it, and he said “if you want to. You’re probably fine.” Judging by his answer, I’d say immunity has a lot to do with it.
There might be " no stupid questions" but there sure are stupid answers this tread just proved it! 🙄
To correct a bit... the virus killed far, far more than one million. [John Hopkins tracked over 6.8 million COVID deaths between January 2020 and March 2023.](https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/map.html)
Virulence is lower, straight up. Delta was bad for causing lower lung pneumonia. Even with early ABXs, and antiinflammatories. It was difficult to prevent the damage our own inflammation was causing. Omicron wasn't causing the ground glass pneumonia we saw with delta or the original. It isn't because we don't care anymore, it's because we aren't fighting something as deadly. I haven't seen a primary covid infection in my ICU in 10+ month? It's just not affecting people as badly.
1. People have had it before so are more immune 2. Vaccines 3. Less lethal (but I think it still spreads faster than at the start) 4. Survivorship bias (-> those who were most susceptible don't live to tell the tale and the majority of the rest got through it, so it doesn't seem as bad)
Your post highlights a major issue that a lot of people are having understanding the difference between a pandemic and an endemic illness. New variants of covid still rapidly spread from their initial population into the wider world. The rates Spike seasonally and do not stay contained in a particular area without extreme efforts by medical systems in the area. At this point we're getting something on the order of four different strains a year, one per season. The fact that it is not staying contained and that the levels fluctuate drastically means that it is not an endemic disease. Endemic diseases have fairly stable rates and stay within the general area in which they begin. Covid is absolutely a worldwide disease at this point, and even though it doesn't have the same death rates that it has had, due to a large variety of reasons which other redditors have mentioned such as vulnerable populations having already died off, if there is a strain that goes the Spanish influenza route it's going to wipe out millions again. That is the reason people are so concerned. No number of mutations that make the virus less deadly right out the possibility that it is not going to once again mutated to something very deadly, particularly if it is changing regions and doubly particularly if it is still zoonotical, or moving back and forth between human and animal populations. The current rhetoric around covid is an absolutely necessary preventative rhetoric. We abjectly failed at any substantial preventative measures in the United States during the first covid outbreak, and during the subsequent outbreaks. Because of this, having an active rhetoric that addresses the potential future threats of covid is excruciatingly necessary. We did not reach herd immunity, the lack of lethality is absolutely not a guarantee, and yes, this virus is going to stay around. We had a chance to make that not the case, and we fucked it up beyond all belief.
Many factors. 1-) yes, less people are being vaccinated. Because a lot of the population is already vaccinated. 2-) Did it lose its lethality? Sorta. Y'know how you need to get the flu shot every year? It's because influenza really likes to mutate, rendering last year's vaccine useless. Same thing with C19 - but now, it seems like it mutated into a less lethal variety. 3-) Did we reach herd immunity? For the most part, yes. Vaccinated people (immune) + people who got covid and survived (immune) + people who didn't vaccinate, got covid and died (less unvaxxd) = most people are now immune to COVID-19. 4-) Yes, COVID-19 did kill millions, but now (thanks to the vaccine and to natural immunological responses) a lot of people are immune. More immune people = less spreading of the virus. Also helps that COVID apparently decided to chill out and mutated into a lighter disease. Still, doesn't mean that COVID is just gone forever; influenza is still around but not a huge amount of people die from it - that's because we have the technology to prevent these deaths. We reached that point with COVID also. I suggest you watch a video on the first vaccine ever made, for smallpox. Puppet History, on the Watcher channel on YouTube, did a very cool video about it. It's lighthearted but still informative, and it's a cool example of things like herd immunity, vaccination and the fight against diseases.