this post was submitted on 07 Aug 2023
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The variant is called EG.5 and is a descendant of Omicron.

The Center for Disease Control and Prevention estimated that EG.5 accounted for roughly 17.3 per cent β€” or one in six β€” of new COVID-19 cases in the U.S. in the past two weeks.

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[–] [email protected] 107 points 1 year ago (55 children)

Idk what people are so worried about, I've been assured that the pandemic is over and we beat covid in ~~2020~~ ~~2021~~ ~~2022~~ ~~2023~~

[–] [email protected] 78 points 1 year ago (50 children)

COVID-19 is now endemic, like influenza. However, we do have vaccines so every 6-12 months when we get a booster shot we can get a bivalent vaccine that contains some of the latest variant to help prevent serious illness. This allows us to recover much more easily, reduce transmission, and ultimately eliminate the clogging of hospitals.

The real danger is from people who refuse to vaccinate because they're going to be more susceptible to the endemic virus and its subvariants.

[–] [email protected] 101 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (38 children)

Nah, the real danger is the result of repeated cumulative reinfection damage from a still-poorly-understood virus that causes more and more damage to the vascular system and every organ connected to it. Long Covid is only beginning to be recognized for the mass disabling event it is, and the response of governments from the municpal all the way to the federal levels have been to let it rip, stop testing, shut down tracking sites, repeal mask mandates, and declare victory. Literally doing the thing they rightly mocked Trump for suggesting.

Now over a million people have died in the US alone, and our government has decided to force everyone back to work to sustain commercial real estate profits, and in the process condemned us all to a lifetime of body-destroying reinfections by a virus who's key traits are infectiousness and rapid evolution.

None of this had to happen. We could have had a real quarantine, just a month or two back in 2019, but that would require making slightly less money for a brief period of time, so instead we get to live in eternal plague world. The hobbling of any effective covid response by our ruling class in favor of more lucrative half-measures and non-measures is beyond a humanitarian disaster, it's a crime of unprecedented scale.

[–] [email protected] -2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

None of this had to happen. We could have had a real quarantine, just a month or two back in 2019, but that would require making slightly less money for a brief period of time, so instead we get to live in eternal plague world. The hobbling of any effective covid response by our ruling class in favor of more lucrative half-measures and non-measures is beyond a humanitarian disaster, it's a crime of unprecedented scale.

Yes it did. If all countries did this around the world many people would have starved to death. It's simply not ethical. Without eliminating it everywhere it would spread eventually - just look at Australia.

You can't even enforce a total lockdown in western countries without excluding "key workers" that would allow the virus to spread anyway.

Nothing you have suggested would work in the real world. The only solution to prevent this is new medicines and prophylactics. We have developed some of these in the form of antivirals but they are not used enough to stop the spread.

We already enjoy a level of health unknown to people 100 years ago even with COVID-19. There will always be new diseases and this is the nature of evolution unfortunately. Previous generations had to accept this, now we have to as well. I hate to say it but probably our current level of health and healthcare isn't sustainable without further advances thanks to antibiotic and antiviral resistance. We will need to change our approach going forward using things like bacteriophages, increased sanitation, healthier life styles, less cattle antibiotics, and new treatments to keep up.

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