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I caught it last week after three years evading all the other variants. My husband brought it home from his delivery job, and he was fully vaccinated and boosted.
Shit sucks yo. I mostly feel better now after ~2-3 days of hell last weekend, but I'm tired and the cough just won't go away. My continued existence is enabled only by all the tea, ramen, cough drops, and menthol vapor products I'm consuming.
Dang it.
At least the new vaccine is supposed to protect against the newest variant. Not looking forward to another shot, though.
https://publichealth.jhu.edu/2023/what-to-know-about-the-eg5-variant
The ongoing problem with new variants is that vaccine research has to forecast which mutations are going to be dominant by the time that the research has been undertaken. The boosters from a year ago were focused on BA5, but the latest EG5 variant quickly becoming dominant is from the XBB path.
https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#variant-summary
In a way, people are right. It's just the flu now. Not in symptoms or severity, but in the way that we'll just have to keep doing regular vaccinations.
Just think, if we had shut down for 2~weeks at the beginning and enforced vaccination at gunpoint, we wouldn't be in this mess.
This is why we are completely screwed if a bird flu or other highly transmissible but more deadly than Covid virus starts spreading. There are people who not only will not follow basic health and safety guidelines, they will actively fight, and sabotage other's attempts at following the guidelines.
The other part of the equation is that if the wealthier countries had not only shut down but quickly provided vaccines for poorer more densely populated countries, the spread would also have been lessened.
Nope, there was never a chance for us to eliminate it. By the time we even knew it existed Covid had been spreading worldwide for over 2 months (initial spread Oct-Nov 2019, discovered late Dec 2019), so there were a lot of unreported cases everywhere.
And once it's in a household it takes way longer than 2 weeks to eliminate due to delayed spread between household members. Also some people stay contagious for months.
And I'm all for the vaccines, but they also don't stop covid, they make it harder to get and reduce symptoms, but you can still get it and spread it even with the vaccine.
The two weeks and it's gone was a fantasy to sell people on lockdowns to slow down covid, it was never going to eliminate it.
They would have worked if we took them seriously.
"They never would have worked" is a lie told by people unwilling to shoot violators.
We could have ended it through a (relative to the length of the still ongoing pandemic) short period of massive testing and quarantine, like what Vietnam did.
Instead white people had to be waited on by wage employees so their could feel important and now millions of people are permanently disabled.
Also all the deaths.
Nope, covid was way too widespread, and exists in multiple animal species, meaning it can easily jump back to humans even if we got rid of it in our populations (which would never have happened).
In all of human history we've eliminated a single disease, Smallpox, and it doesn't spread through the air. Yet you think a few weeks lockdown would have actually gotten rid of a far more transmissible airborne illness? Get real.
We could have done it.
We have more than enough bullets.
For every human, and every wild animal on the planet, sure. Not exactly worth it.
Wouldn't have taken that many.
Especially if vaccine patents were not only shared, the vaccines were administered at the barrel of a gun.
We could have certainly fared better than the real world plan of "let's infect everyone on purpose as quickly as possible".
Yes it would have.
As already stated covid is present in several animal species, so you would have to kill all muskelids, cats, deer, bats, etc...
Covid is also asymptomatic in about 50% of people, so you wouldn't even know who to shoot.
And vaccines are not perfect, I got covid 3 shots in, from someone who had 4 shots of the vaccine.
And in all of human history, as I have said, we have only ever eliminated 1 disease, despite massive efforts to eliminate others.
There was never any chance to eliminate covid. That's a fairy tale fantasy only those that lack knowledge could believe.
Yes there was and you don't have the wherewithal to carry it out.
"Animal reservoirs" is the refuge of someone who never wanted to shut down in the first place and fought restrictions the entire way. We never had to "live with Covid".
Why are you so hung up on killing everybody anyway?
We can test people. We can test animals. We can vaccinate both. We can isolate people and things.
We could have controlled this. We chose—Chose—to exacerbate things.
You're the one who said we have enough bullets to stop it, it's you who suggested killing everyone.
And if it's so easy to eliminate an airborne disease, as you say, then why have we never managed to do it in all of human history?
We have been trying to eliminate the flu for over a hundred years, how's that going?
We could have controlled this.
Nope, we could not. It's a rapidly spreading airborne illness that was already in nearly every country on the planet before it was discovered.
You’re the one who said we have enough bullets to stop it, it’s you who suggested killing everyone.
Whoa there I suggested massive testing, vaccination, and isolation at the barrel of a gun. You're the one who thinks those methods can't work and we have to jump straight to slaughtering everyone.
We have been trying to eliminate the flu for over a hundred years
And there were assholes like you antagonistic to even trying the whole time.
Nope, we could not. It’s a rapidly spreading airborne illness
Vaccination, isolation, testing.
It could have been done.
All you "can't" fuckos trail off before "...while still maintaining capitalist production modes" like I should care.
Then why do we need enough bullets? You suggested we should kill people, not me.
And I'm not antagonistic, I'm a scientist who actually understands how diseases work, unlike you apparently. And I was early in line to get vaccinated, and boosted.
And you think non-capitalist production modes could have mass produced billions upon billions of vaccines and tests in the early months of Covid spreading, before such things were even developed? Because that was impossible.
Sorry to shit on your rather short-sighted worldview, but it's entirely wrong.
mocking voice "I'm a scientist."
Of shutting the fuck up?
Yes, as labor produces vaccines I see no reason it could not do so without it's surplus value being stolen.
Then why do we need enough bullets?
To enforce quarantines, incentivize vaccine uptake, and shoot infected deer.
Christ, why do you shoot (pardon the pun) right past what the guns would be enforcing and in your scenario just start shooting wildly?
You've already admitted it's to preserve capitalism—which is really fucked of you—but Jesus dude
I find it hilarious (at least you'll laugh until you cry, and/or die) how for some, consent simply does not matter whatsoever.
Have many of the symptoms? Wonder if it's COVID? Enough to go get tested for it at least? And THEN go to visit your 90-year-old granny's house, not bothering to tell her that? Knowing full well that she was just recovering from various sicknesses herself and so has a weak immune system? Edit: oh, and let's say just after the vaccine was invented but before many people were able to get it yet.
In that case, then you ~~MIGHT be~~ ARE a Republican. It is shocking to me how the death tolls were not much larger than they were... except they WERE, and we will never know by how much be of all the misrepresention of the deaths as "old age" or "diabetes", bc obviously it simply could NOT have been COVID (except... remind me again why not?).
Whether you choose to think it's "merely the flu" or not, why doesn't the recipient's concerns matter AT ALL!?
See, I told you it was "funny" - don't you see how "hilarious" it all is? ~~not at all akin to murder in any way, nope, not at all~~
The UK doesn't even do that anymore, unless you're over 65. Otherwise you can't get vaccinated.
Well you don't get long COVID from the flu so it's not like the flu at all.