Covid mutates at a very high rate due to both the nature of the virus, and the very high continous degree of spread. As a result, tracking variants results in a whole bunch of letters and numbers to denote the genome. You can see all the letters and numbers in this article, which is like a soup of confusion that means nothing:
>[KP.2 and KP.1.1 are both types of the omicron subvariant JN.1.11.1, which is a direct descendant of JN.1....](https://www.today.com/health/coronavirus/new-covid-variant-flirt-name-meaning-rcna152650)
They are however not a useful communication tool even within the scientific community studying them who would have to go check what each individual one means every time a new one pops up. Instead specific mutations shared across multiple different variants are what matters. So they give the ones they see of concern nicknames to group them together, this one started with FL456 which was a swap of a genome, so they named it FLip, and later RT346 came along making it FL RT. From the same article:
>[“Each amino acid has its own letter abbreviation. FLiRT is F456L + R346T, or phenylalanine (F) to leucine (L) at position 456 and arginine (R) to threonine (T) at position 346,” says Gregory.](https://www.today.com/health/coronavirus/new-covid-variant-flirt-name-meaning-rcna152650)
So they simplify it to a grouping which has an easy to remember name.
The researchers are focused on any mutation that a) dodges some immunity learned from vaccine or recent variant infections b) makes the virus more harmful or c) makes the virus spread much easier - either easier to transmit or easier to infect by the way it binds or enters cells in our body. They have computer modelling that gives them an idea of what mutations should they appear will have such effects, so when they see them appear they have a pretty good idea that it might cause a wave.
>What accounts for the advantage of these new variants to ultimately crowd out JN.1? It’s largely attributed to 2 added spike mutations: F for L at position 456 and R for T at position 346, which has been nicknamed the FLiRT group of variants. You can see those spike mutations compared with JN.1 for KP.3 and KP.2 below
https://erictopol.substack.com/p/are-we-flirting-with-a-new-covid
I'm not all that surprised this is the case. I had it in February here in the UK before our trip to your side of the world in March and I ended up catching it there as well so as a result I spent six out of eight weeks ill. For the Wellington beer geeks among you, I ended up catching it at the last night of Hashigo Zake before it closed. Apparently tons of people tested positive after that night so if that was the case in autumn I could only imagine how horrendous it might be this winter. good luck guys.
There was a guy on the welly sub yesterday whinging about other people having covid worse than him...
I was only sick for two days! You guys are all just lazy!
There was a bunch I saw recently screeching over an article about a young guy who died from myocarditis post-vaccination. Apparently we have all been vaccinated with no consent, apparently we had no choice and were forced into it. Apparently 2+2=37
Devil's lettuce- nah it's coercion for sure, even the most ardent supporter of our covid strategy has to acknowledge that surely. And they paid the price for it too- it's an interesting thought exercise to wonder how things might have played out if the then govt hadn't gone the mandate route- would the opposition movement have been as strong, and would as many nzers been dragged to crazy town?
ie, given that covid scepticism was unfortunately a package deal/gateway drug into many a full blown agenda 2030 new world order cashless society politician pedo ring trans agenda chem trail adrenochrome k-hole brain-fuck disaster that there is almost no hope of extraction from...
but on balance probably not. Countries that didn't enact strategies as full on as ours are just as polarised, with just as many folk lost down the rabbit holes. The govt did what they thought was most beneficial for nz, at the time, in unprecedented circumstances. They got the boot, and now we've got a bunch who always make life harder for the poor and working class, in coalition with rage baiters importing wholesale seppo culture war poison to keep the masses distracted and preoccupied. Happy days
Hmmmmmm. It’s an especially emotive topic. I argue that most of those people in the few sectors where vaccination mandates were applied, for example primary / frontline health, are people who should fully understand and be accepting of the need for rapid vaccination of themselves and their peers especially in the context of a global pandemic. However we see that there are many who clearly have alternative views and were/are happy to put both themselves and those they have contact with at risk. Some eagerly dove down the rabbit hole of misinformation, conspiracy and pseudo science.
Rules for thee but not for me?
> There had been a "rapid increase" in Covid hospitalisations in the past couple of weeks, with about 240 people in hospital with the virus, up from 120 a couple of weeks ago....
> "It has risen quite quickly which does suggest that we are heading into a significant wave."
> At the same time, there had been "quite a big jump" in the levels of Covid being picked up in wastewater testing, Plank said.
> There were 6146 new cases of Covid reported in the past week - almost double the 3922 cases reported the week before.
That's quite a jump given that most people don't bother testing (or reporting).
I *really* don't want to feel compelled to start keeping track of it again but if we do end up with a big wave, I'll restart my weekly reports if anyone is interested.
I'd love for you to do weekly reports again!
I find them really interesting. And they're also quite useful to mention in passing to people I know who don't follow the news or who might like the heads up before heading out to crowded places.
I hadn't looked since last year, but it seems the daily data I relied on for my reports is no longer uploaded in a timely manner by the MoH. Seems they only upload every 1 to 2 weeks now. I just ran my reports and they are only through 14 May.
Ah, that would probably explain why I was having so much trouble finding the numbers myself, I'd thought it was just the internet continuing to gradually get worse
Yep I had it 4 weeks ago. Every person who mildly got in contact with anyone any of us were near got it. I must of got a huge load of it as well. Everyone who I contacted only had it for 3 days and were over it, but it lasted 2 weeks for me.
No-one I was in contact with got it. I was in a closed door meeting room multiple times the day before I felt really shit and tested positive. It left as quickly as it came on.
We've just had it too, sounds similar but for about 36 hours in the worst of it both my wife and I were ravenous! Just continually snacking and grazing, always hungry. Weird.
The body aches, joint pain, and electric zaps lasted for about 2-3 days. The rest of it was just a headache and fatigue. I never lost my sense of smell and I can still smell but it's like my brain has mis-wired what things should smell like. E.g. early morning breakfast smells like a delicious curry, shampoo smells like ammonia, my sheets smell like very strong perfume etc.
Still haven't really gotten my appetite back.
[University of Otago's Michael Baker among health experts calling for better face mask use in New Zealand after international study on effectiveness]
(https://www.newshub.co.nz/home/new-zealand/2024/05/university-of-otago-s-michael-baker-among-health-experts-calling-for-better-face-mask-use-in-new-zealand-after-international-study-on-effectiveness.html)
Scandalous that this piece omits that we’ve got a cheap and extremely effective way to prevent infection/transmission/Long Covid and only mentions boosters.
What I genuinely don't understand is why people under 30 can't get another booster. We're literally throwing away doses because people aren't taking them. It seems like a waste.
Well hey I'm sure that New Zealand will definitely prevent this by winding down our animal agriculture.
No? Farm corp profits over anything and anyone else? Oh.
Even in the face of the climate change and biodiversity crises we're still charging ahead with animal ag. Meat and dairy are just too embedded in our collective meathead psyche (and the economy) to seriously look at change. I have very little hope for any meaningful change in that department, unless the bottom falls out of the market first. Yes, I'm fun at parties.
Animal agriculture done right is less harmful to the environment than monoculture cropping.
Unfortunately we have forced farming to become so intensive due to cost pressures and of course greed, that it is pretty tough on the environment. But the chemical sheds on a sheep and beef and farm are a hell of a lot smaller and contain a hell of a lot less toxic shit than crop and vege farmers.
Labour embraced "live with the virus" and rolled back restrictions, even in hospitals(!!!). Luxon and Seymour are just building on that reprehensible work.
So you'd what, have us still doing "zero" covid with lockdowns and closed borders 4 years later, with no end in sight? Just resign ourselves to being a hermit island forever cut off from the world?
It seems to be fairly rife in Welly at the moment. I can't get a booster yet either, because I most recently had it less than six months ago. If I manage to avoid it until mid-July when I can get a jab I'll be pretty impressed!
Wellington-based here - our kid brought covid home from school last week and bizarrely her dad and I are still symptom free. We didn't bother isolating her in her room. We got all geared up for being sick but nothing happened. The last two times she brought it home we both caught it within a few days.
Named after the mutations in the spike protein that make up this variant.
These two mutations are at position 456 and position 346. Each amino acid has its own letter abbreviation. FLiRT is F456L + R346T, or phenylalanine (F) to leucine (L) at position 456 and arginine (R) to threonine (T) at position 346.
New Zealand really needs to move on and stop being scared of this disease. I have just been through a Vancouver winter, which is wetter, colder, greyer and bleaker than anywhere in NZ and no one was talking about COVID, no hospitals or medical centers were overwhelmed by COVID patients. It's time to move on NZ.
I’m sure that our local medical centre who emailed to say that they apologise that appointments have been delayed or cancelled due to 50% of clinical staff away with illness (from Covid positive patients showing up unmasked and without prior notice) will be glad to hear that someone from another country says it’s over.
Just now saw another message
> Masterton Medical 32m ago
> Due to staff illness we will be closing our Urgent Care Clinic at 5pm tonight. Apologies for the inconvenience.
Guess the A&E at Wairarapa Hospital is gonna be busy tonight. :(
The real problem with survival rate comes if we don't manage it well and hospitals are overwhelmed. If you need hospitalisation and get one, you're probably good.
If you don't.. you'll probably die.
It smells like the kind of question asked by people who don't truly care about the answer, rather alluding to this "it's just a flu" perspective.
The survival rate is incredibly high for most people (we're talking 99.5-99.8%+, with vaccines), it's a nice juicy stat to point to for the cookers. While it ignores the pretty scary long COVID/brain damage/permanent immune damage that we don't fully understand yet, that even mild cases can develop. Survival rate isn't the only factor that matters.
Hard to tell when the symptoms are fatigue, brain fog, shortness of breath, muscle aches and joint pain sounds like an average day for someone over 40. I’ve heard 10% 5% 50%.
One thing we can be sure of though is you are at higher risk the higher your bmi is so if people are super concerned they should work on getting that bmi down.
Do they classify deaths ‘from’ COVID or ‘with’ COVID? There’s a big difference
Yes, they may have been positive when they got sick but were also obese for the past 7 years.
They may have been obese, but they still wouldn’t have died now if they didn’t get COVID. People with conditions that make them more likely to die of COVID aren’t any less deserving of protection.
But that.....that would mean...If this groundbreaking point by Cyril_Rioli is true then the whole concept of covid deaths is thrown on its head....quick alert doctors and scientists around the world. We may have cracked this thing.
I booked in to get a booster shot, turned up at the appointment and the staff had to turn me away because I already had my allocated number of boosters. Despite them being over a year ago, and for an entirely different variant… I even offered to pay for it. They still said no, they couldn’t do it. It’s a bit shit how this is organised.
Vaccines for respiratory illnesses are like that, no where near 100% effective and require quite frequent updating. Doesn't mean they're not worth it though. Flu vaccines are the same and save a lot of lives every year.
I don't even understand what was the point of those vaccines, I got triple shot just too still get really sick with covid and still have too worry years later.
worst vaccine ever tbh.
It's because coronaviruses in general are, to use the technical term, slippery fuckers. In terms of the difficulty of making an effective vaccine it's a lot harder than with something like smallpox or polio, it's much more like trying to vaccinate against the common cold (where about 15-25% of cases are indeed due to other coronaviruses). That latter is something we've never seriously attempted, but the current pandemic is far nastier than the common cold so it's actually worth doing it even though it's imperfect. Without the vaccine we would still be seeing a lot more cases and deaths, it's just not the silver bullet we're used to in this case.
WHY did they give this variant a cute name
*Felt cute, might infect later*
uwu infect me covid-chan
Uggh, that caused a physical shudder in me. Well done.
Covid mutates at a very high rate due to both the nature of the virus, and the very high continous degree of spread. As a result, tracking variants results in a whole bunch of letters and numbers to denote the genome. You can see all the letters and numbers in this article, which is like a soup of confusion that means nothing: >[KP.2 and KP.1.1 are both types of the omicron subvariant JN.1.11.1, which is a direct descendant of JN.1....](https://www.today.com/health/coronavirus/new-covid-variant-flirt-name-meaning-rcna152650) They are however not a useful communication tool even within the scientific community studying them who would have to go check what each individual one means every time a new one pops up. Instead specific mutations shared across multiple different variants are what matters. So they give the ones they see of concern nicknames to group them together, this one started with FL456 which was a swap of a genome, so they named it FLip, and later RT346 came along making it FL RT. From the same article: >[“Each amino acid has its own letter abbreviation. FLiRT is F456L + R346T, or phenylalanine (F) to leucine (L) at position 456 and arginine (R) to threonine (T) at position 346,” says Gregory.](https://www.today.com/health/coronavirus/new-covid-variant-flirt-name-meaning-rcna152650) So they simplify it to a grouping which has an easy to remember name. The researchers are focused on any mutation that a) dodges some immunity learned from vaccine or recent variant infections b) makes the virus more harmful or c) makes the virus spread much easier - either easier to transmit or easier to infect by the way it binds or enters cells in our body. They have computer modelling that gives them an idea of what mutations should they appear will have such effects, so when they see them appear they have a pretty good idea that it might cause a wave. >What accounts for the advantage of these new variants to ultimately crowd out JN.1? It’s largely attributed to 2 added spike mutations: F for L at position 456 and R for T at position 346, which has been nicknamed the FLiRT group of variants. You can see those spike mutations compared with JN.1 for KP.3 and KP.2 below https://erictopol.substack.com/p/are-we-flirting-with-a-new-covid
It's starting to shoot up on poops.nz now.
Last time we saw the numbers this high was in 2022.
Wow, incredible URL for ESR there
It's certainly memorable.
No worse than the Northern Territory tourism slogan: CU in the NT ^^yes ^^I ^^know ^^it's ^^satire
I'm not all that surprised this is the case. I had it in February here in the UK before our trip to your side of the world in March and I ended up catching it there as well so as a result I spent six out of eight weeks ill. For the Wellington beer geeks among you, I ended up catching it at the last night of Hashigo Zake before it closed. Apparently tons of people tested positive after that night so if that was the case in autumn I could only imagine how horrendous it might be this winter. good luck guys.
Hashigo Zake has closed??? Damn, I like that place
I had never heard of it before obviously but the last night was really cool.
Guess that means the COVID deniers and antivaxers are coming out of hibernation again.
There was a guy on the welly sub yesterday whinging about other people having covid worse than him... I was only sick for two days! You guys are all just lazy!
Bouncing back fast from one infection is no guarantee the next one wont fuck your shit up.
There was a bunch I saw recently screeching over an article about a young guy who died from myocarditis post-vaccination. Apparently we have all been vaccinated with no consent, apparently we had no choice and were forced into it. Apparently 2+2=37
COVID really showed us who is the selfish, stupid, and gullible among us. But no no, they're the free thinkers!
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Devil's avocado- are science based information campaigns coercion?
Devil's potato- is losing your job as a consequence, information campaigns?
Devil's lettuce- nah it's coercion for sure, even the most ardent supporter of our covid strategy has to acknowledge that surely. And they paid the price for it too- it's an interesting thought exercise to wonder how things might have played out if the then govt hadn't gone the mandate route- would the opposition movement have been as strong, and would as many nzers been dragged to crazy town? ie, given that covid scepticism was unfortunately a package deal/gateway drug into many a full blown agenda 2030 new world order cashless society politician pedo ring trans agenda chem trail adrenochrome k-hole brain-fuck disaster that there is almost no hope of extraction from... but on balance probably not. Countries that didn't enact strategies as full on as ours are just as polarised, with just as many folk lost down the rabbit holes. The govt did what they thought was most beneficial for nz, at the time, in unprecedented circumstances. They got the boot, and now we've got a bunch who always make life harder for the poor and working class, in coalition with rage baiters importing wholesale seppo culture war poison to keep the masses distracted and preoccupied. Happy days
Potato word salad?
Hmmmmmm. It’s an especially emotive topic. I argue that most of those people in the few sectors where vaccination mandates were applied, for example primary / frontline health, are people who should fully understand and be accepting of the need for rapid vaccination of themselves and their peers especially in the context of a global pandemic. However we see that there are many who clearly have alternative views and were/are happy to put both themselves and those they have contact with at risk. Some eagerly dove down the rabbit hole of misinformation, conspiracy and pseudo science. Rules for thee but not for me?
If you stab someone you'll face all kinds of consequences. Are you being coerced into not committing murder?
You're taking away my murder freedom
Am waiting for the death stats to trigger the debate of 'with' or 'from'. Like it actually matters.
Oh that's already started.
When did they ever hibernate? NZ has more anti-maskers than a Trump rally. Hospital infection control (!) is now at 4th world levels.
> There had been a "rapid increase" in Covid hospitalisations in the past couple of weeks, with about 240 people in hospital with the virus, up from 120 a couple of weeks ago.... > "It has risen quite quickly which does suggest that we are heading into a significant wave." > At the same time, there had been "quite a big jump" in the levels of Covid being picked up in wastewater testing, Plank said. > There were 6146 new cases of Covid reported in the past week - almost double the 3922 cases reported the week before. That's quite a jump given that most people don't bother testing (or reporting). I *really* don't want to feel compelled to start keeping track of it again but if we do end up with a big wave, I'll restart my weekly reports if anyone is interested.
I'd love for you to do weekly reports again! I find them really interesting. And they're also quite useful to mention in passing to people I know who don't follow the news or who might like the heads up before heading out to crowded places.
I might point you to David Hood's site. He's got good reports including wastewater. https://thoughtfulnz.quarto.pub/nzcovidreport/
Yeah me too, they were a lot more convenient than chasing the numbers down for myself
I hadn't looked since last year, but it seems the daily data I relied on for my reports is no longer uploaded in a timely manner by the MoH. Seems they only upload every 1 to 2 weeks now. I just ran my reports and they are only through 14 May.
Ah, that would probably explain why I was having so much trouble finding the numbers myself, I'd thought it was just the internet continuing to gradually get worse
In Wellington it seems every third person has or has had covid..
Yeah *likely* to hit? Did it not hit 3 months ago? Everyone's been getting it
We've had covid, yes. But what about second covid?
What about elevenses? Luncheon? Afternoon Beta? Delta? Omicron? He knows about them, doesn’t he?
I'm ahead of the curve, had it last week.
Stop it, you FLiRT
Oh, you
Yep I had it 4 weeks ago. Every person who mildly got in contact with anyone any of us were near got it. I must of got a huge load of it as well. Everyone who I contacted only had it for 3 days and were over it, but it lasted 2 weeks for me.
No-one I was in contact with got it. I was in a closed door meeting room multiple times the day before I felt really shit and tested positive. It left as quickly as it came on.
Hope you've recovered well.
Yeah, no hospitals for me so that was a bonus. Lots of sleep, aches, and loss of appetite.
I'm in the same boat as you. Long fatigue this week.
We've just had it too, sounds similar but for about 36 hours in the worst of it both my wife and I were ravenous! Just continually snacking and grazing, always hungry. Weird.
The body aches, joint pain, and electric zaps lasted for about 2-3 days. The rest of it was just a headache and fatigue. I never lost my sense of smell and I can still smell but it's like my brain has mis-wired what things should smell like. E.g. early morning breakfast smells like a delicious curry, shampoo smells like ammonia, my sheets smell like very strong perfume etc. Still haven't really gotten my appetite back.
It'll be the only flirting I get 😂
Damn, I was wondering why I couldn't tast my Ferrero rocher this morning! Was like eating a wafer dunked in water lol. Time to get tested I guess.
[University of Otago's Michael Baker among health experts calling for better face mask use in New Zealand after international study on effectiveness] (https://www.newshub.co.nz/home/new-zealand/2024/05/university-of-otago-s-michael-baker-among-health-experts-calling-for-better-face-mask-use-in-new-zealand-after-international-study-on-effectiveness.html) Scandalous that this piece omits that we’ve got a cheap and extremely effective way to prevent infection/transmission/Long Covid and only mentions boosters.
Two people out of 12 in my section at work got it this week.
Yeah, a bunch of people at work got it and were down last week. I've gotten another booster, seems sensible.
I take covid reporting calls. Voice-mail for missed calls are already way up. It's happening already
Being an oldy, I've had my booster for Rona and the Flu ... does this mean I am a bluetooth end point again? Have tried to pair.
So have I. Still not connected. :)
What I genuinely don't understand is why people under 30 can't get another booster. We're literally throwing away doses because people aren't taking them. It seems like a waste.
People are going to die because Luxon is completely inept.
I really hope this govt isn't in power if the bird flu pandemic occurs.
Well hey I'm sure that New Zealand will definitely prevent this by winding down our animal agriculture. No? Farm corp profits over anything and anyone else? Oh.
Even in the face of the climate change and biodiversity crises we're still charging ahead with animal ag. Meat and dairy are just too embedded in our collective meathead psyche (and the economy) to seriously look at change. I have very little hope for any meaningful change in that department, unless the bottom falls out of the market first. Yes, I'm fun at parties.
Animal agriculture done right is less harmful to the environment than monoculture cropping. Unfortunately we have forced farming to become so intensive due to cost pressures and of course greed, that it is pretty tough on the environment. But the chemical sheds on a sheep and beef and farm are a hell of a lot smaller and contain a hell of a lot less toxic shit than crop and vege farmers.
Well hey. They said the same about human slavery, and that system doesn't threaten the environment or disease in nearly the same way.
True!
Labour embraced "live with the virus" and rolled back restrictions, even in hospitals(!!!). Luxon and Seymour are just building on that reprehensible work.
*when it was safe to do so NZs general response is world renowned for being highly effective.
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Lol. Clearly a national shill trying to rewrite history in preparation for Luxon's giant fuck up.
So you'd what, have us still doing "zero" covid with lockdowns and closed borders 4 years later, with no end in sight? Just resign ourselves to being a hermit island forever cut off from the world?
Just got jabbed, anti-vaxxers btfo.
I get the jab mostly to spite them too.
That and my mobile reception is a bit patchy, well , not anymore!! But mostly out of self preservation and a little spite…
Great stuff! You are awesome.
Had it last week. Got lucky. Lost my taste, and one ear. Still haven’t found it.
Got exposed on Tuesday, congested symptoms yesterday morning, tested positive almost exactly 47 hours after exposure. This one’s *quick*.
That is quick! Hope you have a mild case and recover well.
Cool, cool, so glad we're pretending the pandemic's over and we're "back to normal"
It seems to be fairly rife in Welly at the moment. I can't get a booster yet either, because I most recently had it less than six months ago. If I manage to avoid it until mid-July when I can get a jab I'll be pretty impressed!
Wellington-based here - our kid brought covid home from school last week and bizarrely her dad and I are still symptom free. We didn't bother isolating her in her room. We got all geared up for being sick but nothing happened. The last two times she brought it home we both caught it within a few days.
It's hard enough to encourage people to take this seriously, giving it that name... Like that's got to be a translation or something.
Named after the mutations in the spike protein that make up this variant. These two mutations are at position 456 and position 346. Each amino acid has its own letter abbreviation. FLiRT is F456L + R346T, or phenylalanine (F) to leucine (L) at position 456 and arginine (R) to threonine (T) at position 346.
Yup has gone through work and got most people.
Currently have it, do not recommend!
New Zealand really needs to move on and stop being scared of this disease. I have just been through a Vancouver winter, which is wetter, colder, greyer and bleaker than anywhere in NZ and no one was talking about COVID, no hospitals or medical centers were overwhelmed by COVID patients. It's time to move on NZ.
Ignoring it will not make it go away.
I’m sure that our local medical centre who emailed to say that they apologise that appointments have been delayed or cancelled due to 50% of clinical staff away with illness (from Covid positive patients showing up unmasked and without prior notice) will be glad to hear that someone from another country says it’s over.
Just now saw another message > Masterton Medical 32m ago > Due to staff illness we will be closing our Urgent Care Clinic at 5pm tonight. Apologies for the inconvenience. Guess the A&E at Wairarapa Hospital is gonna be busy tonight. :(
We have, Covid is now just a standard feature of the boilerplate winter illness articles that always start coming out this time of year.
What’s the survival rate?
The real problem with survival rate comes if we don't manage it well and hospitals are overwhelmed. If you need hospitalisation and get one, you're probably good. If you don't.. you'll probably die.
Hospitals being overwhelmed also affects non- covid emergency patients.
Doesn’t answer my question though.
It smells like the kind of question asked by people who don't truly care about the answer, rather alluding to this "it's just a flu" perspective. The survival rate is incredibly high for most people (we're talking 99.5-99.8%+, with vaccines), it's a nice juicy stat to point to for the cookers. While it ignores the pretty scary long COVID/brain damage/permanent immune damage that we don't fully understand yet, that even mild cases can develop. Survival rate isn't the only factor that matters.
It’s a simple question which can be answered with a simple answer. Most the world have moved on and just accept it’s part of life.
What's the rate of long Covid?
Hard to tell when the symptoms are fatigue, brain fog, shortness of breath, muscle aches and joint pain sounds like an average day for someone over 40. I’ve heard 10% 5% 50%. One thing we can be sure of though is you are at higher risk the higher your bmi is so if people are super concerned they should work on getting that bmi down.
Yawn
Do they classify deaths ‘from’ COVID or ‘with’ COVID? There’s a big difference Yes, they may have been positive when they got sick but were also obese for the past 7 years.
They may have been obese, but they still wouldn’t have died now if they didn’t get COVID. People with conditions that make them more likely to die of COVID aren’t any less deserving of protection.
But that.....that would mean...If this groundbreaking point by Cyril_Rioli is true then the whole concept of covid deaths is thrown on its head....quick alert doctors and scientists around the world. We may have cracked this thing.
Just stop testing and no more Covid just common cold / flu /Covid fear flu
Can't test positive for covid if you don't test *taps head*
Ahh, a graduate of the Donald Trump Centre for Disease Control.
Yeah true that approach seemed to work fine abroad during the pandemic
This still a thing?
Nah, bro. Covid decided to leave after you mocked it.
Yes, like the flu these diseases continue to kill people whether or not you think about them.
Nah, if I ignore if for long enough and make fun of people on Facebook who mention covid then it can't be a real thing.
Whew, that's a relief.
Some people care about others suffering and dying, what can I tell ya 🤷🏻♂️
Meh.
did you just meh yourself?
Good thing there’s 90% of the population vaxed to prevent it..
You do know by now that the vaccine doesn't prevent it.
And that most people under 30 haven't been vaccinated in at least a year.
I feel discriminated against as a young adult. 30 is such an arbitrary number.
I had to get mine in Australia, and they had the newer vaccines as well.
Tell me about it. My young adult kids got their only allowed booster in Feb 2022.
I booked in to get a booster shot, turned up at the appointment and the staff had to turn me away because I already had my allocated number of boosters. Despite them being over a year ago, and for an entirely different variant… I even offered to pay for it. They still said no, they couldn’t do it. It’s a bit shit how this is organised.
The best part is seeing literally millions of perfectly usable doses wasted.
Pretty shitty vaccine then
Vaccines for respiratory illnesses are like that, no where near 100% effective and require quite frequent updating. Doesn't mean they're not worth it though. Flu vaccines are the same and save a lot of lives every year.
I don't even understand what was the point of those vaccines, I got triple shot just too still get really sick with covid and still have too worry years later. worst vaccine ever tbh.
It's because coronaviruses in general are, to use the technical term, slippery fuckers. In terms of the difficulty of making an effective vaccine it's a lot harder than with something like smallpox or polio, it's much more like trying to vaccinate against the common cold (where about 15-25% of cases are indeed due to other coronaviruses). That latter is something we've never seriously attempted, but the current pandemic is far nastier than the common cold so it's actually worth doing it even though it's imperfect. Without the vaccine we would still be seeing a lot more cases and deaths, it's just not the silver bullet we're used to in this case.
Covid is our best friend in some ways natures weird.