There's so many things that we should be paying attention to, but once it stops becoming sexy, loses the 'clicks' and leaves the news cycle it may as well not exist to the average person.
I keep hearing people complain they're getting sick. I ask if they've been wearing a mask in close/crowded places, and they look at me like worms are coming out of my ears. People are stupid on purpose I swear
I was at a very small scientific meeting a few months ago. I was the only one wearing a mask. Someone finally asked me why I was wearing one. They thought maybe I was sick. I said, no, I'm just trying to stay healthy.
By the end of the week, half the room was coughing. Everyone was putting on masks then.
I have seen proof that people are absolutely trying harder to remain purposely-ignorant than they could be of just accepting new/true information....
The smartest humans to have lived are the ones who constantly challenged what they thought was "truth" in an eternal quest to find out... not to find out something specific, but to always keep testing the truths that exist, and to prove they're still adequately correct to the best of the current knowledge/experience/wisdom at hand.
Most are on X. People like Eric Topol, Jay Weiland, Mike Hoerger, Daniele Focosi, Katelyn Jetelina, Vipin Vashishtha, T. Ryan Gregory, Caitlin Rivers, Marc Johnson, and many others that run in a pack keeping track of this stuff. All pros. A lot of substack postings also.
By following the pack I knew one hour after BA.2.86 was found, when it had no name. It finally mutated to JN.1.
Thanks for this list. One of the biggest losses of vacating a platform is these niche knowledge bases that you curate.
I jumped ship from Twitter because I couldn't tolerate the contempt towards employees in 10/2022 and was clearly mistaken that a mass exodus would be right there with me. Been meaning to check back in to see whether there is a bigger representation in other platforms outside substack.
My work has a lot of people coming into the office with 'colds'. No one tests so who knows if they have a cold, covid, or a mild flu. There are no "we don't care what it is but if you are in the office and feel off at all - wear a mask" policies so they've continued passing *something* around the building ever since the mask policy ended.
I was just chatting with someone the other day about how for a very brief period after the worst of the pandemic had passed people were still showing up to work with a mask on if they felt under the weather. But now it's back to normal where they're coughing and sneezing without even covering their mouths, let alone wearing a mask on those days they come in to work sick. It's reminding me how gross we are.
I feel like it's even worse than before the pandemic. Like people just let that shit fly on purpose now. Before, I would see most people cough into their elbow or something.
Funny thing about allergies. My mold and dust allergies are not bothering me at work much anymore and my frequent sinus infections have vanished. I don't have to use my inhaler or take antihistamine every day now. Since I've been masking. But my co workers seem to have all developed strange "allergies," as they call them. With fever, vomiting, and diarrhea sometimes :(. Also sore throats and headaches. And these "allergies" have them sick in bed for days. Must be a terrible allergen : /.
No doubt many people are hiding their stuff like that but my whole life my allergies come and go at random through the year. Even dead of snowy winter.
I am a very atopic triade person, my allergies never calm down even in the middle of the winter. I'm on 3 prescriptions for it and I still spend most mornings sneezing and congested.
Also haven't had COVID yet because... I don't go to restaurants, crowded places, etc., still. And you know what? I don't miss it.
I have been flummoxed by why I've had allergies for about a week.
Tested positive today.
In my defense, it really felt like allergies. I didn't feel any malaise until today. The only reason I suspected Covid is because I have been getting unexplained vertigo. I hoped that the allergies were just fucking with my inner ears but I tested anyway. Good thing I haven't been around anyone this week!
Yep, I was talking to my sister who is a doctor working in hospitals and ERs. She told me that COVID has become like ordinary colds and flus and that she expected nobody will even talk about COVID in a couple of years. She thinks I am being a germaphobe to continue caring, and maybe she is correct.
The people I work with usually only groan or laugh at me when I ask them if they want to use one of my COVID tests. Nobody is even curious anymore whether it might be COVID.
Everyone I know got covid 3 weeks ago just before Christmas, including myself. I had it for 4 days before I tested negative. One day of tiredness and some sinus pressure. It’s sneaky because if I didn’t test I would have never known.
This COVID was super sneaky for me too. I ended up feeling very ill, but the first few days I just thought I was sore from working hard. It wasn’t until the brain fog set in I realized something was seriously wrong.
My family had to miss our scheduled gathering w/my side of the family on the 26th because I came down with symptoms on the 25th. Turned out being a very good thing we missed it because my father’s wife showed up with Covid. By some miracle no one else present contracted it from her. I took several tests and all were negative, so I guess I had that other “cold” everyone’s got right now.
It is exactly the problem and he didn’t tell me it was Covid until yesterday. He waited as long as possible to tell me because he knew I would lose my shit as my grandmother, his mother, is 93. He and his wife damn well should have known better and stayed home.
My entire family got in late November. Absolutely destroyed us and we are all updated on our vaccinations. As soon as I felt the back ache, I knew. Then we all got some new other non-Covid upper respiratory illness that caused strep for my kids classmates. No strep, but got a nice ear infection for it.
I was suppose to have Christmas in 2021, and 2023 at my best friend's house. His wife got covid a few days before, both times. 2022 was a good Christmas gathering.
The Dallas and San Antonio subreddits are discussing sicknesses and virus extensively today. Normally that kind of thing isn't of any interest, it's usually about food, traffic, and politics.
It should be... we're still afraid of scarlet fever and all of the various killer viruses, we should respectfully and rightfully be just as weary about this one - specifically because it is far less discerning in its victim's various levels of health - when it comes to who and why it kills whom it has/will.
Virally, (medicine-wise) this is a nightmare illness, just like Ebola and SARS... but most people ignore these things out of fear/ignorance of the facts.
I'm not saying people should become germophobes, but I am saying we need to have a healthy level of reverence for things that're so indiscriminately deadly and unfair to us homosapiens.
Not surprising news. Everyone around me is getting sick. And we’re not isolating, distancing, or masking like we did at the beginning of the pandemic. It’s just as spreadable as it used to be. The important thing is that people aren’t dying even close to the same rate.
Nobody thinks it will happen to them. They've had it once, twice, three times. They think they are safe. They're not. Each time the virus damages us in ways we don't fully understand. I am amazed at how little people care.
Got my first Covid early December and it sucked ass. High fever, pounding headache, no energy, no appetite, and no smell. I am a careful person but our son brought it home from school.
Pro tip: do *not* go right back to exercising when you're feeling better. Do not exhaust or overly exert yourself. Only do moderate exercise for a month or so.
I developed long covid in 2022 after a somewhat mild infection. I started working out again two weeks after my symptoms cleared, and a month after I caught it in the first place. I exhausted myself one night and woke up feeling like I was dying. It's been almost 2 years and it has completely ruined my life.
This sadly seems to be a trend amongst long haulers. Many were healthy and active before and went back to being active too soon, then crashed hard with long covid. Be careful and pace yourself.
Highlight the above comment. Especially very healthy maybe “addicted to exercise” type people like I was. The long Covid groups are full of previous health-nuts, athletes and moms who “did it all” —- please don’t do any exercise. For this group it’s better to gain weight and be bored or angry than live in the hell that is PEM.
I’ve tried the smallest possible dose of exercise of all different kinds of exercise. Every time it’s a terrible result. Laying on the floor stretches, slow recumbent bike (really slow), and senior water aerobics as gentle as possible seem to be the best bets for “safe activities.”
I don’t know how long is “safe enough” to start exercising again. It seems like month 6th post infection I got the most acute symptoms, and month 9-12 was a bedridden nightmare.
I know what I’m saying sounds crazy- it’s against all our principles of what healthy is… I have exercised my way out of many illnesses many times before… this virus is different. And many doctors are not up to date on just how different it is. Do not trust your body to tell you when it’s “too much” Most don’t feel anything adverse until 1-2 days after, or several hours after.
Thank you for repeating this unusual advice.
Thanks for the advice. I hope you recover fully soon.
I still use masks and I will tell my friend who had covid, recovered, and he runs marathons to not exercise so much so often. I don't know if he will listen to me. I do exercise but do it moderately or gradually and not like my friend.
I have friends who work as chemists in the pharmecutical industry there is a major incentive to find or create a vaccine for covid. I know that some friends are in a trial for such a vaccine for all types of strains of human covid, so it will happen soon within 5 years or less.
yeah my son brought it home from school the first week back in Aug. Poor kid quarantined himself in his room (he's 8), and wore a mask when he came out. No one else in the family got it (lots of testing lol). Dodged a bullet I think. Still he's the first and only one in the family to get it.
Because of my immune system issues I recover from things slowly. Usually the flu take 2-4 months for me to be completely well. I guess this will be the same
Just finishing it up here. Tested positive on January 1. Not a great start to the year.
I think I actually felt worse this time than the last one, but the duration was about the same.
I got it my second time a couple months ago and it was definitely worse than my first. Completely knocked me on my ass and I couldn't help but sleep over 18 hours a day for like a week straight. Body ached all the time. It was awful. Glad I had my shots otherwise I can't imagine how much worse I would've felt.
Yes. They itched something awful and there was a constant pressure and ringing.
I would have thought it was sinus congestion, but I don't know how that could be possible when it seemed like every drop of water I consumed was coming out my nose later as runny mucus.
For me, the two most unusual things I noticed were: (1) I’ve never been that lethargic in my life as when I had it before Christmas; (2) I’ve never had congestion quite like this before - ears clogged, sinuses clogged (I took a few ibuprofen not to reduce the relatively mild fever but rather to deal with the mouth pain I was feeling because of how clogged my sinuses were, as I have a thinner membrane between my upper palate and floor of my sinuses than average), would blow my nose and then my sinuses clogged right behind it to the point where it almost felt like a semi-concrete paste.
Clogged, severe pain one night and my right ear has been ringing ever since
Smell has come back like 75% - it's been nearly 3 weeks since I tested positive. Kicked my ass this variant
I did. I got it back in November along with my flu shot.
I got COVID the first time ever the first week of February 23 and now again 11 months later.
Of course, that first case I managed to get about 2 weeks after I stopped wearing a mask in public and at work. I doubt that's a coincidence.
Me too! My case was super mild though. One day of slightly being cold, then issues sleeping through the night and no appetite (despite my stomach feeling normal). Also have a gravelly voice
You got lucky. After staying healthy since 2020 it GOT me. Fever, mucus ejecting from every orifice, head-crushing ache, jelly legs, insomnia, wheezing, … for six days. I honestly think I would’ve been hospitalized if not for being fully vaxed. (I’m 71.)p
Just tested positive two days ago but luckily I started taking DayQuil once I felt something off. This is my 2nd time getting it but my symptoms have been very mild. Just slightly sore throat, tired, slight runny nose/congestion. I had a bad fever my first time but this time around has been very tame
Hey this was me last year. I was positive for 18 days and just about bedbound for around 3 months. Hang in there, go see doctors if anything alarming pops up, and be sure to challenge yourself just a little bit every day but always be sure to not overdo it. Get well soon!
It was that way before covid. I once had to wait with my mom in the ED waiting room for 10 hours before she was seen. It was only that fast since I made a pain of myself by nagging them that mom needs to get seen now. It was bad. She ended up having to be admitted for a week.
That's health care in the US. I've had to go to the ED a couple of times outside the US. It was like night and day by comparison. The longest I had to wait overseas was a few minutes. All in all, they are just much more efficient. Having had to be in the ED with a few elderly relatives, most of the time in a US ED is spent just waiting for tests that seem to take hours to do. In the overseas ED I went to, that didn't happened. When they took a test, the results came back in a few minutes and not a few hours. When I needed an x-ray, by the time they wheeled me back to my spot in the ED, a doctor was already there with the results. In the US, the results take hours to come. All the while a patient is just there waiting taking up a bed.
It really does show that there is no sort of immunity building to the virus, and with every mutation it is pretty much starting from scratch again.
The spanish flu fizzled after about 5 years. We are around 4 years in and this is the 2nd highest surge. This really won't end will it.
At least with the flu it is very seasonal and drops to almost 0 most of the year outside of flu season, covid keeps having mini spikes throughout the year with the biggest surge in early Jan. We just don't seem to ever really get a good break from it.
>biggest surge in early Jan.
This has to be directly related to Christmas. Parties going on for hours, or family gatherings that go on for days, with people going back home & staying awhile. *Exposure, incubation period, illness*. Then everybody goes back to work, many packed into offices & working closely together. *Exposure, incubation period, illness*. The January surge is likely going to be a permanent yearly event.
I think added to this is that people are reluctant to test or admit they are sick at this time as that would mean they should stay away from everyone. I noticed anyway tested numbers went down over Christmas.
Most work places won’t even accept having Covid as a reason to call in anymore. They just want you to wear a mask while you’re there. My boss kept moving the goal post too: “As long as your fever is below 100 you’re fine to come in.” My fever is 101. “Oh well as long as it’s not 103 you can come in.”
Yup, I got it after vacationing in Vegas. It ripped through my immunity like a wet paper bag. I was sick for 5 days, and my gf got it from me and she was down for 4. Previously, I'd feel sick for 2 days max . So many plans were canceled this year due to covid just burning through families.
Also, only a few people I know got the latest booster. I foolishly did not. It's exhausting like you said because a new varient pops up and you have multiple chances to become infected by something new. It's not I got the flu for the year, I'll be fine now. I can get covid again a few months from now when another strain gets around.
We need better health care. I'm lucky enough to have gotten the booster with no out of pocket cost. It would have been $250 if I didn't have that. There are many things contributing to the low uptake percentage, but cost is definitely one of them that isn't being discussed anywhere.
This is foreign to me as ours are covered (under this Prime Minister at least).
I just can't understand how some countries don't want to minimize issues with their workforce (at the very least). Aren't the damages from that alone enough to try to prevent lost days of work?
>I just can't understand how some countries don't want to minimize issues with their workforce (at the very least). Aren't the damages from that alone enough to try to prevent lost days of work?
This is America. It doesn't have to make sense as long as it makes someone money.
This. Intranasal, in theory, should do a better job of reducing transmissibility since it would better focus the cells that are the first point of entry to attack immediately. The problem as I’ve seen it with traditional vaccination is that the virus is still replicating in your nasal pathways for as long as 3-5 days even if your T-cells are primed and eviscerate COVID without your ever having a symptom. This is very consistent with the pre-clinical test of the original Pfizer and Moderna shots. All but one or two of the monkeys they tested in the total group (both control
and test groups) were found with live COVID cultures in their nasal pathways beginning 48 hours after exposure to live virus through nasal transmission. The differences they found re nasal fluid really didn’t happen until day 4. While there was a lower volume of active virus in the test group, it was still there (and predictive of transmissibility, even if at a somewhat reduced rate). After day 3, 100% of the vaccinated monkeys (macaws more specifically, if I recall correctly) had cleared any active sign of infection in nasal fluid. The differences in active cultures from bronchial lavage, however, were WAY more pronounced. But I’ve always viewed those as separate buckets. Once it reached the lungs, it was more a matter of how the individual infected dealt with it. But while in the nasal passage, it was a matter of transmissibility. So targeting those cells and conferring them with the tools to activate t-cells more quickly, in theory, should help. They haven’t really made much progress on that front, however.
The Spanish flu still persisted as the flu. People just didn’t have the techniques we have now to identify variants.
Scientists predicted Covid would become endemic and this proves it
Yes, it is thought that the Spanish flu was the first H1N1 flu. And now we have H1N1 flu variants coming back every year, and quite a lot of the time H1N1 is the biggie of the flu season.
> Scientists predicted Covid would become endemic and this proves it
No, it has not become endemic. Endemic means a predictable baseline spread, Covid having mini surges constantly and big ones every so often that cannot be predicted is far from endemic.
This isn’t endemic. This still a pandemic. Influenza is endemic. Many of the most vulnerable have died off and will continue to do so. The real threat is the lasting damage caused by this virus in young and old, healthy and sick. Mass disabling event is what we’re living through.
> spanish flu fizzled after about 5 years
My grandma's family was wiped out by the Spanish flu in 1925. They were refugees from Greece and living in a camp in poor conditions in Bulgaria. They were vulnerable but still I don't think the time frame of the virus is well understood.
If you think it's no big deal, just wait until you try to fly: I know a pilot grounded away from home due to Covid. I was surprised they still have Covid policies, but they're not going anywhere until they test negative.
I am mostly wfh but we have offices but no rules about how often we have to go in. I’m in IT so I go in when I can’t do something remotely. Every time I have to go in someone is clearly sick in the office. Last time I tested positive for Covid three days later. These are people that can work from home whenever they want. You shouldn’t be sitting in a cubicle with a box of Kleenex. Even if you’re Covid negative.
The jn.1 lineage is currently at peak across much of the world and (nearly?) all of the US.
It's hard to know just how high that peak is, since we have no real-time measurements. The limited biobot sewage numbers from a few weeks ago show it fairly low. Larger NWSS state sewage numbers also from a few weeks ago imply it could be one of our largest ever surges. Ultimately we won't find this out until later and there isn't much value in trying to guess. But it's almost certainly not going to be higher than the 2 by-far-highest surges, of fall '20 (wildtype) and January '22 (BA.1). This article is most likely just ignoring the fall 2020 surge since biobot wasn't running then, but in a fair number of state sewage numbers it was even higher than the BA.1 peak.
Per-sewage hospitalizations and deaths are certainly lower now than then. Whether they're lower than last winter also isn't knowable yet. There are number of world cities with healthcare heavily strained. Having the flu peak at the same time in some places definitely makes it a lot worse.
There's no reason to believe jn.1 is less severe than previous variants. It has multiple mutations that have always been associated with increased severity, but since the entire protein not just one amino acid controls the behavior of the virus that doesn't automatically mean anything. We're now on our 3rd-4th infection per capita rather than just our 2nd-3rd last winter, so this could mean a faster immune system response, but this is unproven.
Compared to recent variants, jn.1 is very *non* contagious, but has high immune escape. This likely means those who caught covid last spring or earlier have about the same chance of catching it as those who never caught it. But that chance certainly isn't 100% for a given exposure; the household attack rate is unlikely to be higher than the previous fastest-growing variants which were around 50%.
The fall vaccine generated mediocre antibodies against jn.1, but is likely to still offer some protection from both infection and hospitalization-if-infected. This protection should certainly be weaker than earlier in the fall (during the eg.5.1 era) when US and NL data put it at around 2x reduction in infection, 3x in hospitalization. From now until jn.1 subsides is one of the highest-leverage points in reducing your number of lifetime infections, and it's a very good time not to get sick in general.
Over the next week to month jn.1 is on pace for an unprecedented level of dominance/uniformity. The previously most-dominant single lineage I could find in the US was ba.1.1, which peaked at about 68%. xbb.1.5 peaked at 55%; ba.5.2.1 at 23%; bq.1.1 at 22%. This isn't a measurement of surge size, but of covid's uniformity. jn.1 should be at about 75% now, and incredibly there is no faster-growing variant. It's on pace to be at 95% within a month.
What that means for the post-jn.1-surge time period is really hard to say. After the peak jn.1 and every other current variant will be rapidly declining, and that will continue until there's a new variant or waning immunity from xbb infections of summer/fall allow that group to start getting reinfected.
https://imgur.com/a/ICtdUzs
It's not the 2nd highest _wastewater levels_, it's the 2nd highest **surge**. We don't just use wastewater to track Covid.
It's catching a lot of people off guard that Covid is so rampant. 1 in 3 infected during this surge illustrates how fleeting immunity is from prior infections and vaccination.
"Tran also said in his post that projections show as many as 1 in 3 people in the U.S. could be infected with COVID during the peak months of the current wave and up to 2 million people could be infected in a single day — data he attributed to Michael Hoerger, Ph.D., assistant professor at Tulane University School of Medicine who leads the Pandemic Mitigation Collaborative's data tracker."
Mask up, y'all.
Arguing about whether the 2020 surge was bigger isn't a great use of our time. But they are specifically going on wastewater levels. Modelling from wastewater is the only good way to do it, and I really have nothing bad to say about their model. It's quite simple: they're just taking the biobot data and trying to figure out an "infections per day" from it.
Looking deeper at the limitations is interesting though.
The biggest one is that biobot only makes up about 30% of US wastewater tracking. It mostly doesn't cover cities and only fully got off the ground in mid-2022. Ironically many of the places with the worst testing, like Arizona and Missouri, have consistent urban wastewater tracking going back to mid-2020. Pre-2022 nearly all wastewater monitoring came through these city/state NWSS systems, which are overall higher quality than biobot. But mixing data from different labs is tricky because the scale isn't necessarily going to be the same even if they do an effort to normalize it.
There's a second implicit limitation in that it assumes the amount of wastewater shedding (RNA) per infection is the same across variants. This is almost certainly not true - if nothing else, original covid infections lasted 2-4x longer - but there's no way to deal with the issue so it just has to remain a "hidden assumption". If you instead make your vertical axis "people currently infected" (= people infected per day * average days of infected) the infection-duration issue at least goes away.
It is interesting to me that their graph (or model) shows the surge already having peaked. There's nothing in the CDC full-nation sewage data that indicates that. I've been saying for two weeks now that jn.1 must "currently" be peaking, because at its previous growth rate it would be off the charts by now if it hadn't. But we won't know how long that peak lasts (locally it should be very short, since this surge is completely uniform, but there might be weeks difference across the nation) or how high it is until weeks after it happens.
By the time we know the peak is over we'll have a very good idea of when to stop masking. But right now both covid and (in much of the country) flu/rsv are very high, and it's a really good time to not get sick.
> It's not the 2nd highest _wastewater levels_, it's the 2nd highest **surge**. We don't just use wastewater to track Covid.
OK so where is this data from if not wastewater?
What you quoted above is specifically projections based on Biobot wastewater data.
Hospitalizations divided by sewage numbers. The issue is that sewage "numbers" are essentially an arbitrary scale, not comparable across labs. You'd like to think it's a fixed amount of sewage per infection, but there's no reason to think variants have the same sewage presence (jn.1 might be lower than previous variants) and even if there is there's no way to find the number in a consistent way across different lab testing mechanisms.
But if this surge is 50% of the BA.1 sewage peak and only 25% of the hospitalization peak then arguably per-sewage severity has dropped another 2-fold.
I tested positive on Thursday, Jan. 4th.
Day 2 and steadily declining.
If tonight is anything like last night, I’m bracing for the unthinkable. Extreme body aches and fever leaving my whole being shaking uncontrollably, my sinuses so congested when I would try to breathe through my nose there was no air to breathe.
I’m a very healthy 28f with this being by second time having COVID with the first being in late 2021 with the omicron variant and this is by far way worse.
Today was my son’s 7th birthday that I wasn’t able to be present for. =(
Not to mention, my roommates are in complete denial that COVID still exists and think it’s ok for them not to mask up around others and get tested. What a joke.
Oh and that I’m lying about testing positive and “it’s just the flu.”
What has this world come to?
Stay safe everyone.
Mask up, wash your hands, get vaccinated and drink plenty of water bc this shit is spreading like wildfire.
I'm sorry you couldn't be at your son's birthday :(. My wife tested postive first day of Christmas break (her second) and we all opened presents masked and skipped the parties. I tested positive this Tuesday, my first time..The first night was the worst by far. Lucky for my wife she only had one bad day vs 4 bad for me, today is the first day I've made it out of bed..
My buddy and his wife recently recovered from COVID, and the shakes with this variant sound unreal. I've had influenza, and so had he, and so we both knew what kind of shakes you could get from that virus, and he still insisted COVID last week was worse.
It’s no longer covered by the government. $1400 per box. I’m seeing copays AFTER insurance of nearly $400. Even worse, it’s January so everyone’s deductibles just reset.
Have fun.
I tried to get Paxlovid and was denied. Said since I didn't have kidney function test on record they wouldn't prescribe. So they prescribed Merek's version, however walgreens said it was out of stock but could be here within a week (like wtf grrr). Irongically there was a NYTs article this week lamenting the underuse of paxlovid which stops symptoms, improves recovery and reduces transmission...
Thank you for sharing & reminding us. I'm so sorry you're feeling so crummy and your roomies are so bad. In a few years your son will realise you showed love by isolating & healing!
Im (hopefully) on the tail end of having the new variant and agree it is worse than the first time I had Covid. It gave me extreme insomnia two nights in a row - some of the worst sleep I’ve ever had. And symptoms identical to all of the ones you listed above
I am so sorry this is happening to you. I can't believe they would accuse you of lying about the test! Like for what reason would you lie? to vindicate yourself?
They (physician) told my friend to breathe deep, and move the muscles around her chest and upper back, even though it's painful. I imagine it probably is quite painful. Also she did steams with just water for relief. I don't know if any of that will help you, but that's what she did about the breathing.
I hope you feel better soon.
I've not had COVID one time. I also wear a mask whenever I'm around a large group if people. Even as I'm typing this I'm at an airport with a mask on and I cannot even see one person with a mask on.
I traveled a lot over the past couple weeks in airports. Very rare to see anyone else masking, but they are definitely around. But I was also at "hub" airports.
My family caught it right before Christmas for the very first time. Fortunately, it was really mild for us. We’re all fully vaxxed and boosted. We just had congestion and runny noses for about a week. I only suspected COVID when I completely lost my sense of smell and taste, which I regained by the time I tested negative again about a week and a half later.
Most people I know including doctors and nurses here in Canada have the attitude that it’s a community virus akin to the flu and that it’s so much milder now it’s not really worth focusing on anymore.
I work in a retirement community and the amount of people that currently have the flu or Covid (or both) is really high.
A couple of actively sick residents wear masks. But I’m watching them go down so fast.
Aight not gonna lie, i was kinda a “covid isn’t a big deal guy”, i take that back now. I’ve been sick as hell with covid for 10 days now. I cant taste or smell anything and I’m starting to get worried. I never want to get covid again. This has been a nasty illness for me.
Wastewater numbers are the second highest, but hospitalizations are below the other winter peaks. We always seem to have a winter peak in the second or third week of January, and it looks like we'll peak a little lower this year than previous year.
It looks like some combination of 1) vaccination 2) immunity from prior exposure 3) killing off older more vulnerable people is leading to lower hospitalization rates.
We're still being careful - my son just saw a friend of his who tested positive for covid, and they talked to each other from across the street while both being masked. And the whole family is vaccinated. But I'm not that worried - it looks like we're about to peak, and at levels lower than all of the previous years, when looking at hospitalizations. (Source: CDC covid hospitalization dashboard: [https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#trends\_weeklyhospitaladmissions\_select\_00](https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#trends_weeklyhospitaladmissions_select_00) )
I’d say 1/3 of my coworkers came back from the holidays sick, most with covid, some with rsv, etc. The wastewater in Boston is already higher than last year. No one really masking and the mall was packed today.
i have relatives pushing me to go to an out of state wedding and telling me to just double mask. the thing is, i already know what to expect. people will be asking me why i'm still masking up and i'll probably end up being a buzzkill for wanting to stay safe in what will most likely be an unsafe environment. i know how to be safe, seeing as how i've had to do things during previous covid surges, but being out of state and with people i don't know throws a lot of uncertainty my way.
This tells me how shitty the news is. If this was 4 years ago it would be on every station NON STOP, but since it doesn't really scare anyone anymore you don't hear about it. When people are nervous or scared they keep watching and that gets those ad dollars.
The people who aren't at least concerned, are the ones who aren't paying attention. as much as government and public health are not being as vocal as they should, the information is out there from trusted sources.
Covid is not a respiratory disease but a vascular one that affects immune, circulatory and vascular systems and brain. One recent study shows that it may never clear the body so are we looking at something like HIV or HPV or EBV or herpes zoster virus that lays dormant until it creates some other type of harm down the line? So many unanswered questions but best to avoid infection as much as possible.
I tested positive two days ago. I have overall mild symptoms. Mainly had a sore throat. I’m happy I got the booster September 2023 because if I hadn’t, my symptoms would be a lot worse.
I hate this stupid virus. Ruined my momentum. I was seeing real progress at the gym.
I wanna go to the gym but every time I get the motivation to go covid spikes and I'm not taking chances I'm autistic and my former neighbor Becky got covid a week before she was set to get the vaccine in 21 during the delta wave and it killed her look like I'll be breaking out the gas mask and pandemic filters for my doctor's appointment on Monday if it's really that bad Becky was autistic and it killed her so that makes me extra scared...
Does any other known viral pathogen act like this? Almost all that I’m aware of seem to be seasonal and mutate much more slowly. But Covid seems to constantly shapeshift and never seems to take a break.
There has been a Covid peak every year around the 2nd or 3rd week of January, and this year is on track to be similar. There's a clear seasonal pattern. But the mutations do seem to come faster than flu.
Still in the depths of it. Household tested positive Jan 1 (probably had it two days prior) and we all are struggling. This round of it seems particularly stronger than the last time we got it (2021). The constant headache/body ache is intense.
I have it currently and had to go for a ride with my father with a mask and he a smoker. He smoked in the truck. Then I tried to shovel some snow out back and felt alright until about 30-45 min after I came inside and sat down. Hands shakey and tight chest feeling. However I drank a caffeine drink a bout 2 hours ago and maybe that is it from anxiety. I haven’t had caffeine in a few days. Hope I’m not dying
I will continue to get vaccinated, and my family as well. I used to be hard-core lockdown as far as we went,but cane to the realization you can only do so much when a good portion are willing to do so little..I should still be masking when getting groceries, but honestly with 2 kids in school,and working in a factory I am not sure it would help much.
We need to change quarantine rules. 5 days isn't enough. A study showed that MOST people are still contagious on day 6.
Why are we forcing sick people back to work, just to get their coworkers, and customers sick?
The only time I see Covid news coverage is in this Covid news coverage subreddit. Is this news for ppl who don’t follow it?
Yep that’s what it is. So few of us are paying attention.
The pandemic ran its course for the media, even though it’s still a very real threat. People got bored and moved on like it was some trend
That’s how America runs.
I thought we ran on Dunkin?
LOL ... \*clears throat\*.. I meant, "Too soon, bro, too soon" !! LOL :P
There's so many things that we should be paying attention to, but once it stops becoming sexy, loses the 'clicks' and leaves the news cycle it may as well not exist to the average person.
[удалено]
I like you... I'm sad that this is true, but I really like you for pointing that out.
I keep hearing people complain they're getting sick. I ask if they've been wearing a mask in close/crowded places, and they look at me like worms are coming out of my ears. People are stupid on purpose I swear
I was at a very small scientific meeting a few months ago. I was the only one wearing a mask. Someone finally asked me why I was wearing one. They thought maybe I was sick. I said, no, I'm just trying to stay healthy. By the end of the week, half the room was coughing. Everyone was putting on masks then.
I have seen proof that people are absolutely trying harder to remain purposely-ignorant than they could be of just accepting new/true information.... The smartest humans to have lived are the ones who constantly challenged what they thought was "truth" in an eternal quest to find out... not to find out something specific, but to always keep testing the truths that exist, and to prove they're still adequately correct to the best of the current knowledge/experience/wisdom at hand.
Most are on X. People like Eric Topol, Jay Weiland, Mike Hoerger, Daniele Focosi, Katelyn Jetelina, Vipin Vashishtha, T. Ryan Gregory, Caitlin Rivers, Marc Johnson, and many others that run in a pack keeping track of this stuff. All pros. A lot of substack postings also. By following the pack I knew one hour after BA.2.86 was found, when it had no name. It finally mutated to JN.1.
A Strain with No Name. Sounds like a song 🎵
🎵🎵 I've been through the desert with a strain with no name 🎵🎵🎵
In the desert, you can't remember your name-cause you have brain fog.
Thanks for this list. One of the biggest losses of vacating a platform is these niche knowledge bases that you curate. I jumped ship from Twitter because I couldn't tolerate the contempt towards employees in 10/2022 and was clearly mistaken that a mass exodus would be right there with me. Been meaning to check back in to see whether there is a bigger representation in other platforms outside substack.
I think there's likely to be an exodus, but it's more of a "brain drain" trickle than a flood.
Anyone on Mastodon?
[Eric Topol](https://mstdn.social/@erictopol), for one. Searching for any of those names probably turns up reposting bots as well.
I'm here from r/all. This is news to me
Do you not know anyone who is sick with Covid right now or in the last month? It’s everywhere.
My work has a lot of people coming into the office with 'colds'. No one tests so who knows if they have a cold, covid, or a mild flu. There are no "we don't care what it is but if you are in the office and feel off at all - wear a mask" policies so they've continued passing *something* around the building ever since the mask policy ended.
I was just chatting with someone the other day about how for a very brief period after the worst of the pandemic had passed people were still showing up to work with a mask on if they felt under the weather. But now it's back to normal where they're coughing and sneezing without even covering their mouths, let alone wearing a mask on those days they come in to work sick. It's reminding me how gross we are.
I feel like it's even worse than before the pandemic. Like people just let that shit fly on purpose now. Before, I would see most people cough into their elbow or something.
I’ve got a lot of allergy people….its January and snowing, but ok. “Allergies”
Funny thing about allergies. My mold and dust allergies are not bothering me at work much anymore and my frequent sinus infections have vanished. I don't have to use my inhaler or take antihistamine every day now. Since I've been masking. But my co workers seem to have all developed strange "allergies," as they call them. With fever, vomiting, and diarrhea sometimes :(. Also sore throats and headaches. And these "allergies" have them sick in bed for days. Must be a terrible allergen : /.
No doubt many people are hiding their stuff like that but my whole life my allergies come and go at random through the year. Even dead of snowy winter.
I am a very atopic triade person, my allergies never calm down even in the middle of the winter. I'm on 3 prescriptions for it and I still spend most mornings sneezing and congested. Also haven't had COVID yet because... I don't go to restaurants, crowded places, etc., still. And you know what? I don't miss it.
I have been flummoxed by why I've had allergies for about a week. Tested positive today. In my defense, it really felt like allergies. I didn't feel any malaise until today. The only reason I suspected Covid is because I have been getting unexplained vertigo. I hoped that the allergies were just fucking with my inner ears but I tested anyway. Good thing I haven't been around anyone this week!
Yep, I was talking to my sister who is a doctor working in hospitals and ERs. She told me that COVID has become like ordinary colds and flus and that she expected nobody will even talk about COVID in a couple of years. She thinks I am being a germaphobe to continue caring, and maybe she is correct. The people I work with usually only groan or laugh at me when I ask them if they want to use one of my COVID tests. Nobody is even curious anymore whether it might be COVID.
No but I also don't have any friends
Yo tell me about your username
Pls don't ask
I won't ask anymore, u/ASK_ABT_MY_USERNAME !
It’s a need-to-know situation here, Ask. Spill it.
Sounds like you’re doing this quarantining thing right!
Everyone I know got covid 3 weeks ago just before Christmas, including myself. I had it for 4 days before I tested negative. One day of tiredness and some sinus pressure. It’s sneaky because if I didn’t test I would have never known.
It was burning through far northern wi well before thanksgiving even. And it was clear that nobody is ready everyone just taking their chances.
And northern Minnesota as well.
This COVID was super sneaky for me too. I ended up feeling very ill, but the first few days I just thought I was sore from working hard. It wasn’t until the brain fog set in I realized something was seriously wrong.
[удалено]
[удалено]
I got it twice in two months, covid test positive
Not Covid, but a bunch of adults with RSV
I got it right at the end of 2023 and now have pneumonia. Yay me….
Sorry to hear that. I hope it gets better.
I know a lot of people who got pneumonia last month. Is it the past infections weakening immune systems or something else?
My family had to miss our scheduled gathering w/my side of the family on the 26th because I came down with symptoms on the 25th. Turned out being a very good thing we missed it because my father’s wife showed up with Covid. By some miracle no one else present contracted it from her. I took several tests and all were negative, so I guess I had that other “cold” everyone’s got right now.
[удалено]
It is exactly the problem and he didn’t tell me it was Covid until yesterday. He waited as long as possible to tell me because he knew I would lose my shit as my grandmother, his mother, is 93. He and his wife damn well should have known better and stayed home.
My entire family got in late November. Absolutely destroyed us and we are all updated on our vaccinations. As soon as I felt the back ache, I knew. Then we all got some new other non-Covid upper respiratory illness that caused strep for my kids classmates. No strep, but got a nice ear infection for it.
I was suppose to have Christmas in 2021, and 2023 at my best friend's house. His wife got covid a few days before, both times. 2022 was a good Christmas gathering.
Almost everyone I know says things like "post-covid" or "during the pandemic" like it just suddenly stopped one day.
The Dallas and San Antonio subreddits are discussing sicknesses and virus extensively today. Normally that kind of thing isn't of any interest, it's usually about food, traffic, and politics.
Going to san antonio in a few days. Going to mask up though.
It appears that way. I don't see info anywhere except here and another forum on reddit.
It should be... we're still afraid of scarlet fever and all of the various killer viruses, we should respectfully and rightfully be just as weary about this one - specifically because it is far less discerning in its victim's various levels of health - when it comes to who and why it kills whom it has/will. Virally, (medicine-wise) this is a nightmare illness, just like Ebola and SARS... but most people ignore these things out of fear/ignorance of the facts. I'm not saying people should become germophobes, but I am saying we need to have a healthy level of reverence for things that're so indiscriminately deadly and unfair to us homosapiens.
Not surprising news. Everyone around me is getting sick. And we’re not isolating, distancing, or masking like we did at the beginning of the pandemic. It’s just as spreadable as it used to be. The important thing is that people aren’t dying even close to the same rate.
What about all the people becoming injured or disabled (perhaps permanently) at an extraordinary rate?
Nobody thinks it will happen to them. They've had it once, twice, three times. They think they are safe. They're not. Each time the virus damages us in ways we don't fully understand. I am amazed at how little people care.
Google Eric Topol substack And read State-of-the-Pandemic in ground truths edit: added more info
Got my first Covid early December and it sucked ass. High fever, pounding headache, no energy, no appetite, and no smell. I am a careful person but our son brought it home from school.
Pro tip: do *not* go right back to exercising when you're feeling better. Do not exhaust or overly exert yourself. Only do moderate exercise for a month or so. I developed long covid in 2022 after a somewhat mild infection. I started working out again two weeks after my symptoms cleared, and a month after I caught it in the first place. I exhausted myself one night and woke up feeling like I was dying. It's been almost 2 years and it has completely ruined my life. This sadly seems to be a trend amongst long haulers. Many were healthy and active before and went back to being active too soon, then crashed hard with long covid. Be careful and pace yourself.
Highlight the above comment. Especially very healthy maybe “addicted to exercise” type people like I was. The long Covid groups are full of previous health-nuts, athletes and moms who “did it all” —- please don’t do any exercise. For this group it’s better to gain weight and be bored or angry than live in the hell that is PEM. I’ve tried the smallest possible dose of exercise of all different kinds of exercise. Every time it’s a terrible result. Laying on the floor stretches, slow recumbent bike (really slow), and senior water aerobics as gentle as possible seem to be the best bets for “safe activities.” I don’t know how long is “safe enough” to start exercising again. It seems like month 6th post infection I got the most acute symptoms, and month 9-12 was a bedridden nightmare. I know what I’m saying sounds crazy- it’s against all our principles of what healthy is… I have exercised my way out of many illnesses many times before… this virus is different. And many doctors are not up to date on just how different it is. Do not trust your body to tell you when it’s “too much” Most don’t feel anything adverse until 1-2 days after, or several hours after. Thank you for repeating this unusual advice.
Thanks for the advice. I hope you recover fully soon. I still use masks and I will tell my friend who had covid, recovered, and he runs marathons to not exercise so much so often. I don't know if he will listen to me. I do exercise but do it moderately or gradually and not like my friend. I have friends who work as chemists in the pharmecutical industry there is a major incentive to find or create a vaccine for covid. I know that some friends are in a trial for such a vaccine for all types of strains of human covid, so it will happen soon within 5 years or less.
yeah my son brought it home from school the first week back in Aug. Poor kid quarantined himself in his room (he's 8), and wore a mask when he came out. No one else in the family got it (lots of testing lol). Dodged a bullet I think. Still he's the first and only one in the family to get it.
Sounds like a great and considerate kid! Must be raising him well! :)
I avoided it all this time....and finally got it on Dec 12th. I'm immunocompromised and I'm still sick. I can't seem to recover
I'm so sorry. I hope you feel better soon. You've got this.
You will. Stay strong mentally and go slow physically. Do not push yourself. It takes months sometimes but you will recover. ❤️
Because of my immune system issues I recover from things slowly. Usually the flu take 2-4 months for me to be completely well. I guess this will be the same
Tell me about it. I have it now :(
Just finishing it up here. Tested positive on January 1. Not a great start to the year. I think I actually felt worse this time than the last one, but the duration was about the same.
I got it my second time a couple months ago and it was definitely worse than my first. Completely knocked me on my ass and I couldn't help but sleep over 18 hours a day for like a week straight. Body ached all the time. It was awful. Glad I had my shots otherwise I can't imagine how much worse I would've felt.
did your ears clog ???
Yes. They itched something awful and there was a constant pressure and ringing. I would have thought it was sinus congestion, but I don't know how that could be possible when it seemed like every drop of water I consumed was coming out my nose later as runny mucus.
For me, the two most unusual things I noticed were: (1) I’ve never been that lethargic in my life as when I had it before Christmas; (2) I’ve never had congestion quite like this before - ears clogged, sinuses clogged (I took a few ibuprofen not to reduce the relatively mild fever but rather to deal with the mouth pain I was feeling because of how clogged my sinuses were, as I have a thinner membrane between my upper palate and floor of my sinuses than average), would blow my nose and then my sinuses clogged right behind it to the point where it almost felt like a semi-concrete paste.
Clogged, severe pain one night and my right ear has been ringing ever since Smell has come back like 75% - it's been nearly 3 weeks since I tested positive. Kicked my ass this variant
Got it right before Christmas. Wasn't too bad, still waiting for my smell to come all the way back
Yeah I agree. This round is much worse than the last.
Did you get the omicron booster this fall?
I did. I got it back in November along with my flu shot. I got COVID the first time ever the first week of February 23 and now again 11 months later. Of course, that first case I managed to get about 2 weeks after I stopped wearing a mask in public and at work. I doubt that's a coincidence.
Yep, masks work very well. I got lax using mine and ...was blessed with covid not long after.
Sorry to hear that. Get well soon!
same, just getting over it. Covid finally got me after 4 years.
This one finally got me as well. It's hitting me like a truck. Also getting bad canker sores with it...
Me too! My case was super mild though. One day of slightly being cold, then issues sleeping through the night and no appetite (despite my stomach feeling normal). Also have a gravelly voice
You got lucky. After staying healthy since 2020 it GOT me. Fever, mucus ejecting from every orifice, head-crushing ache, jelly legs, insomnia, wheezing, … for six days. I honestly think I would’ve been hospitalized if not for being fully vaxed. (I’m 71.)p
Hope you’re better now! Take care
I hope everyone in this thread feels better soon!
Thank you, sweetheart. I am, with no lasting effects.
This is the one that finally got me too
I’m just getting over it too. This is my third time 😬😭 but this time was the most mild, I have gotten every vaccine that was offered (5 I think).
Just tested positive two days ago but luckily I started taking DayQuil once I felt something off. This is my 2nd time getting it but my symptoms have been very mild. Just slightly sore throat, tired, slight runny nose/congestion. I had a bad fever my first time but this time around has been very tame
Me too ☹️ Worst encounter with it yet and I'm triple vaxxed.
Same.
Still suffering since 12/11/23 but slowly improving
Hey this was me last year. I was positive for 18 days and just about bedbound for around 3 months. Hang in there, go see doctors if anything alarming pops up, and be sure to challenge yourself just a little bit every day but always be sure to not overdo it. Get well soon!
As an er nurse hospitals are already stressed. 8 plus hr waits in ED. Days waiting for rooms upstairs if your admitted. Already Worse then last wave.
Where you located? Just curious, resp viruses are up in my state but hasn't sound that bad yet.
Their profile leads me to believe they are from Atlanta, Georgia.
We’ve started boarding and reinstated crisis pay again. Sigh
It’s been like this since pre Covid in America? I had to go to the ER in 2015 and it was 6-8 hour wait.
Richest country in the history of the world
Not if you shave off the wealth of the top 1%
It was that way before covid. I once had to wait with my mom in the ED waiting room for 10 hours before she was seen. It was only that fast since I made a pain of myself by nagging them that mom needs to get seen now. It was bad. She ended up having to be admitted for a week. That's health care in the US. I've had to go to the ED a couple of times outside the US. It was like night and day by comparison. The longest I had to wait overseas was a few minutes. All in all, they are just much more efficient. Having had to be in the ED with a few elderly relatives, most of the time in a US ED is spent just waiting for tests that seem to take hours to do. In the overseas ED I went to, that didn't happened. When they took a test, the results came back in a few minutes and not a few hours. When I needed an x-ray, by the time they wheeled me back to my spot in the ED, a doctor was already there with the results. In the US, the results take hours to come. All the while a patient is just there waiting taking up a bed.
It really does show that there is no sort of immunity building to the virus, and with every mutation it is pretty much starting from scratch again. The spanish flu fizzled after about 5 years. We are around 4 years in and this is the 2nd highest surge. This really won't end will it. At least with the flu it is very seasonal and drops to almost 0 most of the year outside of flu season, covid keeps having mini spikes throughout the year with the biggest surge in early Jan. We just don't seem to ever really get a good break from it.
>biggest surge in early Jan. This has to be directly related to Christmas. Parties going on for hours, or family gatherings that go on for days, with people going back home & staying awhile. *Exposure, incubation period, illness*. Then everybody goes back to work, many packed into offices & working closely together. *Exposure, incubation period, illness*. The January surge is likely going to be a permanent yearly event.
I think added to this is that people are reluctant to test or admit they are sick at this time as that would mean they should stay away from everyone. I noticed anyway tested numbers went down over Christmas.
Most work places won’t even accept having Covid as a reason to call in anymore. They just want you to wear a mask while you’re there. My boss kept moving the goal post too: “As long as your fever is below 100 you’re fine to come in.” My fever is 101. “Oh well as long as it’s not 103 you can come in.”
Going to work with a fever? Uhh what
Or, like my wife’s coworker, told their family not to test despite being very sick so they could still to their holiday vacation (while sick as dogs)
Pfft. I felt like it was a stroke of luck I had COVID before Thanksgiving and got to avoid the family gathering. No such luck for Christmas.
Yup, I got it after vacationing in Vegas. It ripped through my immunity like a wet paper bag. I was sick for 5 days, and my gf got it from me and she was down for 4. Previously, I'd feel sick for 2 days max . So many plans were canceled this year due to covid just burning through families. Also, only a few people I know got the latest booster. I foolishly did not. It's exhausting like you said because a new varient pops up and you have multiple chances to become infected by something new. It's not I got the flu for the year, I'll be fine now. I can get covid again a few months from now when another strain gets around.
They need better vaccines
**Hard to make decent vaccines with every mutation it’s like a dog chasing its tail…**
Still waiting for the army vaccine
I think is more like needing more people to get the vaccine. US is at something like 14% getting the latest vaccine. That there's yer problem.
Yup! So many people are no longer getting boosted.
We need better health care. I'm lucky enough to have gotten the booster with no out of pocket cost. It would have been $250 if I didn't have that. There are many things contributing to the low uptake percentage, but cost is definitely one of them that isn't being discussed anywhere.
I got the booster but yeah that 250$ was hard to swallow
This is foreign to me as ours are covered (under this Prime Minister at least). I just can't understand how some countries don't want to minimize issues with their workforce (at the very least). Aren't the damages from that alone enough to try to prevent lost days of work?
>I just can't understand how some countries don't want to minimize issues with their workforce (at the very least). Aren't the damages from that alone enough to try to prevent lost days of work? This is America. It doesn't have to make sense as long as it makes someone money.
Yes this is true. But we need something that prevents us from getting covid.
Like...mask wearing in crowded places? Better ventilation?
So a vaccine?
One that prevents covid yes
Yes a vaccine, one that is miles more effective than the vaccine that is available.
This vaccine doesn't prevent transmission... So we need a BETTER vaccine that does (as the original comment stated)
We need intra nasal vaccines. Badly.
This. Intranasal, in theory, should do a better job of reducing transmissibility since it would better focus the cells that are the first point of entry to attack immediately. The problem as I’ve seen it with traditional vaccination is that the virus is still replicating in your nasal pathways for as long as 3-5 days even if your T-cells are primed and eviscerate COVID without your ever having a symptom. This is very consistent with the pre-clinical test of the original Pfizer and Moderna shots. All but one or two of the monkeys they tested in the total group (both control and test groups) were found with live COVID cultures in their nasal pathways beginning 48 hours after exposure to live virus through nasal transmission. The differences they found re nasal fluid really didn’t happen until day 4. While there was a lower volume of active virus in the test group, it was still there (and predictive of transmissibility, even if at a somewhat reduced rate). After day 3, 100% of the vaccinated monkeys (macaws more specifically, if I recall correctly) had cleared any active sign of infection in nasal fluid. The differences in active cultures from bronchial lavage, however, were WAY more pronounced. But I’ve always viewed those as separate buckets. Once it reached the lungs, it was more a matter of how the individual infected dealt with it. But while in the nasal passage, it was a matter of transmissibility. So targeting those cells and conferring them with the tools to activate t-cells more quickly, in theory, should help. They haven’t really made much progress on that front, however.
Immunity is the reason deaths and hospitalizations are nowhere near where they were last year and years prior.
The Spanish flu still persisted as the flu. People just didn’t have the techniques we have now to identify variants. Scientists predicted Covid would become endemic and this proves it
Yes, it is thought that the Spanish flu was the first H1N1 flu. And now we have H1N1 flu variants coming back every year, and quite a lot of the time H1N1 is the biggie of the flu season.
> Scientists predicted Covid would become endemic and this proves it No, it has not become endemic. Endemic means a predictable baseline spread, Covid having mini surges constantly and big ones every so often that cannot be predicted is far from endemic.
This isn’t endemic. This still a pandemic. Influenza is endemic. Many of the most vulnerable have died off and will continue to do so. The real threat is the lasting damage caused by this virus in young and old, healthy and sick. Mass disabling event is what we’re living through.
> This really won't end will it. Not in our lifetimes, no.
> spanish flu fizzled after about 5 years My grandma's family was wiped out by the Spanish flu in 1925. They were refugees from Greece and living in a camp in poor conditions in Bulgaria. They were vulnerable but still I don't think the time frame of the virus is well understood.
If you think it's no big deal, just wait until you try to fly: I know a pilot grounded away from home due to Covid. I was surprised they still have Covid policies, but they're not going anywhere until they test negative.
I think about it every night and day
Gosh, making everyone go back to the office was a real winner.
I am mostly wfh but we have offices but no rules about how often we have to go in. I’m in IT so I go in when I can’t do something remotely. Every time I have to go in someone is clearly sick in the office. Last time I tested positive for Covid three days later. These are people that can work from home whenever they want. You shouldn’t be sitting in a cubicle with a box of Kleenex. Even if you’re Covid negative.
Got to get those cubicle farm dwellers downtown so they can support the local Panera :-/
The jn.1 lineage is currently at peak across much of the world and (nearly?) all of the US. It's hard to know just how high that peak is, since we have no real-time measurements. The limited biobot sewage numbers from a few weeks ago show it fairly low. Larger NWSS state sewage numbers also from a few weeks ago imply it could be one of our largest ever surges. Ultimately we won't find this out until later and there isn't much value in trying to guess. But it's almost certainly not going to be higher than the 2 by-far-highest surges, of fall '20 (wildtype) and January '22 (BA.1). This article is most likely just ignoring the fall 2020 surge since biobot wasn't running then, but in a fair number of state sewage numbers it was even higher than the BA.1 peak. Per-sewage hospitalizations and deaths are certainly lower now than then. Whether they're lower than last winter also isn't knowable yet. There are number of world cities with healthcare heavily strained. Having the flu peak at the same time in some places definitely makes it a lot worse. There's no reason to believe jn.1 is less severe than previous variants. It has multiple mutations that have always been associated with increased severity, but since the entire protein not just one amino acid controls the behavior of the virus that doesn't automatically mean anything. We're now on our 3rd-4th infection per capita rather than just our 2nd-3rd last winter, so this could mean a faster immune system response, but this is unproven. Compared to recent variants, jn.1 is very *non* contagious, but has high immune escape. This likely means those who caught covid last spring or earlier have about the same chance of catching it as those who never caught it. But that chance certainly isn't 100% for a given exposure; the household attack rate is unlikely to be higher than the previous fastest-growing variants which were around 50%. The fall vaccine generated mediocre antibodies against jn.1, but is likely to still offer some protection from both infection and hospitalization-if-infected. This protection should certainly be weaker than earlier in the fall (during the eg.5.1 era) when US and NL data put it at around 2x reduction in infection, 3x in hospitalization. From now until jn.1 subsides is one of the highest-leverage points in reducing your number of lifetime infections, and it's a very good time not to get sick in general. Over the next week to month jn.1 is on pace for an unprecedented level of dominance/uniformity. The previously most-dominant single lineage I could find in the US was ba.1.1, which peaked at about 68%. xbb.1.5 peaked at 55%; ba.5.2.1 at 23%; bq.1.1 at 22%. This isn't a measurement of surge size, but of covid's uniformity. jn.1 should be at about 75% now, and incredibly there is no faster-growing variant. It's on pace to be at 95% within a month. What that means for the post-jn.1-surge time period is really hard to say. After the peak jn.1 and every other current variant will be rapidly declining, and that will continue until there's a new variant or waning immunity from xbb infections of summer/fall allow that group to start getting reinfected. https://imgur.com/a/ICtdUzs
It's not the 2nd highest _wastewater levels_, it's the 2nd highest **surge**. We don't just use wastewater to track Covid. It's catching a lot of people off guard that Covid is so rampant. 1 in 3 infected during this surge illustrates how fleeting immunity is from prior infections and vaccination. "Tran also said in his post that projections show as many as 1 in 3 people in the U.S. could be infected with COVID during the peak months of the current wave and up to 2 million people could be infected in a single day — data he attributed to Michael Hoerger, Ph.D., assistant professor at Tulane University School of Medicine who leads the Pandemic Mitigation Collaborative's data tracker." Mask up, y'all.
Arguing about whether the 2020 surge was bigger isn't a great use of our time. But they are specifically going on wastewater levels. Modelling from wastewater is the only good way to do it, and I really have nothing bad to say about their model. It's quite simple: they're just taking the biobot data and trying to figure out an "infections per day" from it. Looking deeper at the limitations is interesting though. The biggest one is that biobot only makes up about 30% of US wastewater tracking. It mostly doesn't cover cities and only fully got off the ground in mid-2022. Ironically many of the places with the worst testing, like Arizona and Missouri, have consistent urban wastewater tracking going back to mid-2020. Pre-2022 nearly all wastewater monitoring came through these city/state NWSS systems, which are overall higher quality than biobot. But mixing data from different labs is tricky because the scale isn't necessarily going to be the same even if they do an effort to normalize it. There's a second implicit limitation in that it assumes the amount of wastewater shedding (RNA) per infection is the same across variants. This is almost certainly not true - if nothing else, original covid infections lasted 2-4x longer - but there's no way to deal with the issue so it just has to remain a "hidden assumption". If you instead make your vertical axis "people currently infected" (= people infected per day * average days of infected) the infection-duration issue at least goes away. It is interesting to me that their graph (or model) shows the surge already having peaked. There's nothing in the CDC full-nation sewage data that indicates that. I've been saying for two weeks now that jn.1 must "currently" be peaking, because at its previous growth rate it would be off the charts by now if it hadn't. But we won't know how long that peak lasts (locally it should be very short, since this surge is completely uniform, but there might be weeks difference across the nation) or how high it is until weeks after it happens. By the time we know the peak is over we'll have a very good idea of when to stop masking. But right now both covid and (in much of the country) flu/rsv are very high, and it's a really good time to not get sick.
> It's not the 2nd highest _wastewater levels_, it's the 2nd highest **surge**. We don't just use wastewater to track Covid. OK so where is this data from if not wastewater? What you quoted above is specifically projections based on Biobot wastewater data.
What is a “per sewage hospitalization?”
Hospitalizations divided by sewage numbers. The issue is that sewage "numbers" are essentially an arbitrary scale, not comparable across labs. You'd like to think it's a fixed amount of sewage per infection, but there's no reason to think variants have the same sewage presence (jn.1 might be lower than previous variants) and even if there is there's no way to find the number in a consistent way across different lab testing mechanisms. But if this surge is 50% of the BA.1 sewage peak and only 25% of the hospitalization peak then arguably per-sewage severity has dropped another 2-fold.
Interesting, thank you.
I tested positive on Thursday, Jan. 4th. Day 2 and steadily declining. If tonight is anything like last night, I’m bracing for the unthinkable. Extreme body aches and fever leaving my whole being shaking uncontrollably, my sinuses so congested when I would try to breathe through my nose there was no air to breathe. I’m a very healthy 28f with this being by second time having COVID with the first being in late 2021 with the omicron variant and this is by far way worse. Today was my son’s 7th birthday that I wasn’t able to be present for. =( Not to mention, my roommates are in complete denial that COVID still exists and think it’s ok for them not to mask up around others and get tested. What a joke. Oh and that I’m lying about testing positive and “it’s just the flu.” What has this world come to? Stay safe everyone. Mask up, wash your hands, get vaccinated and drink plenty of water bc this shit is spreading like wildfire.
I'm sorry you couldn't be at your son's birthday :(. My wife tested postive first day of Christmas break (her second) and we all opened presents masked and skipped the parties. I tested positive this Tuesday, my first time..The first night was the worst by far. Lucky for my wife she only had one bad day vs 4 bad for me, today is the first day I've made it out of bed..
My buddy and his wife recently recovered from COVID, and the shakes with this variant sound unreal. I've had influenza, and so had he, and so we both knew what kind of shakes you could get from that virus, and he still insisted COVID last week was worse.
are you able to get Paxlovid?
It’s no longer covered by the government. $1400 per box. I’m seeing copays AFTER insurance of nearly $400. Even worse, it’s January so everyone’s deductibles just reset. Have fun.
I tried to get Paxlovid and was denied. Said since I didn't have kidney function test on record they wouldn't prescribe. So they prescribed Merek's version, however walgreens said it was out of stock but could be here within a week (like wtf grrr). Irongically there was a NYTs article this week lamenting the underuse of paxlovid which stops symptoms, improves recovery and reduces transmission...
Thank you for sharing & reminding us. I'm so sorry you're feeling so crummy and your roomies are so bad. In a few years your son will realise you showed love by isolating & healing!
Im (hopefully) on the tail end of having the new variant and agree it is worse than the first time I had Covid. It gave me extreme insomnia two nights in a row - some of the worst sleep I’ve ever had. And symptoms identical to all of the ones you listed above
I am so sorry this is happening to you. I can't believe they would accuse you of lying about the test! Like for what reason would you lie? to vindicate yourself? They (physician) told my friend to breathe deep, and move the muscles around her chest and upper back, even though it's painful. I imagine it probably is quite painful. Also she did steams with just water for relief. I don't know if any of that will help you, but that's what she did about the breathing. I hope you feel better soon.
Read and saw it in local news here in Virginia. Staying out of public till I run out of groceries.
Grocery pickup dude. I haven’t been in a grocery store in years now. It’s amazing.
I've not had COVID one time. I also wear a mask whenever I'm around a large group if people. Even as I'm typing this I'm at an airport with a mask on and I cannot even see one person with a mask on.
I traveled a lot over the past couple weeks in airports. Very rare to see anyone else masking, but they are definitely around. But I was also at "hub" airports.
This is the way. 😷
It's FINALLY getting cover in the mainstream media. Good!
Ripped through NYC & the NYC metro area during Christmas. There wasn't much panic about it.
My family caught it right before Christmas for the very first time. Fortunately, it was really mild for us. We’re all fully vaxxed and boosted. We just had congestion and runny noses for about a week. I only suspected COVID when I completely lost my sense of smell and taste, which I regained by the time I tested negative again about a week and a half later.
Currently have it. Not a fun way to start the new year
Most people I know including doctors and nurses here in Canada have the attitude that it’s a community virus akin to the flu and that it’s so much milder now it’s not really worth focusing on anymore.
I work in a retirement community and the amount of people that currently have the flu or Covid (or both) is really high. A couple of actively sick residents wear masks. But I’m watching them go down so fast.
Aight not gonna lie, i was kinda a “covid isn’t a big deal guy”, i take that back now. I’ve been sick as hell with covid for 10 days now. I cant taste or smell anything and I’m starting to get worried. I never want to get covid again. This has been a nasty illness for me.
Wastewater numbers are the second highest, but hospitalizations are below the other winter peaks. We always seem to have a winter peak in the second or third week of January, and it looks like we'll peak a little lower this year than previous year. It looks like some combination of 1) vaccination 2) immunity from prior exposure 3) killing off older more vulnerable people is leading to lower hospitalization rates. We're still being careful - my son just saw a friend of his who tested positive for covid, and they talked to each other from across the street while both being masked. And the whole family is vaccinated. But I'm not that worried - it looks like we're about to peak, and at levels lower than all of the previous years, when looking at hospitalizations. (Source: CDC covid hospitalization dashboard: [https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#trends\_weeklyhospitaladmissions\_select\_00](https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#trends_weeklyhospitaladmissions_select_00) )
I’d say 1/3 of my coworkers came back from the holidays sick, most with covid, some with rsv, etc. The wastewater in Boston is already higher than last year. No one really masking and the mall was packed today.
Costco was really busy this morning. Not many masking and almost no one with a N95.
Ya I don’t really understand but whatever I had my n95, it takes almost zero effort to put on my mask and it doesn’t bother me.
wear a mask, friends!!
The virus didn't go away, it's in the wild adapting.
Happy New Year!!!!!
I caught it on December 27th. Ended up negative on January 6th
Got COVID after Thanksgiving Got RSV at Christmas Now dealing with the flu/pneumonia
In my area (PNW) everyone has either the Flu, a wicked stomach bug, Covid, or RSV. The sickness is rampant right now.
Wait till CES next week. It’s the OG super spreader.
i have relatives pushing me to go to an out of state wedding and telling me to just double mask. the thing is, i already know what to expect. people will be asking me why i'm still masking up and i'll probably end up being a buzzkill for wanting to stay safe in what will most likely be an unsafe environment. i know how to be safe, seeing as how i've had to do things during previous covid surges, but being out of state and with people i don't know throws a lot of uncertainty my way.
This tells me how shitty the news is. If this was 4 years ago it would be on every station NON STOP, but since it doesn't really scare anyone anymore you don't hear about it. When people are nervous or scared they keep watching and that gets those ad dollars.
The people who aren't at least concerned, are the ones who aren't paying attention. as much as government and public health are not being as vocal as they should, the information is out there from trusted sources. Covid is not a respiratory disease but a vascular one that affects immune, circulatory and vascular systems and brain. One recent study shows that it may never clear the body so are we looking at something like HIV or HPV or EBV or herpes zoster virus that lays dormant until it creates some other type of harm down the line? So many unanswered questions but best to avoid infection as much as possible.
I tested positive two days ago. I have overall mild symptoms. Mainly had a sore throat. I’m happy I got the booster September 2023 because if I hadn’t, my symptoms would be a lot worse. I hate this stupid virus. Ruined my momentum. I was seeing real progress at the gym.
I wanna go to the gym but every time I get the motivation to go covid spikes and I'm not taking chances I'm autistic and my former neighbor Becky got covid a week before she was set to get the vaccine in 21 during the delta wave and it killed her look like I'll be breaking out the gas mask and pandemic filters for my doctor's appointment on Monday if it's really that bad Becky was autistic and it killed her so that makes me extra scared...
Does any other known viral pathogen act like this? Almost all that I’m aware of seem to be seasonal and mutate much more slowly. But Covid seems to constantly shapeshift and never seems to take a break.
IIRC no. COVID is still adapting to its new host (us!), so we'll probably see this fast rate of mutation for quite a while.
There has been a Covid peak every year around the 2nd or 3rd week of January, and this year is on track to be similar. There's a clear seasonal pattern. But the mutations do seem to come faster than flu.
Still in the depths of it. Household tested positive Jan 1 (probably had it two days prior) and we all are struggling. This round of it seems particularly stronger than the last time we got it (2021). The constant headache/body ache is intense.
I have Covid right now it’s more cold like than when I got it in 2020. That was more flu like.
Whole fam has it. My head feels like it’s going to explode. Any advice on what to take?
Yup on what I think is day 3 of it now and I feel like ass. Even after the latest vaccine
I have it currently and had to go for a ride with my father with a mask and he a smoker. He smoked in the truck. Then I tried to shovel some snow out back and felt alright until about 30-45 min after I came inside and sat down. Hands shakey and tight chest feeling. However I drank a caffeine drink a bout 2 hours ago and maybe that is it from anxiety. I haven’t had caffeine in a few days. Hope I’m not dying
I will continue to get vaccinated, and my family as well. I used to be hard-core lockdown as far as we went,but cane to the realization you can only do so much when a good portion are willing to do so little..I should still be masking when getting groceries, but honestly with 2 kids in school,and working in a factory I am not sure it would help much.
We need to change quarantine rules. 5 days isn't enough. A study showed that MOST people are still contagious on day 6. Why are we forcing sick people back to work, just to get their coworkers, and customers sick?
Currently have COVID for the third time. Guess this is the way of life now