Coronavirus

After 2.5 years of Neo-like dodging this thing, BA.5 was the one that finally got my wife last week. We sequestered her in COVID jail in the basement guest room and so far the rest of us seem to have been spared--the kids just got their boosters 3 weeks ago, maybe that helped, who even knows. Mostly we're just glad that for her it was 1 full day of fever and body aches and that she got it out of the way before the school year started.

Basically everyone I know had gotten it in the last three weeks. We haven't yet but it'll be soon.

As long as I don't get polio I guess we'll call it a win, it's 2022.

I recently attended two outdoor parties on the same day. At the graduation party, I had conversations with three different relatives who all had Covid in recent weeks. At the goth batday (birthday) party, nobody mentioned recent Covid, but I did hear mention of a small recent concert where allegedly half the people came down sick with Covid. Last week, I learned that 97% of the ICU beds in the metro area are occupied, mostly with Covid patients. So I am back to the social distancing until an updated vaccine or booster is available. One that actually works against Omicron variants. So tired of everybody pretending that it's over. If I die of Covid, then I die, but I don't want any part of Long Covid.

Tonight I have challenged Science itself, receiving the second and final Shingles vaccine, a flu shot, and the fancy new COVID booster with Omicron protection.

I'm hoping I don't feel like death itself tomorrow. I expect at best a sore shoulder, but that comes with the territory.


UPDATE: woke up with a fever, took some Tylenol, and generally just feel a bit "off" but otherwise okay. I guess I just handle vaccines well.

Man, you know how to party!

I got the new bi-valent anti-Omicron Covid booster two weeks ago and have stopped masking recently. A friend of mine who has a weak immune system recently caught Covid for the second time in five months. She recovered reasonably quickly the first time, and seems on track this time. She has gotten all the shots except for the new booster, which she was scheduled to get except that she got sick first.

I'm having several friends over for boardgames later this month. I am tempted to go out and celebrate Halloween this year, for the first time since 2019. One friend is throwing a party, and another is going bar-hopping in the hipster section of town. The local goth bar is like Halloween all year long, so their Halloween party is always great.

My county health department shared that we had more covid deaths this past summer than the previous two. That’s a good reminder that things are not over.

As of last week, only 7 million Americans have gotten the new bivalent Covid booster shot. That's about 2% of our population. Cases are surging in Europe again, which always seems to be followed by a surge in the U.S., especially now that people are spending more time indoors. The only bright spot that I see is that mask usage is way up at the local grocery store, and nearly 100% of the elderly are masking. Even a few of the knuckleheads at the local gym are wearing masks again. I might start wearing a mask again soon, even though I recently got the booster. Depends on how bad the fall surge gets.

Did y’all see where the Pfizer exec admitted that they had no idea if people would become immune, or still able to transmit, when they released their jab?

They literally just did what Andrew Wakefield could never have done at scale. They just undermined belief in the entire vaccination regime and gave the nut jobs real evidence about how two Presidents, Fauci, and “big pharma” lied to everyone.

If the old diseases like TB and Measles comes back in 10 years it will almost certainly be traced back to this moment.

As usual, the critical minds are able to understand that the primary role of vaccines is to protect the people that have them. If they also reduce, or prevent, transmission then that is a great bonus. This “bombshell” is not really what anyone who is pushing an anti-vaccine agenda is making it out to be.

And they are also spreading misinformation and a false narrative.



Regardless, the group of people who refused to get vaccinated — because they relied on those that did to not infect them — are the only ones at fault.

SuperflyPete wrote: Did y’all see where the Pfizer exec admitted that they had no idea if people would become immune, or still able to transmit, when they released their jab?

They literally just did what Andrew Wakefield could never have done at scale. They just undermined belief in the entire vaccination regime and gave the nut jobs real evidence about how two Presidents, Fauci, and “big pharma” lied to everyone.

If the old diseases like TB and Measles comes back in 10 years it will almost certainly be traced back to this moment.

The normal drug development cycle in the United States, including extensive clinical trials, ranges from 10 to 15 years.

Covid killed more than one million Americans, and more than half of those deaths happened in the first year of the pandemic. Waiting another decade for more decisive data would have been horrific.

Fuck the nutjobs. They weren't going to get vaccinated under any circumstances, and a few of them literally killed themselves with bleach or ivermectin. There were already a disturbing number of anti-vaxxers before Covid, typically associated with either the extreme left or right of the political spectrum.

Speaking of politics, there have now been some definitive studies linking political orientation with Covid death rates in the U.S. Here is a direct link to one:

www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w30512/w30512.pdf

I laughed when I read that. It’s as if we all get to watch natural selection in real time. The last time this happened this fast was just after the extinction event of the dinosaurs, as far as I can tell.

People are self/selecting. It was fine when it was just them, since the transmission isn’t stopped by this, but holy shit…if this causes the anti-vax folks to stop ALL vaccines writ large, that’s when shit gets real. At that point, their moronicism begins to fuck with all of us, and that can’t happen.

I'm back to only wearing a mask for the regular reasons (e.g. burglary, unlicensed surgery) but I wouldn't bat an eyelash if a guest requested that I mask up.

Honest question, why can't we treat the anti-vaxxers like guys on the internet who give themselves snakebites to develop a resistance to snake venom, and live and let die?

Virabhadra wrote: Honest question, why can't we treat the anti-vaxxers like guys on the internet who give themselves snakebites to develop a resistance to snake venom, and live and let die?

I thought we were already doing that.

Virabhadra wrote: I'm back to only wearing a mask for the regular reasons (e.g. burglary, unlicensed surgery) but I wouldn't bat an eyelash if a guest requested that I mask up.

Honest question, why can't we treat the anti-vaxxers like guys on the internet who give themselves snakebites to develop a resistance to snake venom, and live and let die?

Because giving themselves snakebites has a zero-percent chance of making the folks behind them at Costco sick.