"Our failures here could last a generation."
April 12, 2023 2:27 PM Subscribe
Three Years Later, Covid-19 Is Still a Health Threat. Journalism Needs to Reflect That. Outlets like The New Yorker, The Washington Post, and NPR, to name just a few, have amplified voices and arguments that helped create a narrative that not only pathologizes those who remain cautious about the disease, but also fails to adequately convey the risks associated with Covid such that many people are unwittingly taking on potentially lifelong risks.
it's wild how federal and local gov'ts have just stopped covid 19 messaging, or doing much of anything special and it's now just another disease. Close to 2000 people are still dying of it every week, and I don't even know if there's going to be yearly boosters or not.
posted by dis_integration at 3:03 PM on April 12, 2023 [50 favorites]
posted by dis_integration at 3:03 PM on April 12, 2023 [50 favorites]
Oh, I do not have any faith that we will weather the next pandemic--and yes, there will be a next one and probably soon given climate change and destruction of animal habitiats--any better. If we can't care for each other because of one virus, then we can't care for each other for the next one down the pike. We can play at caring for each other because it feels novel and different, but once it hits inconvenience, then pfffft, get back to work, suckers.
posted by Kitteh at 3:12 PM on April 12, 2023 [31 favorites]
posted by Kitteh at 3:12 PM on April 12, 2023 [31 favorites]
I think people don't realize that the lockdowns at the beginning of this whole thing were that the previous SARS virus killed something like 2/3 of the people who got it, and they didn't know what this one was like.
The lesson to be gained from this is we need MUCH better public education about public health and how unfolding new disease vectors work. There was too much stated with too much certainty early on by authorities that weakened their authority when they issued new certainties later. Granted, the new information was because we'd learned new things, but they'd Said Something Different Before. And every instance of that was a little pickaxe blow against the foundation of public trust.
We need to teach 1) better messaging (for certain) but also 2) how these unfolding public health situations work so the populace will more surf the changing information rather than fighting it.
posted by hippybear at 3:28 PM on April 12, 2023 [25 favorites]
The lesson to be gained from this is we need MUCH better public education about public health and how unfolding new disease vectors work. There was too much stated with too much certainty early on by authorities that weakened their authority when they issued new certainties later. Granted, the new information was because we'd learned new things, but they'd Said Something Different Before. And every instance of that was a little pickaxe blow against the foundation of public trust.
We need to teach 1) better messaging (for certain) but also 2) how these unfolding public health situations work so the populace will more surf the changing information rather than fighting it.
posted by hippybear at 3:28 PM on April 12, 2023 [25 favorites]
instagram delivered some british comedian into my feed. he asked the crowd, "Do you all think we overreacted to COVID-19?" and the crowd roared its agreement.
"Yeah, a lot of the survivors think so," he said .
posted by entropone at 3:35 PM on April 12, 2023 [244 favorites]
"Yeah, a lot of the survivors think so," he said .
posted by entropone at 3:35 PM on April 12, 2023 [244 favorites]
OK Boomer has taken a very dark turn.
posted by srboisvert at 3:36 PM on April 12, 2023 [8 favorites]
posted by srboisvert at 3:36 PM on April 12, 2023 [8 favorites]
"… but they'd Said Something Different Before."
Seems to me that, in a rapidly evolving situation, there is little alternative other than to have said nothing.
posted by bz at 3:37 PM on April 12, 2023 [9 favorites]
Seems to me that, in a rapidly evolving situation, there is little alternative other than to have said nothing.
posted by bz at 3:37 PM on April 12, 2023 [9 favorites]
Seems to me that, in a rapidly evolving situation, there is little alternative other than to have said nothing.
There are ways to say things that don't seem as absolute as what was going around in Apr/May 2020, and also ways to prep the audience so they don't interpret things as being absolute when they aren't meant as such.
I think both of these weaknesses played into the situation we've ended up with.
posted by hippybear at 3:40 PM on April 12, 2023 [20 favorites]
There are ways to say things that don't seem as absolute as what was going around in Apr/May 2020, and also ways to prep the audience so they don't interpret things as being absolute when they aren't meant as such.
I think both of these weaknesses played into the situation we've ended up with.
posted by hippybear at 3:40 PM on April 12, 2023 [20 favorites]
The author of this piece is one of my favorite Twitter follows. Specializes in climate, hates mayo. (I love mayo, however)
posted by armacy at 3:43 PM on April 12, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by armacy at 3:43 PM on April 12, 2023 [2 favorites]
Seems to me that, in a rapidly evolving situation, there is little alternative other than to have said nothing.
They didn't have to say nothing. But it sure would have helped if major groups didn't explicitly lie about how COVID was transmitted to discourage mask hoarding. I'm sure it seemed like a good idea at the time, but for fucks sake, they didn't have to just hand the cult thinking idiots weapons to use against them.
posted by tclark at 3:59 PM on April 12, 2023 [34 favorites]
They didn't have to say nothing. But it sure would have helped if major groups didn't explicitly lie about how COVID was transmitted to discourage mask hoarding. I'm sure it seemed like a good idea at the time, but for fucks sake, they didn't have to just hand the cult thinking idiots weapons to use against them.
posted by tclark at 3:59 PM on April 12, 2023 [34 favorites]
Goddddddddd……… I miss my friends. I miss concerts and plays. I miss restaurants. I miss dancing.
posted by seanmpuckett at 4:00 PM on April 12, 2023 [38 favorites]
posted by seanmpuckett at 4:00 PM on April 12, 2023 [38 favorites]
“So, if you believe the science, it doesn’t argue only for getting vaccinated. It also argues for living your life in a way that reflects that you’ve been vaccinated.”
Ah yes, "Drive like you're wearing your seatbelt."
posted by entropone at 4:00 PM on April 12, 2023 [28 favorites]
Ah yes, "Drive like you're wearing your seatbelt."
posted by entropone at 4:00 PM on April 12, 2023 [28 favorites]
It boggles my mind how many people really seem to have learned no lessons from the COVID-19 pandemic experience. Yeah, it could be worse, like the plague or something. Sure. Maybe you and all your friends got COVID and feel no worse for it. But like - you're still not going to wash your hands after using the toilet in a public restroom? You're going to just blow your nose at the dinner table and keep right on eating with your snot hands? You're going to be on public transit with a nasty cough and not wear even a basic surgical mask?
This is just everyday hygiene stuff that I had felt so optimistic early on during the lockdown days that American society at large was going to adapt to. But like so many other things, everything about COVID had to be polarized, and you're either all this or all that.
posted by wondermouse at 4:04 PM on April 12, 2023 [56 favorites]
This is just everyday hygiene stuff that I had felt so optimistic early on during the lockdown days that American society at large was going to adapt to. But like so many other things, everything about COVID had to be polarized, and you're either all this or all that.
posted by wondermouse at 4:04 PM on April 12, 2023 [56 favorites]
Article seems to ignore the fact that the elected (though with a minority) President of the United States was one of the main people minimizing and lying about the pandemic, as well as multiple other elected and non-elected government officials not in the CDC.
Ctrl-F "Trump", "President", "DeSantis", "Governor" - no matches.
posted by meowzilla at 4:09 PM on April 12, 2023 [36 favorites]
Ctrl-F "Trump", "President", "DeSantis", "Governor" - no matches.
posted by meowzilla at 4:09 PM on April 12, 2023 [36 favorites]
Article seems to ignore the fact that the elected (though with a minority) President of the United States was one of the main people minimizing and lying about the pandemic, as well as multiple other elected and non-elected government officials not in the CDC.
Are there actually any countries whose populace is taking COVID any more seriously than the US is right now?
posted by BungaDunga at 4:13 PM on April 12, 2023 [3 favorites]
Are there actually any countries whose populace is taking COVID any more seriously than the US is right now?
posted by BungaDunga at 4:13 PM on April 12, 2023 [3 favorites]
The president now is Joe Biden??
posted by latkes at 4:14 PM on April 12, 2023 [6 favorites]
posted by latkes at 4:14 PM on April 12, 2023 [6 favorites]
Please keep in mind that the source, the Nieman Reports is
posted by MrVisible at 4:21 PM on April 12, 2023 [14 favorites]
a website and quarterly print publication covering thought leadership in journalism. Its editorial mission mirrors that of the Foundation itself: “to promote and elevate the standards of journalism.”So if the author is focused on journalistic responsibility, that's kind of their thing.
posted by MrVisible at 4:21 PM on April 12, 2023 [14 favorites]
I do live my life in a way that reflects that I've been vaccinated.
And that reflects that I know that even though I've been vaccinated, I can still catch the current strains or the next ones, I can feel like liquid shit if I catch it, I can infect other people and maybe not even know that I'm doing it, and that I could have long-term complications from it.
I mean, I'm at five shots now -- original two, two boosters, bivalent booster -- and I'm happy about that and I wouldn't have it any other way. I'll get the sixth when/if it's called for.
But my wife and I still avoid eating in restaurants, wear masks in public places, and nod at the other masked people we see. You get it, too, we each think. Good luck.
I'm much safer with the shots than without them. But I'm not safe.
posted by delfin at 4:26 PM on April 12, 2023 [77 favorites]
And that reflects that I know that even though I've been vaccinated, I can still catch the current strains or the next ones, I can feel like liquid shit if I catch it, I can infect other people and maybe not even know that I'm doing it, and that I could have long-term complications from it.
I mean, I'm at five shots now -- original two, two boosters, bivalent booster -- and I'm happy about that and I wouldn't have it any other way. I'll get the sixth when/if it's called for.
But my wife and I still avoid eating in restaurants, wear masks in public places, and nod at the other masked people we see. You get it, too, we each think. Good luck.
I'm much safer with the shots than without them. But I'm not safe.
posted by delfin at 4:26 PM on April 12, 2023 [77 favorites]
I appreciate MrVisible’s point.
Journalists report that Covid numbers are dropping but fail to put the decline in the proper context, adds Tran. “The cases are dropping from extremely high to very high. We still have a high baseline of Covid throughout the year, basically,” he says.
My patience has worn very thin for this kind of “if” lacking a “then.” Ditto the people I know who say “the pandemic never ended!” We are where we are, so what next? I know people still living like it’s summer ‘20, or sometimes summer ‘21, and I don’t know what their endgame is. (To the best of my knowledge, I’m not talking folks who are immunocompromised, etc. I also have friends with serious health problems who are still masking hard.)
I, too, continue to mask, but it is getting harder and fucking harder when I’m in environments where I am literally the only person (in 10, in 100, in 1,000) wearing a mask. I continue to do it because I don’t want goddamn complications, but I’m currently doing some traveling in areas where few or no people are wearing masks. In South Carolina, I talked with one guy in a mask… who undergoing cancer treatment. Today in Alabama, I passed a woman in the store who was masking and appeared next on the Grim Reaper’s list.
It’s good to think about the future, but I feel like this situation has given us an all too clear demonstration of the baseline response. For a better response from journalists next time, I’d expect we’d have to have a robust or strengthening journalism environment… and that doesn’t generally seem to be the case.
posted by cupcakeninja at 4:29 PM on April 12, 2023 [18 favorites]
Journalists report that Covid numbers are dropping but fail to put the decline in the proper context, adds Tran. “The cases are dropping from extremely high to very high. We still have a high baseline of Covid throughout the year, basically,” he says.
My patience has worn very thin for this kind of “if” lacking a “then.” Ditto the people I know who say “the pandemic never ended!” We are where we are, so what next? I know people still living like it’s summer ‘20, or sometimes summer ‘21, and I don’t know what their endgame is. (To the best of my knowledge, I’m not talking folks who are immunocompromised, etc. I also have friends with serious health problems who are still masking hard.)
I, too, continue to mask, but it is getting harder and fucking harder when I’m in environments where I am literally the only person (in 10, in 100, in 1,000) wearing a mask. I continue to do it because I don’t want goddamn complications, but I’m currently doing some traveling in areas where few or no people are wearing masks. In South Carolina, I talked with one guy in a mask… who undergoing cancer treatment. Today in Alabama, I passed a woman in the store who was masking and appeared next on the Grim Reaper’s list.
It’s good to think about the future, but I feel like this situation has given us an all too clear demonstration of the baseline response. For a better response from journalists next time, I’d expect we’d have to have a robust or strengthening journalism environment… and that doesn’t generally seem to be the case.
posted by cupcakeninja at 4:29 PM on April 12, 2023 [18 favorites]
Are there actually any countries whose populace is taking COVID any more seriously than the US is right now?
There's a very small number of countries, all in Asia, where masking is much more of a norm. More to the point, though, is that there are a bunch of countries that did and continue to do much better than the US at getting people vaccinated and providing basic health care. There's also plenty of countries that gamed/falsified mortality and caseload numbers so they look good on paper, so it's hard to directly compare in a lot of cases.
Mostly, the US is a massively unequal society, and one of the ways that is expressed is through unequal health outcomes and opportunities. And, rightly or wrongly (I would argue wrongly), as a society we are ok with those unequal outcomes and higher costs. Those memes showing a photo of fighter jets with a caption like "this is why the US doesn't have universal healthcare" (example) aren't totally wrong, though as a country we're wealthy enough to have both the huge military and health care. We have the means to do better, but overall we don't want to.
This is an interesting article, thank you for posting it.
posted by Dip Flash at 4:34 PM on April 12, 2023 [21 favorites]
There's a very small number of countries, all in Asia, where masking is much more of a norm. More to the point, though, is that there are a bunch of countries that did and continue to do much better than the US at getting people vaccinated and providing basic health care. There's also plenty of countries that gamed/falsified mortality and caseload numbers so they look good on paper, so it's hard to directly compare in a lot of cases.
Mostly, the US is a massively unequal society, and one of the ways that is expressed is through unequal health outcomes and opportunities. And, rightly or wrongly (I would argue wrongly), as a society we are ok with those unequal outcomes and higher costs. Those memes showing a photo of fighter jets with a caption like "this is why the US doesn't have universal healthcare" (example) aren't totally wrong, though as a country we're wealthy enough to have both the huge military and health care. We have the means to do better, but overall we don't want to.
This is an interesting article, thank you for posting it.
posted by Dip Flash at 4:34 PM on April 12, 2023 [21 favorites]
Are there actually any countries whose populace is taking COVID any more seriously than the US is right now?
Over the last year available from Johns Hopkins (until they discontinued their tracker March 9th), COVID deaths were around 49 per 100K in the US; this is similar to the UK and South Korea. Italy, Germany and Australia had deaths around 55 per 100K; meanwhile Spain, France, Japan and Canada had deaths around 38 per 100K. Those seem like smallish numbers; if the US had the 55/100K rate, that would represent 20,226 extra deaths since March 2022. If the US could have achieved the 38/100K rate, that represents 31,135 unnecessary deaths since March 2022.
Note that 49/100K is a national average; there are states like CO, IL, NJ, OH and, yes, TX that have been in the low 30s over the past year, and states like AZ, MI and FL have been in the 70ish range. If those last 3 states had the average COVID death rate of the rest of the country, there would be 10,014 fewer COVID deaths.
posted by Superilla at 4:46 PM on April 12, 2023 [10 favorites]
Over the last year available from Johns Hopkins (until they discontinued their tracker March 9th), COVID deaths were around 49 per 100K in the US; this is similar to the UK and South Korea. Italy, Germany and Australia had deaths around 55 per 100K; meanwhile Spain, France, Japan and Canada had deaths around 38 per 100K. Those seem like smallish numbers; if the US had the 55/100K rate, that would represent 20,226 extra deaths since March 2022. If the US could have achieved the 38/100K rate, that represents 31,135 unnecessary deaths since March 2022.
Note that 49/100K is a national average; there are states like CO, IL, NJ, OH and, yes, TX that have been in the low 30s over the past year, and states like AZ, MI and FL have been in the 70ish range. If those last 3 states had the average COVID death rate of the rest of the country, there would be 10,014 fewer COVID deaths.
posted by Superilla at 4:46 PM on April 12, 2023 [10 favorites]
I disagree with the assertion that lockdowns were so extreme early on bc we were anticipating 2/3 mortality. I recall watching Italy's numbers before a DC trip I declined in late March due to infections starting to climb in the states. We knew then it was ~1-3% without effective treatment, which enough of us agreed was bad. Now the rate is still ~1% in countries like the US, which is still bad.
We knew it was bad, and enough people agreed it was bad, so we treated it as bad. Now what's "bad" is different because it doesn't line up with standard US policy of ruthless exploitation of labor while NGAF about anyone without ownership interests of valuable assets.
And I haven't even started in on the disabling effects of this virus nor the effect on the lives of the disabled. Because I'm tired. But it's still all bad.
posted by CPAnarchist at 4:48 PM on April 12, 2023 [55 favorites]
We knew it was bad, and enough people agreed it was bad, so we treated it as bad. Now what's "bad" is different because it doesn't line up with standard US policy of ruthless exploitation of labor while NGAF about anyone without ownership interests of valuable assets.
And I haven't even started in on the disabling effects of this virus nor the effect on the lives of the disabled. Because I'm tired. But it's still all bad.
posted by CPAnarchist at 4:48 PM on April 12, 2023 [55 favorites]
If those last 3 states had the average COVID death rate of the rest of the country, there would be 10,014 fewer COVID deaths.
That's not really what I'm saying. I'm saying that I can't think of any country, state, or city that is still COVID-cautious, either on the level of government policy or the population at large, regardless of politics. It seems to be more or less a global reversion to the status quo ante.
This also makes it hard to blame stuff on the CDC, or on Trump, or on any particular national institution, when basically no polities have maintained significant COVID caution.
posted by BungaDunga at 4:58 PM on April 12, 2023 [22 favorites]
That's not really what I'm saying. I'm saying that I can't think of any country, state, or city that is still COVID-cautious, either on the level of government policy or the population at large, regardless of politics. It seems to be more or less a global reversion to the status quo ante.
This also makes it hard to blame stuff on the CDC, or on Trump, or on any particular national institution, when basically no polities have maintained significant COVID caution.
posted by BungaDunga at 4:58 PM on April 12, 2023 [22 favorites]
What's going to be interesting, in a "Mussolini was interesting" kind of way, is the reaction the next time that a pandemic wave (whether it's COVID 7.0 or something quite different) forces national or regional institutions to take it seriously and they declare, "Um, hey, everybody, we had a year or two in which we collectively took our feet off of the PPE gas pedals, but it's time to be careful again. We mean it."
And it'll start from a baseline where a disturbing percentage of our population is not only ambivalent about compliance but vehemently opposed to it, some of whom are still trying to have the people who tried to protect us last time prosecuted, tried and executed.
I mean, we had a Congress full of dingbats in 2019, too. But the Rand Pauls of the world were not empowered to the extent that they are now.
posted by delfin at 5:09 PM on April 12, 2023 [27 favorites]
And it'll start from a baseline where a disturbing percentage of our population is not only ambivalent about compliance but vehemently opposed to it, some of whom are still trying to have the people who tried to protect us last time prosecuted, tried and executed.
I mean, we had a Congress full of dingbats in 2019, too. But the Rand Pauls of the world were not empowered to the extent that they are now.
posted by delfin at 5:09 PM on April 12, 2023 [27 favorites]
Now the rate is still ~1% in countries like the US, which is still bad.
Maybe I'm missing something, but this data seems to reflect the entire course of the pandemic, and thus to be of limited use in determining the ongoing danger of the threat.
I find it very tiring not to be able to rely on factual claims from the ongoing-catastrophe wing, and I'll leave it at that.
posted by praemunire at 5:14 PM on April 12, 2023 [34 favorites]
Maybe I'm missing something, but this data seems to reflect the entire course of the pandemic, and thus to be of limited use in determining the ongoing danger of the threat.
I find it very tiring not to be able to rely on factual claims from the ongoing-catastrophe wing, and I'll leave it at that.
posted by praemunire at 5:14 PM on April 12, 2023 [34 favorites]
>”There are ways to say things that don't seem as absolute as what was going around in Apr/May 2020, and also ways to prep the audience so they don't interpret things as being absolute when they aren't meant as such.”
Yes, ideally it should always be acceptable to give a cautious or condition dependent statement when events are still evolving
But when you’re up against the bullhorns of Donald Trump, Fox News, hostile state disinformation and QAnon?
Research is very clear about the fact that, for the vast majority of people, hedged statements are immediately suspicious and confident statements, even fantastical ones, are easily believed. “Well, we think, maybe…” is not going to cut it. In the context of the time, public health information was always going to be cut to ribbons by straight up lies and disinformation
And that’s exactly what’s still happening in the rewriting of history to make the early interventions look deceitful. The anti-science right wing is playing the long game and priming the well for next time
The inevitable next pandemic will doom us at this rate. Heck, the extremist Mises Caucus Libertarians pooled their money to create a think tank solely dedicated to ensuring that the next pandemic kills as many poor people as possible: the Brownstone Institute
posted by Skwirl at 5:18 PM on April 12, 2023 [17 favorites]
Yes, ideally it should always be acceptable to give a cautious or condition dependent statement when events are still evolving
But when you’re up against the bullhorns of Donald Trump, Fox News, hostile state disinformation and QAnon?
Research is very clear about the fact that, for the vast majority of people, hedged statements are immediately suspicious and confident statements, even fantastical ones, are easily believed. “Well, we think, maybe…” is not going to cut it. In the context of the time, public health information was always going to be cut to ribbons by straight up lies and disinformation
And that’s exactly what’s still happening in the rewriting of history to make the early interventions look deceitful. The anti-science right wing is playing the long game and priming the well for next time
The inevitable next pandemic will doom us at this rate. Heck, the extremist Mises Caucus Libertarians pooled their money to create a think tank solely dedicated to ensuring that the next pandemic kills as many poor people as possible: the Brownstone Institute
posted by Skwirl at 5:18 PM on April 12, 2023 [17 favorites]
We are where we are, so what next? I know people still living like it’s summer ‘20, or sometimes summer ‘21, and I don’t know what their endgame is.
There is no endgame. Unless there's some miraculous medical discovery in vaccination that makes covid-19 sterilize so we can't get it while vaccinated, or there's a cure for long covid, or anything else that probably won't happen in our lifetimes, this is as good as it gets until the next pandemic hits. This shit will never, ever end for real. The people who are still just as at risk as they ever were probably don't get to wind down precautions and throw masks to the wind and be freeeeeeeeeee like it's 2019.
posted by jenfullmoon at 5:23 PM on April 12, 2023 [63 favorites]
There is no endgame. Unless there's some miraculous medical discovery in vaccination that makes covid-19 sterilize so we can't get it while vaccinated, or there's a cure for long covid, or anything else that probably won't happen in our lifetimes, this is as good as it gets until the next pandemic hits. This shit will never, ever end for real. The people who are still just as at risk as they ever were probably don't get to wind down precautions and throw masks to the wind and be freeeeeeeeeee like it's 2019.
posted by jenfullmoon at 5:23 PM on April 12, 2023 [63 favorites]
The president now is Joe Biden??
Over 74 million Americans voted for Trump in 2020, and presumably agree with the way he handled the pandemic. Just because Trump did not get reelected does not mean that these voters changed their minds.
posted by meowzilla at 5:29 PM on April 12, 2023 [6 favorites]
Over 74 million Americans voted for Trump in 2020, and presumably agree with the way he handled the pandemic. Just because Trump did not get reelected does not mean that these voters changed their minds.
posted by meowzilla at 5:29 PM on April 12, 2023 [6 favorites]
And there are so many levels beyond that of the Presidency to consider. Whether your statehouse is full of vaccine/PPE/precaution skeptics, for instance. Whether your town is. Whether the stores you shop at and the markets you frequent will mandate any new precautions, either for their staff or for the customers. Whether where you work will. What will happen when one level of government says "let's turn the precaution machine back on" and other levels say "over our dead bodies."
Buckle up, hope for it to happen later rather than sooner, and friends don't let friends watch Newsmax.
posted by delfin at 5:44 PM on April 12, 2023 [6 favorites]
Buckle up, hope for it to happen later rather than sooner, and friends don't let friends watch Newsmax.
posted by delfin at 5:44 PM on April 12, 2023 [6 favorites]
And yet there's still hardly anything for those of us who've had COVID, especially multiple-COVID survivors and Long COVID survivors. I couldn't even access Paxlovid because here in Australia I was deemed "too young" (despite having multiple comorbidities as well as having gotten it multiple times). I'm still waiting out the period before I can get my 4th booster. But yeah, once you get COVID, no matter how hard it hits you - you're on your own. The only people I've seen advocate and work on post-COVID care are either other COVID survivors or the odd researcher.
I can't be bothered to get upset at people masking/not masking - it's exhausting to think that 99% of the people around me want me dead because they're not masking at that exact moment. The ones that get my "they want me dead" energy are the people that have straight up told me "we don't expend any energy on helping people with COVID because it's too late for you" - that this is coming from fellow disabled people is especially heartbreaking.
COVID got treated like a crime from Day 1. I saw people call for manslaughter charges for people who (often unwittingly, since testing was very difficult to access for way too long) were COVID vectors - forgetting that being a COVID vector usually means you are dealing with being sick right now. I strongly feel like this criminalisation of COVID, without nearly equivalent energy being put into COVID recovery and care, has led us to today, where it is still deadly despite all of the promises of "we'll use this lockdown time to beef up our healthcare system!!".
posted by creatrixtiara at 5:55 PM on April 12, 2023 [8 favorites]
I can't be bothered to get upset at people masking/not masking - it's exhausting to think that 99% of the people around me want me dead because they're not masking at that exact moment. The ones that get my "they want me dead" energy are the people that have straight up told me "we don't expend any energy on helping people with COVID because it's too late for you" - that this is coming from fellow disabled people is especially heartbreaking.
COVID got treated like a crime from Day 1. I saw people call for manslaughter charges for people who (often unwittingly, since testing was very difficult to access for way too long) were COVID vectors - forgetting that being a COVID vector usually means you are dealing with being sick right now. I strongly feel like this criminalisation of COVID, without nearly equivalent energy being put into COVID recovery and care, has led us to today, where it is still deadly despite all of the promises of "we'll use this lockdown time to beef up our healthcare system!!".
posted by creatrixtiara at 5:55 PM on April 12, 2023 [8 favorites]
It's tempting to blame this on Trump and the republicans, and they definitely fucked up, but Biden hasn't been much better, really, and just two days ago signed a bill ending the COVID-19 emergency. It's a bipartisan fuckup, a surrender to commercial interests who just want people to go back to using commercial real estate, going to malls, and spending money like before, and no one in power has got the backbone to stand up to them.
posted by Joakim Ziegler at 6:16 PM on April 12, 2023 [39 favorites]
posted by Joakim Ziegler at 6:16 PM on April 12, 2023 [39 favorites]
(And a similar dynamic has been at play in most other countries. Almost all European countries decided to just let it rip after they'd gotten most people vaccinated, with predictable results.)
posted by Joakim Ziegler at 6:18 PM on April 12, 2023 [3 favorites]
posted by Joakim Ziegler at 6:18 PM on April 12, 2023 [3 favorites]
a surrender to commercial interests who just want people to go back to using commercial real estate, going to malls, and spending money like before
That's part of it, but let's be honest: almost everyone wants to do that, too. People love going out. They love spending money. They like going to the mall. They like going to the bar. People will go back to that stuff anyway, and will pressure governments to let that happen. You can convince people to give that stuff up for a while, if they're sufficiently scared and/or trusting of authority, but that's not going to stop people wanting to go out to the bar again when they stop being quite so scared and/or trusting.
What they don't like doing is going into the office, and attempts to force office workers back in haven't been totally effective. China had actual grassroots protests over their Covid Zero policy; they weren't being egged on by corporate media or whatever, they were tired of COVID restrictions.
posted by BungaDunga at 6:30 PM on April 12, 2023 [39 favorites]
That's part of it, but let's be honest: almost everyone wants to do that, too. People love going out. They love spending money. They like going to the mall. They like going to the bar. People will go back to that stuff anyway, and will pressure governments to let that happen. You can convince people to give that stuff up for a while, if they're sufficiently scared and/or trusting of authority, but that's not going to stop people wanting to go out to the bar again when they stop being quite so scared and/or trusting.
What they don't like doing is going into the office, and attempts to force office workers back in haven't been totally effective. China had actual grassroots protests over their Covid Zero policy; they weren't being egged on by corporate media or whatever, they were tired of COVID restrictions.
posted by BungaDunga at 6:30 PM on April 12, 2023 [39 favorites]
In the UK, the government have now stopped requiring COVID testing for health workers even if symptomatic. This apparently includes most social care situations. The government is no longer providing free tests to health workers.
They also (in mid-February) made boosters largely unavailable. Healthy under-50s here were never able to get the bivalent booster in the first place (I think), but it's now impossible to get one unless you're over 75 and/or in a super-vulnerable category.
As of 24 March the Office of National Statistics has stopped collecting data on COVID, though all 3 metrics (infections, hospitalisations, deaths) were rising when they stopped. There are still figures on the government's site for now, but not as well visualised, and... they're government figures, not from an independent body.
So not only have the government scrapped our protective measures, they've taken away much of our ability to assess our risk and protect ourselves.
posted by Pallas Athena at 6:38 PM on April 12, 2023 [28 favorites]
They also (in mid-February) made boosters largely unavailable. Healthy under-50s here were never able to get the bivalent booster in the first place (I think), but it's now impossible to get one unless you're over 75 and/or in a super-vulnerable category.
As of 24 March the Office of National Statistics has stopped collecting data on COVID, though all 3 metrics (infections, hospitalisations, deaths) were rising when they stopped. There are still figures on the government's site for now, but not as well visualised, and... they're government figures, not from an independent body.
So not only have the government scrapped our protective measures, they've taken away much of our ability to assess our risk and protect ourselves.
posted by Pallas Athena at 6:38 PM on April 12, 2023 [28 favorites]
“And then suddenly, the narrative shifted where that became something that’s ‘unfavorable’ even though polls still show that masking and other precautions like that are still popular and understood in shared public spaces, like transit and healthcare. There’s still public support, but it’s not being reported on in that way. More often it’s being reported on as something that support is fading, or unfeasible or not politically viable when it absolutely is. But those narratives are self-perpetuating, and they feed into policy.”As someone who's both older and who has comorbidities, as well as being immunocompromised, this is what's blown my mind the most. There's just no help out there for me. I've been searching for a remote job desperately for the past few months; having a job where I can remain isolated may literally save my life, but I'm competing against hundreds of healthy young people without spotty work histories for every position, and I don't have much of a chance. There are no programs I can find that can help me, there is no hotline I can call to get help. If I get a public-facing job it's just a matter of time before I become severely ill, which is the best possible outcome. But I've got to make a living somehow.
I'm still trying to come to terms with my limitations. I'll never go to a concert again. I'll be in danger if I ever have to travel, for the rest of my life. I'll be massively limited in my career options, from now on. And there's no recourse, no safety net, no help on the way, no mercy. This is my life now, and if I can't find a way to cope, well, sucks to be me.
It's deeply disturbing that 'throw the sick and the old to the wolves' is the official position of our government. That's a very disturbing precedent to set.
posted by MrVisible at 6:49 PM on April 12, 2023 [60 favorites]
We are where we are, so what next? I know people still living like it’s summer ‘20, or sometimes summer ‘21, and I don’t know what their endgame is.
My partner is immunocompromised. Barring scientific breakthroughs, we figure we'll never eat in a restaurant or hang out in a bar again. We'll minimize time indoors in public places as much as possible, and we'll stay masked while in public. She works in healthcare, and her workplace considered easing up on requiring patients to be masked. She would have quit if they had. As far as we're concerned, yes, the pandemic never ended. It's just here now. The endgame is "continue to try to not get sick while most everyone else has stopped caring about the spread of COVID".
posted by The Great Big Mulp at 6:54 PM on April 12, 2023 [45 favorites]
My partner is immunocompromised. Barring scientific breakthroughs, we figure we'll never eat in a restaurant or hang out in a bar again. We'll minimize time indoors in public places as much as possible, and we'll stay masked while in public. She works in healthcare, and her workplace considered easing up on requiring patients to be masked. She would have quit if they had. As far as we're concerned, yes, the pandemic never ended. It's just here now. The endgame is "continue to try to not get sick while most everyone else has stopped caring about the spread of COVID".
posted by The Great Big Mulp at 6:54 PM on April 12, 2023 [45 favorites]
It seems especially strange here in Australia how quiet the media is about the ongoing Covid threat. Just last week in the state of New South Wales there were 36 deaths and when you compare 2022 to 2021 the increase in the death rate is startling, with Covid now the 3rd leading cause of death, up from the 34th leading cause of death in 2021. And those are just the direct-cause deaths; there are still many more considered to be COVID-19-related. Of course, this recent increase has to do with the fact that Australia was locked down for so long and travel restricted until the end of 2021.
I do think the ageism piece is huge; I have a friend whose mother is in the aged care system and they've been in rolling lockdowns–full PPE for visitors–for months as waves of infection continue to filter through the wards. This demographic is probably where most of the deaths are occurring. The ABC story linked notes that as a cause of death, "COVID-19 third only to ischaemic heart disease and dementia as causes of death in Australia, outstripping stroke, lung and colon cancer, lower respiratory disease, and diabetes" – and yet health news reporting seems to be focusing on cancers, obesity, and respiratory illness.
posted by amusebuche at 6:55 PM on April 12, 2023 [12 favorites]
I do think the ageism piece is huge; I have a friend whose mother is in the aged care system and they've been in rolling lockdowns–full PPE for visitors–for months as waves of infection continue to filter through the wards. This demographic is probably where most of the deaths are occurring. The ABC story linked notes that as a cause of death, "COVID-19 third only to ischaemic heart disease and dementia as causes of death in Australia, outstripping stroke, lung and colon cancer, lower respiratory disease, and diabetes" – and yet health news reporting seems to be focusing on cancers, obesity, and respiratory illness.
posted by amusebuche at 6:55 PM on April 12, 2023 [12 favorites]
In general, we've stopped hearing about the circumstances and stories of individuals who are still dying from COVID. I personally haven't heard about anyone I know dying of COVID, nor of people I know personally losing loved ones to it, in over a year. I say that because I've found myself looking at the continuing COVID death statistics, still well over 1,000 COVID deaths per week in the US according to the CDC, and wondering, "Who are all these people in the US that are dying of COVID in 2023?"
I'm not asking anyone to tell me right here about their recent experiences losing loved ones from COVID - and I know that people are still dying from COVID every day and suffering from long COVID - but even the photo in the article is dated 2021. I wish they used a recent photo to better illustrate the point of the article.
NPR did have a story today about long COVID research, which was refreshing to hear. Long COVID may be due to the virus sticking around after infection, researchers say
posted by wondermouse at 7:04 PM on April 12, 2023 [13 favorites]
I'm not asking anyone to tell me right here about their recent experiences losing loved ones from COVID - and I know that people are still dying from COVID every day and suffering from long COVID - but even the photo in the article is dated 2021. I wish they used a recent photo to better illustrate the point of the article.
NPR did have a story today about long COVID research, which was refreshing to hear. Long COVID may be due to the virus sticking around after infection, researchers say
posted by wondermouse at 7:04 PM on April 12, 2023 [13 favorites]
Yep, local data here in Chicago says covid levels are low. So. The fact that they are still high enough to kill more than the flu means they are still high? There is no clarity here.
posted by tiny frying pan at 7:28 PM on April 12, 2023 [3 favorites]
posted by tiny frying pan at 7:28 PM on April 12, 2023 [3 favorites]
Unless there's some miraculous medical discovery in vaccination that makes covid-19 sterilize so we can't get it while vaccinated, or there's a cure for long covid, or anything else that probably won't happen in our lifetimes, this is as good as it gets until the next pandemic hits
There actually are things that could be done, I think. What comes to mind:
A Project Warp Speed II for a nasal vaccine would have a chance of producing a sterilizing vaccine, and failing that it would be a second type of protection.
Equitable access to Paxlovid: it (probably) reduces the risk of Long Covid (vaccination probably does too).
Due to Omicron there are no longer any effective prophylactic antibody drugs available. Probably with enough funding they could develop one that would protect against Omicron for people who are otherwise still at risk despite vaccination.
Also I get the impression there's just not enough money and effort being spent researching long covid, maybe the only reason a cure seems so far away is that it's still under-researched.
posted by BungaDunga at 7:35 PM on April 12, 2023 [9 favorites]
There actually are things that could be done, I think. What comes to mind:
A Project Warp Speed II for a nasal vaccine would have a chance of producing a sterilizing vaccine, and failing that it would be a second type of protection.
Equitable access to Paxlovid: it (probably) reduces the risk of Long Covid (vaccination probably does too).
Due to Omicron there are no longer any effective prophylactic antibody drugs available. Probably with enough funding they could develop one that would protect against Omicron for people who are otherwise still at risk despite vaccination.
Also I get the impression there's just not enough money and effort being spent researching long covid, maybe the only reason a cure seems so far away is that it's still under-researched.
posted by BungaDunga at 7:35 PM on April 12, 2023 [9 favorites]
Are there actually any countries whose populace is taking COVID any more seriously than the US is right now?
There's actually quite a lot of masking on public transit and even just walking around in Mexico City. You wouldn't think so, but Mexico is an interesting case, mostly because of H1N1, which hit them (and Mexico City especially) quite hard less than 15 years ago. I also think the constant threat of catastrophic earthquake means people aren't against taking some precautions to protect themselves.
I'd also say that there is probably a little more masking in Canada still than there is in the US, though that's anecdotal and it's not much in either case.
So it's not just Asian countries.
posted by ssg at 8:22 PM on April 12, 2023 [10 favorites]
There's actually quite a lot of masking on public transit and even just walking around in Mexico City. You wouldn't think so, but Mexico is an interesting case, mostly because of H1N1, which hit them (and Mexico City especially) quite hard less than 15 years ago. I also think the constant threat of catastrophic earthquake means people aren't against taking some precautions to protect themselves.
I'd also say that there is probably a little more masking in Canada still than there is in the US, though that's anecdotal and it's not much in either case.
So it's not just Asian countries.
posted by ssg at 8:22 PM on April 12, 2023 [10 favorites]
hippybear: I think people don't realize that the lockdowns at the beginning of this whole thing were that the previous SARS virus killed something like 2/3 of the people who got it, and they didn't know what this one was like.
In Feb 2020, Fauci estimated it at much lower than 2%
In Feb 2020, Fauci estimated it at much lower than 2%
The mortality rate of seasonal flu is about 0.1%, 0.2% at the most. If you look at the new coronavirus, and you do the math, it's sticking right at 2%. But (the actual rate could be much lower) because there are many, many either asymptomatic or minimally symptomatic people (in China) that don't get counted in the denominator.posted by daksya at 9:10 PM on April 12, 2023 [4 favorites]
It's tempting to blame this on Trump and the republicans
It’s not just tempting, it’s the right thing to do. From the start, Trump tried to minimize the disease. To frame it as a conspiracy. To say it would just disappear. He said he wasn’t going to wear a mask. He pushed anti-lockdown protests hard. He gave a loud voice to the snake oil people and pushed hydroxychloroquine as a miracle cure. Biden never had much of a chance because Trump, instead of using the presidency to responsibly work to protect the public, actively fanned the flames of the worst elements of society. He could have at least acted like he was taking this seriously. Instead, he is the main reason why we have all of the anti-lockdown, anti-masking, anti-science people running amok in the US. They had the blessing and support of the highest office in the land.
posted by azpenguin at 10:03 PM on April 12, 2023 [44 favorites]
It’s not just tempting, it’s the right thing to do. From the start, Trump tried to minimize the disease. To frame it as a conspiracy. To say it would just disappear. He said he wasn’t going to wear a mask. He pushed anti-lockdown protests hard. He gave a loud voice to the snake oil people and pushed hydroxychloroquine as a miracle cure. Biden never had much of a chance because Trump, instead of using the presidency to responsibly work to protect the public, actively fanned the flames of the worst elements of society. He could have at least acted like he was taking this seriously. Instead, he is the main reason why we have all of the anti-lockdown, anti-masking, anti-science people running amok in the US. They had the blessing and support of the highest office in the land.
posted by azpenguin at 10:03 PM on April 12, 2023 [44 favorites]
As long as the rest of us don't have access to tests, effective masks, vaccines and paxlovid, it doesn't really matter whether or not USA people behave in covid safe ways.
We're still out here getting Covid over and over again (my husband has it right now for the 4th or 5th time I've lost count) so the variants we experience because rich countries hoard resources will continue to bite you guys in the ass too.
posted by Zumbador at 10:14 PM on April 12, 2023 [31 favorites]
We're still out here getting Covid over and over again (my husband has it right now for the 4th or 5th time I've lost count) so the variants we experience because rich countries hoard resources will continue to bite you guys in the ass too.
posted by Zumbador at 10:14 PM on April 12, 2023 [31 favorites]
Dropping in to plug People’s CDC (amplifying the data the government is downplaying— did you know wastewater copies of the virus are down, but still double what they were a year ago?) and the Death Panel podcast ( focusing on healthcare justice and disability advocacy).
posted by supercres at 10:52 PM on April 12, 2023 [19 favorites]
posted by supercres at 10:52 PM on April 12, 2023 [19 favorites]
He could have at least acted like he was taking this seriously
At first I was unclear who you were referring to, then realized it didn’t matter
Donald Trump, miraculously controlling the executive branch 812 days after leaving office.
posted by supercres at 10:58 PM on April 12, 2023 [2 favorites]
At first I was unclear who you were referring to, then realized it didn’t matter
Donald Trump, miraculously controlling the executive branch 812 days after leaving office.
posted by supercres at 10:58 PM on April 12, 2023 [2 favorites]
Donald Trump, miraculously controlling the executive branch 812 days after leaving office.
He definitely set the tone of public discourse and
President Biden has to deal with the public sentiment he inherited.
posted by M. at 11:17 PM on April 12, 2023 [10 favorites]
It's tempting to blame some message or political decision along the way, but frankly I think we're passed that and we're simply reaching the overall equilibrium society is going to hit for Covid.
It wasn't some politician or political movement that convinced the U.S. that 30,000 deaths a year from the flu was an okay number -- it's just what we settled into. Some people thought the number was too high, but not enough to make masks a thing. Some people thought we were investing too much in a yearly flu vaccine, but not enough to cut the funding. A balance had been reached.
I think we're reaching a similar point with Covid. People can try to push the needle one way or another but I suspect (in fact I have observed) that it's hard going at this point.
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 11:23 PM on April 12, 2023 [22 favorites]
It wasn't some politician or political movement that convinced the U.S. that 30,000 deaths a year from the flu was an okay number -- it's just what we settled into. Some people thought the number was too high, but not enough to make masks a thing. Some people thought we were investing too much in a yearly flu vaccine, but not enough to cut the funding. A balance had been reached.
I think we're reaching a similar point with Covid. People can try to push the needle one way or another but I suspect (in fact I have observed) that it's hard going at this point.
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 11:23 PM on April 12, 2023 [22 favorites]
Maybe I'm wrong about masks, but I'm curious about the logic of wearing one if you're the only one doing it. I thought masks prevent spreading diseases, not catching them.
posted by Braeburn at 11:53 PM on April 12, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by Braeburn at 11:53 PM on April 12, 2023 [1 favorite]
One-Way Masking Works (The Atlantic)
Caveat: You have to be wearing a genuine, fit-tested respirator; not a random KN95 that may or may not meet standards and doesn't fit you anyway (especially if you're talking).
posted by meowzilla at 12:07 AM on April 13, 2023 [11 favorites]
Caveat: You have to be wearing a genuine, fit-tested respirator; not a random KN95 that may or may not meet standards and doesn't fit you anyway (especially if you're talking).
posted by meowzilla at 12:07 AM on April 13, 2023 [11 favorites]
Maybe I'm wrong about masks, but I'm curious about the logic of wearing one if you're the only one doing it. I thought masks prevent spreading diseases, not catching them.
Seriously?!? I wear an N95 everywhere in public because it’s been known right from the first days that it protects you. I caught Covid in January 2020, before it was known to be in the USA. I haven’t caught it since, in spite of the fact that all of my coworkers have caught it at least twice (including the person who also had it in January 2020, so it’s not like we got some kind of super immunity from that.) I’m considered an essential worker, so I’ve been back in the office since I got my first vaccine. In May of 2020, I had to fly from El Paso, Texas to Anchorage, Alaska, a trip that took 14 hours and involved a loooong layover in Seattle, right when Seattle was the worst place in the USA for infections. There were unmasked people all over that airport (including children running wild and literally crawling on the floor). I haven’t caught it again.
Masking works, if you have the ability and the will to do it correctly. And we’ve known that from the beginning.
posted by MexicanYenta at 1:35 AM on April 13, 2023 [43 favorites]
Seriously?!? I wear an N95 everywhere in public because it’s been known right from the first days that it protects you. I caught Covid in January 2020, before it was known to be in the USA. I haven’t caught it since, in spite of the fact that all of my coworkers have caught it at least twice (including the person who also had it in January 2020, so it’s not like we got some kind of super immunity from that.) I’m considered an essential worker, so I’ve been back in the office since I got my first vaccine. In May of 2020, I had to fly from El Paso, Texas to Anchorage, Alaska, a trip that took 14 hours and involved a loooong layover in Seattle, right when Seattle was the worst place in the USA for infections. There were unmasked people all over that airport (including children running wild and literally crawling on the floor). I haven’t caught it again.
Masking works, if you have the ability and the will to do it correctly. And we’ve known that from the beginning.
posted by MexicanYenta at 1:35 AM on April 13, 2023 [43 favorites]
It wasn't some politician or political movement that convinced the U.S. that 30,000 deaths a year from the flu was an okay number -- it's just what we settled into.
I do believe that politicians and political movements absolutely influence public sentiment to the point that the overall consensus shifts. I do not think it's our natural inclinations finding their natural equilibrium. Some people and organizations are pushing that common sentiment HARD.
It's hard to think about how much a single person has contributed to the fate of the world but I believe that yes, if a different person had been in charge, the whole US response to COVID might have been different and the public attitude might have been different. I am sure Mr Trump is not losing sleep over this but I sometimes ponder with awe and sadness how a single person can do so much harm.
I am sure there were Trump-like politicians during the 1918 flu pandemic as well.
posted by M. at 2:36 AM on April 13, 2023 [10 favorites]
I do believe that politicians and political movements absolutely influence public sentiment to the point that the overall consensus shifts. I do not think it's our natural inclinations finding their natural equilibrium. Some people and organizations are pushing that common sentiment HARD.
It's hard to think about how much a single person has contributed to the fate of the world but I believe that yes, if a different person had been in charge, the whole US response to COVID might have been different and the public attitude might have been different. I am sure Mr Trump is not losing sleep over this but I sometimes ponder with awe and sadness how a single person can do so much harm.
I am sure there were Trump-like politicians during the 1918 flu pandemic as well.
posted by M. at 2:36 AM on April 13, 2023 [10 favorites]
It's hard to think about how much a single person has contributed to the fate of the world
I mean, Trump obviously but I also sometimes think in this context about Andrew Wakefield…
posted by staggernation at 2:53 AM on April 13, 2023 [11 favorites]
I mean, Trump obviously but I also sometimes think in this context about Andrew Wakefield…
posted by staggernation at 2:53 AM on April 13, 2023 [11 favorites]
I bought Brian Deer's book on Wakefield. It's an eye opener.
posted by flabdablet at 3:21 AM on April 13, 2023 [4 favorites]
posted by flabdablet at 3:21 AM on April 13, 2023 [4 favorites]
I mask, get vaxxed, have no social life, live in a rural area with a fair bit of space and greenery twixt me and the neighbours, etc. I am as protected as I can be.
So far it appears to have paid off, unless I have had an asymptomatic case.
My health status simply doesn't allow me much wiggle room, and Covid-19 is still very much with us, festering merrily away trying to come up with a better version to continue on the spread and mayhem.
While currently on the low side here (Australia), numbers are starting to rise again, and winter is on its way.
Sure, it might die out this year, or become little more trouble than the common cold. I certainly hope so. Or it might just keep hanging around, getting neither worse nor better, just continually chipping away at human health indefinitely. Or it might even get a lot worse. We just don't know.
Plus, we still have no idea of any significant long-term consequences for those who have had it and appear thus far to made a full recovery. That will take a generation to determine, but I will be surprised if there is not a statistically significant reduction in the average lifetime expectancy of survivors.
Our government for the first two years of the pandemic behaved not a million miles from how the Trump crowd did and really fucked the social response stuff up, even though they too were forced very much against their will to face up to some basic medical facts by everybody else.
Our current (different) government, a mostly saner and more humane centre-left outfit, has officially declared our pandemic to be over. So there's that too. (In fairness, unlike in the UK our national and state governments are still collecting and reporting basic stats on it.)
Very unimpressed and unhappy with all this. :(
posted by Pouteria at 4:08 AM on April 13, 2023 [13 favorites]
So far it appears to have paid off, unless I have had an asymptomatic case.
My health status simply doesn't allow me much wiggle room, and Covid-19 is still very much with us, festering merrily away trying to come up with a better version to continue on the spread and mayhem.
While currently on the low side here (Australia), numbers are starting to rise again, and winter is on its way.
Sure, it might die out this year, or become little more trouble than the common cold. I certainly hope so. Or it might just keep hanging around, getting neither worse nor better, just continually chipping away at human health indefinitely. Or it might even get a lot worse. We just don't know.
Plus, we still have no idea of any significant long-term consequences for those who have had it and appear thus far to made a full recovery. That will take a generation to determine, but I will be surprised if there is not a statistically significant reduction in the average lifetime expectancy of survivors.
Our government for the first two years of the pandemic behaved not a million miles from how the Trump crowd did and really fucked the social response stuff up, even though they too were forced very much against their will to face up to some basic medical facts by everybody else.
Our current (different) government, a mostly saner and more humane centre-left outfit, has officially declared our pandemic to be over. So there's that too. (In fairness, unlike in the UK our national and state governments are still collecting and reporting basic stats on it.)
Very unimpressed and unhappy with all this. :(
posted by Pouteria at 4:08 AM on April 13, 2023 [13 favorites]
The people who still care about not getting covid also, in general, care about not being a link in a chain of potentially spreading it to others, should we unknowingly be asymptomatic ourselves. I’d be wearing my mask even if it did nothing to protect me personally, because it’s an easy (for me) and responsible thing to do to avoid being a link in a chain that sickens or kills someone else. I’d wear it at least for flu season even if covid vanished tomorrow because my version of “it’s no worse than the flu!” is “wow, I’ve learned a lot these past three years about the flu being worse than I realized, and this is an easy thing I can do to avoid potentially being part of a transmission chain.”
And yes, because I have vulnerable and immunocompromised loved ones in my life, I assume the life I’m living now is pretty much the one I’ll be living forever. I’ll be sad if I never get to experience live theater again, but I’m focused more on having a rich and satisfying life within the constraints I do have, and I’m happy with where I’ve landed. If this is what the rest of my life looks like, that’s pretty much okay for me.
posted by Stacey at 4:12 AM on April 13, 2023 [25 favorites]
And yes, because I have vulnerable and immunocompromised loved ones in my life, I assume the life I’m living now is pretty much the one I’ll be living forever. I’ll be sad if I never get to experience live theater again, but I’m focused more on having a rich and satisfying life within the constraints I do have, and I’m happy with where I’ve landed. If this is what the rest of my life looks like, that’s pretty much okay for me.
posted by Stacey at 4:12 AM on April 13, 2023 [25 favorites]
It's tempting to blame some message or political decision along the way, but frankly I think we're passed that and we're simply reaching the overall equilibrium society is going to hit for Covid.
I remember in the early days in 2020, epidemiologists were talking about whether people would get tired of NPIs. As I recall, this worry lead to legal restrictions coming in later than they otherwise should have. In the end, in the UK, people generally did with comply with the laws we had. (Whether they'd do so again after the Partygate revelations is an interesting question. Let's hope we don't have to test that any time soon.)
Now I think we are at that equilibrium, as you say.
I'm someone who did follow the rules in 2020 and 2021. I take a low dose of immunosuppressants to keep Crohn's in remission, was initially told to "shield" (i.e. isolate myself to the extent of not going to shops etc.) but then that decision was reversed by a finer grained database sweep :-) and I was just told to be careful. I switched to FFP2 masks when it seemed that was a better thing to do, although the recent Cochrane meta-analysis has made me doubt that, I guess I can do better than the population at wearing one "properly".
I now wear an FFP2 mask if I have to go to the pharmacy with a sore throat, but otherwise don't, and I attend large-ish social dancing events unmasked. That's because the situation has changed from 2020 and 2021. In England, COVID is less deadly than flu because of vaccination/previous infection and the reduced virulence of omicron. Most people have had COVID one or more times, which is probably why all cause mortality for the vaxed and unvaxed is converging.
There are still people who are especially vulnerable (perhaps they couldn't be vaccinated), but pre-COVID the less vulnerable didn't restrict their lives because of the chance of giving flu to someone more vulnerable (with the exception of not seeing your frail grandma if you were ill, say).
If you accept that there is some large number people whose happiness at seeing loved ones, going out dancing etc. is worth the risk of an infectious disease harming a small number of people, then the point is made, and we're just arguing about the price. I think we rightly accept such tradeoffs all the time, but COVID is uppermost in people's minds so they don't compare it to say, driving a car (where I might pollute the atmosphere and indirectly make someone ill, or even accidentally kill someone if I make a mistake and crash). I do know people who disapprove of such reasoning and keep themselves locked away even though they are not (afaik) extremely vulnerable, but their disapproval doesn't move the needle of society away from the new equilibrium, so they seem to be just making themselves sad and angry. There are also people who've discovered they like solitude and the outdoors, and more power to them.
posted by pw201 at 4:25 AM on April 13, 2023 [24 favorites]
I remember in the early days in 2020, epidemiologists were talking about whether people would get tired of NPIs. As I recall, this worry lead to legal restrictions coming in later than they otherwise should have. In the end, in the UK, people generally did with comply with the laws we had. (Whether they'd do so again after the Partygate revelations is an interesting question. Let's hope we don't have to test that any time soon.)
Now I think we are at that equilibrium, as you say.
I'm someone who did follow the rules in 2020 and 2021. I take a low dose of immunosuppressants to keep Crohn's in remission, was initially told to "shield" (i.e. isolate myself to the extent of not going to shops etc.) but then that decision was reversed by a finer grained database sweep :-) and I was just told to be careful. I switched to FFP2 masks when it seemed that was a better thing to do, although the recent Cochrane meta-analysis has made me doubt that, I guess I can do better than the population at wearing one "properly".
I now wear an FFP2 mask if I have to go to the pharmacy with a sore throat, but otherwise don't, and I attend large-ish social dancing events unmasked. That's because the situation has changed from 2020 and 2021. In England, COVID is less deadly than flu because of vaccination/previous infection and the reduced virulence of omicron. Most people have had COVID one or more times, which is probably why all cause mortality for the vaxed and unvaxed is converging.
There are still people who are especially vulnerable (perhaps they couldn't be vaccinated), but pre-COVID the less vulnerable didn't restrict their lives because of the chance of giving flu to someone more vulnerable (with the exception of not seeing your frail grandma if you were ill, say).
If you accept that there is some large number people whose happiness at seeing loved ones, going out dancing etc. is worth the risk of an infectious disease harming a small number of people, then the point is made, and we're just arguing about the price. I think we rightly accept such tradeoffs all the time, but COVID is uppermost in people's minds so they don't compare it to say, driving a car (where I might pollute the atmosphere and indirectly make someone ill, or even accidentally kill someone if I make a mistake and crash). I do know people who disapprove of such reasoning and keep themselves locked away even though they are not (afaik) extremely vulnerable, but their disapproval doesn't move the needle of society away from the new equilibrium, so they seem to be just making themselves sad and angry. There are also people who've discovered they like solitude and the outdoors, and more power to them.
posted by pw201 at 4:25 AM on April 13, 2023 [24 favorites]
I'm just so tired of the "both sides" journalism that has enabled covid and guns and fascism to thrive.
posted by Dashy at 5:08 AM on April 13, 2023 [27 favorites]
posted by Dashy at 5:08 AM on April 13, 2023 [27 favorites]
I still wear a mask when I'm in a place with a lot of people--supermarkets and the occasional theater trip mostly. I'm less concerned in smaller groups. But my husband and I were at a play last weekend, both masked, and I noticed my husband paying close attention to the man in front of me, who had just answered a text that read "How is your Covid?" with "Fine, I'm at the theater." He was an elderly man with his elderly wife, both unmasked. They left at intermission, maybe because he wasn't feeling well. I'm still pretty pissed off about it.
Sometimes I think I'm being silly when I'm wearing my mask and everyone around me isn't, and then something like that happens.
posted by ceejaytee at 5:09 AM on April 13, 2023 [39 favorites]
Sometimes I think I'm being silly when I'm wearing my mask and everyone around me isn't, and then something like that happens.
posted by ceejaytee at 5:09 AM on April 13, 2023 [39 favorites]
It's a really hard problem, moreso because it's a social problem, mostso because society sucks. But in the last few months I've made my peace with equilibrium. I'll wear an N95 going to a crowded concert or an airport/airplane. I'd wear one if I had to go out while feeling sick. But I'm trying not to judge everyone around me as potential disease vectors, because I'm enough of a misanthrope already. If we have another variant spike like Omicron (only a year and change ago), I'll go back to masking religiously, but right now I'm just living with increased risk.
At the store I own & run, we installed noisy air filters that run all day long but we stopped requiring masks from our customers. It was starting to feel unwelcoming. And so far, we've been okay. I like meeting in person. I like seeing people's faces. I like being able to go out to events once in a while.
Generally government works best when it mandates rules that make things safer. I'm much less likely to die in a car accident than I ever have been. But some assholes make some reasonable rules impossible to make, whether that's guns or public health. Funny how it's always the same assholes. Getting caught up in the details of any of their particular nonsensical policies makes my blood pressure unhealthy, so I'm just against the assholes broadly on principle because they are always wrong and they don't listen to reason anyway.
posted by rikschell at 5:42 AM on April 13, 2023 [10 favorites]
At the store I own & run, we installed noisy air filters that run all day long but we stopped requiring masks from our customers. It was starting to feel unwelcoming. And so far, we've been okay. I like meeting in person. I like seeing people's faces. I like being able to go out to events once in a while.
Generally government works best when it mandates rules that make things safer. I'm much less likely to die in a car accident than I ever have been. But some assholes make some reasonable rules impossible to make, whether that's guns or public health. Funny how it's always the same assholes. Getting caught up in the details of any of their particular nonsensical policies makes my blood pressure unhealthy, so I'm just against the assholes broadly on principle because they are always wrong and they don't listen to reason anyway.
posted by rikschell at 5:42 AM on April 13, 2023 [10 favorites]
I'm still masking up in public but I'm a bit more relaxed in private. I figure people who don't have a choice about who and what they're exposed to (public facing jobs) deserve the respect that comes with me putting on a mask when I have the sniffles. In private when meeting with small groups of friends I'm more comfortable taking off the mask because we all have sufficient agency to decide how and when we're going to interact.
posted by RonButNotStupid at 5:50 AM on April 13, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by RonButNotStupid at 5:50 AM on April 13, 2023 [1 favorite]
If you accept that there is some large number people whose happiness at seeing loved ones, going out dancing etc. is worth the risk of an infectious disease harming a small number of people,
The Ones Who Mask at Omelas
posted by ricochet biscuit at 5:55 AM on April 13, 2023 [14 favorites]
The Ones Who Mask at Omelas
posted by ricochet biscuit at 5:55 AM on April 13, 2023 [14 favorites]
Picard will say, "America when the masks came off," and the aliens will nod sagely and sigh.
posted by seanmpuckett at 6:01 AM on April 13, 2023 [11 favorites]
posted by seanmpuckett at 6:01 AM on April 13, 2023 [11 favorites]
It's tempting to blame some message or political decision along the way, but frankly I think we're passed that and we're simply reaching the overall equilibrium society is going to hit for Covid.
Very much this. It's become, for most people in most places, a slight increase in the background of risk, along with car accidents, other diseases, etc. The US and Europe specifically (but also other places to a greater or lesser extent) had a somewhat miraculous number of decades in the twentieth century and into the twenty-first, where in the US and Europe malaria was basically eliminated, TB went from being a mass disease to a minor concern, polio was eliminated, and so on. Even poor rural areas got improvements in water and sanitation, reducing diseases like cholera and parasites. So people got used to having a really low background risk from communicable diseases, in a way that people who lived in countries where diseases like dengue or malaria are common did not.
A lot of the outraged articles and opinion pieces (and some comments here)that I read seem to me to be people being really angry that their era of complacency has been ended by this new disease. Those of us in rich countries especially took the previous situation for granted, honestly. So there is a lot of anger and trauma over that, that in a lot of cases is disproportionate to that person's personal risk.
posted by Dip Flash at 6:08 AM on April 13, 2023 [20 favorites]
Very much this. It's become, for most people in most places, a slight increase in the background of risk, along with car accidents, other diseases, etc. The US and Europe specifically (but also other places to a greater or lesser extent) had a somewhat miraculous number of decades in the twentieth century and into the twenty-first, where in the US and Europe malaria was basically eliminated, TB went from being a mass disease to a minor concern, polio was eliminated, and so on. Even poor rural areas got improvements in water and sanitation, reducing diseases like cholera and parasites. So people got used to having a really low background risk from communicable diseases, in a way that people who lived in countries where diseases like dengue or malaria are common did not.
A lot of the outraged articles and opinion pieces (and some comments here)that I read seem to me to be people being really angry that their era of complacency has been ended by this new disease. Those of us in rich countries especially took the previous situation for granted, honestly. So there is a lot of anger and trauma over that, that in a lot of cases is disproportionate to that person's personal risk.
posted by Dip Flash at 6:08 AM on April 13, 2023 [20 favorites]
I saw an interesting data point this week: "Traditional values closely linked to following COVID-19 precautions, except in US" [source]
posted by wenestvedt at 6:14 AM on April 13, 2023 [8 favorites]
Worldwide, people who professed to have more traditional or socially conservative values were more likely to adhere to COVID-19 recommendations, but in the United States people with those values were more likely to dismiss such recommendations.Ugh! It is, as rikschell says, the same damn assholes -- whether it's guns or racism or fascism in general. And it's us! The assholes are among us, so we can't just shut them out!
The study was published in Scientific Reports and conducted by anthropologists who surveyed nearly 8,000 people in 27 countries across North America, South America, Europe, Asia and Africa.
posted by wenestvedt at 6:14 AM on April 13, 2023 [8 favorites]
I definitely think it's the people who have the most exposure who are the most blasé, for example I'm back to work at my job at a public high school - where we just had an active shooter threat called in to police yesterday - and if you think about the risks all the time when you have no choice but to go back to work you'll go crazy. I don't mask at work because it would interfere with my ability to teach.
Similarly, I just had a baby and before I was back at work, I was at the library 2-3 times a week for their baby programs - where no one is masking - and they just opened the children's programming room back up.
I had COVID twice while pregnant - both times without complications or after effects - and I'm 5x vaccinated. I wish they hadn't moved to the programming room because it makes me nervous to be around so many people in such a small room, but at the same time after weighing options, my husband and I determined that the baby's need for social interaction with other kids and my need to get out of the house outweighed the COVID risks at this point in time.
And that's knowing about the double-digit risk of developing long COVID etc... there has always been a privilege element to isolating, work from home, keeping up with vaccinations, etc, especially here in the US. So some of the culture war is amplified by Republicans but some of it is really those class differences.
PS
We focus so much on masking because it's the one area of individual consumer choice and we are an individualist, consumer society but masking is the least of it really, money to improve ventilation in public buildings and changing the building codes to require better ventilation in new buildings would make a bigger difference.
posted by subdee at 6:30 AM on April 13, 2023 [10 favorites]
Similarly, I just had a baby and before I was back at work, I was at the library 2-3 times a week for their baby programs - where no one is masking - and they just opened the children's programming room back up.
I had COVID twice while pregnant - both times without complications or after effects - and I'm 5x vaccinated. I wish they hadn't moved to the programming room because it makes me nervous to be around so many people in such a small room, but at the same time after weighing options, my husband and I determined that the baby's need for social interaction with other kids and my need to get out of the house outweighed the COVID risks at this point in time.
And that's knowing about the double-digit risk of developing long COVID etc... there has always been a privilege element to isolating, work from home, keeping up with vaccinations, etc, especially here in the US. So some of the culture war is amplified by Republicans but some of it is really those class differences.
PS
We focus so much on masking because it's the one area of individual consumer choice and we are an individualist, consumer society but masking is the least of it really, money to improve ventilation in public buildings and changing the building codes to require better ventilation in new buildings would make a bigger difference.
posted by subdee at 6:30 AM on April 13, 2023 [10 favorites]
A lot of the outraged articles and opinion pieces (and some comments here)that I read seem to me to be people being really angry that their era of complacency has been ended by this new disease.
I don't know - for me, my anger has been about the complacency this new disease has been treated with. (All too similar to the complacency about climate change, from people who either can't imagine their reality changing or who expect to not be personally vulnerable.)
Even where drastic measures like lockdowns were taken, there largely was no massive investment in the healthcare system, in infrastructure, in data tracking, in education about public health, or in production and distribution of medications and PPE.
As far as endgames - my hope is for indoor air ventilation standards to be massively improved and enforced. I'm not optimistic about it though, largely because of said complacency.
At the store I own & run, we installed noisy air filters that run all day long
Thank you!
posted by trig at 6:36 AM on April 13, 2023 [13 favorites]
I don't know - for me, my anger has been about the complacency this new disease has been treated with. (All too similar to the complacency about climate change, from people who either can't imagine their reality changing or who expect to not be personally vulnerable.)
Even where drastic measures like lockdowns were taken, there largely was no massive investment in the healthcare system, in infrastructure, in data tracking, in education about public health, or in production and distribution of medications and PPE.
As far as endgames - my hope is for indoor air ventilation standards to be massively improved and enforced. I'm not optimistic about it though, largely because of said complacency.
At the store I own & run, we installed noisy air filters that run all day long
Thank you!
posted by trig at 6:36 AM on April 13, 2023 [13 favorites]
Yes, thank you VERY much for filtering the air in your store. I'm sure it was expensive, and the noise isn't fun either. I appreciate you going ahead with the filters anyway!
posted by humbug at 6:40 AM on April 13, 2023 [16 favorites]
posted by humbug at 6:40 AM on April 13, 2023 [16 favorites]
I don't know - for me, my anger has been about the complacency this new disease has been treated with. (All too similar to the complacency about climate change, from people who either can't imagine their reality changing or who expect to not be personally vulnerable.)
I don't think I'm complacent, exactly, about climate change. But I cannot fix it, the reality is it is changing, fast, and bad - and we are all so vulnerable, not just from that, but economics, etc - so I try to still live with all of it without it eating me up inside. I think a lot of people do this with a lot of things.
posted by tiny frying pan at 6:46 AM on April 13, 2023 [12 favorites]
I don't think I'm complacent, exactly, about climate change. But I cannot fix it, the reality is it is changing, fast, and bad - and we are all so vulnerable, not just from that, but economics, etc - so I try to still live with all of it without it eating me up inside. I think a lot of people do this with a lot of things.
posted by tiny frying pan at 6:46 AM on April 13, 2023 [12 favorites]
So people got used to having a really low background risk from communicable diseases, in a way that people who lived in countries where diseases like dengue or malaria are common did not.
A lot of the outraged articles and opinion pieces (and some comments here)that I read seem to me to be people being really angry that their era of complacency has been ended by this new disease.
Also, I get where this is coming from, but it's a pretty messed up way of looking at it. Ultimately the goal should be for everyone to have a low background risk of injury from communicable diseases. Everyone should get to live free of worry about that. The way richer countries and individuals have continuously avoided helping poorer countries and people get to that worry-free state is obscene, and I definitely understand any feeling of schadenfreude that arises when suddenly they find themselves in trouble too.
But we should all be able to worry as little about communicable disease, unsafe water, contaminated food and air, and so on as the wealthiest of us do. That should be the goal, that should be the direction of progress, and it's right to be angry when things get worse. It's just that that anger should be aimed at protecting everyone, and not only ourselves.
posted by trig at 6:48 AM on April 13, 2023 [15 favorites]
A lot of the outraged articles and opinion pieces (and some comments here)that I read seem to me to be people being really angry that their era of complacency has been ended by this new disease.
Also, I get where this is coming from, but it's a pretty messed up way of looking at it. Ultimately the goal should be for everyone to have a low background risk of injury from communicable diseases. Everyone should get to live free of worry about that. The way richer countries and individuals have continuously avoided helping poorer countries and people get to that worry-free state is obscene, and I definitely understand any feeling of schadenfreude that arises when suddenly they find themselves in trouble too.
But we should all be able to worry as little about communicable disease, unsafe water, contaminated food and air, and so on as the wealthiest of us do. That should be the goal, that should be the direction of progress, and it's right to be angry when things get worse. It's just that that anger should be aimed at protecting everyone, and not only ourselves.
posted by trig at 6:48 AM on April 13, 2023 [15 favorites]
for me, my anger has been about the complacency this new disease has been treated with
> I don't think I'm complacent, exactly, about climate change. But I cannot fix it
(To clarify, my own anger is aimed mostly at the people who do have the power and ability to make a difference. And at the people who obstruct and deride anyone who is actually working to make things better.)
posted by trig at 6:49 AM on April 13, 2023 [2 favorites]
> I don't think I'm complacent, exactly, about climate change. But I cannot fix it
(To clarify, my own anger is aimed mostly at the people who do have the power and ability to make a difference. And at the people who obstruct and deride anyone who is actually working to make things better.)
posted by trig at 6:49 AM on April 13, 2023 [2 favorites]
I mask in cabs, on airplanes - anywhere that I am in close, confined quarters for an extended duration with unknown people. Restaurants are an exception, and I'll only go if they're not particularly crowded and the local community transmission rate is low. I've also gotten the bivalent booster (plus two original shots and the first booster) and will be getting jabbed with whatever they come out with next, as soon as I can get it. Really shocking that only 17% have gotten the bivalent booster! But in general my risk calculus is "what is the community transmission rate, how high are the ceilings, how good is the ventilation, will I be visiting anyone who is immunocompromised in the near future." If: high, low, bad or yes, I wear a mask. So far this has worked out for me and grumpybearbride - no COVID. I have friends who all attended a comedy show and afterparty in SF and caught it, and while most of them bounced back quickly, two of them took a lot longer. I'm not sure what their booster status is.
I have not gone dancing since the start of the pandemic as I don't think there is a safe way to do that indoors. We don't eat at restaurants very often, but feel pretty safe at places like airports and casinos which by necessity invest heavily in air filtration and ventilation.
Who doesn't wash their hands after using the bathroom? That is gross AF.
The masks we use are the 3M 9205+ Auras. They are amazing and actually provide a seal on my face, as long as I shave.
If anyone is hosting an event and looking into air filter rentals, I can recommend Sunbelt, as we used them for our small trivia convention this past summer. They were great!
posted by grumpybear69 at 6:52 AM on April 13, 2023 [7 favorites]
I have not gone dancing since the start of the pandemic as I don't think there is a safe way to do that indoors. We don't eat at restaurants very often, but feel pretty safe at places like airports and casinos which by necessity invest heavily in air filtration and ventilation.
Who doesn't wash their hands after using the bathroom? That is gross AF.
The masks we use are the 3M 9205+ Auras. They are amazing and actually provide a seal on my face, as long as I shave.
If anyone is hosting an event and looking into air filter rentals, I can recommend Sunbelt, as we used them for our small trivia convention this past summer. They were great!
posted by grumpybear69 at 6:52 AM on April 13, 2023 [7 favorites]
A lot of the outraged articles and opinion pieces (and some comments here)that I read seem to me to be people being really angry that their era of complacency has been ended by this new disease.
I know this is not a new thought, but yes, I am in fact angry when society has solved problems and then things get worse. I'm angry when, eg, we have established Medicare and Social Security and then decide to get rid of them or radically shrink them and whoops, the same problems are still there. I'm mad that we have all kinds of unused tools to deal with covid and we've just decided that the world is going to get worse, life spans are going to get shorter, there's going to be more disability, etc.
If the GOP gets into power and we go back to "lobotomies for the gays" and "the fire department is by subscription only" I'll be pretty mad about that too and would not, in fact, describe our present era of gay marriage and fire protection as an era of complacency.
We could have used 2020-2021 to massively improve ventilation everywhere - something that would have been a big jobs boost, for one thing. We could have used that time to improve outdoor capacity - there are so many group events that can be held fairly safely outdoors for much of the year, even in states like Minnesota. As soon as the limits of the mRNA vaccines became apparent, we could have started throwing money at next generation vaccines - Biden is probably sort of doing this, but if we'd pursued this strategy through 2022 we would be a lot further along.
We could even have supported funding to design better, more comfortable N95s and focused on normalizing them for everyone for ever on transit, in schools and in medical spaces. Like, my 3M Aura is basically glued to my face any time I'm indoors away from home, but it's also the only one that really fits me well and it would be fun to have more choices, or even some colors.
To me, ventilation is the biggie. If we had focused on upgrading ventilation as fast as possible (knowing that there's supply chain limits but still doing our best) we would have cut down on all kinds of infections and it wouldn't matter so much if people didn't mask.
"You're going to work really hard to solve substantial social problems and then some asshole will blow things up for their own gain and everything will get worse again" may indeed be a universal truth of human history, but it's more like the "war shatters society" and "people leverage nationalism to gain power" truth than a "well, wise up, be real, kid" truth.
posted by Frowner at 7:00 AM on April 13, 2023 [43 favorites]
I know this is not a new thought, but yes, I am in fact angry when society has solved problems and then things get worse. I'm angry when, eg, we have established Medicare and Social Security and then decide to get rid of them or radically shrink them and whoops, the same problems are still there. I'm mad that we have all kinds of unused tools to deal with covid and we've just decided that the world is going to get worse, life spans are going to get shorter, there's going to be more disability, etc.
If the GOP gets into power and we go back to "lobotomies for the gays" and "the fire department is by subscription only" I'll be pretty mad about that too and would not, in fact, describe our present era of gay marriage and fire protection as an era of complacency.
We could have used 2020-2021 to massively improve ventilation everywhere - something that would have been a big jobs boost, for one thing. We could have used that time to improve outdoor capacity - there are so many group events that can be held fairly safely outdoors for much of the year, even in states like Minnesota. As soon as the limits of the mRNA vaccines became apparent, we could have started throwing money at next generation vaccines - Biden is probably sort of doing this, but if we'd pursued this strategy through 2022 we would be a lot further along.
We could even have supported funding to design better, more comfortable N95s and focused on normalizing them for everyone for ever on transit, in schools and in medical spaces. Like, my 3M Aura is basically glued to my face any time I'm indoors away from home, but it's also the only one that really fits me well and it would be fun to have more choices, or even some colors.
To me, ventilation is the biggie. If we had focused on upgrading ventilation as fast as possible (knowing that there's supply chain limits but still doing our best) we would have cut down on all kinds of infections and it wouldn't matter so much if people didn't mask.
"You're going to work really hard to solve substantial social problems and then some asshole will blow things up for their own gain and everything will get worse again" may indeed be a universal truth of human history, but it's more like the "war shatters society" and "people leverage nationalism to gain power" truth than a "well, wise up, be real, kid" truth.
posted by Frowner at 7:00 AM on April 13, 2023 [43 favorites]
COVID itself is one thing, but when I remember that, for a brief second, the USA media almost cared about air pollution and long term respiratory health, the mind boggles.
The WHO lowered their PM standard, but not in the USA. Instead, we are building 50-60 new refineries in what Exxon is calling the "petrochemical renaissance".
It s been a wild ride, the swing from "hey, air pollution actually causes a lot of diseases listed as leading causes of death" to "quick, give the oil industry 50 Billion to have a massive refinery buildout".
I think I have whiplash concerning how much the public has learned, then immediately was told to forget
posted by eustatic at 7:05 AM on April 13, 2023 [12 favorites]
The WHO lowered their PM standard, but not in the USA. Instead, we are building 50-60 new refineries in what Exxon is calling the "petrochemical renaissance".
It s been a wild ride, the swing from "hey, air pollution actually causes a lot of diseases listed as leading causes of death" to "quick, give the oil industry 50 Billion to have a massive refinery buildout".
I think I have whiplash concerning how much the public has learned, then immediately was told to forget
posted by eustatic at 7:05 AM on April 13, 2023 [12 favorites]
Who doesn't wash their hands after using the bathroom? That is gross AF.
Though of limited relevance to a discussion about a respiratory disease, lots and lots of people don't. (Random link from google, there are actually good scientific studies of this.) Moreover, lots of people say they wash their hands but observational studies show much lower numbers actually doing so.
posted by Dip Flash at 7:05 AM on April 13, 2023 [8 favorites]
Though of limited relevance to a discussion about a respiratory disease, lots and lots of people don't. (Random link from google, there are actually good scientific studies of this.) Moreover, lots of people say they wash their hands but observational studies show much lower numbers actually doing so.
posted by Dip Flash at 7:05 AM on April 13, 2023 [8 favorites]
The western world is collapsing into authoritarianism and frankly I don't have the inclination or the energy to care about COVID anymore. I might be shot to death buying fruit next week.
posted by rhymedirective at 7:08 AM on April 13, 2023 [13 favorites]
posted by rhymedirective at 7:08 AM on April 13, 2023 [13 favorites]
I'm wondering why our governments are minimizing the dangers of Covid. Criticising someone for doing something comes instinctively and feels good and self righteous, but finding strategies to make them change what they are doing requires figuring out what their motivation is. And of course in this case with leaders who are indifferent to Covid deaths and disability there's not so much motivation involved as a lack of it.
A few theories on the why:
Power results in loss of empathy, so leaders don't see a downside. "Old people always die. *shrug"
Power results in loss of empathy, so leaders are secretly mildly pleased if people die, due to the saving on the social benefits paid out to the people most at risk. It's a net good if someone in Canada dies at 70 instead of dying at at 85. The savings to socialized medicine are enormous.
Leaders don't identify with the vulnerable because for the most part, they themselves are not vulnerable. This makes them impatient and annoyed with the vulnerable who are seen as impediments. They actively dislike them, which is not the same as being indifferent or mildly pleased at the savings when they die. The vulnerable are actually their enemies, in their own small way.
Curiously, you would think that more conservative/republican type of leaders would want to protect the older people who are more likely to vote for them, but the older people who are more likely to vote conservative/republican strongly do not want strong Covid mandates. Try imposing strong mandates on the people most at risk and you will have to install cameras in the nursing homes and staff who monitor them and stomp into the room and yell at the residents when they take their masks off. Seniors organizations for seniors who live in the community are not being vocal about masking and bringing back partial lock down. It's the reverse. The older they get and the more likely they are to be immune suppressed the less likely they are to be taking measures to avoid Covid.
Elected leaders no longer have the backing of most people to have strong Covid mandates. Trying to make people do what they don't want to uses up your limit supply of control. The Chinese leaders who enforced the Zero Covid mandates have made themself more vulnerable to losing power.
There is a very strong and vocal contingent that want no Covid restrictions at all and are prepared to commit social unrest to prevent it. While leaders could always surround themselves with body guards, it ain't great when there are riots. In the US there probably would be riots in many states. Would YOU want to be the Governor of Texas who declared a major lock down?
There was so much money thrown around during lockdown that the leaders are now under significant pressure to divert similar sorts of money to their cronies and backers. "If you could dedicate a trillion dollars to paying people to stay home, how about three billion for my little pork barrel?" It's hard to turn down your golf buddy, who is at the top of the list for favours owed, and who is very good at math.
Leaders have a limited amount of attention. Covid has dropped off their radar because there are so many other thing being scheduled for them. Lobbyists for various special interests get all the attention. Any statements the leader makes about Covid is probably being written by an intern. "Gotta make one lip-service mention of Covid in this speech, and two about Murdered and Missing First Nations, and three about Climate Change. But inflation is the issue polling most significant, so we're going to announce that any union getting increased wages is keeping the inflation rate from going back to normal. Greedy Unions cause inflation. Especially nurses. Got it?"
There are a lot of really serious issues that they need to deal with pertaining to public health - fossil fuels, income inequality, etc - and if they make Covid a priority people will turn around and demand they do something about those other issues too. But they can't do anything about those other issues because they are oligarchs with ties to the fossil fuel industry themselves.
It would cost money and a significant revamping of the public health system to do anything effective about Covid and yet their per capita budget for public health is being slashed because it is too expensive to keep increasing it to match the greying of the population. They'd need to hire masses of staff and pay far better wages to retain them just to sustain the care they are providing, and what they really want is to find a way to cut expenses.
They don't believe in Covid, the same way that the ordinary person doesn't believe in Covid. It didn't result in bodies in the street and mass graves and a significant population death the way the Black Death did, so it was really vastly over hyped. Everyone knows someone who died of Covid, and everyone knows someone who was killed in a traffic accident. But everyone still goes out there and walks around the neighbourhood and gets into cars.
God will protect them, and the people and the country, things usually turn out right. If it gets bad, we'll deal with it then, but everything is normal today and the sun is shining.
They have no clue how to successfully come up with effective anti Covid measure other than complete lockdown.
That's the big one. Of 15 studies on using masks to combat transmission done in Canada they all showed that transmission was reduced - but several were so low a figure as to be statistically insignificant, and the highest rate was a 10% reduction, with effective, stringent use. Effective and stringent use was the exception. People are absolute crap at being careful to mask, even when they have high incentive and good training. Worse, the longer they mask, the less effective they get at it. They stop noticing if the fit of their mask isn't good, and stop carefully readjusting it. Masking is no where near as effective as lockdown. You really want to prevent the spread? Lockdown is the way to go.
Getting aside from politicans and oligarchs as letting us down and letting people die - which they are definitely doing - Maybe we need to find another measure that is more effective than masking, but less damaging to people and less expensive than lockdown?
The problem is that the only solution we have yet come up with that fits that description is vaccination, and vaccination is crap at protecting immune suppressed people. Anyone who actually lives long enough is going to eventually become immune suppressed, so vaccination is the stop gap measure. We need something that works, something better than masking.
I dunno what to suggest, but I am sure there are millions of very intelligent creative people wracking their brains to come up with something. In the meantime immune suppressed people and the people that love them, have to revert to using personally imposed lockdown to protect themselves. I just wish that the focus wasn't on masking, because while that ten percent is critically important - it's still only ≤ ten percent. And that's not good enough.
posted by Jane the Brown at 7:26 AM on April 13, 2023 [7 favorites]
A few theories on the why:
Power results in loss of empathy, so leaders don't see a downside. "Old people always die. *shrug"
Power results in loss of empathy, so leaders are secretly mildly pleased if people die, due to the saving on the social benefits paid out to the people most at risk. It's a net good if someone in Canada dies at 70 instead of dying at at 85. The savings to socialized medicine are enormous.
Leaders don't identify with the vulnerable because for the most part, they themselves are not vulnerable. This makes them impatient and annoyed with the vulnerable who are seen as impediments. They actively dislike them, which is not the same as being indifferent or mildly pleased at the savings when they die. The vulnerable are actually their enemies, in their own small way.
Curiously, you would think that more conservative/republican type of leaders would want to protect the older people who are more likely to vote for them, but the older people who are more likely to vote conservative/republican strongly do not want strong Covid mandates. Try imposing strong mandates on the people most at risk and you will have to install cameras in the nursing homes and staff who monitor them and stomp into the room and yell at the residents when they take their masks off. Seniors organizations for seniors who live in the community are not being vocal about masking and bringing back partial lock down. It's the reverse. The older they get and the more likely they are to be immune suppressed the less likely they are to be taking measures to avoid Covid.
Elected leaders no longer have the backing of most people to have strong Covid mandates. Trying to make people do what they don't want to uses up your limit supply of control. The Chinese leaders who enforced the Zero Covid mandates have made themself more vulnerable to losing power.
There is a very strong and vocal contingent that want no Covid restrictions at all and are prepared to commit social unrest to prevent it. While leaders could always surround themselves with body guards, it ain't great when there are riots. In the US there probably would be riots in many states. Would YOU want to be the Governor of Texas who declared a major lock down?
There was so much money thrown around during lockdown that the leaders are now under significant pressure to divert similar sorts of money to their cronies and backers. "If you could dedicate a trillion dollars to paying people to stay home, how about three billion for my little pork barrel?" It's hard to turn down your golf buddy, who is at the top of the list for favours owed, and who is very good at math.
Leaders have a limited amount of attention. Covid has dropped off their radar because there are so many other thing being scheduled for them. Lobbyists for various special interests get all the attention. Any statements the leader makes about Covid is probably being written by an intern. "Gotta make one lip-service mention of Covid in this speech, and two about Murdered and Missing First Nations, and three about Climate Change. But inflation is the issue polling most significant, so we're going to announce that any union getting increased wages is keeping the inflation rate from going back to normal. Greedy Unions cause inflation. Especially nurses. Got it?"
There are a lot of really serious issues that they need to deal with pertaining to public health - fossil fuels, income inequality, etc - and if they make Covid a priority people will turn around and demand they do something about those other issues too. But they can't do anything about those other issues because they are oligarchs with ties to the fossil fuel industry themselves.
It would cost money and a significant revamping of the public health system to do anything effective about Covid and yet their per capita budget for public health is being slashed because it is too expensive to keep increasing it to match the greying of the population. They'd need to hire masses of staff and pay far better wages to retain them just to sustain the care they are providing, and what they really want is to find a way to cut expenses.
They don't believe in Covid, the same way that the ordinary person doesn't believe in Covid. It didn't result in bodies in the street and mass graves and a significant population death the way the Black Death did, so it was really vastly over hyped. Everyone knows someone who died of Covid, and everyone knows someone who was killed in a traffic accident. But everyone still goes out there and walks around the neighbourhood and gets into cars.
God will protect them, and the people and the country, things usually turn out right. If it gets bad, we'll deal with it then, but everything is normal today and the sun is shining.
They have no clue how to successfully come up with effective anti Covid measure other than complete lockdown.
That's the big one. Of 15 studies on using masks to combat transmission done in Canada they all showed that transmission was reduced - but several were so low a figure as to be statistically insignificant, and the highest rate was a 10% reduction, with effective, stringent use. Effective and stringent use was the exception. People are absolute crap at being careful to mask, even when they have high incentive and good training. Worse, the longer they mask, the less effective they get at it. They stop noticing if the fit of their mask isn't good, and stop carefully readjusting it. Masking is no where near as effective as lockdown. You really want to prevent the spread? Lockdown is the way to go.
Getting aside from politicans and oligarchs as letting us down and letting people die - which they are definitely doing - Maybe we need to find another measure that is more effective than masking, but less damaging to people and less expensive than lockdown?
The problem is that the only solution we have yet come up with that fits that description is vaccination, and vaccination is crap at protecting immune suppressed people. Anyone who actually lives long enough is going to eventually become immune suppressed, so vaccination is the stop gap measure. We need something that works, something better than masking.
I dunno what to suggest, but I am sure there are millions of very intelligent creative people wracking their brains to come up with something. In the meantime immune suppressed people and the people that love them, have to revert to using personally imposed lockdown to protect themselves. I just wish that the focus wasn't on masking, because while that ten percent is critically important - it's still only ≤ ten percent. And that's not good enough.
posted by Jane the Brown at 7:26 AM on April 13, 2023 [7 favorites]
So there is a lot of anger and trauma over that, that in a lot of cases is disproportionate to that person's personal risk.
posted by Dip Flash at 8:08 AM on April 13
I mean, I have elderly parents I love. It's not about my personal risk.
Also, I think most of my anger comes from having every illusion that people are basically kind violently shattered.
posted by joannemerriam at 8:01 AM on April 13, 2023 [22 favorites]
posted by Dip Flash at 8:08 AM on April 13
I mean, I have elderly parents I love. It's not about my personal risk.
Also, I think most of my anger comes from having every illusion that people are basically kind violently shattered.
posted by joannemerriam at 8:01 AM on April 13, 2023 [22 favorites]
you would think that more conservative/republican type of leaders would want to protect the older people who are more likely to vote for them
Those leaders have given up on majority voting as a strategy. There’s no mandate to protect your votes when votes and voters are only there for the optics and power is protected by other means.
posted by rikschell at 8:06 AM on April 13, 2023 [3 favorites]
Those leaders have given up on majority voting as a strategy. There’s no mandate to protect your votes when votes and voters are only there for the optics and power is protected by other means.
posted by rikschell at 8:06 AM on April 13, 2023 [3 favorites]
Someone above asked what the endgame is for those of us still trying not to get Covid.
The endgame is improvements in indoor air quality, like Belgium is instituting.
I don’t know if most people are aware of this, but during the course of the pandemic, we have had a major shift in our understanding of respiratory disease transmission. We used to think that they were mostly transmitted via large droplets - that’s where that initial 6 foot rule came from. But it turns out that transmission of Covid and the flu and colds and lots of other common respiratory illnesses is primarily airborne and that means we can dramatically reduce and possibly all but eliminate almost all of these illnesses if we just clean indoor air.
The last time we figured something like this out, it led to an enormous overhaul of our infrastructure - especially the way we handled sewage. The people wearing masks are simply the people who are saying: “I will continue to boil my water until we stop putting raw sewage in it.”
The endgame isn’t wearing masks forever. The end game is ventilation, filtration, and disinfection of indoor air. But it’s going to be masks and lots of death and disability forever if people keep throwing up their hands and saying “what’s the endgame? I’m not gonna wear a mask forever!”
posted by congen at 8:10 AM on April 13, 2023 [61 favorites]
The endgame is improvements in indoor air quality, like Belgium is instituting.
I don’t know if most people are aware of this, but during the course of the pandemic, we have had a major shift in our understanding of respiratory disease transmission. We used to think that they were mostly transmitted via large droplets - that’s where that initial 6 foot rule came from. But it turns out that transmission of Covid and the flu and colds and lots of other common respiratory illnesses is primarily airborne and that means we can dramatically reduce and possibly all but eliminate almost all of these illnesses if we just clean indoor air.
The last time we figured something like this out, it led to an enormous overhaul of our infrastructure - especially the way we handled sewage. The people wearing masks are simply the people who are saying: “I will continue to boil my water until we stop putting raw sewage in it.”
The endgame isn’t wearing masks forever. The end game is ventilation, filtration, and disinfection of indoor air. But it’s going to be masks and lots of death and disability forever if people keep throwing up their hands and saying “what’s the endgame? I’m not gonna wear a mask forever!”
posted by congen at 8:10 AM on April 13, 2023 [61 favorites]
Minimizing Covid and its impacts as much of the media has done means folks who would mask don’t and that has real consequences. And responsible media coverage would have led to more public pressure for improved indoor air quality. When was the last time you read a Covid article in a mainstream outlet that talked about protecting yourself with anything other than masks and hand washing? Why don’t restaurant reviews in the New York Times have CO2 levels or whether the restaurant has HEPA filters? Where is the comparison between the Japanese shops that report CO2 levels and upgraded their ventilation and your local grocery store?
posted by congen at 8:15 AM on April 13, 2023 [24 favorites]
posted by congen at 8:15 AM on April 13, 2023 [24 favorites]
Also, I think most of my anger comes from having every illusion that people are basically kind violently shattered.
"A person is smart. People are dumb, stupid panicky animals and you know it." -- Agent K
posted by delfin at 8:16 AM on April 13, 2023 [9 favorites]
"A person is smart. People are dumb, stupid panicky animals and you know it." -- Agent K
posted by delfin at 8:16 AM on April 13, 2023 [9 favorites]
Everyone has their own feelings and I'm not saying they are easy to control: but using one metric to explain that most people are not "basically kind" is going to end in misery.
In conclusion, people are a land of contrasts.
posted by tiny frying pan at 8:49 AM on April 13, 2023 [15 favorites]
In conclusion, people are a land of contrasts.
posted by tiny frying pan at 8:49 AM on April 13, 2023 [15 favorites]
Maybe we need to find another measure that is more effective than masking, but less damaging to people and less expensive than lockdown?
Of all the measures that can be taken, masking is the most effective and least invasive. You just wear a mask. It's so much less expensive than lockdown and it hardly requires any effort at all. Just wear a mask. There's no other measure that can provide anywhere close to the same amount of benefit for the same amount of cost.
The lasting failure of the pandemic is that such a simple and effective tool has been completely nullified because some people are absolute assholes who can't be bothered to make even the smallest sacrifice of wearing a fucking mask.
posted by RonButNotStupid at 8:53 AM on April 13, 2023 [19 favorites]
Of all the measures that can be taken, masking is the most effective and least invasive. You just wear a mask. It's so much less expensive than lockdown and it hardly requires any effort at all. Just wear a mask. There's no other measure that can provide anywhere close to the same amount of benefit for the same amount of cost.
The lasting failure of the pandemic is that such a simple and effective tool has been completely nullified because some people are absolute assholes who can't be bothered to make even the smallest sacrifice of wearing a fucking mask.
posted by RonButNotStupid at 8:53 AM on April 13, 2023 [19 favorites]
Completely on board with those saying we should be cranking up indoor air quality, big time. It will pay off way beyond just helping control Covid.
•••••••
A lot of the outraged articles and opinion pieces (and some comments here)that I read seem to me to be people being really angry that their era of complacency has been ended by this new disease.
Can't speak for others, but that is most certainly not true for me. Complacency about my health has never been an option for me. Life made sure of that from early on.
With respect, I think your comment was flippant, and might say more about you than those you are commenting on.
posted by Pouteria at 8:57 AM on April 13, 2023 [5 favorites]
•••••••
A lot of the outraged articles and opinion pieces (and some comments here)that I read seem to me to be people being really angry that their era of complacency has been ended by this new disease.
Can't speak for others, but that is most certainly not true for me. Complacency about my health has never been an option for me. Life made sure of that from early on.
With respect, I think your comment was flippant, and might say more about you than those you are commenting on.
posted by Pouteria at 8:57 AM on April 13, 2023 [5 favorites]
The endgame isn’t wearing masks forever. The end game is ventilation, filtration, and disinfection of indoor air. But it’s going to be masks and lots of death and disability forever if people keep throwing up their hands and saying “what’s the endgame? I’m not gonna wear a mask forever!”
posted by congen at 8:10 AM on April 13
This, this, this. Please, if you're in any position to have people listen to you, speak up.
posted by wintersweet at 9:10 AM on April 13, 2023 [10 favorites]
posted by congen at 8:10 AM on April 13
This, this, this. Please, if you're in any position to have people listen to you, speak up.
posted by wintersweet at 9:10 AM on April 13, 2023 [10 favorites]
Why don’t restaurant reviews in the New York Times have CO2 levels or whether the restaurant has HEPA filters?
That is actually a really good, actionable idea (and even relates to the OP article's focus on media coverage). Writing to newspapers, review sites, etc. to ask/demand that they include information about air filtering (and things like outdoor seating, where relevant) for restaurants, stores, and other public spaces has a small but real chance of creating some change and influencing expectations, which is about as much as most of us can hope to accomplish.
This comment got me thinking about the ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act) and how basic accessibility regulations came about. Apparently the National Council on Disability played a major role in making it happen. Searching the site today for mentions of air quality, filtering, or ventilation brings up nothing post 2016 and very little before that. Which is kind of amazing, since for anyone immunocompromised the air quality of a location is a major factor in determining how accessible it is, and many people are currently living lives that are much more restricted and disabled than they could be if more spaces were safer for them. It feels like a major shift in perception is needed for people to start thinking of some public health measures as being accessibility measures too.
posted by trig at 9:18 AM on April 13, 2023 [14 favorites]
That is actually a really good, actionable idea (and even relates to the OP article's focus on media coverage). Writing to newspapers, review sites, etc. to ask/demand that they include information about air filtering (and things like outdoor seating, where relevant) for restaurants, stores, and other public spaces has a small but real chance of creating some change and influencing expectations, which is about as much as most of us can hope to accomplish.
This comment got me thinking about the ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act) and how basic accessibility regulations came about. Apparently the National Council on Disability played a major role in making it happen. Searching the site today for mentions of air quality, filtering, or ventilation brings up nothing post 2016 and very little before that. Which is kind of amazing, since for anyone immunocompromised the air quality of a location is a major factor in determining how accessible it is, and many people are currently living lives that are much more restricted and disabled than they could be if more spaces were safer for them. It feels like a major shift in perception is needed for people to start thinking of some public health measures as being accessibility measures too.
posted by trig at 9:18 AM on April 13, 2023 [14 favorites]
Further, Covid antibodies — even from infection — decline rapidly. But antibodies to the flu can linger for decadesI wish this news article would cite its sources for that. I know that SARS-COV-1 antibodies have been shown to decline but there are still some present 12 years later and the virologists on TVIW seem inclined to think SARS-COV-2 antibodies might decline in a similar pattern, although that strikes me as a guess. So how does that actually compare to flu antibody decline?
posted by joeyh at 9:40 AM on April 13, 2023 [5 favorites]
Covid got in the way of profit. Of course it's being ignored; profit is what matters.
posted by theora55 at 10:51 AM on April 13, 2023 [5 favorites]
posted by theora55 at 10:51 AM on April 13, 2023 [5 favorites]
With respect, I think your comment was flippant, and might say more about you than those you are commenting on.
With recognition that passive aggression is a major communication modality here, I'll note that adding "with respect" doesn't particularly connotate respect and there are better ways to express displeasure.
The combined population of developed countries that had (largely but not completely) eliminated malaria, TB, etc. within living memory is well over a billion people. People my age in the US, Europe, Japan, Australia, etc. have spent our entire lives with effective vaccines and few communicable diseases of concern. (The bad years of the AIDS epidemic were terrible, but that was and continues to be a disease where risk is focused much more narrowly.) It's been really traumatic for people to have that bubble broken, and it shows up clearly in the discourse. Observing that is not a criticism of anyone, nor a minimization of all the other ways this has been and still is horribly traumatic.
And it goes hand in hand with the trauma of having elected leaders so comprehensively fail our societies -- not everywhere, but in a lot of places -- and the collective shrug over the unequal risks faced by the elderly and otherwise vulnerable that people have been commenting on.
I'll bow out at this point, to avoid creating any kind of personal back and forth that is a drag in broader discussions.
posted by Dip Flash at 10:59 AM on April 13, 2023 [15 favorites]
With recognition that passive aggression is a major communication modality here, I'll note that adding "with respect" doesn't particularly connotate respect and there are better ways to express displeasure.
The combined population of developed countries that had (largely but not completely) eliminated malaria, TB, etc. within living memory is well over a billion people. People my age in the US, Europe, Japan, Australia, etc. have spent our entire lives with effective vaccines and few communicable diseases of concern. (The bad years of the AIDS epidemic were terrible, but that was and continues to be a disease where risk is focused much more narrowly.) It's been really traumatic for people to have that bubble broken, and it shows up clearly in the discourse. Observing that is not a criticism of anyone, nor a minimization of all the other ways this has been and still is horribly traumatic.
And it goes hand in hand with the trauma of having elected leaders so comprehensively fail our societies -- not everywhere, but in a lot of places -- and the collective shrug over the unequal risks faced by the elderly and otherwise vulnerable that people have been commenting on.
I'll bow out at this point, to avoid creating any kind of personal back and forth that is a drag in broader discussions.
posted by Dip Flash at 10:59 AM on April 13, 2023 [15 favorites]
Covid got in the way of profit. Of course it's being ignored; profit is what matters.
Dip Flash stated some things better than I could have. I'd add, I'm not even a parent but I saw some situations involving youth from pre-school through high school and covid absolutely fucked them over. I hate to reduce this discussion to simplistic things: "you're a shitbag human if you don't wear a mask/our politicians failed us/it's all about profit"
We can implicate these threads into the discussion, but can we also acknowledge that strident opinions with a super laser focus on The One Thing is not really useful in this situation?
posted by elkevelvet at 11:12 AM on April 13, 2023 [9 favorites]
Dip Flash stated some things better than I could have. I'd add, I'm not even a parent but I saw some situations involving youth from pre-school through high school and covid absolutely fucked them over. I hate to reduce this discussion to simplistic things: "you're a shitbag human if you don't wear a mask/our politicians failed us/it's all about profit"
We can implicate these threads into the discussion, but can we also acknowledge that strident opinions with a super laser focus on The One Thing is not really useful in this situation?
posted by elkevelvet at 11:12 AM on April 13, 2023 [9 favorites]
I live in an area where Covid is over. Maybe 1 out of every 300 people mask, indoor dining has been back for years, nobody says the word "Covid", and doctors will tell you: You know, it's okay to take your mask off in here.
It doesn't work. Pretending doesn't work. I'm telling you, the people I work with have been sick all year. Their kids have been sick all year. It's not Covid, of course, just "something going around"... But they confess to me that they're tired; they can't shake this cough; they can't seem to catch their breath; their doctor says they might have had a cardiac event (under age 30). The immigrant guys who work on the cleaning crew come in to work for a few weeks, leave with a bad cough one day, and never come back again.
There is no lockdown. There are no Covid restrictions. Hospital nurses don't mask or require you to mask. Everything is back to normal. Except it's not. Everyone is palpably miserable. The labor shortages, the horrific way customers treat us, the drop in life expectancy, the nosediving economy, your buddy's preteen who suddenly has CFS and the doctors say he's faking it for attention so he doesn't go to school and cries all the time--these things are here, still happening. Covid precautions are not at fault for these things. I can tell you that because where I am, there are no Covid precautions.
I don't want this anymore, either. I hate all of it. But it's here, chewing its way through the people at the edges of our society, whether we name it or not. Our lives and our health are being sacrified in the name of capital.
posted by the liquid oxygen at 11:37 AM on April 13, 2023 [47 favorites]
It doesn't work. Pretending doesn't work. I'm telling you, the people I work with have been sick all year. Their kids have been sick all year. It's not Covid, of course, just "something going around"... But they confess to me that they're tired; they can't shake this cough; they can't seem to catch their breath; their doctor says they might have had a cardiac event (under age 30). The immigrant guys who work on the cleaning crew come in to work for a few weeks, leave with a bad cough one day, and never come back again.
There is no lockdown. There are no Covid restrictions. Hospital nurses don't mask or require you to mask. Everything is back to normal. Except it's not. Everyone is palpably miserable. The labor shortages, the horrific way customers treat us, the drop in life expectancy, the nosediving economy, your buddy's preteen who suddenly has CFS and the doctors say he's faking it for attention so he doesn't go to school and cries all the time--these things are here, still happening. Covid precautions are not at fault for these things. I can tell you that because where I am, there are no Covid precautions.
I don't want this anymore, either. I hate all of it. But it's here, chewing its way through the people at the edges of our society, whether we name it or not. Our lives and our health are being sacrified in the name of capital.
posted by the liquid oxygen at 11:37 AM on April 13, 2023 [47 favorites]
We focus so much on masking because it's the one area of individual consumer choice and we are an individualist, consumer society but masking is the least of it really, money to improve ventilation in public buildings and changing the building codes to require better ventilation in new buildings would make a bigger difference.
You can only protect you. You can't get the rest of the world en masse to fix anything or take care of you. They can't keep it up if they tried. The theater I perform at had 6 HEPA filters in 2021. Now they're all gone except for one, which stopped working and nobody fixed it last time I was there. Everyone has given up. They'd all rather get sick and have free faces every single day. This is too hard to fight, needs collective action, we don't have the people or power for that, we can't win this fight because it's too big and too hard anyway. We lost the fight with biology. You can't win no matter what you do. Everyone who cares still is too tired to keep going, and most people burned out years ago.
I will note that the last time I saw Covid "going around" (i.e. people I know are coming down with it) was late December 2022, but also I haven't been doing much theater since then, so make of that what you will. I'm still masking even if I'm the only one, but I'm tired of "I can't hear you!" and all that shit as well.
posted by jenfullmoon at 11:47 AM on April 13, 2023 [8 favorites]
You can only protect you. You can't get the rest of the world en masse to fix anything or take care of you. They can't keep it up if they tried. The theater I perform at had 6 HEPA filters in 2021. Now they're all gone except for one, which stopped working and nobody fixed it last time I was there. Everyone has given up. They'd all rather get sick and have free faces every single day. This is too hard to fight, needs collective action, we don't have the people or power for that, we can't win this fight because it's too big and too hard anyway. We lost the fight with biology. You can't win no matter what you do. Everyone who cares still is too tired to keep going, and most people burned out years ago.
I will note that the last time I saw Covid "going around" (i.e. people I know are coming down with it) was late December 2022, but also I haven't been doing much theater since then, so make of that what you will. I'm still masking even if I'm the only one, but I'm tired of "I can't hear you!" and all that shit as well.
posted by jenfullmoon at 11:47 AM on April 13, 2023 [8 favorites]
It turns out hindsight is not as great as people say it is..
posted by srboisvert at 12:39 PM on April 13, 2023 [3 favorites]
posted by srboisvert at 12:39 PM on April 13, 2023 [3 favorites]
It doesn't work. Pretending doesn't work. I'm telling you, the people I work with have been sick all year. Their kids have been sick all year. It's not Covid, of course, just "something going around"... But they confess to me that they're tired; they can't shake this cough; they can't seem to catch their breath; their doctor says they might have had a cardiac event (under age 30). The immigrant guys who work on the cleaning crew come in to work for a few weeks, leave with a bad cough one day, and never come back again.
This is anecdote-based conspiracy thinking. Yes, other viruses exist--I was sick last month with some sort of respiratory... thing, took 2 at-home tests and went and got a PCR, all negative. People have been sick "all year"? a) it's April and b) confirmation bias. They're tired? Yeah, I'm often tired too. That's what happens when you get older.
posted by rhymedirective at 12:41 PM on April 13, 2023 [26 favorites]
This is anecdote-based conspiracy thinking. Yes, other viruses exist--I was sick last month with some sort of respiratory... thing, took 2 at-home tests and went and got a PCR, all negative. People have been sick "all year"? a) it's April and b) confirmation bias. They're tired? Yeah, I'm often tired too. That's what happens when you get older.
posted by rhymedirective at 12:41 PM on April 13, 2023 [26 favorites]
This is anecdote-based conspiracy thinking. Yes, other viruses exist--I was sick last month with some sort of respiratory... thing, took 2 at-home tests and went and got a PCR, all negative. People have been sick "all year"? a) it's April and b) confirmation bias. They're tired? Yeah, I'm often tired too. That's what happens when you get older.
When the United States stopped collecting and reporting covid data (April 9th or thereabouts) there were still ~300/day dying from covid-19. This was happening with near universal vaccination particularly among the vulnerable and the anti-vaxxer holdouts having been already infected at least once thanks to all the omicrons. That means the odds of those still alive at this point dying now should be extremely low. Like super-miniscule low. Like covid-minimizer's dream low. So the number of infections has to actually be pretty high to get a daily death count that is higher than Chet Hank's white boy summer of 2021 and it has probably been consistently pretty high since the first omicron wave when RATs became ubiquitous and case number data collection was effectively abandoned.
Is it a conspiracy theory to infer from the deliberately limited available data that there must actually be a lot of covid-19 circulating?
posted by srboisvert at 1:07 PM on April 13, 2023 [12 favorites]
When the United States stopped collecting and reporting covid data (April 9th or thereabouts) there were still ~300/day dying from covid-19. This was happening with near universal vaccination particularly among the vulnerable and the anti-vaxxer holdouts having been already infected at least once thanks to all the omicrons. That means the odds of those still alive at this point dying now should be extremely low. Like super-miniscule low. Like covid-minimizer's dream low. So the number of infections has to actually be pretty high to get a daily death count that is higher than Chet Hank's white boy summer of 2021 and it has probably been consistently pretty high since the first omicron wave when RATs became ubiquitous and case number data collection was effectively abandoned.
Is it a conspiracy theory to infer from the deliberately limited available data that there must actually be a lot of covid-19 circulating?
posted by srboisvert at 1:07 PM on April 13, 2023 [12 favorites]
There is, of course, a vast difference between "people are still catching COVID" and "everyone has long COVID and is dying of heart attacks at the age of 27 or disappearing."
posted by rhymedirective at 1:12 PM on April 13, 2023 [9 favorites]
posted by rhymedirective at 1:12 PM on April 13, 2023 [9 favorites]
So I'm earnestly asking...the transmission is still considered high but since people aren't getting as sick (I base this off of hospitals not being overrun), they aren't testing or seeking treatment? Making the numbers seem low?
I understand the bad news reporting (the focus of this FPP), but am reluctant to not trust the same medical sources I used to telling me now that my area has low amounts of covid. But if it's not reported to medical people maybe it's "not there."
posted by tiny frying pan at 1:12 PM on April 13, 2023 [2 favorites]
I understand the bad news reporting (the focus of this FPP), but am reluctant to not trust the same medical sources I used to telling me now that my area has low amounts of covid. But if it's not reported to medical people maybe it's "not there."
posted by tiny frying pan at 1:12 PM on April 13, 2023 [2 favorites]
Metafilter: Is it a conspiracy theory to infer from the deliberately limited available data
posted by Jarcat at 1:24 PM on April 13, 2023
posted by Jarcat at 1:24 PM on April 13, 2023
I don't think anyone here called anything a conspiracy theory?
posted by tiny frying pan at 1:31 PM on April 13, 2023
posted by tiny frying pan at 1:31 PM on April 13, 2023
People having to take home tests (PCR mostly being unavailable again) and not reporting them is one thing. Also, they literally redrew the definitions of low, medium and high for awhile to make everything seem lower than it actually is. Wastewater testing is as close to you get for accuracy these days.
posted by jenfullmoon at 1:31 PM on April 13, 2023 [8 favorites]
posted by jenfullmoon at 1:31 PM on April 13, 2023 [8 favorites]
tiny frying pan: ... but since people aren't getting as sick (I base this off of hospitals not being overrun), they aren't testing or seeking treatment?
What I have heard is that most settings (e.g., work, colleges) no longer make allowances for people who have tested positive, so there is strong pressure not to test when you feel sick.
That is, you invite penalties on yourself -- starting with five days of missed work or school -- for testing positive, but almost no one will know that you're sick, if your COVID is mild and you say nothing.
posted by wenestvedt at 1:33 PM on April 13, 2023 [6 favorites]
What I have heard is that most settings (e.g., work, colleges) no longer make allowances for people who have tested positive, so there is strong pressure not to test when you feel sick.
That is, you invite penalties on yourself -- starting with five days of missed work or school -- for testing positive, but almost no one will know that you're sick, if your COVID is mild and you say nothing.
posted by wenestvedt at 1:33 PM on April 13, 2023 [6 favorites]
I know a bunch of people personally who've had covid in recent months, some for the first time. While it made them feel like crap for a few days, none of them needed hospitalization, and they're all fine now. This includes a 93 year-old woman, a 65 year-old woman with an autoimmune disorder, and a 40 year-old woman with asthma. I was worried about all of them when I found out they had it, and they all turned out fine. So has everyone I work with who's had it so far this year, along with their families who all caught it from each other.
This is why I feel like it doesn't make sense to think people should keep acting like we're in emergency mode, when it really doesn't seem like we are anymore. I am much more worried about all the people out there with new substance abuse problems, people with road rage and bad drivers in general, and getting cancer than I can continue to be about covid.
I will continue to pay attention to the wastewater testing results in my community and act accordingly if results are getting high. I'll still get vaccinated or boosted annually or whatever they're going to call future vaccines as they come out whenever it's recommended. If a new and much more deadly or debilitating variant emerges, I will adapt my behavior to that as well.
posted by wondermouse at 1:34 PM on April 13, 2023 [20 favorites]
This is why I feel like it doesn't make sense to think people should keep acting like we're in emergency mode, when it really doesn't seem like we are anymore. I am much more worried about all the people out there with new substance abuse problems, people with road rage and bad drivers in general, and getting cancer than I can continue to be about covid.
I will continue to pay attention to the wastewater testing results in my community and act accordingly if results are getting high. I'll still get vaccinated or boosted annually or whatever they're going to call future vaccines as they come out whenever it's recommended. If a new and much more deadly or debilitating variant emerges, I will adapt my behavior to that as well.
posted by wondermouse at 1:34 PM on April 13, 2023 [20 favorites]
I'm going back to the question of reporting.
I was really disappointed in journalism over the pandemic. And I used to be in the industry and did not think that my opinion could sink more. I wasn't for the first few months, even though Mistakes Were Made, because making mistakes is fine.
But the biggest weakness I saw, particularly in broadcast/immediate media were frustratingly the same issue that has been pushing media in bad directions since 24/7 cable news - the "unique angle."
If there is a series of statistics and public health measures that are available for everyone and where the messaging is consistent, clear, and simple (6 feet apart, while insufficient, is actually a great example of this; my kids will sadly remember the droplet distance for the rest of their lives whether it's valuable or not) -- it's BORING NEWS after the first day. It's not going to get clicks or keep audiences watching until the commercials.
So you get more and more extreme viewpoints presented and worse and worse takes on things. I personally went through this with Wakefield and sat in on a story meeting where we diligently sat around trying to think of what else we could say about autism and vaccines because we had to cover something and it is one of my top-10 nightmare fuel memories.
Because there's a difference between making sure a story is factually correct, and having regard for the overall critical truth, and "unique angles" do not really lend themselves to the second.
What I learned from watching things roll out is that we need really great health comms teams doing direct communication from well-funded public health. (Ha ha ha.) Kevin Parent/Ottawa Public Health Twitter gets the warriorqueen pandemic award. Another not really media issue but pretty amazing use of social media was Vaccine Hunters Canada (I'm proud to say I helped and know some of the minds behind that.) Health communications is a serious skill set.
posted by warriorqueen at 1:56 PM on April 13, 2023 [12 favorites]
I was really disappointed in journalism over the pandemic. And I used to be in the industry and did not think that my opinion could sink more. I wasn't for the first few months, even though Mistakes Were Made, because making mistakes is fine.
But the biggest weakness I saw, particularly in broadcast/immediate media were frustratingly the same issue that has been pushing media in bad directions since 24/7 cable news - the "unique angle."
If there is a series of statistics and public health measures that are available for everyone and where the messaging is consistent, clear, and simple (6 feet apart, while insufficient, is actually a great example of this; my kids will sadly remember the droplet distance for the rest of their lives whether it's valuable or not) -- it's BORING NEWS after the first day. It's not going to get clicks or keep audiences watching until the commercials.
So you get more and more extreme viewpoints presented and worse and worse takes on things. I personally went through this with Wakefield and sat in on a story meeting where we diligently sat around trying to think of what else we could say about autism and vaccines because we had to cover something and it is one of my top-10 nightmare fuel memories.
Because there's a difference between making sure a story is factually correct, and having regard for the overall critical truth, and "unique angles" do not really lend themselves to the second.
What I learned from watching things roll out is that we need really great health comms teams doing direct communication from well-funded public health. (Ha ha ha.) Kevin Parent/Ottawa Public Health Twitter gets the warriorqueen pandemic award. Another not really media issue but pretty amazing use of social media was Vaccine Hunters Canada (I'm proud to say I helped and know some of the minds behind that.) Health communications is a serious skill set.
posted by warriorqueen at 1:56 PM on April 13, 2023 [12 favorites]
The world to COVID: "whoa, good vibes only, bro"
posted by Kitteh at 2:00 PM on April 13, 2023 [3 favorites]
posted by Kitteh at 2:00 PM on April 13, 2023 [3 favorites]
As long as we are sharing anecdotes here…
I teach at a public high school in Florida with about 1500 students. The number of teachers or students that still wear masks is probably 2-3% - and even fewer are wear their masks consistently or correctly. There were a handful of covid cases in the fall. I honestly have not heard of a case of covid at our school in months. This notion that covid is tearing through unmasked populations like wildfire leaving a wake of destruction is just… not true.
posted by gnutron at 2:17 PM on April 13, 2023 [8 favorites]
I teach at a public high school in Florida with about 1500 students. The number of teachers or students that still wear masks is probably 2-3% - and even fewer are wear their masks consistently or correctly. There were a handful of covid cases in the fall. I honestly have not heard of a case of covid at our school in months. This notion that covid is tearing through unmasked populations like wildfire leaving a wake of destruction is just… not true.
posted by gnutron at 2:17 PM on April 13, 2023 [8 favorites]
I teach at a public university in Georgia. I have 60 something students this semester, and at least one of them has had COVID almost every week.
posted by hydropsyche at 2:37 PM on April 13, 2023 [6 favorites]
posted by hydropsyche at 2:37 PM on April 13, 2023 [6 favorites]
FWIW, the rehab facility where my stepfather is currently staying requires masking and rapid tests everyone who comes in, every day. They haven't had a positive test since January, and they do a lot of tests.
I think there is definitely a lot of reasonable mistrust of official channels re: COVID data. I follow a really smart astrophysicist on Twitter and they have been sharing official-looking dashboards for various parts of Canada that are all deep in the red with "EXTREME DANGER" etc. And then I looked at the official Ontario dashboard and it was all "things are pretty low." So I looked deeper into the DANGER dashboard and it is a grassroots org made of scientists and other smart people that was put together when the official data was lacking. But at this point it feels like they feel compelled to just keep sounding the alarm? And a lot of the dashboard is based on estimates, and the underlying data is just a spreadsheet with numbers sourced from ???. Which, remember when everyone was predicting that XBB 1.5 was going to cause another Omicron-style wave this winter? That didn't happen. It is hard to move out of the emergency mindset. And, for sure, COVID is not gone, and still can be very serious! But we are in no way, shape or form anywhere close to where we were during Omicron or Delta.
I understand why people choose to isolate, mask, etc. And I support their choices and will never look down on someone for being cautious. And besides, as others have mentioned, there are other viruses out there! Like RSV, which was a major contributing factor to my dad's passing this winter. But I don't think it is healthy or helpful to be alarmist.
posted by grumpybear69 at 2:40 PM on April 13, 2023 [11 favorites]
I think there is definitely a lot of reasonable mistrust of official channels re: COVID data. I follow a really smart astrophysicist on Twitter and they have been sharing official-looking dashboards for various parts of Canada that are all deep in the red with "EXTREME DANGER" etc. And then I looked at the official Ontario dashboard and it was all "things are pretty low." So I looked deeper into the DANGER dashboard and it is a grassroots org made of scientists and other smart people that was put together when the official data was lacking. But at this point it feels like they feel compelled to just keep sounding the alarm? And a lot of the dashboard is based on estimates, and the underlying data is just a spreadsheet with numbers sourced from ???. Which, remember when everyone was predicting that XBB 1.5 was going to cause another Omicron-style wave this winter? That didn't happen. It is hard to move out of the emergency mindset. And, for sure, COVID is not gone, and still can be very serious! But we are in no way, shape or form anywhere close to where we were during Omicron or Delta.
I understand why people choose to isolate, mask, etc. And I support their choices and will never look down on someone for being cautious. And besides, as others have mentioned, there are other viruses out there! Like RSV, which was a major contributing factor to my dad's passing this winter. But I don't think it is healthy or helpful to be alarmist.
posted by grumpybear69 at 2:40 PM on April 13, 2023 [11 favorites]
they aren't testing or seeking treatment?
A lot of people I know have been sick in recent months (which is not that weird in itself, people generally get sick every so often, especially in the winter and spring). Almost all of them have said, when I asked, that they're intentionally not testing for covid because if they had it they'd have to cancel their plans. They're all people who acted responsibly for the first 2 years of pandemic.
It's weird: I've been very careful since the start, partly because of health reasons and probably partly because of personality, and because I can. I do not act like the pandemic is over. But where I live people have been acting like it's completely over for way more than a year now, and I'm starting to feel that way too - not because I think it's true (local death rates are about twice what they were during the last trough before omicron, and many times higher than they were at the end of each lockdown) but because the water we swim in is really powerful. Everyone is living like it's the reality, and it becomes really hard to not get swept up in that. It's a weird sort of dissonance.
I really want, hope, and need for a massive ventilation overhaul to happen, because not only is individual action not enough, we really aren't built for it. Even though I can and do handle the burden of always masking, avoiding lots of indoor activity, cutting way back on social life, and so on, and I don't even find it all that difficult - I still am deeply tired of this burden. Regulate air quality, provide funding for businesses and organizations to improve air quality, inspect and enforce, and let me and the rest of us drop this from our shoulders safely.
posted by trig at 2:42 PM on April 13, 2023 [15 favorites]
A lot of people I know have been sick in recent months (which is not that weird in itself, people generally get sick every so often, especially in the winter and spring). Almost all of them have said, when I asked, that they're intentionally not testing for covid because if they had it they'd have to cancel their plans. They're all people who acted responsibly for the first 2 years of pandemic.
It's weird: I've been very careful since the start, partly because of health reasons and probably partly because of personality, and because I can. I do not act like the pandemic is over. But where I live people have been acting like it's completely over for way more than a year now, and I'm starting to feel that way too - not because I think it's true (local death rates are about twice what they were during the last trough before omicron, and many times higher than they were at the end of each lockdown) but because the water we swim in is really powerful. Everyone is living like it's the reality, and it becomes really hard to not get swept up in that. It's a weird sort of dissonance.
I really want, hope, and need for a massive ventilation overhaul to happen, because not only is individual action not enough, we really aren't built for it. Even though I can and do handle the burden of always masking, avoiding lots of indoor activity, cutting way back on social life, and so on, and I don't even find it all that difficult - I still am deeply tired of this burden. Regulate air quality, provide funding for businesses and organizations to improve air quality, inspect and enforce, and let me and the rest of us drop this from our shoulders safely.
posted by trig at 2:42 PM on April 13, 2023 [15 favorites]
From the US NIH, the current situation with mucosal vaccines.
posted by humbug at 2:43 PM on April 13, 2023 [5 favorites]
posted by humbug at 2:43 PM on April 13, 2023 [5 favorites]
I really want, hope, and need for a massive ventilation overhaul to happen
Me too. It is a major disappointment that we didn't see ventilation and filtration upgrades to schools etc. and as part of building code updates as an artifact of the pandemic. It would have gone so far.
posted by grumpybear69 at 2:48 PM on April 13, 2023 [10 favorites]
Me too. It is a major disappointment that we didn't see ventilation and filtration upgrades to schools etc. and as part of building code updates as an artifact of the pandemic. It would have gone so far.
posted by grumpybear69 at 2:48 PM on April 13, 2023 [10 favorites]
It's really hard to truly know anything these days (if that ever were possible), especially in the age of social media; but what passes for mainstream media too has fallen for the easy ragebait opinion. In 2020 I remember seeing two news articles quoting the same recent Fauci interview; both had somehow come to completely opposite conclusions, farming clicks from completely different sets of people.
Now all the covid-deniers are back on Twitter, FB, and YT; the alarmists never left; and both groups are talking past each other while their followers fight.
It wasn't six months ago that the alarmists were calling covid "airborne AIDS" and we'd be we'd have a triple- or quad-demic of all the diseases. That did not come to pass. Or maybe it did and I didn't notice.
posted by meowzilla at 3:04 PM on April 13, 2023 [2 favorites]
Now all the covid-deniers are back on Twitter, FB, and YT; the alarmists never left; and both groups are talking past each other while their followers fight.
It wasn't six months ago that the alarmists were calling covid "airborne AIDS" and we'd be we'd have a triple- or quad-demic of all the diseases. That did not come to pass. Or maybe it did and I didn't notice.
posted by meowzilla at 3:04 PM on April 13, 2023 [2 favorites]
This is anecdote-based conspiracy thinking. Yes, other viruses exist--I was sick last month with some sort of respiratory... thing, took 2 at-home tests and went and got a PCR, all negative. People have been sick "all year"? a) it's April and b) confirmation bias. They're tired? Yeah, I'm often tired too. That's what happens when you get older.
And this is a tremendously uncharitable reading of what I posted. Perhaps you could accept that others have different experiences and information sources than you instead of accusing them of conspiracy thinking. I remember very clearly what my life and my friends' and coworkers' lives were like before Covid. Since I've seen how MeFi reacts to papers that suggest maybe we're not out of this yet from prior FPPs, about all I have to offer is my personal experience; I'll refrain from posting that from now on as well.
posted by the liquid oxygen at 3:51 PM on April 13, 2023 [10 favorites]
And this is a tremendously uncharitable reading of what I posted. Perhaps you could accept that others have different experiences and information sources than you instead of accusing them of conspiracy thinking. I remember very clearly what my life and my friends' and coworkers' lives were like before Covid. Since I've seen how MeFi reacts to papers that suggest maybe we're not out of this yet from prior FPPs, about all I have to offer is my personal experience; I'll refrain from posting that from now on as well.
posted by the liquid oxygen at 3:51 PM on April 13, 2023 [10 favorites]
did you know wastewater copies of the virus are down, but still double what they were a year ago
The peaks and troughs haven’t necessarily lined up every year, have they? I don’t get what this stat is supposed to mean on its own.
posted by atoxyl at 5:05 PM on April 13, 2023 [4 favorites]
The peaks and troughs haven’t necessarily lined up every year, have they? I don’t get what this stat is supposed to mean on its own.
posted by atoxyl at 5:05 PM on April 13, 2023 [4 favorites]
There is no endgame. Unless there's some miraculous medical discovery in vaccination that makes covid-19 sterilize so we can't get it while vaccinated
There have only ever been two really plausible endgames - the virus being fully contained early, or the virus reaching an equilibrium as a globally endemic respiratory disease. Obviously we failed to achieve the former. It’s seeming like it’s going to end up around the same magnitude of severity as influenza - which of course people commonly underestimate, being itself not only lethal to vulnerable people but associated with elevated risks of cardiovascular events, autoimmunity and so on in its wake. A new virus is kind of incalculably bad when you multiply by millions of infections and an indefinite number of years going forward. But nonetheless, if you’re expecting people individually to take it vastly more seriously than other respiratory viruses, at some point you will be disappointed.
The bigger thing here that I’m mad about is feeling like I have gained no confidence in the ability of our societies to avert another disaster of this sort in the future. As other people have said, feeling like nobody will bother to put to use anything we’ve learned about ventilation and large scale reduction of transmission. And I am hoping that funding for research on vaccines and post-viral sequelae doesn’t fall off a cliff.
posted by atoxyl at 5:22 PM on April 13, 2023 [14 favorites]
There have only ever been two really plausible endgames - the virus being fully contained early, or the virus reaching an equilibrium as a globally endemic respiratory disease. Obviously we failed to achieve the former. It’s seeming like it’s going to end up around the same magnitude of severity as influenza - which of course people commonly underestimate, being itself not only lethal to vulnerable people but associated with elevated risks of cardiovascular events, autoimmunity and so on in its wake. A new virus is kind of incalculably bad when you multiply by millions of infections and an indefinite number of years going forward. But nonetheless, if you’re expecting people individually to take it vastly more seriously than other respiratory viruses, at some point you will be disappointed.
The bigger thing here that I’m mad about is feeling like I have gained no confidence in the ability of our societies to avert another disaster of this sort in the future. As other people have said, feeling like nobody will bother to put to use anything we’ve learned about ventilation and large scale reduction of transmission. And I am hoping that funding for research on vaccines and post-viral sequelae doesn’t fall off a cliff.
posted by atoxyl at 5:22 PM on April 13, 2023 [14 favorites]
Public health measures are collective action problems, and they need huge support to become automatic behaviours or legally mandated changes to built things.
Unfortunately various actors have decided they want to harm social cohesion (the Russians, perhaps) or that such action harms their business interests, or that collective action is inherently bad, and together made this a culture war battle front.
I don't think we can blame individual people for not being fully aware, or making appropriate risk calculations, or whatever. Media coverage is somewhat to blame as it treats bad faith claims as a point of view that needs to be covered for balance, and it treats continuing problems as not newsworthy once they've been around for a while. But those people who poison the dialogue for gain, I blame them most of all.
posted by i_am_joe's_spleen at 5:30 PM on April 13, 2023 [6 favorites]
Unfortunately various actors have decided they want to harm social cohesion (the Russians, perhaps) or that such action harms their business interests, or that collective action is inherently bad, and together made this a culture war battle front.
I don't think we can blame individual people for not being fully aware, or making appropriate risk calculations, or whatever. Media coverage is somewhat to blame as it treats bad faith claims as a point of view that needs to be covered for balance, and it treats continuing problems as not newsworthy once they've been around for a while. But those people who poison the dialogue for gain, I blame them most of all.
posted by i_am_joe's_spleen at 5:30 PM on April 13, 2023 [6 favorites]
Re: the ‘if there were that many cases, hospitals would be overrun’ comment: there is a lot more omicron around than previous variants. Some COVID risk reports focus on prevalence, and prevalence is very high most places.
For a combination of reasons (partially the variant itself, partially previous immunity from vaccination or prior infection, partly more experience leading to better treatment options in some cases), rates of serious illness requiring hospitalization from omicron variants have been lower than for previous variants. The combination of very high prevalence and lower rates of serious illness per fixed number of cases has meant that hospitalization rates in my region have been pretty consistent over the past year or year and a bit - goes up and down a little, but about the same as the delta wave (we still had required precautionary public health measures during delta where I am), and similar rates of death from COVID as well.
And also, the health care system in my region is seriously struggling. Folks who are generally healthy and who do have a family doctor (the entry point for health care in the Canadian system) still have a reasonable experience, though wait times for appointments have definitely increased. So you wouldn’t necessarily notice it if you were in that lucky group, which is the majority, but of course is also skewed toward folks who are more financially stable. And due to economic segregation (which isn’t as bad in Canada as in the US, but definitely still a factor), someone upper middle class could absolutely be in a position of not knowing (to the best of their knowledge) anyone who has been more than just a little inconvenienced by the crisis in our health care system. It’s not an equally distributed crisis, by any means.
Now, there are some specific provincial issues that were already causing issues in our health care system pre-pandemic, so my province’s health care crisis is particularly bad. But health care systems across Canada are all struggling, still/currently, and doctor organizations and nurses unions all say that the pandemic is a significant factor: they were previously below but very close to max capacity, and need for services hasn’t decreased, so need continues to exceed capacity. But, again, due to inequality only some sub-populations are bearing the brunt of that shortfall.
posted by eviemath at 5:33 PM on April 13, 2023 [16 favorites]
For a combination of reasons (partially the variant itself, partially previous immunity from vaccination or prior infection, partly more experience leading to better treatment options in some cases), rates of serious illness requiring hospitalization from omicron variants have been lower than for previous variants. The combination of very high prevalence and lower rates of serious illness per fixed number of cases has meant that hospitalization rates in my region have been pretty consistent over the past year or year and a bit - goes up and down a little, but about the same as the delta wave (we still had required precautionary public health measures during delta where I am), and similar rates of death from COVID as well.
And also, the health care system in my region is seriously struggling. Folks who are generally healthy and who do have a family doctor (the entry point for health care in the Canadian system) still have a reasonable experience, though wait times for appointments have definitely increased. So you wouldn’t necessarily notice it if you were in that lucky group, which is the majority, but of course is also skewed toward folks who are more financially stable. And due to economic segregation (which isn’t as bad in Canada as in the US, but definitely still a factor), someone upper middle class could absolutely be in a position of not knowing (to the best of their knowledge) anyone who has been more than just a little inconvenienced by the crisis in our health care system. It’s not an equally distributed crisis, by any means.
Now, there are some specific provincial issues that were already causing issues in our health care system pre-pandemic, so my province’s health care crisis is particularly bad. But health care systems across Canada are all struggling, still/currently, and doctor organizations and nurses unions all say that the pandemic is a significant factor: they were previously below but very close to max capacity, and need for services hasn’t decreased, so need continues to exceed capacity. But, again, due to inequality only some sub-populations are bearing the brunt of that shortfall.
posted by eviemath at 5:33 PM on April 13, 2023 [16 favorites]
Summary: perhaps reconsider what you think “hospitals being overrun” looks like.
posted by eviemath at 5:36 PM on April 13, 2023 [5 favorites]
posted by eviemath at 5:36 PM on April 13, 2023 [5 favorites]
Re: the ‘if there were that many cases, hospitals would be overrun’ comment:
For the record, that is not what I said.
posted by tiny frying pan at 6:00 PM on April 13, 2023
For the record, that is not what I said.
posted by tiny frying pan at 6:00 PM on April 13, 2023
Covid is what caused me to give up hope for humanity.
I'd always worried that climate change would be our undoing as it comes on too slowly to trigger enough concern. Conditions every year are a little worse than they were the year before, but people accept that. By the time the danger becomes impossible to ignore it would be too late. But I still had hope we'd come to our senses in time.
Then covid hit, and we had an absolutely obvious threat that was killing people in droves. And we...just...couldn't be bothered.
posted by bitmage at 6:12 PM on April 13, 2023 [20 favorites]
I'd always worried that climate change would be our undoing as it comes on too slowly to trigger enough concern. Conditions every year are a little worse than they were the year before, but people accept that. By the time the danger becomes impossible to ignore it would be too late. But I still had hope we'd come to our senses in time.
Then covid hit, and we had an absolutely obvious threat that was killing people in droves. And we...just...couldn't be bothered.
posted by bitmage at 6:12 PM on April 13, 2023 [20 favorites]
Re: the ‘if there were that many cases, hospitals would be overrun’ comment:
I think what you said is perfectly true, but it's also true that COVID was never equally distributed, and why I continue to argue that stuff like fancy ventilation in buildings should be far below adding/improving medical services where poorer people and people of color live to improve basic medical access would have far better impacts.
But those are not indicators of 'hospitals being overrun' and those same situations existed long before the pandemic.
posted by The_Vegetables at 7:32 PM on April 13, 2023 [1 favorite]
I think what you said is perfectly true, but it's also true that COVID was never equally distributed, and why I continue to argue that stuff like fancy ventilation in buildings should be far below adding/improving medical services where poorer people and people of color live to improve basic medical access would have far better impacts.
But those are not indicators of 'hospitals being overrun' and those same situations existed long before the pandemic.
posted by The_Vegetables at 7:32 PM on April 13, 2023 [1 favorite]
One big difference is we now have anti-virals that are pretty easy to get, if you live in a first-world country and have any kind of risk factor at all, which wasn't true even 6 months ago. I had Covid in Sept and Dec 2022 and my experiences were like it was a completely different disease (of course it would have been a different strain but they were both omicron even). In September my PCP wouldn't prescribe anti-virals and I was completely out of it for a week, actively sick for 6 weeks, and had at least a month after that with brain fog. In December my PCP gave me anti-virals with no argument and I was out of it for a day, actively sick for maybe 4-5 days, and had a couple weeks of lower-level brain fog.
I work in a hospital and basically everybody on staff got Covid at some point Nov-Jan and everybody was reporting the same sort of thing: the anti-virals kept pretty much all of us from having a serious case of Covid. That's anecdotal, it's not a magic bullet, but it does make a tremendous difference.
posted by joannemerriam at 7:41 PM on April 13, 2023 [6 favorites]
I work in a hospital and basically everybody on staff got Covid at some point Nov-Jan and everybody was reporting the same sort of thing: the anti-virals kept pretty much all of us from having a serious case of Covid. That's anecdotal, it's not a magic bullet, but it does make a tremendous difference.
posted by joannemerriam at 7:41 PM on April 13, 2023 [6 favorites]
Silent Hypoxemia in Patients with COVID-19 Pneumonia: A Review
Mast cell activation is associated with post-acute COVID-19 syndrome
Pathophysiology of Post-COVID syndromes: a new perspective
A condition called POTS rose after covid, but patients can’t find care: Covid is causing a sharp rise in cases of postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome, a disorder of the autonomic nervous system that causes rapid heart rate, fainting and dizziness
Organ damage for 59% of patients with long COVID continues a year after initial symptoms
The haunting brain science of long Covid
Risk of diabetes rises 58% after COVID, even amid omicron, study finds
Long Covid is associated with significantly increased risk of death, heart and lung problems, study finds
Young people are more likely to die of heart attacks post-COVID, study finds. But why?: A recent study found that heart attacks in people ages 25 to 44 increased by 30% compared to the expected number over the first two years of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Autopsies show COVID-19 virus in brain, elsewhere in body
'I really miss school': 71,000 children in UK struggling with long Covid
More than half of long Covid sufferers unable to work after two years: UWV
posted by MrVisible at 9:32 PM on April 13, 2023 [12 favorites]
Mast cell activation is associated with post-acute COVID-19 syndrome
Pathophysiology of Post-COVID syndromes: a new perspective
A condition called POTS rose after covid, but patients can’t find care: Covid is causing a sharp rise in cases of postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome, a disorder of the autonomic nervous system that causes rapid heart rate, fainting and dizziness
Organ damage for 59% of patients with long COVID continues a year after initial symptoms
The haunting brain science of long Covid
Risk of diabetes rises 58% after COVID, even amid omicron, study finds
Long Covid is associated with significantly increased risk of death, heart and lung problems, study finds
Young people are more likely to die of heart attacks post-COVID, study finds. But why?: A recent study found that heart attacks in people ages 25 to 44 increased by 30% compared to the expected number over the first two years of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Autopsies show COVID-19 virus in brain, elsewhere in body
'I really miss school': 71,000 children in UK struggling with long Covid
More than half of long Covid sufferers unable to work after two years: UWV
posted by MrVisible at 9:32 PM on April 13, 2023 [12 favorites]
It is absolutely wild to me to read covid threads because of how different people’s experiences are and how much they’re very sure it is absolutely reflective of reality and how it is for everyone. Fwiw I include myself in that. But also there is literally a tent hospital less than five miles from my house because the system is overrun. The people I know who’ve had covid aren’t back to normal, although they will say they are. But they also have gone from being people who take ten or twenty mile hiked every weekend to people who are winded after a single flight of stairs. I know four people who died this month from covid complications. I look at the dashboard for hospital capacity in different counties and it couldn’t be clearer that people are living different pandemics. And yet people act like I’m the crazy one for thinking we should still be talking about the risks and ways to mitigate your chances of catching covid. The media has 100% dropped the ball on this, and I think it’s because it’s too existentially terrifying to think about what it means for excess mortality to be so high. Journalists are just people, too. And people have forgotten that they weren’t always sick. They’ve forgotten that it’s weird so so many people have strep, that young people are dying from cardiac and stroke events, and that *they will get old, too.* So even if covid is only dangerous once you are old … shouldn’t we all act in our best interest and make it safe to be old? Shouldn’t we look at the decline in life expectancy and be concerned?
I know I live somewhere with particularly bad healthcare and that impacts outcomes. But I sure know a fuckload of people who are seeking specialists for all these new weird problems that have cropped up. And I’ve been disabled a long time. I am keenly aware of how little help there is, and just how many people are shocked to find out a doctor can’t fix them. This is new. I’ve never had so much chronically ill company, and people have amnesia about how good they used to feel while in the same sentence asking me how to navigate a new system.
I know this is just my own experience. But it truly takes me aback that there are people for whom everyone they know came out of having covid with no lasting effects. I might know one person that could be characterized that way. And a lot of them got sick for the first time in the era of “mild” omicron …
posted by Bottlecap at 9:50 PM on April 13, 2023 [21 favorites]
I know I live somewhere with particularly bad healthcare and that impacts outcomes. But I sure know a fuckload of people who are seeking specialists for all these new weird problems that have cropped up. And I’ve been disabled a long time. I am keenly aware of how little help there is, and just how many people are shocked to find out a doctor can’t fix them. This is new. I’ve never had so much chronically ill company, and people have amnesia about how good they used to feel while in the same sentence asking me how to navigate a new system.
I know this is just my own experience. But it truly takes me aback that there are people for whom everyone they know came out of having covid with no lasting effects. I might know one person that could be characterized that way. And a lot of them got sick for the first time in the era of “mild” omicron …
posted by Bottlecap at 9:50 PM on April 13, 2023 [21 favorites]
(In fairness, unlike in the UK our national and state governments are still collecting and reporting basic stats on it.)
posted by Pouteria
With the important caveat that reporting a positive result is no longer mandatory, and financial support to stay home while sick is not on offer anymore thus reducing even further the incentive to report a positive result. So the official numbers are not as reliable as they were.
I think all jurisdictions are doing wastewater monitoring though, which certainly helps.
posted by Pouteria at 9:52 PM on April 13, 2023
posted by Pouteria
With the important caveat that reporting a positive result is no longer mandatory, and financial support to stay home while sick is not on offer anymore thus reducing even further the incentive to report a positive result. So the official numbers are not as reliable as they were.
I think all jurisdictions are doing wastewater monitoring though, which certainly helps.
posted by Pouteria at 9:52 PM on April 13, 2023
we now have anti-virals that are pretty easy to get, if you live in a first-world country and have any kind of risk factor at all
Unless you're in Australia, not a senior, and not obviously at Death's door, in which case you'll be regarded as "too young" and "you're probably fine, exisiting conditions and past Covid history be damned" to qualify for any sort of medical care or even a checkup
(Which is also why I've now become meh about testing because... What difference is that gonna make? I'll just be stuck at home with no care or help. Not much different than staying home due to the flu. I also wonder if me looking younger than I am is throwing people off, because technically I'm middle aged but you wouldn't know that from seeing me in a video call)
posted by creatrixtiara at 9:52 PM on April 13, 2023 [6 favorites]
Unless you're in Australia, not a senior, and not obviously at Death's door, in which case you'll be regarded as "too young" and "you're probably fine, exisiting conditions and past Covid history be damned" to qualify for any sort of medical care or even a checkup
(Which is also why I've now become meh about testing because... What difference is that gonna make? I'll just be stuck at home with no care or help. Not much different than staying home due to the flu. I also wonder if me looking younger than I am is throwing people off, because technically I'm middle aged but you wouldn't know that from seeing me in a video call)
posted by creatrixtiara at 9:52 PM on April 13, 2023 [6 favorites]
The people I know who’ve had covid aren’t back to normal, although they will say they are.
posted by Bottlecap
This is a very important confounder in the numbers and overall picture of the situation. Various pressures are in play here, including financial, political, and social, and certainly personal in (very understandably) having difficulty grasping and facing up to what has happened to you, particularly given the lack of explanation and treatment on offer from medical science.
The whole idea of convalescence has fallen out of favour, but it used to be done for very good reasons, that are still very much in play. The big brave soldier on mentality has a price, and that bill is coming due on Covid-19.
Much harder data is needed on the long term health effects, and the socio-economic consequences of it, than we are getting.
posted by Pouteria at 10:18 PM on April 13, 2023 [5 favorites]
posted by Bottlecap
This is a very important confounder in the numbers and overall picture of the situation. Various pressures are in play here, including financial, political, and social, and certainly personal in (very understandably) having difficulty grasping and facing up to what has happened to you, particularly given the lack of explanation and treatment on offer from medical science.
The whole idea of convalescence has fallen out of favour, but it used to be done for very good reasons, that are still very much in play. The big brave soldier on mentality has a price, and that bill is coming due on Covid-19.
Much harder data is needed on the long term health effects, and the socio-economic consequences of it, than we are getting.
posted by Pouteria at 10:18 PM on April 13, 2023 [5 favorites]
we now have anti-virals that are pretty easy to get, if you live in a first-world country and have any kind of risk factor at all
Unless you're in Australia, not a senior, and not obviously at Death's door
I was going to say exactly that about my country. I think America's easy access to Paxlovid is the outlier among its peers, not the rule, though admittedly I haven't checked availability in all first-world countries.
posted by trig at 12:37 AM on April 14, 2023 [9 favorites]
Unless you're in Australia, not a senior, and not obviously at Death's door
I was going to say exactly that about my country. I think America's easy access to Paxlovid is the outlier among its peers, not the rule, though admittedly I haven't checked availability in all first-world countries.
posted by trig at 12:37 AM on April 14, 2023 [9 favorites]
It is absolutely wild to me to read covid threads because of how different people’s experiences are
Thinking about it, it's kind of amazing how everyone I ran into when vaccines were coming out had multiple stories of people being hurt or even killed by vaccines. You'd go online and there'd be groups with endless posts about it: I got the vaccine and then X happened. People in person would tell me they or their parents or their friends or friends of friends of their friends got the first vaccine and then X happened so they weren't getting the second one. A lot of times X was things like heart attacks or diabetes or other things that can happen for multiple reasons, including as a result of having had covid itself. People posted pictures of swollen lymph nodes like they were crime scenes. Someone told me about hospitalization rates for various conditions going way up where they lived after vaccines were introduced - when I said given how low vaccination rates were in that area it made more sense for that to be due to covid infections, which were extremely high, that was brushed away. Even though the people telling these stories were pretty much always fine, they absolutely took every vaccine injury account seriously.
Was it the intensity with which these things were reported that got them to stick so much in people's minds and made anti-vaccine stories so effective, was it the inherent drama of "someone injected this into me and then...", or was it only people's desire to believe? Because "I got X from covid" stories don't seem to have anywhere near the same sticking power in the popular imagination, aside from the one about losing your sense of smell, and I wonder if it's only because people don't want to believe it, or because it's reported in a less sensationalistic, "they don't want you to know about this but here's the truth from the underground" kind of way, or what.
posted by trig at 12:59 AM on April 14, 2023 [7 favorites]
Thinking about it, it's kind of amazing how everyone I ran into when vaccines were coming out had multiple stories of people being hurt or even killed by vaccines. You'd go online and there'd be groups with endless posts about it: I got the vaccine and then X happened. People in person would tell me they or their parents or their friends or friends of friends of their friends got the first vaccine and then X happened so they weren't getting the second one. A lot of times X was things like heart attacks or diabetes or other things that can happen for multiple reasons, including as a result of having had covid itself. People posted pictures of swollen lymph nodes like they were crime scenes. Someone told me about hospitalization rates for various conditions going way up where they lived after vaccines were introduced - when I said given how low vaccination rates were in that area it made more sense for that to be due to covid infections, which were extremely high, that was brushed away. Even though the people telling these stories were pretty much always fine, they absolutely took every vaccine injury account seriously.
Was it the intensity with which these things were reported that got them to stick so much in people's minds and made anti-vaccine stories so effective, was it the inherent drama of "someone injected this into me and then...", or was it only people's desire to believe? Because "I got X from covid" stories don't seem to have anywhere near the same sticking power in the popular imagination, aside from the one about losing your sense of smell, and I wonder if it's only because people don't want to believe it, or because it's reported in a less sensationalistic, "they don't want you to know about this but here's the truth from the underground" kind of way, or what.
posted by trig at 12:59 AM on April 14, 2023 [7 favorites]
Unless you're in Australia, not a senior, and not obviously at Death's door, in which case you'll be regarded as "too young" and "you're probably fine, exisiting conditions and past Covid history be damned" to qualify for any sort of medical care or even a checkupI understand what you're going through. My dad now has long covid after the Australian medical system decided that a man in his late 60s wasn't worth Paxlovid.
The other person I know who has seriously been impacted by long covid had to quit my social basketball team. Watching someone with long covid try to play basketball will make you mask up forever.
posted by zymil at 1:05 AM on April 14, 2023 [5 favorites]
We used to think that they were mostly transmitted via large droplets - that’s where that initial 6 foot rule came from. But it turns out that transmission of Covid and the flu and colds and lots of other common respiratory illnesses is primarily airborne and that means we can dramatically reduce and possibly all but eliminate almost all of these illnesses if we just clean indoor air.
This being my second SARS coronavirus pandemic, I could have sworn this was learned during the first pandemic in Hong Kong (Amoy Gardens for example, for anyone else who was there for it). Guess everyone has to learn the same lessons the same hard way themselves.
posted by Dysk at 3:36 AM on April 14, 2023 [5 favorites]
This being my second SARS coronavirus pandemic, I could have sworn this was learned during the first pandemic in Hong Kong (Amoy Gardens for example, for anyone else who was there for it). Guess everyone has to learn the same lessons the same hard way themselves.
posted by Dysk at 3:36 AM on April 14, 2023 [5 favorites]
The majority of humans on the planet has caught the Covid-19 virus at this point. Those who are lucky or caught it after vaccination may not even have noticed, so the case-fatality rates are a measure of how well you have tested rather than how dangerous it is.
The hardest hit parts of Italy hit 800% of standard mortality rates, with the entire North having 30% more deaths. The rate of death was high enough that health care and funeral systems broke down.
The latest Omicron wave caused about 10% excess mortality at its peak.
The overall death rate from Covid-19 seems to track "did the country get vaccines before its quarantine measures broke down" times its reliability in tracking. Excess deaths are a far better metric for cross-national comparisons, as actually tracking covid-19 deaths is something many countries fail to do; but almost everyone tracks all-cause deaths.
Here is cumulative excess deaths as a percentage over baseline:
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/cumulative-excess-mortality-p-scores-projected-baseline?tab=chart&country=PER~MEX~IRN~USA~ISR~BOL~ECU~CAN~GBR~TUR~JPN~NZL~RUS~DEU~ZAF~KOR
It can give you a visual feel of how the pandemic has been (and still is being) handled.
Most of the downward slopes are because the early deaths killed off a bunch of people who where vulnerable.
The upward slopes are on countries that did an effective quarantine, and have now relaxed measures. NZ, for example, has just now hit the pre-pandemic expected death counts. It had an effective quarantine and got mostly vaccinated by high quality vaccines before the quarantine failed. Canada hit a flat 5% excess deaths compared to pre-pandemic and has stayed relatively steady; UK is steady around 10%, and United States is staying steady closer to 15%.
Excess deaths both measure "you got Covid 19 and this weakened you, then you died to something else" as caused by Covid 19 and "you where going to die shortly from something else, but Covid 19 killed you first" as not caused by Covid 19. It even measures "the hospital isn't working property due to Covid 19 problems, and you died" as caused by Covid 19. But most of the deaths it measures seem to be "you got Covid 19 and died. If you didn't have Covid 19 you'd have lived pretty close to your expected life expectancy for your age".
When I looked at excess deaths in greater detail about a year ago using detailed UK numbers, the death rate increase was flat with regards to age group: like, a 30% death rate increase was 30% more 70 year olds and 30% more 20 year olds. The "background" rate of death of each age group scaled with the "covid" death rate reasonably closely. Not certain if this has changed.
posted by NotAYakk at 7:22 AM on April 14, 2023 [6 favorites]
The hardest hit parts of Italy hit 800% of standard mortality rates, with the entire North having 30% more deaths. The rate of death was high enough that health care and funeral systems broke down.
The latest Omicron wave caused about 10% excess mortality at its peak.
The overall death rate from Covid-19 seems to track "did the country get vaccines before its quarantine measures broke down" times its reliability in tracking. Excess deaths are a far better metric for cross-national comparisons, as actually tracking covid-19 deaths is something many countries fail to do; but almost everyone tracks all-cause deaths.
Here is cumulative excess deaths as a percentage over baseline:
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/cumulative-excess-mortality-p-scores-projected-baseline?tab=chart&country=PER~MEX~IRN~USA~ISR~BOL~ECU~CAN~GBR~TUR~JPN~NZL~RUS~DEU~ZAF~KOR
It can give you a visual feel of how the pandemic has been (and still is being) handled.
Most of the downward slopes are because the early deaths killed off a bunch of people who where vulnerable.
The upward slopes are on countries that did an effective quarantine, and have now relaxed measures. NZ, for example, has just now hit the pre-pandemic expected death counts. It had an effective quarantine and got mostly vaccinated by high quality vaccines before the quarantine failed. Canada hit a flat 5% excess deaths compared to pre-pandemic and has stayed relatively steady; UK is steady around 10%, and United States is staying steady closer to 15%.
Excess deaths both measure "you got Covid 19 and this weakened you, then you died to something else" as caused by Covid 19 and "you where going to die shortly from something else, but Covid 19 killed you first" as not caused by Covid 19. It even measures "the hospital isn't working property due to Covid 19 problems, and you died" as caused by Covid 19. But most of the deaths it measures seem to be "you got Covid 19 and died. If you didn't have Covid 19 you'd have lived pretty close to your expected life expectancy for your age".
When I looked at excess deaths in greater detail about a year ago using detailed UK numbers, the death rate increase was flat with regards to age group: like, a 30% death rate increase was 30% more 70 year olds and 30% more 20 year olds. The "background" rate of death of each age group scaled with the "covid" death rate reasonably closely. Not certain if this has changed.
posted by NotAYakk at 7:22 AM on April 14, 2023 [6 favorites]
I teach at a public high school in Florida with about 1500 students. The number of teachers or students that still wear masks is probably 2-3% - and even fewer are wear their masks consistently or correctly. There were a handful of covid cases in the fall. I honestly have not heard of a case of covid at our school in months. This notion that covid is tearing through unmasked populations like wildfire leaving a wake of destruction is just… not true.
At my kids school, its the same. No covid. They notify if anyone tests. While its possible someone had covid and got sick and no tests, it didn't spread throughout a classroom.
We started taking the kids to museums, play areas, activity centers, lots of indoor spots. I always see comments on metafilter that are to the effect of "I don't go anywhere and mask 100% everywhere, anyone else not doing that is not caring about other people" but, frankly, that's a lot easier to do when you're not caring directly for little ones. We stayed in for two years. I'm done. I need to take them out. They need to go to school. They need to see a world bigger than them. Parents need a night out every now and again.
We got covid once last summer. Its not that big a problem for us.
posted by MisantropicPainforest at 7:27 AM on April 14, 2023 [12 favorites]
At my kids school, its the same. No covid. They notify if anyone tests. While its possible someone had covid and got sick and no tests, it didn't spread throughout a classroom.
We started taking the kids to museums, play areas, activity centers, lots of indoor spots. I always see comments on metafilter that are to the effect of "I don't go anywhere and mask 100% everywhere, anyone else not doing that is not caring about other people" but, frankly, that's a lot easier to do when you're not caring directly for little ones. We stayed in for two years. I'm done. I need to take them out. They need to go to school. They need to see a world bigger than them. Parents need a night out every now and again.
We got covid once last summer. Its not that big a problem for us.
posted by MisantropicPainforest at 7:27 AM on April 14, 2023 [12 favorites]
So even if covid is only dangerous once you are old … shouldn’t we all act in our best interest and make it safe to be old? Shouldn’t we look at the decline in life expectancy and be concerned?
In the USA, income inequality, expensive healthcare, and the war on workers has made the quality of life so poor and the prospects of old age so dire that the decline in life expectancy seems like a blessing.
posted by rikschell at 7:35 AM on April 14, 2023 [3 favorites]
In the USA, income inequality, expensive healthcare, and the war on workers has made the quality of life so poor and the prospects of old age so dire that the decline in life expectancy seems like a blessing.
posted by rikschell at 7:35 AM on April 14, 2023 [3 favorites]
The decline of life expectancy in the US isn't due to old people dying but young people dying.
posted by MisantropicPainforest at 7:35 AM on April 14, 2023 [13 favorites]
posted by MisantropicPainforest at 7:35 AM on April 14, 2023 [13 favorites]
has made the quality of life so poor and the prospects of old age so dire that the decline in life expectancy seems like a blessing
seriously?
posted by pullayup at 7:39 AM on April 14, 2023 [10 favorites]
seriously?
posted by pullayup at 7:39 AM on April 14, 2023 [10 favorites]
I mean, not entirely unseriously. I’m 50 now and I don’t think I’m going to be able to afford being 80.
posted by rikschell at 7:52 AM on April 14, 2023 [3 favorites]
posted by rikschell at 7:52 AM on April 14, 2023 [3 favorites]
>the prospects of old age so dire that the decline in life expectancy seems like a blessing
seriously?
Not what the original commenter meant, but ....
"Pneumonia is the old man's friend" has taken on an increasingly poignant meaning as our ability to keep bodies alive has expanded. We're no longer looking at a few years in a nursing home at the end of our lives -- it could easily be decades, during which our mental facilities will degrade, for some a lot faster than others.
More than ever before the end of our lives have turned into a long, dwindling, and (for some) tortuous twilight.
So yeah, when it comes to old age living longer is not necessarily always better.
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 8:34 AM on April 14, 2023 [4 favorites]
seriously?
Not what the original commenter meant, but ....
"Pneumonia is the old man's friend" has taken on an increasingly poignant meaning as our ability to keep bodies alive has expanded. We're no longer looking at a few years in a nursing home at the end of our lives -- it could easily be decades, during which our mental facilities will degrade, for some a lot faster than others.
More than ever before the end of our lives have turned into a long, dwindling, and (for some) tortuous twilight.
So yeah, when it comes to old age living longer is not necessarily always better.
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 8:34 AM on April 14, 2023 [4 favorites]
Jfc what the FUCK
posted by Bottlecap at 8:48 AM on April 14, 2023 [6 favorites]
posted by Bottlecap at 8:48 AM on April 14, 2023 [6 favorites]
old age living longer is not necessarily always better.
You said the quiet part out loud, this is sickening.
posted by Jarcat at 8:59 AM on April 14, 2023 [1 favorite]
You said the quiet part out loud, this is sickening.
posted by Jarcat at 8:59 AM on April 14, 2023 [1 favorite]
I watched my dad decline so badly with no quality of life whatsoever for years on end. I really hope that doesn't happen to me, but odds are really high in my genepool that's how I'll go. Long slow excruciating decline isn't something I'd wish on my worst enemy.
posted by jenfullmoon at 9:32 AM on April 14, 2023 [8 favorites]
posted by jenfullmoon at 9:32 AM on April 14, 2023 [8 favorites]
Welp. I guess it's time to roll out the suicide booths.
If we're not going to do anything to help the vulnerable, the sick, or the old, just letting them (us) gradually get sicker and drift into poverty and homelessness and despair is just plain cruel. Now that we've established a national policy of "these people should just die for the sake of the economy" let's at least give everyone the option of a peaceful death.
I mean, what else is left now?
posted by MrVisible at 9:42 AM on April 14, 2023
If we're not going to do anything to help the vulnerable, the sick, or the old, just letting them (us) gradually get sicker and drift into poverty and homelessness and despair is just plain cruel. Now that we've established a national policy of "these people should just die for the sake of the economy" let's at least give everyone the option of a peaceful death.
I mean, what else is left now?
posted by MrVisible at 9:42 AM on April 14, 2023
God, these threads are unbearable.
posted by cakelite at 10:00 AM on April 14, 2023 [15 favorites]
posted by cakelite at 10:00 AM on April 14, 2023 [15 favorites]
I watched my dad decline so badly with no quality of life whatsoever for years on end
One does in many places increasingly have the choice to opt out of some of this - which I am highly in favor of, but which does seem kind of weird to bring up in this specific context!
posted by atoxyl at 10:02 AM on April 14, 2023
One does in many places increasingly have the choice to opt out of some of this - which I am highly in favor of, but which does seem kind of weird to bring up in this specific context!
posted by atoxyl at 10:02 AM on April 14, 2023
Folks who are generally healthy and who do have a family doctor (the entry point for health care in the Canadian system) still have a reasonable experience, though wait times for appointments have definitely increased. So you wouldn’t necessarily notice it if you were in that lucky group, which is the majority, but of course is also skewed toward folks who are more financially stable. And due to economic segregation (which isn’t as bad in Canada as in the US, but definitely still a factor), someone upper middle class could absolutely be in a position of not knowing (to the best of their knowledge) anyone who has been more than just a little inconvenienced by the crisis in our health care system.
This will probably vary substantially by country, but in the U.S. the (serious) problems seem to be less an issue of a flood of COVID patients and more a reflection of how the earlier floods of COVID patients and all the failures associated with that damaged an already brittle system with little capacity to restore itself. We could learn a lesson. Or we could continue to stagger along until the next shock drives us down further. I wish I was optimistic about our choice.
The people I know who’ve had covid aren’t back to normal, although they will say they are.
You really think you have better insight into people's health/experience of well-being than the people themselves?
posted by praemunire at 10:23 AM on April 14, 2023 [10 favorites]
This will probably vary substantially by country, but in the U.S. the (serious) problems seem to be less an issue of a flood of COVID patients and more a reflection of how the earlier floods of COVID patients and all the failures associated with that damaged an already brittle system with little capacity to restore itself. We could learn a lesson. Or we could continue to stagger along until the next shock drives us down further. I wish I was optimistic about our choice.
The people I know who’ve had covid aren’t back to normal, although they will say they are.
You really think you have better insight into people's health/experience of well-being than the people themselves?
posted by praemunire at 10:23 AM on April 14, 2023 [10 favorites]
God, these threads are unbearable.
Once a society has abandoned its responsibility to the sick, the old, and the poor, you can pretty much expect the discourse to be uncomfortable for everyone.
posted by MrVisible at 10:31 AM on April 14, 2023 [9 favorites]
Once a society has abandoned its responsibility to the sick, the old, and the poor, you can pretty much expect the discourse to be uncomfortable for everyone.
posted by MrVisible at 10:31 AM on April 14, 2023 [9 favorites]
Welp. I guess it's time to roll out the suicide booths.
If we're not going to do anything to help the vulnerable, the sick, or the old, just letting them (us) gradually get sicker and drift into poverty and...
Nobody is saying this! It's not even rude to see people fall into decrepitude -- which is independent of wealth -- and not wanting that for oneself. Or not wanting it for them. This is empathy.
Regression to helplessness is devoid of dignity, there's just no way around it. However, dignity can be extended with the liberal application of money or in-kind resources, neither of which is likely to be provided to poor people without significant activism and legislation.
posted by rhizome at 10:55 AM on April 14, 2023 [3 favorites]
If we're not going to do anything to help the vulnerable, the sick, or the old, just letting them (us) gradually get sicker and drift into poverty and...
Nobody is saying this! It's not even rude to see people fall into decrepitude -- which is independent of wealth -- and not wanting that for oneself. Or not wanting it for them. This is empathy.
Regression to helplessness is devoid of dignity, there's just no way around it. However, dignity can be extended with the liberal application of money or in-kind resources, neither of which is likely to be provided to poor people without significant activism and legislation.
posted by rhizome at 10:55 AM on April 14, 2023 [3 favorites]
Yeah, nobody’s saying they fucking LIKE this, just that it’s part of our thinking these days. My calculus includes “how much can we try to prevent healthcare backsliding into the Middle Ages without being shot to death by fascists.” I desperately WANT to live in a Star Trek future while my country continues its descent into a Mad Max future. Scold me for recognizing that fact all you want, bub, but it won’t change the facts.
posted by rikschell at 10:58 AM on April 14, 2023 [6 favorites]
posted by rikschell at 10:58 AM on April 14, 2023 [6 favorites]
> You really think you have better insight into people's health/experience of well-being than the people themselves?
I think you misunderstand me. These are all changes in their health that they tell me about. They’re even supplying the timeline of their decline that matches up with covid. But if you were to ask “do you have lingering effects from covid?” They would say no.
It’s like touching a hot stove, and then complaining about the burn. But if someone asks if it’s because of the hot stove saying “no, people just get burns as they age. It’s normal.”
I’m not judging their health or experiences of well being. They’re telling me how tired of being sick and unwell they are. Which …. Is a thing that has always happened with me because of disability. People feel a lot freer to tell me about their health because I don’t give them ableist replies. It’s just that now there’s an obvious proximate cause. In my experience, it’s only the people who are bedbound that will actually point at covid. Others will only talk about how much getting older sucks. And I’m like “bro, you are 28. This is not normal.”
posted by Bottlecap at 11:06 AM on April 14, 2023 [8 favorites]
I think you misunderstand me. These are all changes in their health that they tell me about. They’re even supplying the timeline of their decline that matches up with covid. But if you were to ask “do you have lingering effects from covid?” They would say no.
It’s like touching a hot stove, and then complaining about the burn. But if someone asks if it’s because of the hot stove saying “no, people just get burns as they age. It’s normal.”
I’m not judging their health or experiences of well being. They’re telling me how tired of being sick and unwell they are. Which …. Is a thing that has always happened with me because of disability. People feel a lot freer to tell me about their health because I don’t give them ableist replies. It’s just that now there’s an obvious proximate cause. In my experience, it’s only the people who are bedbound that will actually point at covid. Others will only talk about how much getting older sucks. And I’m like “bro, you are 28. This is not normal.”
posted by Bottlecap at 11:06 AM on April 14, 2023 [8 favorites]
I mean, what else is left now?
Strawmen! Think of all those poor abandoned strawmen!
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 11:48 AM on April 14, 2023 [4 favorites]
Strawmen! Think of all those poor abandoned strawmen!
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 11:48 AM on April 14, 2023 [4 favorites]
There are choices I might make for myself, that I wouldn't make for others, and choices people might make for themselves that I wouldn't make. Regardless I deserve to be the agent that makes those choices right up to the point they meaningfully affect other people.
Kinda feel like this thread would be better if people spoke of it in terms of what they want their personal choices to be, and if we also acknowledged that what we deserve is to have a choice, and that the messed up part of this is that the way some people now act like covid is over robs many other people of the ability to live safely within our society.
posted by Chrysopoeia at 11:55 AM on April 14, 2023 [14 favorites]
Kinda feel like this thread would be better if people spoke of it in terms of what they want their personal choices to be, and if we also acknowledged that what we deserve is to have a choice, and that the messed up part of this is that the way some people now act like covid is over robs many other people of the ability to live safely within our society.
posted by Chrysopoeia at 11:55 AM on April 14, 2023 [14 favorites]
The derail about aging was brought up specifically in response to the argument of "wouldn't YOU personally want to prevent YOU getting covid just for purely selfish reasons, because it will shorten YOUR personal life span."
And I mean, no. I want to prevent people getting COVID because they don't want to have COVID and its attendant stuff. I personally could not give a shit about my own life span. And it sounds like I am far from alone in that.
posted by We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese at 12:02 PM on April 14, 2023 [3 favorites]
And I mean, no. I want to prevent people getting COVID because they don't want to have COVID and its attendant stuff. I personally could not give a shit about my own life span. And it sounds like I am far from alone in that.
posted by We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese at 12:02 PM on April 14, 2023 [3 favorites]
I appreciate this post, OP. I was recently ill with what I believe was Covid because it felt exactly like it did when I officially got Covid in January 2022 or so. I could not get tested because I was too sick to go buy a test and basically too sick to do anything else.
Toward the end, as I was getting much better, I had to leave my apartment to pick up a package that literally could only be picked up by me personally. So I put on a mask for the bus ride from and back to my place. I asked my kid to drop off groceries outside my door. I did the stuff you are supposed to do if you may have something infectious. But not everyone can do that. It is maddening to me that the Swedish government does not provide free or subsidized tests and that you can forget getting an anti-viral unless you are in the hospital with Covid.
Pushing for improved ventilation in all buildings where lots of people gather makes enormous sense, and many thanks to those who brought up that idea or elaborated on it. I do not know how to make it happen, but it is necessary and important.
posted by Bella Donna at 12:10 PM on April 14, 2023 [10 favorites]
Toward the end, as I was getting much better, I had to leave my apartment to pick up a package that literally could only be picked up by me personally. So I put on a mask for the bus ride from and back to my place. I asked my kid to drop off groceries outside my door. I did the stuff you are supposed to do if you may have something infectious. But not everyone can do that. It is maddening to me that the Swedish government does not provide free or subsidized tests and that you can forget getting an anti-viral unless you are in the hospital with Covid.
Pushing for improved ventilation in all buildings where lots of people gather makes enormous sense, and many thanks to those who brought up that idea or elaborated on it. I do not know how to make it happen, but it is necessary and important.
posted by Bella Donna at 12:10 PM on April 14, 2023 [10 favorites]
Once a society has abandoned its responsibility to the sick, the old, and the poor, you can pretty much expect the discourse to be uncomfortable for everyone.
Sounds like a Doomsdaycult.
posted by Ahmad Khani at 1:33 PM on April 14, 2023 [4 favorites]
Sounds like a Doomsdaycult.
posted by Ahmad Khani at 1:33 PM on April 14, 2023 [4 favorites]
If you want to be a nihilist, that's your own prerogative, but please try to remember that the rest of us have not made that choice, and actually do want to live in this world.
When it comes to public health, your personal decisions impact more than just yourself.
posted by schmod at 2:18 PM on April 14, 2023 [8 favorites]
When it comes to public health, your personal decisions impact more than just yourself.
posted by schmod at 2:18 PM on April 14, 2023 [8 favorites]
I think people are talking past each other here, with one group saying look it's pretty grim getting old in US society and the other group misunderstanding this as cheerleading for the grimness, which is not at all what the first group is saying.
posted by joannemerriam at 5:21 PM on April 14, 2023 [11 favorites]
posted by joannemerriam at 5:21 PM on April 14, 2023 [11 favorites]
Again, I firmly believe that extra attention on post-Covid care would go a long way towards making ageing (amongst other things that are after effects of Covid or affected intensely by Covid) less painful and more bearable.
posted by creatrixtiara at 6:08 PM on April 14, 2023 [4 favorites]
posted by creatrixtiara at 6:08 PM on April 14, 2023 [4 favorites]
Frankly I wouldn't be surprised if that's part of the resistance to the entire idea of Long COVID, that any initiative for national health coverage for LC will expand to cover more general endemic degenerative conditions like old age.
posted by rhizome at 7:53 PM on April 14, 2023 [3 favorites]
posted by rhizome at 7:53 PM on April 14, 2023 [3 favorites]
It’s like touching a hot stove, and then complaining about the burn. But if someone asks if it’s because of the hot stove saying “no, people just get burns as they age. It’s normal.”
I imagine you would not like it if someone talked about your own understanding of your own health like this.
The thirst for the existence of mass disabling events is a deeply off-putting undertone of these conversations; I wish I could convey from the outside just how off-putting.
posted by praemunire at 9:48 PM on April 14, 2023 [15 favorites]
I imagine you would not like it if someone talked about your own understanding of your own health like this.
The thirst for the existence of mass disabling events is a deeply off-putting undertone of these conversations; I wish I could convey from the outside just how off-putting.
posted by praemunire at 9:48 PM on April 14, 2023 [15 favorites]
Yeah like I got a myriad of after-effects from Covid, especially the first go round, but it wasn't actually easy to place what symptoms were Covid and what was just pre-existing bullshit that Covid may or may not have affected. A lot of times I'd present with Weird Symptom and ask "hey is this a Covid thing" and the docs would say "probably???" - there just isn't enough research to tell . But my other health conditions also have Unexpected Symptoms so it's hard to say where one ends and the other begins.
So yeah, if people are being vague about whether their symptom is a Covid thing or not, just consider that there's maybe more going on with them physically than you know of and not try to armchair diagnose them.
posted by creatrixtiara at 10:00 PM on April 14, 2023 [5 favorites]
So yeah, if people are being vague about whether their symptom is a Covid thing or not, just consider that there's maybe more going on with them physically than you know of and not try to armchair diagnose them.
posted by creatrixtiara at 10:00 PM on April 14, 2023 [5 favorites]
Yeah like I got a myriad of after-effects from Covid, especially the first go round, but it wasn't actually easy to place what symptoms were Covid and what was just pre-existing bullshit that Covid may or may not have affected.
This may not be relevant in your particular case, but I think one of the problems is that for many people covid does seem to worsen pre-existing issues (that they may or may not be aware of). But because they think of it only as a respiratory disease, they don't make the connection.
posted by mydonkeybenjamin at 11:10 PM on April 14, 2023 [1 favorite]
This may not be relevant in your particular case, but I think one of the problems is that for many people covid does seem to worsen pre-existing issues (that they may or may not be aware of). But because they think of it only as a respiratory disease, they don't make the connection.
posted by mydonkeybenjamin at 11:10 PM on April 14, 2023 [1 favorite]
The thirst for the existence of mass disabling events is a deeply off-putting undertone of these conversations; I wish I could convey from the outside just how off-putting.
I imagine it’s terrifying. We all know for a fact that 67 million people will die this year, but trying to guide how it happens is a moral nightmare.
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 2:04 AM on April 15, 2023 [1 favorite]
I imagine it’s terrifying. We all know for a fact that 67 million people will die this year, but trying to guide how it happens is a moral nightmare.
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 2:04 AM on April 15, 2023 [1 favorite]
The thirst for the existence of mass disabling events is a deeply off-putting undertone of these conversations; I wish I could convey from the outside just how off-putting.
I've got long-covid. It's kept me from running for 4 months now. I've slept through the night maybe 5 times since I recovered from covid. I'm constantly exhausted and my thinking is fogged. When I write words go missing. I sometimes don't complete sentences and other weird errors. I recognize what it is. I don't run around telling everyone I see. In fact I've told no one I know IRL.
I am 100% not thirsty for a mass disabling event but I do think there is lot more hidden disability out there than you realize and huge whack of people think they can just work through it and it'll go away (I hope this myself!). What I do see, and maybe it is confirmation bias, is that there is a lot of evidence that people are just slightly more fucked up than they used to be. Things like a startling increases in near misses reported by the FAA and such that you would expect if some proportion of people were trying to function while mildly impaired.
During the pandemic response I thought much of the societal low-level fucked-upness was attributable to the stress of dealing with the pandemic but that explanation is pretty much long gone as the overwhelming majority of people have moved on and are not only feeling no stress themselves but want to extend that feeling somewhat forcefully to others.
This is all of course not systematic data collection but that doesn't seem to be something any governments are interested in collecting.
posted by srboisvert at 2:59 PM on April 15, 2023 [22 favorites]
I've got long-covid. It's kept me from running for 4 months now. I've slept through the night maybe 5 times since I recovered from covid. I'm constantly exhausted and my thinking is fogged. When I write words go missing. I sometimes don't complete sentences and other weird errors. I recognize what it is. I don't run around telling everyone I see. In fact I've told no one I know IRL.
I am 100% not thirsty for a mass disabling event but I do think there is lot more hidden disability out there than you realize and huge whack of people think they can just work through it and it'll go away (I hope this myself!). What I do see, and maybe it is confirmation bias, is that there is a lot of evidence that people are just slightly more fucked up than they used to be. Things like a startling increases in near misses reported by the FAA and such that you would expect if some proportion of people were trying to function while mildly impaired.
During the pandemic response I thought much of the societal low-level fucked-upness was attributable to the stress of dealing with the pandemic but that explanation is pretty much long gone as the overwhelming majority of people have moved on and are not only feeling no stress themselves but want to extend that feeling somewhat forcefully to others.
This is all of course not systematic data collection but that doesn't seem to be something any governments are interested in collecting.
posted by srboisvert at 2:59 PM on April 15, 2023 [22 favorites]
COVID-19 Associated with Long-Term Cognitive Dysfunction, Acceleration of Alzheimer’s Symptoms
Infection with SARS-CoV-2 has a significant impact on cognitive function in patients with preexisting dementia, according to new research, published in the Journal of Alzheimer's Disease Reports. Patients with all subtypes of dementia included in the study experienced rapidly progressive dementia following infection with SARS-CoV-2.
posted by MrVisible at 5:15 PM on April 15, 2023 [4 favorites]
Infection with SARS-CoV-2 has a significant impact on cognitive function in patients with preexisting dementia, according to new research, published in the Journal of Alzheimer's Disease Reports. Patients with all subtypes of dementia included in the study experienced rapidly progressive dementia following infection with SARS-CoV-2.
posted by MrVisible at 5:15 PM on April 15, 2023 [4 favorites]
I had to look it up - apparently entropone is quoting a Jimmy Carr special called ‘His Dark Material’ which is available on Netflix.
posted by zenon at 7:31 AM on April 16, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by zenon at 7:31 AM on April 16, 2023 [1 favorite]
The thirst for the existence of mass disabling events is a deeply off-putting undertone of these conversations; I wish I could convey from the outside just how off-putting.
Good thing literally nobody here is thirsty for it? People are just pointing out that there might be a REASON why we can't, as a society, get people to give a fuck even about their own personal longevity. And one reason might be that we sure as fuck don't give old people much to look forward to, with the possible exception of the very wealthiest.
We can't get people to give a fuck about their own health in SO MANY WAYS! People still smoke, people still drink, people still do danger sports, because some people simply do not care whether or not they get old. This is not news.
Observing that this is how humans are, how they feel, how they think, and how they literally have always felt and thought and been, is not exactly cheerleading the reaper.
posted by We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese at 12:38 PM on April 16, 2023 [6 favorites]
Good thing literally nobody here is thirsty for it? People are just pointing out that there might be a REASON why we can't, as a society, get people to give a fuck even about their own personal longevity. And one reason might be that we sure as fuck don't give old people much to look forward to, with the possible exception of the very wealthiest.
We can't get people to give a fuck about their own health in SO MANY WAYS! People still smoke, people still drink, people still do danger sports, because some people simply do not care whether or not they get old. This is not news.
Observing that this is how humans are, how they feel, how they think, and how they literally have always felt and thought and been, is not exactly cheerleading the reaper.
posted by We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese at 12:38 PM on April 16, 2023 [6 favorites]
People still smoke, people still drink, people still do danger sports, because some people simply do not care whether or not they get old.
This is not the motivation for most people who do these activities. Much as not giving a fuck about living longer isn't the reason people persist with dangerous activities like driving.
posted by Dysk at 1:14 PM on April 16, 2023 [7 favorites]
This is not the motivation for most people who do these activities. Much as not giving a fuck about living longer isn't the reason people persist with dangerous activities like driving.
posted by Dysk at 1:14 PM on April 16, 2023 [7 favorites]
And the motivation for going out to eat dinner with friends on one's birthday is ALSO not "because I personally wish to die as soon as possible," either. It's a decision to trade an unknowable future for an immediate, tangible, definite benefit.
When you find a way to make humans stop doing that you'll likely have the solution to all of civilization's problems at hand, so please do holler when you find it!
posted by We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese at 7:51 AM on April 17, 2023 [4 favorites]
When you find a way to make humans stop doing that you'll likely have the solution to all of civilization's problems at hand, so please do holler when you find it!
posted by We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese at 7:51 AM on April 17, 2023 [4 favorites]
Masking works, if you have the ability and the will to do it correctly. And we’ve known that from the beginning.
It does seem to but I would challenge the fact that we've known that from the beginning. At least for the first month or two, people in many places were told that masks used by members of the public would not make a difference. Certainly it's low cost enough that I will continue to wear a mask on public transport. I do go to pubs and restaurants indoors which is of course high risk but at least I'm getting something for my risk there.
There are still people who are especially vulnerable (perhaps they couldn't be vaccinated), but pre-COVID the less vulnerable didn't restrict their lives because of the chance of giving flu to someone more vulnerable (with the exception of not seeing your frail grandma if you were ill, say).
The problem with the comparison to flu is that it normalises our attitude to flu and to other respiratory illnesses without considering whether those are really consistent with our long term aspirations for society. Like, immuno-compromised people have always been at risk from flu but somehow "we've always put these people at this kind of risk" is meant to be a good excuse for continuing to do so. That's fucked up. I guess it's predictable, but it's still a shame to see what could have been a morally clarifying moment turn into this.
We could at least have heavily normalised that if you're actively ill, you should be expected to stay at home and expect moral disapprobation from people around you if you're coughing and sneezing everywhere but not even that.
Me too. It is a major disappointment that we didn't see ventilation and filtration upgrades to schools etc. and as part of building code updates as an artifact of the pandemic. It would have gone so far.
I would have been ok with not doing the upgrades themselves as a rush job, given how expensive it is to retrofit things to buildings but yes, it really chaps my tits the way we haven't even changed the standards for new builds and deep retrofits and very few places are even considering it. Yes, that might take decades to slowly make its way through society, but all the more reason to start right away. We need to be upgrading buildings for fabric air tightness anyway to meet energy saving requirements which means that we will be installing energy recovery ventilating heat exchangers all over the place. What an opportunity! It costs a lot to do anything to a building... but once you're doing stuff to e.g. the HVAC system, additional costs are often marginal. I'd also like to see more interest in far-UVC light which is potentially very easily widely deployed and might completely eliminate indoor transmission of airborne diseases. Isn't that... kind of fucking cool though? Like we just accept that we have to be snotty messes for a week or two a year and that the end of our lives comes with ever increasing caution around sneezes but why? Give me some wild-eyed utopian high-modernism. I don't want to learn to live with shit, I want it engineered out of my life.
posted by atrazine at 9:24 AM on April 17, 2023 [11 favorites]
It does seem to but I would challenge the fact that we've known that from the beginning. At least for the first month or two, people in many places were told that masks used by members of the public would not make a difference. Certainly it's low cost enough that I will continue to wear a mask on public transport. I do go to pubs and restaurants indoors which is of course high risk but at least I'm getting something for my risk there.
There are still people who are especially vulnerable (perhaps they couldn't be vaccinated), but pre-COVID the less vulnerable didn't restrict their lives because of the chance of giving flu to someone more vulnerable (with the exception of not seeing your frail grandma if you were ill, say).
The problem with the comparison to flu is that it normalises our attitude to flu and to other respiratory illnesses without considering whether those are really consistent with our long term aspirations for society. Like, immuno-compromised people have always been at risk from flu but somehow "we've always put these people at this kind of risk" is meant to be a good excuse for continuing to do so. That's fucked up. I guess it's predictable, but it's still a shame to see what could have been a morally clarifying moment turn into this.
We could at least have heavily normalised that if you're actively ill, you should be expected to stay at home and expect moral disapprobation from people around you if you're coughing and sneezing everywhere but not even that.
Me too. It is a major disappointment that we didn't see ventilation and filtration upgrades to schools etc. and as part of building code updates as an artifact of the pandemic. It would have gone so far.
I would have been ok with not doing the upgrades themselves as a rush job, given how expensive it is to retrofit things to buildings but yes, it really chaps my tits the way we haven't even changed the standards for new builds and deep retrofits and very few places are even considering it. Yes, that might take decades to slowly make its way through society, but all the more reason to start right away. We need to be upgrading buildings for fabric air tightness anyway to meet energy saving requirements which means that we will be installing energy recovery ventilating heat exchangers all over the place. What an opportunity! It costs a lot to do anything to a building... but once you're doing stuff to e.g. the HVAC system, additional costs are often marginal. I'd also like to see more interest in far-UVC light which is potentially very easily widely deployed and might completely eliminate indoor transmission of airborne diseases. Isn't that... kind of fucking cool though? Like we just accept that we have to be snotty messes for a week or two a year and that the end of our lives comes with ever increasing caution around sneezes but why? Give me some wild-eyed utopian high-modernism. I don't want to learn to live with shit, I want it engineered out of my life.
posted by atrazine at 9:24 AM on April 17, 2023 [11 favorites]
At least for the first month or two, people in many places were told that masks used by members of the public would not make a difference.
That was certainly the message I remember being pushed by both Australian commercial media and the Canberra clown car.
Our excellent public broadcaster, on the other hand, consistently presented the much more nuanced view that since rapid widespread public uptake of PPE would inevitably cause a severe supply shortfall, then until masks could be reliably supplied in mass quantities it would do more good to limit their use to medical professionals, who were (a) likely to have much higher virus exposure than the general public (b) vital to the containment and treatment effort.
Australia fucked up early in two huge ways: allowing uncontrolled disembarkation from the Ruby Princessplague hulk cruise ship, and keeping on trying to quarantine folks in commercial hotel buildings with HVAC systems totally unsuited to containing an infectious respiratory agent well after the strangely persistent Droplets Bad, Aerosols Just Fine wishful thinking was definitively debunked.
posted by flabdablet at 12:16 PM on April 17, 2023 [5 favorites]
That was certainly the message I remember being pushed by both Australian commercial media and the Canberra clown car.
Our excellent public broadcaster, on the other hand, consistently presented the much more nuanced view that since rapid widespread public uptake of PPE would inevitably cause a severe supply shortfall, then until masks could be reliably supplied in mass quantities it would do more good to limit their use to medical professionals, who were (a) likely to have much higher virus exposure than the general public (b) vital to the containment and treatment effort.
Australia fucked up early in two huge ways: allowing uncontrolled disembarkation from the Ruby Princess
posted by flabdablet at 12:16 PM on April 17, 2023 [5 favorites]
If I understand the flu details correctly, there is at least less of the sort of pre- or a-symptomatic but still able to transmit the disease and infect others period for most versions of the flu that there is for COVID-19? But yeah, my personal takeaway has been “wow, we’ve been pretty callous about even the flu. We should fix that and do better as a society.” Though, what we need is not (just) social approbation for being noticeably suffering from a respiratory issue in public, but to have sufficient paid sick days required by legislation. Which has, of course, been one of the sticking points….
posted by eviemath at 2:11 PM on April 17, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by eviemath at 2:11 PM on April 17, 2023 [2 favorites]
Covid is still a leading cause of death as the virus recedes: But many Americans dispute the data and the risks — much as they have throughout the pandemic
But retreat is not the same thing as eradication: Federal health officials say that covid-19 remains one of the leading causes of death in the United States, tied to about 250 deaths daily, on average, mostly among the old and immunocompromised.posted by MrVisible at 6:45 PM on April 17, 2023 [3 favorites]
Few Americans are treating it as a leading killer, however — in part because they are not hearing about those numbers, don’t trust them or don’t see them as relevant to their own lives.
“We’re not presenting the data in a way that resonates with the American people,” said Deborah Birx, who served as the first White House coronavirus coordinator under President Donald Trump, citing research that finds elevated risks of health complications and death in the months after a covid infection.
While I am firmly in favour of upgrading indoor ventilation and air quality standards across the board, as others have pointed out that is expensive (at least up front) and will take some years at best, even with adequate goodwill and resources, both of which are in short supply at this stage.
OTOH, encouraging masking to be the social normal for anybody with any air transmissible infection (Covid, flu, cold) could be done now and very cheaply.
Problem, of course, is getting people to actually do it (and do it properly) in this socio-political climate. If people are being openly abused in the street for simply wearing a mask while minding their own business, let alone asking others to wear one, then we have a long way to go. We may well have blown that critical opportunity, in the west at least.
posted by Pouteria at 7:09 PM on April 17, 2023 [3 favorites]
OTOH, encouraging masking to be the social normal for anybody with any air transmissible infection (Covid, flu, cold) could be done now and very cheaply.
Problem, of course, is getting people to actually do it (and do it properly) in this socio-political climate. If people are being openly abused in the street for simply wearing a mask while minding their own business, let alone asking others to wear one, then we have a long way to go. We may well have blown that critical opportunity, in the west at least.
posted by Pouteria at 7:09 PM on April 17, 2023 [3 favorites]
I have had fights with medical professionals online in the early days of COVID about masking and testing - back then the health advice was "masking doesn't help and getting tested just makes you vulnerable to getting sick, so just stay at home". If both those things were opened up way earlier then we probably could have sorted COVID out way sooner. Also a lot of Asians in Western countries suffered abuse in the early days of COVID for masking up, because of people's perceptions that the only reason you'd mask is if you yourself was sick (especially given the carceral nature of COVID discourse that still permeates to this day) - I wouldn't be surprised if some of them have become a bit averse to masking as a result.
We could at least have heavily normalised that if you're actively ill, you should be expected to stay at home and expect moral disapprobation from people around you if you're coughing and sneezing everywhere but not even that.
A lot of people don't stay home even when sick due to work, school, or other commitments to their livelihood. Even before COVID, a lot of workplaces and schools didn't really allow for such health accommodations - my high school higher ups openly proclaimed "I have a medical certificate and I still came to work!" as a point of pride. COVID payments in my area were only eligible to people with full-time or part-time work (so not casual/gig labour, which eliminated a LOT of people) and they're not even giving those payments anymore. You can give as much "moral disapprobation" as you want, but when someone's rent or food or medical expenses (!!!) are on the line, it may not matter as much.
posted by creatrixtiara at 8:08 PM on April 17, 2023 [4 favorites]
We could at least have heavily normalised that if you're actively ill, you should be expected to stay at home and expect moral disapprobation from people around you if you're coughing and sneezing everywhere but not even that.
A lot of people don't stay home even when sick due to work, school, or other commitments to their livelihood. Even before COVID, a lot of workplaces and schools didn't really allow for such health accommodations - my high school higher ups openly proclaimed "I have a medical certificate and I still came to work!" as a point of pride. COVID payments in my area were only eligible to people with full-time or part-time work (so not casual/gig labour, which eliminated a LOT of people) and they're not even giving those payments anymore. You can give as much "moral disapprobation" as you want, but when someone's rent or food or medical expenses (!!!) are on the line, it may not matter as much.
posted by creatrixtiara at 8:08 PM on April 17, 2023 [4 favorites]
my high school higher ups openly proclaimed "I have a medical certificate and I still came to work!" as a point of pride.
If there's one genuine service that this pandemic has done humanity, it's raising the profile of presenteeism as a pathological workplace behaviour.
posted by flabdablet at 9:27 PM on April 17, 2023 [7 favorites]
If there's one genuine service that this pandemic has done humanity, it's raising the profile of presenteeism as a pathological workplace behaviour.
posted by flabdablet at 9:27 PM on April 17, 2023 [7 favorites]
back then the health advice was "masking doesn't help and getting tested just makes you vulnerable to getting sick, so just stay at home".
Getting tested makes you more vulnerable to getting sick? That was medical advice at some point?
posted by Dysk at 12:02 AM on April 18, 2023
Getting tested makes you more vulnerable to getting sick? That was medical advice at some point?
posted by Dysk at 12:02 AM on April 18, 2023
Well, back then we didn't have rapids you could do at home. Getting tested meant going somewhere where somebody would be shoving a swab up your nose, somewhere you might have to wait in line along with other people who thought they might have it, a lot of them coughing, the perfect place to be exposed if you didn't already have it, and most people testing were not positive and thus vulnerable to catching it.
And the kind of masking most people were doing was a mitigation, not real PPE; cloth and surgical masks serve better as source control that lowers community transmission than as personal protection. Even health care workers didn't get enough of the N95s they should have had, the advice being to reserve it only for aerosolizing events. The WHO was insisting in March 2020 that COVID wasn't airborne and didn't officially change that position until May 2021. So even though I'm not sure I'd agree with the reasoning behind that advice at the time it was given, in retrospect it wasn't half bad for the situation.
posted by foxfirefey at 12:51 AM on April 18, 2023 [2 favorites]
And the kind of masking most people were doing was a mitigation, not real PPE; cloth and surgical masks serve better as source control that lowers community transmission than as personal protection. Even health care workers didn't get enough of the N95s they should have had, the advice being to reserve it only for aerosolizing events. The WHO was insisting in March 2020 that COVID wasn't airborne and didn't officially change that position until May 2021. So even though I'm not sure I'd agree with the reasoning behind that advice at the time it was given, in retrospect it wasn't half bad for the situation.
posted by foxfirefey at 12:51 AM on April 18, 2023 [2 favorites]
And the kind of masking most people were doing was a mitigation, not real PPE; cloth and surgical masks serve better as source control that lowers community transmission than as personal protection.
This is true, and there was also a lot of misunderstanding of not just how to wear a mask (above the nose...) but what made for a good one. A lot of people felt masking was so important that they started making cloth masks themselves... but often chose fabric based on how "breathable" it was, which in practice often meant they chose fabric with looser weaves (with bigger holes between threads) or knits (where the holes can expand) - the opposite of what you want.
Which is another thing governments in a lot of countries should have done, especially as a way of taking advantage of the lockdown period, but absolutely didn't: invest aggressively in local high-quality mask production (and make them colorful and good looking, to increase favorability), distribute high-quality masks for free, educate people about what makes a mask a good one, and create quality-controlled sourcing systems such that people could actually know if their masks were genuine (besides being less effective, fake masks are often harder to breathe in than real n95s, kn-95s, and so on, which may be why a lot of people seem to equate higher mask quality with being hard to breathe in and used to show me their stretchy fabric masks that they preferred because they were so breathable). None of that happened. That unfortunate but maybe unavoidable period of "we don't have enough PPE so let's save it for healthcare workers" was never accompanied by "but this is terrible because masking is so important, so we're working hard on quickly producing the real masks and getting them to you."
posted by trig at 1:44 AM on April 18, 2023 [9 favorites]
This is true, and there was also a lot of misunderstanding of not just how to wear a mask (above the nose...) but what made for a good one. A lot of people felt masking was so important that they started making cloth masks themselves... but often chose fabric based on how "breathable" it was, which in practice often meant they chose fabric with looser weaves (with bigger holes between threads) or knits (where the holes can expand) - the opposite of what you want.
Which is another thing governments in a lot of countries should have done, especially as a way of taking advantage of the lockdown period, but absolutely didn't: invest aggressively in local high-quality mask production (and make them colorful and good looking, to increase favorability), distribute high-quality masks for free, educate people about what makes a mask a good one, and create quality-controlled sourcing systems such that people could actually know if their masks were genuine (besides being less effective, fake masks are often harder to breathe in than real n95s, kn-95s, and so on, which may be why a lot of people seem to equate higher mask quality with being hard to breathe in and used to show me their stretchy fabric masks that they preferred because they were so breathable). None of that happened. That unfortunate but maybe unavoidable period of "we don't have enough PPE so let's save it for healthcare workers" was never accompanied by "but this is terrible because masking is so important, so we're working hard on quickly producing the real masks and getting them to you."
posted by trig at 1:44 AM on April 18, 2023 [9 favorites]
If I understand the flu details correctly, there is at least less of the sort of pre- or a-symptomatic but still able to transmit the disease and infect others period for most versions of the flu that there is for COVID-19? But yeah, my personal takeaway has been “wow, we’ve been pretty callous about even the flu. We should fix that and do better as a society.” Though, what we need is not (just) social approbation for being noticeably suffering from a respiratory issue in public, but to have sufficient paid sick days required by legislation. Which has, of course, been one of the sticking points….
Correct, peak flu transmissibility is coincident with symptom onset +2 days (but can be transmitted in the 24 hrs before symptoms) and up to 5 days after symptom onset. Covid reaches peak before symptom onset. That makes a difference enough in the R0 that measures which only slowly flattened covid transmission totally smashed flu transmission.
And yes, it isn't just "you're sick and should stay home" it's "this is why you get full-pay sick days, so that you will stay at home". Even during Covid we saw (at least in the UK) lots of transmission continuing in areas where people often worked off the record small factory jobs or as cab drivers etc. because those people weren't well covered by the support payment systems and so they went to work, in some cases knowing they were ill or at least suspecting.
Getting tested makes you more vulnerable to getting sick? That was medical advice at some point?
Not only pre-rapid-test but also at a time of very high transmission, there was actually not that much point testing symptomatic people because they should be preventatively assumed to be Covid+ and infectious anyway so the test didn't really give you much actionable information.
What has been fascinating during this, listening to things like TWiV and their interviews especially is:
1) How little science as a whole knew and still knows about respiratory disease spread. Yes of course we know stuff qualitatively but things like "how long after an infectious person (itself a complicated concept) has been in a room is it safe?" and "what relative role do surfaces play?" or "what does aerosol *really* mean in practice" are actually studies by a very small number of people even within the infectious disease world. We know loads about the minutia of virus genetics and how the proteins do their little dance to manipulate cells but not that much about the "macro" questions of how it spreads.
2) How concentrated that knowledge is. Lots of non-specialist virologists, non-specialist public health specialists and god-help-us non-specialist doctors know effectively no more than the most elementary basics of how respiratory disease spreads. It isn't necessarily their job to know more than that but it's worth keeping in mind in being cautious of how we evaluate expertise.
posted by atrazine at 1:56 AM on April 18, 2023 [5 favorites]
Correct, peak flu transmissibility is coincident with symptom onset +2 days (but can be transmitted in the 24 hrs before symptoms) and up to 5 days after symptom onset. Covid reaches peak before symptom onset. That makes a difference enough in the R0 that measures which only slowly flattened covid transmission totally smashed flu transmission.
And yes, it isn't just "you're sick and should stay home" it's "this is why you get full-pay sick days, so that you will stay at home". Even during Covid we saw (at least in the UK) lots of transmission continuing in areas where people often worked off the record small factory jobs or as cab drivers etc. because those people weren't well covered by the support payment systems and so they went to work, in some cases knowing they were ill or at least suspecting.
Getting tested makes you more vulnerable to getting sick? That was medical advice at some point?
Not only pre-rapid-test but also at a time of very high transmission, there was actually not that much point testing symptomatic people because they should be preventatively assumed to be Covid+ and infectious anyway so the test didn't really give you much actionable information.
What has been fascinating during this, listening to things like TWiV and their interviews especially is:
1) How little science as a whole knew and still knows about respiratory disease spread. Yes of course we know stuff qualitatively but things like "how long after an infectious person (itself a complicated concept) has been in a room is it safe?" and "what relative role do surfaces play?" or "what does aerosol *really* mean in practice" are actually studies by a very small number of people even within the infectious disease world. We know loads about the minutia of virus genetics and how the proteins do their little dance to manipulate cells but not that much about the "macro" questions of how it spreads.
2) How concentrated that knowledge is. Lots of non-specialist virologists, non-specialist public health specialists and god-help-us non-specialist doctors know effectively no more than the most elementary basics of how respiratory disease spreads. It isn't necessarily their job to know more than that but it's worth keeping in mind in being cautious of how we evaluate expertise.
posted by atrazine at 1:56 AM on April 18, 2023 [5 favorites]
Ah right, all my local test centres at the start were drive-through do-it-yourself in the car (or very very well spaced for anyone on foot, with access to the entirely outdoor sites restricted to your pre-booked appointment) but I can see how they could be possible transmission sites if run differently.
posted by Dysk at 3:21 AM on April 18, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by Dysk at 3:21 AM on April 18, 2023 [1 favorite]
Covid reaches peak before symptom onset
This is definitely true for the immunologically naive, but around the time of the vaccine rollout I heard a lot of folks saying that vaccination could be expected to push symptom onset in breakthrough cases back before the peak because it would prime the immune system (which is what produces early symptoms) to respond. I would imagine similar would be true for repeat infections. Does anyone know if this was borne out by evidence?
posted by pullayup at 11:25 AM on April 18, 2023
This is definitely true for the immunologically naive, but around the time of the vaccine rollout I heard a lot of folks saying that vaccination could be expected to push symptom onset in breakthrough cases back before the peak because it would prime the immune system (which is what produces early symptoms) to respond. I would imagine similar would be true for repeat infections. Does anyone know if this was borne out by evidence?
posted by pullayup at 11:25 AM on April 18, 2023
Covid reaches peak before symptom onset
I don't think the evidence really supports this assertion, though certainly a lot of people have made this claim. Here's a good overview (scroll down to Timing of Transmission) that says the highest rates of transmission are probably early in the symptomatic phase.
posted by ssg at 12:07 PM on April 18, 2023 [1 favorite]
I don't think the evidence really supports this assertion, though certainly a lot of people have made this claim. Here's a good overview (scroll down to Timing of Transmission) that says the highest rates of transmission are probably early in the symptomatic phase.
posted by ssg at 12:07 PM on April 18, 2023 [1 favorite]
About getting tested being risky: some of my grimmest memories are around getting tested.
We still don't have at home covid testing in South Africa and we never did. You could go to your doctor, or a mobile test center. Expensive, and you had to queue with all the other sick people. Can I repeat that it's expensive? And you only got your results the next day, sometimes later.
I've had Covid several times but I only got tested when that was required as part of an in hospital medical procedure, (and that was a farce because they let me into the hospital without asking for my proof of being tested)
That was during the peak of our second wave. Around here, queues in shops and other places are usually quite chatty and it's easy to get into conversation with a stranger. Those testing queues were silent.
The social distancing and Covid safety of the testing places varied. Queues were usually nicely spaced, but testing often happened indoors in a small room, and even the health workers were not wearing n95 masks, but those little blue rectangles, surgical masks.
Getting vaccinated was the same, except the queue wasn't always spaced out. People crowded together at the entrance to the facility and only got spaced out when they were inside.
It's been quite surreal to see people chatting online about testing every day, etc. Or to read advice about testing as though that was possible. Difficult not to get angry about it, to be honest.
posted by Zumbador at 9:24 PM on April 18, 2023 [16 favorites]
We still don't have at home covid testing in South Africa and we never did. You could go to your doctor, or a mobile test center. Expensive, and you had to queue with all the other sick people. Can I repeat that it's expensive? And you only got your results the next day, sometimes later.
I've had Covid several times but I only got tested when that was required as part of an in hospital medical procedure, (and that was a farce because they let me into the hospital without asking for my proof of being tested)
That was during the peak of our second wave. Around here, queues in shops and other places are usually quite chatty and it's easy to get into conversation with a stranger. Those testing queues were silent.
The social distancing and Covid safety of the testing places varied. Queues were usually nicely spaced, but testing often happened indoors in a small room, and even the health workers were not wearing n95 masks, but those little blue rectangles, surgical masks.
Getting vaccinated was the same, except the queue wasn't always spaced out. People crowded together at the entrance to the facility and only got spaced out when they were inside.
It's been quite surreal to see people chatting online about testing every day, etc. Or to read advice about testing as though that was possible. Difficult not to get angry about it, to be honest.
posted by Zumbador at 9:24 PM on April 18, 2023 [16 favorites]
The endgame isn’t wearing masks forever. The end game is ventilation, filtration, and disinfection of indoor air. But it’s going to be masks and lots of death and disability forever if people keep throwing up their hands and saying “what’s the endgame? I’m not gonna wear a mask forever!”
Proper air filters would also probably be really nice for people with seasonal allergies.
posted by srboisvert at 4:43 AM on April 19, 2023 [1 favorite]
Proper air filters would also probably be really nice for people with seasonal allergies.
posted by srboisvert at 4:43 AM on April 19, 2023 [1 favorite]
I'm sorry to hear that Zumbador.
Here in Ontario Canada, we were slow to roll out the at home tests.
The perfect was the enemy of the good . There was an initial reluctance because the PCR test was more accurate. There was a stockpile that was not being distributed.
When the decision was made to go ahead , in my province it was of course botched.
The chamber of commerce? the provincial liquor store ?
Not public health, not at the vaccine clinic ?
Thanks Dougie.
But finally they were easily available.
At drug stores , Grocery stores .
They had them at the check out counter. Help yourself. No charge.
Each box has 5 tests. But if you are testing you go through them quickly.
Canada as a whole has made 800 million test kits available.
Each kit has 5 tests.
I was surprised at the number.
There's concern about the kits still in storage, and their expiry date.
So we have a surplus now.
posted by yyz at 8:31 AM on April 19, 2023 [3 favorites]
Here in Ontario Canada, we were slow to roll out the at home tests.
The perfect was the enemy of the good . There was an initial reluctance because the PCR test was more accurate. There was a stockpile that was not being distributed.
When the decision was made to go ahead , in my province it was of course botched.
The chamber of commerce? the provincial liquor store ?
Not public health, not at the vaccine clinic ?
Thanks Dougie.
But finally they were easily available.
At drug stores , Grocery stores .
They had them at the check out counter. Help yourself. No charge.
Each box has 5 tests. But if you are testing you go through them quickly.
Canada as a whole has made 800 million test kits available.
Each kit has 5 tests.
I was surprised at the number.
There's concern about the kits still in storage, and their expiry date.
So we have a surplus now.
posted by yyz at 8:31 AM on April 19, 2023 [3 favorites]
We had PCR tests made available as home test kits pretty early on in the UK as well. You could order a swab kit sent to your home grøn a website, then you did the swab within the hour before collection from your local designated postbox, and dropped it off there (after all the multiple layers of sealing and boxing). You had the result within a couple of days, typically.
posted by Dysk at 9:58 AM on April 19, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by Dysk at 9:58 AM on April 19, 2023 [1 favorite]
Couple of recent, relevant articles:
* Long COVID Is Being Erased—Again by Ed Yong, Atlantic (archive)
* The Search for Long Covid Treatments Takes a Promising Turn by Grace Browne, Wired
The first article goes quite a bit into how we can have many millions of people suffering from various effects of Long Covid yet most everyone can look around and say, "Gosh, I don't really know anyone with Long Covid":
So while everyone is "so over covid" and yip-yapping about "why are you still wearing a mask" the reason is because we have like 3 people at home with a CURRENT Covid infection and I'm out doing the shopping for them. But if you'd like me to come over and cough on you sans mask I'm ever so happy to.
For everyone else in the family it was the "simple" really bad cold experience, but after I came down with Covid Feb 26th I was really quite sick for a couple of days until I took Paxlovid, then very mild symptoms for 5-6 more days.
But then I have been pretty much unable to function from then until now. Like sleep literally 20 hours day, then 16, then "only" 12 more recently, etc. Every day and every week I think "I'm going to be better now" but still an hour or two of work - and that at well under 100% of the normal capacity and ability - and I'm done for the day.
I've got around 6 risk factors, including a couple that are quite serious, so in a way it is not too surprising. But there seems to be a big element of chance, too - some people with the same risk factors or worse have very light cases, while others with no particular risk factors are very sick for a long time.
Anyway, this has pretty well destroyed my productivity for a good two months now. I haven't had the worst of the Long Covid symptoms by any means and it's gradually improving. I'm optimistic that by the time I reach the 3 month mark, I'll have no symptoms to speak of. That means that I won't even be counted in the national stats . . .
Still, the last two months have been pretty disastrous. And that is following on the last 3 years that have been a series of disasters of various types. I'm trying to figure out right now how to pull the small business I run back from the brink of bankruptcy. I think we can do it, but it's going to be a hell of a pull. Being unexpectedly out of commission for two months straight is not very conducive to business.
posted by flug at 2:50 PM on April 20, 2023 [9 favorites]
* Long COVID Is Being Erased—Again by Ed Yong, Atlantic (archive)
* The Search for Long Covid Treatments Takes a Promising Turn by Grace Browne, Wired
The first article goes quite a bit into how we can have many millions of people suffering from various effects of Long Covid yet most everyone can look around and say, "Gosh, I don't really know anyone with Long Covid":
Almost every aspect of long COVID serves to mask its reality from public view. Its bewilderingly diverse symptoms are hard to see and measure. At its worst, it can leave people bed- or housebound, disconnected from the world. And although milder cases allow patients to appear normal on some days, they extract their price later, in private. For these reasons, many people don’t realize just how sick millions of Americans are—and the invisibility created by long COVID’s symptoms is being quickly compounded by our attitude toward them. . . .FWIW our family manage to mostly avoid Covid until recently - it's run through the entire family - and pretty much everyone else I work with closely - between mid-February and now.
[W]hat was once outright denial of long COVID’s existence has morphed into something subtler: a creeping conviction, seeded by academics and journalists and now common on social media, that long COVID is less common and severe than it has been portrayed—a tragedy for a small group of very sick people, but not a cause for societal concern. This line of thinking points to the absence of disability claims, the inconsistency of biochemical signatures, and the relatively small proportion of severe cases as evidence that long COVID has been overblown. “There’s a shift from ‘Is it real?’ to ‘It is real, but …,’” . . .
[T]he accumulated evidence, alongside the experience of long haulers, makes it clear that the coronavirus is still exacting a heavy societal toll.
As it stands, 11 percent of adults who’ve had COVID are currently experiencing symptoms that have lasted for at least three months, according to data collected by the Census Bureau and the CDC through the national Household Pulse Survey. That equates to more than 15 million long-haulers, or 6 percent of the U.S. adult population. And yet, “I run into people daily who say, ‘I don’t know anyone with long COVID,’” says Priya Duggal, an epidemiologist and a co-lead of the Johns Hopkins COVID Long Study. The implication is that the large survey numbers cannot be correct; given how many people have had COVID, we’d surely know if one in 10 of our contacts was persistently unwell.
But many factors make that unlikely. . . .
So while everyone is "so over covid" and yip-yapping about "why are you still wearing a mask" the reason is because we have like 3 people at home with a CURRENT Covid infection and I'm out doing the shopping for them. But if you'd like me to come over and cough on you sans mask I'm ever so happy to.
For everyone else in the family it was the "simple" really bad cold experience, but after I came down with Covid Feb 26th I was really quite sick for a couple of days until I took Paxlovid, then very mild symptoms for 5-6 more days.
But then I have been pretty much unable to function from then until now. Like sleep literally 20 hours day, then 16, then "only" 12 more recently, etc. Every day and every week I think "I'm going to be better now" but still an hour or two of work - and that at well under 100% of the normal capacity and ability - and I'm done for the day.
I've got around 6 risk factors, including a couple that are quite serious, so in a way it is not too surprising. But there seems to be a big element of chance, too - some people with the same risk factors or worse have very light cases, while others with no particular risk factors are very sick for a long time.
Anyway, this has pretty well destroyed my productivity for a good two months now. I haven't had the worst of the Long Covid symptoms by any means and it's gradually improving. I'm optimistic that by the time I reach the 3 month mark, I'll have no symptoms to speak of. That means that I won't even be counted in the national stats . . .
Still, the last two months have been pretty disastrous. And that is following on the last 3 years that have been a series of disasters of various types. I'm trying to figure out right now how to pull the small business I run back from the brink of bankruptcy. I think we can do it, but it's going to be a hell of a pull. Being unexpectedly out of commission for two months straight is not very conducive to business.
posted by flug at 2:50 PM on April 20, 2023 [9 favorites]
Glad to see Ed Yong is back from his sabbatical/break! Sad that there is still just as much for him to report on for the COVID beat.
posted by eviemath at 6:32 PM on April 20, 2023 [3 favorites]
posted by eviemath at 6:32 PM on April 20, 2023 [3 favorites]
Yeah flug, I think that this has really been making it hard to record and reckon with (I also think that people individually would prefer not to have long-covid up to the point of telling themselves they don't if they just have some mild lingering fatigue).
I had Covid about six months ago and I've only just gone from *needing* a nap on a typical workday afternoon to *preferring* one on some workdays. It's complicated because I also have a young baby born about a year ago so my "normal" sleeping has been disrupted and that obviously plays a part. I could easily tell myself that my young family is tiring me out but if I'm really honest, it isn't just that.
Most people have an "underlying condition", you know? So it's not so clear cut as a population of previously perfectly healthy athletes suddenly having to sleep 18 hours a day, that is a tiny minority. Most of us were not perfectly healthy beforehand and because the effect of the illness is complex, varies in intensity, and (luckily) goes down over time for most of us, picking it out of the statistics is hard.
When I read the stories of people with "real" long covid, it can be easy to say, "well I was never unable to work or to look after my baby and I have an incredibly busy job so did I ever have anything that would or should count as "long covid""? but then on the other hand I could also say, "is it normal for a 37 year old to be out of breath after one flight of stairs?" (no!) "Is it normal for a 37 year old to fall asleep at their desk if they don't get 8 hours of sleep and an afternoon nap?" (no!).
So I wonder how that shows up? I would never show up in any list of disabled people from a government database or even an internal company record, my medical record doesn't show anything apart from some chest x-rays and a blood panel done a month ago to exclude "other stuff" as indeed it did. I've definitely done less intense work than I would have though. If everyone in the country was affected the way I was, there might just be a big and difficult to explain drop in productivity.
posted by atrazine at 9:11 AM on April 21, 2023 [10 favorites]
I had Covid about six months ago and I've only just gone from *needing* a nap on a typical workday afternoon to *preferring* one on some workdays. It's complicated because I also have a young baby born about a year ago so my "normal" sleeping has been disrupted and that obviously plays a part. I could easily tell myself that my young family is tiring me out but if I'm really honest, it isn't just that.
Most people have an "underlying condition", you know? So it's not so clear cut as a population of previously perfectly healthy athletes suddenly having to sleep 18 hours a day, that is a tiny minority. Most of us were not perfectly healthy beforehand and because the effect of the illness is complex, varies in intensity, and (luckily) goes down over time for most of us, picking it out of the statistics is hard.
When I read the stories of people with "real" long covid, it can be easy to say, "well I was never unable to work or to look after my baby and I have an incredibly busy job so did I ever have anything that would or should count as "long covid""? but then on the other hand I could also say, "is it normal for a 37 year old to be out of breath after one flight of stairs?" (no!) "Is it normal for a 37 year old to fall asleep at their desk if they don't get 8 hours of sleep and an afternoon nap?" (no!).
So I wonder how that shows up? I would never show up in any list of disabled people from a government database or even an internal company record, my medical record doesn't show anything apart from some chest x-rays and a blood panel done a month ago to exclude "other stuff" as indeed it did. I've definitely done less intense work than I would have though. If everyone in the country was affected the way I was, there might just be a big and difficult to explain drop in productivity.
posted by atrazine at 9:11 AM on April 21, 2023 [10 favorites]
God, these threads are unbearable.
Yeah, I know. And such small portions!
posted by Tehhund at 8:36 PM on April 21, 2023 [11 favorites]
Yeah, I know. And such small portions!
posted by Tehhund at 8:36 PM on April 21, 2023 [11 favorites]
Why long COVID could be a ticking time bomb for public health: Long COVID isn't novel: other viruses in history have had similar “long” arcs — with devastating repercussions
Salon then asked what it will take to definitively prove whether COVID-19 can trigger a Parkinson's-like disease and whether long COVID is in fact the early stages of such a disease. Dr. Smeyne responded, "My best guess is we will need anywhere from five to ten years from the initial outbreak to see any statistically measurable effect."posted by MrVisible at 4:22 PM on April 24, 2023 [2 favorites]
The NY Times magazine has a long interview with Fauci that I found interesting in places. Long covid wasn't discussed, it focused more on early decisions and mis-decisions and what the implications were.
posted by Dip Flash at 7:08 AM on April 25, 2023
posted by Dip Flash at 7:08 AM on April 25, 2023
Disability denied: Unable to work, COVID long haulers face barriers to benefits
posted by MrVisible at 2:35 PM on April 25, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by MrVisible at 2:35 PM on April 25, 2023 [1 favorite]
High risk of autoimmune diseases after COVID-19 (Nature article)
So that means more of you are going to be joining the ranks of the immunosuppressed...
posted by hydropsyche at 5:31 PM on April 25, 2023 [4 favorites]
Two studies that use large cohorts now highlight that SARS-CoV-2 infection is linked to a substantially increased risk of developing a diverse spectrum of new-onset autoimmune diseases.The heightened risk of autoimmune diseases after Covid (Explainer from Eric Topol)
So that means more of you are going to be joining the ranks of the immunosuppressed...
posted by hydropsyche at 5:31 PM on April 25, 2023 [4 favorites]
I've sort of mentioned this before, but I'm disturbed by the people going "this person I know clearly has Long Covid, they just don't want to admit it!!!"
A lot of doctors still don't understand Long Covid (or even just Immediately After Covid) enough to be willing to diagnose people with it. I'm in an Australian Long Covid group and so many members face hurdles with getting docs to even get what's going on, let alone name it as Covid related. Also, as I've said before, many of us have other physical conditions that are hard to separate from Covid symptoms - it's not like Covid gives you very unique and obviously distinct symptoms like turning your skin rainbow!
Your acquaintances that you think are in denial of having Long Covid may have other medical things you're not aware of. Or they have asked their doctor, doctor says it's not Long Covid, so they're taking their doctor's word for it. So there's no need to try to psychoanalyse their """denial""" as though you know their body better than they do.
(Also I just got my first "you're masking, therefore you're sick" sigghhh)
posted by creatrixtiara at 9:14 PM on April 27, 2023 [2 favorites]
A lot of doctors still don't understand Long Covid (or even just Immediately After Covid) enough to be willing to diagnose people with it. I'm in an Australian Long Covid group and so many members face hurdles with getting docs to even get what's going on, let alone name it as Covid related. Also, as I've said before, many of us have other physical conditions that are hard to separate from Covid symptoms - it's not like Covid gives you very unique and obviously distinct symptoms like turning your skin rainbow!
Your acquaintances that you think are in denial of having Long Covid may have other medical things you're not aware of. Or they have asked their doctor, doctor says it's not Long Covid, so they're taking their doctor's word for it. So there's no need to try to psychoanalyse their """denial""" as though you know their body better than they do.
(Also I just got my first "you're masking, therefore you're sick" sigghhh)
posted by creatrixtiara at 9:14 PM on April 27, 2023 [2 favorites]
So my clinic has decided to eliminate masking unless you are directly interacting with a patient--like the residents and docs do--or if you are in a common area. I am not happy about this and I have my manager know that I will continue to mask regardless. She's one of the rare excellent managers I have had in my life and she has no qualms if I want to continue doing so. Listen, I work in healthcare. I am around sick people A LOT. But this is letting me know that maybe my time in healthcare is done and it's time to find something more suited to me these days. I am currently negotiating to see if I can work from home.
posted by Kitteh at 4:53 AM on April 28, 2023 [3 favorites]
posted by Kitteh at 4:53 AM on April 28, 2023 [3 favorites]
For Fuck's Sake: CDC meeting, intended to mark covid progress, sees virus cases of its own (WaPo)
posted by hydropsyche at 3:06 PM on April 30, 2023 [4 favorites]
posted by hydropsyche at 3:06 PM on April 30, 2023 [4 favorites]
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posted by eviemath at 2:50 PM on April 12, 2023 [10 favorites]