Nature just published an article summarizing the status of studies aimed at determining the effect of vaccine mandates and whether they are beneficial to society.
The conclusions- they definitely have a positive effect on vaccination rate, probably save lives and boost GDP, but the conclusions on whether the overall societal benefits outweigh the societal upsets is not clear.
Did COVID vaccine mandates work? What the data say (nature.com)
I don’t. There are unmasked people wandering around with coughs all over the place. I encountered 3 just today.
Okay, I gotta ask: at some point, given the contagiousness of the thing, every single person on the planet who’s able to get it (barring isolated tribes) is going to have it at least once, right? If so, when? I mean, given that we’re dealing with one of the most contagious diseases in human history in an interconnected world that won’t and can’t do what it takes to contain it for good, I’m actually surprised that the world is chugging along as “well” as it is now. I would’ve expected, if not apocalyptic scenarios, at least ones where it’d be making the news nightly, Covid fatigue be damned. This thread/forum would certainly not have gone even a day without update, in my mind. Why isn’t half the world in the hospital or at home sick?
Oh, yeah, and another question: family is visiting soon, and one of the planned activities, the only one where wearing a mask is literally not possible, is an indoor water park. While pondering my previous question with this in mind, I wondered: the room will obviously be huge and the humidity a bit higher than normal. Does that do anything to virus transmission, for good or ill, proximity notwithstanding?
My guess would be vaccinations and boosters.
Consider the excluded middle. COVID has proven to be neither Captain Trips nor “just a cold”. However, it is moving rapidly towards the latter.
Media representations, even in staid traditional media, have often tilted toward the sensationalistic. Not to say outright fabulation – just that the very worst of the true stories were sometimes held up as all but “the default COVID experience”. This garnered lots of attention, eyeballs, clicks, and shares but concealed COVID’s true nature from many people.
And yes, there were too many media representations that leaned way too far in the other “just a flu” direction. Again, there has been an excluded middle all along.
I mean, the flu is pretty unpleasant. “Just a flu” that’s far more contagious than flu is nasty in it’s own right, without the added fear of long covid.
And some people get asymptomatic cases; or cases so mild that they don’t realize that’s what they have.
I don’t think that at this point anybody, with very few exceptions, can say for certain that they haven’t had it; or even, unless currently both isolating and testing clear, that they don’t have it right now.
– plus which, I’m sure there are people who suspect that they have it and are doing their best to refuse to admit it, whether due to believing political bullshit, or due to fear of losing their jobs/being unable to pay the rent, or due to just plain not caring if they infect others and not wanting to isolate.
I think a combination of vaccines and better understanding of possible treatments is what’s keeping the hospitals from overloading. Whether that’ll last, with nearly everyone deciding to go back to “normal”, I think is unclear. NPR had two stories adjacent on their web page a couple of days ago, one of them about a rise in the latest variant and the other about a large number of people who’d been unable to publicly celebrate their weddings in 2020 or much of 2021 all getting together to do it now: complete with photos: a very large group of people, most of whom didn’t otherwise know or spend time with each other, all jammed in shoulder to shoulder, almost nobody wearing masks. I looked at the juxtaposition of those two stories and cringed. If you were afraid to get married in a group of your close friends and relatives, with masks and/or testing, in 2021, people: why on earth are you doing this much riskier thing now instead of having an ordinary wedding? I wonder if there’ll be a followup. There was no mention in the wedding story of the information in the new-variants story.
I have never exhibited any ‘classic’ symptoms of Covid. On two different occasions in the past couple of years, I had a mild sore throat and slight fever; both times I tested negative.
I’ve been exposed numerous times, and several times I’ve been tested after exposures. Always negative. I’ve had two vaccines and one booster.
Can I say for certain that I haven’t had it? Obviously not.
I’m somewhat curious about getting tested for antibodies. Our household has 4 people, and none of us has had COVID. To be fair, we’ve been fairly locked down for almost the entire time, and even when travelling we’ve been as careful as we can manage. But you hear so many stories along the lines of “I pretty much never go out, where’d I get it?” that you never know. Plus, we’re visiting a relative this weekend who just started chemotherapy (yes, we’ll test beforehand, and cancel immediately if needed), and we’ll be visiting the in-laws in Florida in about 6 weeks.
On a different note:
Netflix finally got the movie Contagion, which had been mentioned somewhere hear as one of the most realistic pandemic movies out there. It was kind of scary how spot-on it was. Aside from the mortality rate (25%, I think) and being somewhat more transmissible, it was like reading a future history of what happened with COVID.
Then I watched most of World War Z, which shared a title with the book and not much else, and nearly laughed at the premise: you get bitten, and 10 seconds later you’re a raging zombie… and this somehow spread around the world - no flight attendants noticed the gray fellow who was foaming at the mouth? Nope. Fun despite that, but my disbelief was hanging by the neck.
The tests available to consumers, from CVS or Qwest, tell your whether you have antibodies to the spike protein. If you’ve been vaccinated, you ought to test positive on those.
There is also a test available to determine whether you have developed antibodies to the nucleocapsid protein. The Red Cross used to administer it, because they were looking for people with lots of antibodies to make convalescent plasma, and also because they were researching the incidence on covid among blood donors. Your doctor can order that, but it might be hard to get them to do it.
I get that done after i cared for my mom, when she died of covid and I’d spent a lot of time with her. I was negative.
I’m pretty sure I’ve never had covid and don’t have it now, fwiw. Although my last rapid test was Sunday.
I started a thread here wondering about the possibility of getting an asymptomatic case of Covid, and then having long Covid afterwards. I haven’t had Covid, to my knowledge, but for several months I’m having spells of weird symptoms which overlap to a large degree with what I’m reading about long Covid. So I asked my doctor if I could be tested for antibodies, and I have an order and an appointment for testing this Monday.
Due to high area cases per the CDC, my work has reinstituted a mask recommendation.
The thing is, my company has been very generous with letting people work from home. All of our work is done on computers now. Such that in July 2022 our offices are a ghost town still.
A number of employees have moved out of commuting distance, making any sort of enforcement mechanism (of requiring office presence) difficult at this point, and of course, if a majority work from home anyway, what’s the point of requiring the rest to show up?
I myself have kind of had work from home burnout set it and it’s started to affect me some. To the point that I can see the other side of things. The days just become endless when home’s all that we have. I wonder if this is what retirement is like.
The email had a whole “just a suggestion, folks” vibe that probably recognized that anyone going in has 50 ft + of social distancing already. I don’t think the masks are necessary when the office is so barren anyway. Mostly it’s going to be another hurdle to getting people back in the office, if that ever happens at this point.
I feel your pain. I don’t particularly like working from home either.
The difference between this and retirement, is that if I were retired, I would not be required to stay home 8+ hours a day.
No, but it may be more difficult to find those opportunities if other people are staying at home or the activities require you to mask up for hours at a time.
I agree that the work from home for this length, as opposed to non-pandemic retirement, is potentially more isolating.
I do miss seeing and interacting with my coworkers.
I don’t miss the 90+ minutes of commute each way and the potential for COVID infection.
ETA: And I’m rather liking being able to say, “I get about 3-4 months per refill.”
I really, really hope they never go back to ‘you can’t get a refill until you’re within 5 days of running out.’
Some of us do not live next to the drugstore. (And no, insurance company, I don’t want to use your mail-order pharmacy! I very much doubt that it will step in and argue on my behalf next time you screw something up.)
As mentioned in another thread, I’m kicking myself still for losing my mask an hour before entering an indoor space with lots of people. I’ve pretty much resigned myself to Covid at this point. Should I tell work? Stay home regardless of how I feel? My infection is so likely that I should be isolating now, right?
I’m feeling kind of stupid and careless and honestly lost. If this is how I buy the farm, I’m going to be pissed.
I think you’re getting way ahead of yourself. The CDC is telling people not to even isolate if they’ve had possible exposure but no symptoms yet. Just keep testing and relax. Lots of us have had plenty of inadvertent exposure and have never knowingly caught it yet.
Yeah.
Don’t visit anyone who is immune compromised for ten days. Wear a mask when you go shopping until you either get sick (stay home) or enough time has passed that you know you didn’t catch it. Get some rapid tests, and test yourself every couple of days and if you develop symptoms. If you have covid symptoms, especially if you test positive, contact your doctor and discuss pavloxid. It’s no longer in short supply, so if you are over 50 or have any other risk factors, they’ll likely give it to you.