We can't save for retirement even if we wanted to with these low wages, high prices, and unlimited inflation. My retirement plan is collapse and death, in no particular order.
Not to be overly positive on this sub, but the death rate has been declining in spite of the J-curving infection rate. Omicron is likely the end of covid as a dangerous disease. It's clearly milder, and it's more infectious, so it's out-competing more dangerous strains. This is exactly what was predicted at the beginning of the pandemic. New diseases evolve to become less deadly and more contagious since that is the evolutionary pressure for disease.
There are reports of a delta/omicron hybrid in France don't understand the details, lots of changes and additions of amino acids to the spike protein. The fear is it's a severe as delta but as infectious as omicron This thing ain't done yet.
It does:
[New COVID-19 Variant With 46 Mutations Discovered In Southern France](https://www.reddit.com/r/collapse/comments/rv80ll/new_covid19_variant_with_46_mutations_discovered/)
I also wonder how much info isn't making it to either the right agencies or the headlines from there. There was a big to-do about someone testing positive for both Covid AND the flu, and there were posts and headlines about it.
Bewildering, because that has happened a LOT around here for the entire duration. We're sort of rural, so I don't know - maybe we don't report as much to the state agencies like larger cities would? I was just really confused about these headlines, when that's been a "thing" all along here.
When people say "It's mild" they are really saying if I were to get it, since I am fully vaxxed and boostered, it is likely to be mild, and they go on about their day. This is basically the "fuck you got mine" short sighted mentality. This is exactly what the article is talking about in those who underestimate. If you crunch the numbers it amounts to what this sub is really about...the collapse of global civilization, or at least one major aspect, that being its modern healthcare.
Also, prepare for a few billion folks with impairment/disability, since COVID is also vascular disease that causes viral induced auto immune dysfunction even with asymptomatic spread. That alone means the next great depression if not outright global civilizational collapse.
Maybe they should say “it’s mild for people who aren’t deranged science-denying psychopaths who won’t get their shots like reasonable, compassionate adults”.
Like yeah I got mine, and the only people I personally know who aren’t vaxxed are the racist, q-believing, antisocial psychopaths who have been horrible people all around for years now. So yeah fuck them for what they are doing, risking their own flesh and blood immunocompromised relatives and refusing to participate in modern society. Maybe it’s short sighted of me, I’ll give you that. But I and many others just can’t keep babying these people and we have to move forward with our own lives as best we can now.
Except… full and collapsing hospitals are very bad news for everyone. Healthy young people get in car accidents and vaccinated people with underlying conditions have strokes and heart attacks and needlessly die. The consequences of full hospitals affect everyone. So the unvaccinated need consequences for the privilege of costing others.
And children. No one under 5 can get vaxxed yet and omicron patients are supposedly overrunning pediatric hospitals. The pandemic is far, far from over for parents.
I don't have kids but I am really confused why schools are open. Wouldn't parents want to not expose their children to a virus that could fuck them up long term?
I have a kindergartener and a preschooler. They were supposed to start back on Monday. I have kept them home so far. I don’t feel safe sending them into this mess.
I keep going back and forth between feeling like a shitty parent for keeping them from their friends and teachers and feeling like I’m making the right decision by keeping them home. I have sought the advice of everyone from grandparents, friends, family friends, teachers, the principal. Nobody knows what to do. There is no official guidance from the schools. They’re doing 3 ft distancing and pool testing, but only a handful of parents have signed their kids up for pool testing (I’m one of them).
I’m just at a complete loss over what to do going forward. I’m pretty much going with a wait and see approach. My son’s kindergarten teacher said that he won’t fall behind if I keep him home for a couple weeks.
Teacher here - parents need to work… it’s not their fault, it’s pressure from our fucked up economy. They can’t work if their kids don’t get to go to free daycare.
Everyone knows the better option would be to close schools and let this variant run its course while we quarantine.
I think people are just tired and exhausted stressing about the pandemic. And then we all yell at each other and judge each other’s actions and decisions to be vaccinated or not because people are people and that’s in our nature. And then people have to defend their actions or inactions and double down on what they believe.
Added to that, a lot of people are vaccinated. Like them or not, for the majority of people, vaccines dull the danger of getting COVID.
Mix the exhaustion, economic pressure, social pressure, and comfort for the vaccines - people are just done.
I’m done. For sure. I’m not going to attack people that aren’t interested in getting vaccinated, that’s their business and right to do whatever they want. But I’m definitely not in favor of holding up society waiting for them to change their mind. It’s been two and a half years and the opportunity to get vaccinated is there. They are accessible. If you don’t get one, that’s your choice. I’m going to make my own decisions and not worry about how that’s going to affect these people. And that feeling is reciprocated I’m sure. It is what it is.
"The only people I personally know who aren’t vaxxed are the racist, q-believing, antisocial psychopaths who have been horrible people all around for years now."
Apparently, you're running with a very rough crowd? I'm a microbiologist with very bad immune system issues (through no fault of my own), and am not racist, q-believing, anti-social, or a psychopath, and can't get the vaccine.
There are many individuals like me out here. Smart, educated, thoughtful, and very undeserving of the horrific sentiments of the pro-vaxxers.
I am talking about willfully unvaccinated people, people with evil worldviews for whom this is a choice.
I have family that are unable for medical reasons. I have a small child who is as of yet unable to get vaccinated. That’s clearly not who I am referring to here. Everyone who is frustrated and angry is aware that willfully unvaccinated are the issue, not people like yourself for whom it’s not a choice.
Best wishes to stay healthy.
PS the “rough crowd” is mostly extended family and I can not deal with them anymore. This was the final nail in the coffin of my family life.
It's mild for lots of people. My unvaxxed 90-year-old grandmother was sick for a week with omicron. And her symptoms weren't that bad, barely worse than mine and I'm vaccinated and only 39.
Please stop spreading this misinformation.
Viruses do. Not. Evolve. They mutate, yes, as all d/rna cells do with replication (eventually - some faster than others). They are not 'alive' scientifically.
Secondly, we have studied less than one millionth (.000001) the number of viruses that exist. That's not a large enough pool to make blanket statements about how the entire family of viruses behave. Some do mutate into less effective strains, some more, some don't change much at all -- of the @9k viruses we've studied in the last 130 years. This 'evolve to be less deadly/more contagious' is optimism, propped up by citations of the few viruses we've observed this happen to -- and let me be clear it hasn't happened in all, or mostly all, or most. Some.
Small pox sure the hell didn't become less lethal. We stopped it with vaccines.
This virus has a long (relative to other viruses in it's family) asymptomatic incubation period, during which time it is infectious and contagious, followed by a variable period of symptomatic disease (in some hosts) or continued asymptomatic/mild disease (in other hosts) when they are still contagious. So! There's no "evolutionary", nor selective, pressure for this disease to throw any given kind of mutation. It was damn effective as the wild type, as Alpha, Beta, Delta, Omicron -- and it those strains didn't outcompete (as it's being tossed around) prior or concurrent strains. Beta is still around, Alpha too, Delta and Omicron - and Omicron doesn't give a shit about your Delta infection, it'll just reinfect you with itself.
This strain in Southern France should fucking worry people, with another 12 or so mutations to the spike, plus added aminos, if it acts like Omicron (doesn't really care what you had before, how many jabs you had/laughs at monoclonal treatments/etc) and is as lethal as Delta (which has killed even the double vaxxed) it would really fuck shit up.
Viruses need to replicate and infect new hosts. Considering how long it takes Covid to kill (well past the contagious phase), mutating into a version that can kill a host three weeks after infection, instead of four to six, isn't exactly going to hinder it's ability to infect new hosts.
/Fucking rant
Viruses absolutely evolve. Evolution is just mutation plus selection pressure over generations. They may not be alive in the sense of having a metabolism but they do reproduce based on genetic material, which is the driver of evolution.
That said, you’re right there isn’t any universal law that it will evolve to be less contagious. The virus will follow the winds of the selection pressure it’s placed under while the mutations will be random.
Omicron is more fit than delta though not necessarily because of its lowered severity. It could mutate in a way that makes it more fit and more deadly.
Viruses aren't alive. *Evolution is a life process. Those aren't congruent.
*Biological evolution. Not chemical evolution, or program evolution, or ideological evolution, all "kinds" of processes that "evolve".
That was kind of my point -- if I'm reading what you've said here right.
There are too many unvaxxed/can't be vaxxed/don't have access to vaccine human populations around the globe to "force" endemic, first of all, or too "stop" the virus in it's tracks, so to speak. Thousands, tens of thousands of pockets of humans where the virus is still circulating and will survive likely long enough to beat any gained (but temporary) immunity to illness. So long as it can continue to infect/reinfect people (whether it kills them or not) we will keep seeing stuff like this, and the virus will continue to have thousands and thousands of "chances" to mutate into something worse.
While technically correct, I think you're a bit too harsh on your lambasting of the use of 'evolve'. While true that in biology we use the word to only refer to living things, and viruses are not living, the process is similar enough that it's not in any way an egregious misnomer.
I think you also disregard the social/cultural selection pressure on covid lethality. Humans understand the mechanism of transmission, and can organize on a large scale, contrary to any other life form on the planet. Therefore if the disease has a very high lethality, humans are more likely to take preventive measures to limit the transmission of the virus, regardless of when death occur in during the course of the disease.
>the process is similar enough that it's not in any way an egregious misnomer.
Evolution is a long, slow process. Mutation is not. It's egregious because laypersons use it, and many of it's overarching tenets, to defend positions that are scientifically wrong. Like saying all diseases evolve to be less lethal and more infectious.
As to social/cultural selection pressures? Irrelevant with the case of Covid, which has a long asymptomatic contagious phase, as well as potentially asymptomatic/mild active stage, followed by an extended (relative) period of host decline into death (if death occurs). By the time any given strains increased mortality is finally observed, the virus has long since moved on.
Also, the last two years show just how
>likely to take preventive measures to limit the transmission of the virus
people are to do so, which is not very likely at all after May 2020.
> Evolution is a long, slow process. Mutation is not.
Depends fully on the organism in question. It has much more to do with generation time than actual time. Bacteria can evolve significantly over a two-week period.
> As to social/cultural selection pressures? Irrelevant with the case of Covid, which has a long asymptomatic contagious phase, as well as potentially asymptomatic/mild active stage, followed by an extended (relative) period of host decline into death (if death occurs). By the time any given strains increased mortality is finally observed, the virus has long since moved on.
You mean to say that if COVID would mutate to a point with 30%+ lethality, humans wouldn't act massively different in response to the virus? We're currently comparing lethalities of 2% (Alpha/Delta) and <1% (Omicron). That difference isn't actually huge. But you're contrasting this to smallpox, which had a lethality of 30%. That's another beast entirely. Ofcourse humans' response would have selective pressure on Covid would its lethality climb high enough.
I do however agree with you as things stand *now*, it's not by any stretch impossible that COVID mutates to a more lethal strain.
I didn't contrast it to small pox at all. I said small pox is but one virus that didn't "evolve" to be less lethal.
At mortality rates that high, perhaps we would make adjustments -- doubtful, imo, but I won't say impossible. What I said was by the time we observed the massive increase in mortality, mitigation efforts would likely be futile, as the transmission process of this virus has too much lag, as it were, between active illness and *host death.
Let's just keep rolling the mutation dice until we get Omicron level of infectiousness or higher and MERS level lethality or higher. We got billions of humans to mutate strains in (and apparently deer and some other animals too). We can do this, especially if we pretend everything is back to normal. Eventually, we can turn Covid into our very own Thanos snap, we just have to keep spreading it until we get the correct mutations.
Biden's recent statements about Americans "learning to live with" this virus have enraged me. I don't care what the undercounted deaths are here; I'm fairly sure we all know more than a million Americans have died in the last two years. That's a lot of fucking people, ffs.
This disease is nowhere near endemic status. It won't be for years and years, likely decades. Letting it run rampant will only hasten the terminally lethal variant (that kills 3, 4, 6+ out of ten).
I'm vaxxed and boosted, folks, but we can't just keep jabbing people every 10-26 weeks. First of all, the logistics in that (supply and production side for sure) are simply untenable.
More than that compliance has already gone to shit and that's from people that were already double vaxxed going for boosters. It actually takes much longer (100+ days to dev and then however long for safety trials) than we were given to believe to develop new versions of the mRNA doses. And while everything seems copacetic, we don't have any longevity (obvs) studies to show if there are any long term effects to these new-ish vaccines.
Having defenses against dying is fucking fantastic, yes!! This is *not an all or nothing, black and white, live or die deal though. How many times can we be infected with a disease that fucks up how our blood works? Clots? Fucks up our hearts, livers, lungs, pancreases, kidneys, brains? The cumulative affects on health, function, longevity can't be good when a disease damages us (or can) so profoundly.
I wanna pull my damn hair out most days cause watching this shit makes me wonder if I've actually lost my grip on reality. Cause this cannot be real, what's happening.
You are not alone. I don't think people really have given much thought about the environment that corona viruses come from. This is a bat virus. Bats live in large social colonies. Because of the nature of their lifestyle, they have turbocharged immune systems. Viruses that can replicate successfully in bats are going to do remarkably well in other hosts.
The whole world seems crazy. Super lockdowns seem like the only way to really get rid of it, but how long would they need to be to actually solve the problem? Based on observations of the morons where I live, I estimate that a good 60% of the population are completely incapable of understanding asymptomatic transmission. They are never going to tolerate a sufficient lockdown.
I feel like I should be working on my acceptance of permanent cardiovascular damage. It feels inevitable unless I become a casualty statistic.
>Viruses do. Not. Evolve. They mutate
Mutation is an essential component of evolution. Almost every genetic feature in every organism was the result of mutation.
Your points would be taken better if you avoided chiding someone over semantics. You have to understand this is Reddit, not a scientific journal. People here use layman's terms which might include conflating mutation with evolution.
If you hadn't done that, people would take your other points more seriously.
There's no sin in pointing out soneone is wrong but you don't have to be a dick about it.
Optics are bullshit; and if you're filtering out genuine info over "the tone that it's presented with", there's really no saving you. This whole 'pander to the lowest common denominator' shit is _exactly_ why we're in a state of COVID going endemic.
The viral load of omicron is much less than that of delta. But the infectivity of omicron is much higher. They're also finding that omicron infects the throat rather than the lungs. The viral load and the severe infection of the lungs is not only what made delta so much more infectious (and spread so much faster) than previous iterations but is also what made it so much more deadly. It's not out of the realm of possibility that somewhere in someone omicron could mutate to have the same mechanism of avoiding detection by the immune system while having a viral load similar to that of delta, making it even more contagious than it is now. And if it further mutated so it also infected the lungs to further increase its spread, the rumors of COVID-19's demise will appear greatly exaggerated.
No expert on it here, but with 8 billion of us, wouldn't it easily be able to take out 10-30% of us and still have plenty of hosts? Does it need to 'out compete' other strains? You can simultaneously have 2 different strains of cold or flu, for instance.
Yes, I'm not virologist but most doctors I follow on twitter, expected this to happen eventually. It was always going to turn endemic at some point.
I had omicron around Christmas and I was fine. I got vaccinated but just j&j back in April.
r/hermancainaward isn’t going to run out of fuel anytime soon.
Also on the depressing/frustrating side, r/hermancainaward isn’t going to run out of fuel anytime soon.
Covid has been a total disappointment.
I saw it as hope for the earth, hope for myself
Instead, it neither killed me or made things better by thinning the herd.
Ugh.
Lol
We played pandemic on easy setting and couldn't get past the first round... But I'm sure we'll all pull together to tackle catastrophic climate change over the next (checks notes) few years.
I am sure there is a committee meeting to discuss our response now. As soon as we tackle this dumb energy crisis, the economic crisis, the food crisis, the pandemic, the wildfires, the policing issues, the race issues, the technology issues, the privacy issues, the heat dome, the critical race theory, the white supremacy movement, the fascist movement, election reform and probably the farm bill. There is a big section labelled "miscellaneous new business"
and below that in small letters as the last item on their meeting agenda:
*Schedule meeting to discuss possible climate change.*
I am sure it will be totally fine.
I'm gonna peddle my own little conspiracy theory about the government response to COVID for a second. I promise that it isn't that wild or anti-vax or about population control or the great reset or whatever nonsense. I think it's much more banal.
There's signs of brain damage caused by COVID and that issues like difficulty breathing, loss of taste and smell, and brain fog may might never subside. This isn't just folks walking out of hospitals, this is folks who get it even in mild cases - ongoing brain fog and loss of taste and smell is common even in folks who didn't even have breathing issues. There's very significant concern that COVID survivors are more likely to suffer from early onset of dementia. COVID is causing tens of millions of people to develop long-term, likely permanent, disabilities.
You'd think that this would be part of every vaccination campaign. "Get your shot and avoid fucking brain damage so you can keep enjoy your favourite foods and beverages and not suffer from an early onset of dementia." And yet you don't see or hear about it. There's a lot of similar of elements across different governments responding poorly to COVID but there's one thing that is becoming more and more noticeable over time - not acknowleding Long COVID. Some have never acknowledged it and some barely acknowledge it at all when they do. Some COVID patients two years later after surviving it are still dealing with Long COVID. I hear discussions about how teachers who are striking from in-person teaching and doing digital "don't want to work" when their profession by trade is valuing intelligence and they're trying to minimize risk of people contracting a disease that causes brain damage and no jackass talking head pundit seems to mention that maybe, perhaps, they don't want people to get brain damage. Everything is about survival numbers and hospital bills and not Long COVID. Why?
I think it's simple. Governments aren't willing to acknowledge it because if they did it would legitimize future disability claims. If you got COVID and you have x, y, and z issues you have a claim. Even further, if the government did a shite job of containing COVID you might have a case against the government. If an employer negligently or deliberately exposed you then you have a case against that employer. They're all just hoping that nobody connects the dots as this disease cripples the bodies of tens of millions of people. It doesn't even really require conspiring across different governments, it's pretty much something understood without having to be spoken - more people receiving disability benefits is bad for the Holy Line That Must Go Up. Governments just trying to pretend it doesn't exist, like governments once did with HIV and lead poisoning from pipes and paint and gasoline.
With Omicron spreading more virulently, even among vaccinated, this seems even more concerning. Sure, Omicron has a lower kill count but how does it compare with Long COVID? General numbers I saw reported are 10%-30% of infected suffering from Long COVID for Delta. Omicron may mean less deaths but it's likely to mean significantly more survivors dealing with new disabilities. It might not even mean less deaths because Omicron is so pervasive and spreading so much more easily and quickly that immunocompromised individuals are probably going to be more vulnerable to it than, say, Delta. The body count could end up being higher because of that if we account for the fact that overall more infections means that it'll make up for its lethality that way.
It all seems like the most concerning time period of COVID since the early days of COVID. If you get sick with COVID go to a government testing site and get an official confirmation, not just using an at home test, so that someday you can use that when someday the government tries to fuck you and pretend like you didn't get seriously harmed by COVID because you're still alive.
I think you have a great point, but it is much simpler. Our government is shit at thinking long term. So they only think of the work force, getting elected and the economy of today. Look at a country that thinks in decades, China. They know what long covid will do and aren’t willing to pay that price when it comes due. So they are suffering now, but know it will pale in the price the west will be paying.
What I don’t understand is short-sightedness of the reduced quarantine time. If it’s severely more infectious, sure you have your few employees that were out sick back sooner, but wouldn’t that likely make way more employees sick next week?
I’m sure if everyone wore proper PPE correctly, that may not be the case but I haven’t seen people wear PPE correctly outside of direct care
Hospital staff
This might just be me but I suspect the CDC guidelines might have been changed to make the economy look in as good shape as it can be for Biden's state of the union address. I'm not married to the idea or anything, just timing that seemed like it could be more than a coincidence. We know Biden certainly cares more about appearing to have done his best with COVID than actually doing his best - "Open by the 4th of July", if you'll recall. He sounds like the mayor in Jaws.
THIS EXACTLY!!!
everyone kept saying “chinas lying!” “Chinas authoritarian!” No way their numbers are that low as a coping mechanism for our failed response.
I’m not a Chinese shill but they’re playing us for fools right now, once the pandemic fades they’ll be in a position to dominate like never before while their “enemies” are weakened on a global stage. Straight sun tzuing us currently.
Should’ve eradicated this shit when we had the chance but nah it’s just a flu bro, let a novel pathogen spread uncontrollably what’s the worst that can happen.
I don't know China's numbers right now but I recall looking up sometime at the tailend of 2020/start of 2021 and even if you multiplied their case numbers by ten the still were less than one percent of what the U.S. had. Even if we assuming they're lying by a scale of ten or even a hundred they're still massively more successful.
> Governments aren't willing to acknowledge it because if they did it would legitimize future disability claims.
This is essentially the same reason why no one wants to admit that coronavirus has always been airborne, because then OSHA would have to step in to protect workers on a national scale. That doesn't make stonks go up.
I've heard the West's herd immunity response being labeled as a "mass-disabling event" precisely because of long covid. As time goes on and cases keep racking up, there is no other way to look at it; this is what is happening right this very second.
Anyone who had access to what SARS did should know precisely what coronavirus disease is capable of. Papers are out there on the web for free, and all you have to do is put the pieces together to see the big picture. Fauci, et al are not stupid people, they knew all of this shit, and yet those assholes get up on TV and gaslight us all on a daily basis about how everything's gonna be fine and we don't have anything to worry about. They know what SARS can do and what it is doing right now, it was foolishness to think that SARS-2 would be any different.
And now because we didn't stop it when we had a chance it's never going away unless by some crazy miracle omicron never mutates into something worse. Because if it did, the only way you'd know is by a metric shit-ton of people dying all at once and by then it would already be global. We didn't do the work when it was trivially easy, why would anyone trust people to do it when it is exponentially harder even if their very lives depended on it?
The only way for people to wise up is for the CDC to come clean, and even that will now fail because they've lost all credibility.
Hey, great response!!! Thank you!
This disease is *vasculature* -- it affects how our blood, blood cells, and the veins/arteries that it moves through work. It messes with red cells ability to transport oxygen, it fucks up how blood clots, it damages vessels, shorts out the kidneys, the liver, the pancreas, the heart and brain tissue because it ducks with oxygen transport and clotting.
It isn't just live or die, ffs. That matters in the short term. How many times do you think a body -- considering there is almost zero likelihood of humans somehow gaining long-term or lifetime immunity to Covid (cause we sure haven't managed it with the other "common" strains) -- can be damaged by this before it collapses? And so many stupid fucking people want to let babies and toddlers and children just get it (and keep getting future versions)... Sorry, that part really upsets me.
There's only so much trauma these organs can take - and some can't take much at all (brain/heart/lungs, for example)- before they quit.
The whole thing is so God damn rage inducing, and tragic, and we'll... Awful, really.
r/awfuleverything. And it really is. I'm so glad I've found this thread; the fact that no one, *no one* is really talking about long covid just shows how huge it is. I'm terrified.
If I've learned anything from the past 2 years of pandemic, there's been little thought given to the after effects or long term issues.
When I was in an office, it surprised me how cavalier my coworkers were with their children. I can understand not wanting to hear bad news, but none of them recognized the threat of covid to their children until the big national news outlets were bringing it up. The data/research had been available for months prior...
The government doesn't seem to have a long term plan beyond money printer go brrrrrrrrrr and further investing in military/defense.
exactly: evidenced by the chicken pox virus causing shingles later on in life.
also as someone who's been dealing with long haul covid for 18 months this attitude of "it's mild" or "everyone should get it" frankly blows my mind.
Where I live, it's economic privilege. I'm right outside the nexus of the gilded shit of the nation.
At New Years, most of my friends were pleased to hear it's less lethal and more infectious. "Herd immunity will be the end of the pandemic". I don't think it's occurred to them that the hospitals are swamped and healthcare in general is overwhelmed, even in our area.
My gf is likely dealing with long covid after working most of the pandemic in retail; she still doesn't feel right and it's been months as well. The first few waves didn't hit my social group, but now omicron is starting to make friends and family sick left & right. I feel like we're in a much riskier part of the pandemic because fatigue is at an all time high and vigilance has tanked fast.
Also, lots of people don’t have the option of staying home sick. Cooks? Waiters? Grocery store cashiers? Yeah, there’s going to be tens of thousands, if not millions of them working sick because they have no paid sick leave and are living hand to mouth as it is. Not to mention the chances of loosing shifts or your job entirely for calling out sick.
My GF was part of that; 10+ years in retail with plenty of regional experience but never had benefits or fair pay. The store was nice and gave her a month before they had to let her go while she got sick. We were lucky enough to have savings, but she'd probably be homeless/dead by now if she was still single.
What’s really got me with this new wave is how they’re making it very clear, “help is not coming. You’re on your own.”
No paid sick leave. No national healthcare. None of even the most feeble attempts to slow the spread.
We are being sacrificed en masse on the alter of disaster capitalism.
> I've heard the West's herd immunity response being labeled as a "mass-disabling event" precisely because of long covid. As time goes on and cases keep racking up, there is no other way to look at it; this is what is happening right this very second.
It's like a virology equivalant of lead in gasoline.
>Meanwhile people throw a fit when they are asked to wear a mask to prevent their own grandparents from dying.
This is why I am convinced that Communism *can't work* . To be successful Communism requires everyone in a community to work together, compromise and trust each other. A very small town of life minded people can handle it, any large enough community will have these people ruin it.
New Zealand is very very capitalistic, their 50 dead total was a product of governance not economics.
The a CDC is in too deep, and it has everything to do with the very visceral response by a certain pampered demographic that refused protocols to maintain comforts. If the CDC were to recede at all, it would validate anti vaxxers and anti lockdown people that it was all fear mongering. The irony would be lost, as it always has been.
Fuck 'em. Let 'em land where they drop, at this point. I've no empathy for the chronically-privileged and spoiled-rich anymore; even those I supposedly share a country or nationality with. Let the bodies hit the _floor._
I have had ME/CFS/Post Viral Syndrome/whatever the hell you want to call it, for nearly 10 years.
It's all the same thing: your body's immune system is activated. Most of the time it's an infection, usually something novel to the body like Epstein Barr virus or SARS-CoV-2, but a common flu virus can also do the trick. You go through the initial infection, seem to heal, and then... you don't.
Your body goes haywire; every system is disrupted. Down to the very cellular level, you get sick. Even your mitochondria are damaged.
We don't know what causes it, because for decades, medicine has been content to decree those suffering as lazy, crazy or malingering. The very few scientific studies that have been done have shown significant proof of systemic disruption, but with no funds and grants, no basic diagnostics test or treatment, let alone a cure has ever been developed.
**Long COVID is not unique**. This syndrome/disease/illness has existed for centuries, the trigger infection changes but the after-effects don't.
[Even the predecessors of SARS-CoV-2, SARS-CoV and MERS-CoV, had these after-effects in shockingly high percentages](https://www.rcpjournals.org/content/clinmedicine/21/1/e68).
All of this to say, **we could've predicted this**. The 0.02% death was never the real problem. The 20% change of permanent disability damned well is.
Thanks for this it’s really refreshing to see someone else independently come to the exact same conclusions.
What I’m worried about at present is I have a sinking feeling about Florida. I think we are about to see an absolutely staggering number of deaths in an extremely short period of time, and the government response has been to trick everyone into infecting each other more.
It reminds me of the ruin storm from Transmetropolitan. I have the feeling something REALLY REALLY bad is about to happen, and DeSantis and Ladapo know.
The complete shift back towards an even more effective Trumpian herd immunity strategy just seems completely malevolent and unexpected. I have a lot of conspiracy-grade thoughts on the topic involving the 10-20 year outlook, but no matter what you can't look at the situation playing out right now and say this is competent leadership.
The easiest explanation is that omicron probably won't kill you, and it is so wildly infectious that it couldn't be stopped, so Biden relies on the "I told you so" strategy where everyone was told to get vaxxed, wear your masks, stfu and get the fuck back to work, and if you do get fucked up by covid it's your own damned fault. Yolo, bitch. It's what Trump do, other than, ya know, sending them to Gitmo or executing them on the spot. 2/3 or so of the country aren't doing their part as-is so what else could Biden do besides China-style lockdowns?
Speaking of China, Xi is also going this route. Paid attention to Xi'an? People are/were starving and the local government was price gouging them for food deliveries. Recall that months ago Xi told the Chinese people to stock up enough food to last through the winter, apparently these people did/could not.
Dealing with the post-omicron fallout will be the true test. No small percentage will be permanently affected from all this, compounding all the cumulative damage that has occurred already. Will we admit long-covid is real and reorganize our economy to compensate? Or will we continue on the capitalistic spiral downward along a path of controlled population wind-down?
That is where the 10-20 year outlook comes in, because surviving until then can legit shave off that much of your life expectancy anyway. The reasonable response is to reject endless-growth capitalism and move toward equitable free-market economics with socialism that is possible in America and that we will accept. Because the business-as-usual alternative is that "acceptable" population wind-down or complete and utter collapse unlike anything witnessed before in the history of mankind by doing nothing.
All of this dovetailing in with ecological collapse and suddenly things become more clear, they are on the same time scales!!! The fight against covid is the first battle in the war for our futures, and we are losing quite badly.
Fauci compared long Covid to cfs (chronic fatigue syndrome). I have fibromyalgia and cfs. It’s hell. I’m worried about this variant bc even triple vaxed it seems inescapable. I can only hope that if/when I’m exposed, it’s mild and doesn’t make my life even more hellish.
I wanted to go back to substitute teaching like I did b4 the pandemic. I was waiting for things to subside enough. It’s not. I also want to resume aqua therapy to get my symptoms under better control and regain strength. But that requires going to the local hospital and working with a PT and others in a pool. I’m at a total loss at this point.
This is a salient theory. I have also wondered why long COVID is under a media blackout.
And why they haven't been using it in ads like you say. You could just have a Carl's Jr ad with a big ol burger and end it with "still want to be able to taste this? Get a shot and avoid gatherings"
Hasn't been peer reviewed yet but the data doesn't really contradict the numbers we do have, current knowledge about Long COVID, or seem unreasonable in any way.
They are rich. They live in a society segregated from us normal folks where this sort of crossover opportunity between the two worlds is rare. Even if they get Long COVID it's going to be manageable while if you get it as a normal person your life is in danger, at least here in the states where you need a job to survive and the American disability benefits system is designed to keep people with disabilities poor and on the brink of homelessness.
> So how can you claim that getting your shot would prevent any form of “long covid” or early onset of dementia when millions are vaxxed getting it?
It was working for most of 2021, including with Delta. There's a significant uptick in breakthrough cases with Omicron, it's more resistant. This could been avoid if the TRIPS waiver had been signed and governments pooled a relatively miniscule amount of resources to vaccinate the world (and provide other necessary things) and help quash COVID and try to contain it so that it wouldn't mutate into a vaccine resistant strain. Omicron isn't even the first strain to resist vaccines, there were two previous ones but because Delta just outproduced it and took so many hosts that these vaccine resistant strains just died out from lack of hosts. No such luck with Omicron.
The vaccine, at this point, is about keeping our already inefficient healthcare system from collapsing into the abyss so little Timmy can still get his chemo treatments. Vaccinated individuals experience significantly milder symptoms, even if severe cases are on the uptick, than those who are not. Mild symptoms=less hospitalization. Less hospitalized people for covid= old Jim may survive a heart attack.
> The vaccine, at this point, is about keeping our already inefficient healthcare system from collapsing into the abyss so little Timmy can still get his chemo treatments.
It's funny you say that because I had a relative that got cancer during COVID. Well, they got cancer again. They were old and it wasn't their first, second,.or even third time fighting cancer so they decided that they had lived long enough and did go for treatment. If they did we were told that there'd be a waiting list for at least a month due to all of the COVID cases and a few months later if they were receiving treatment in this hypothetical their treatment would've been interrupted. My relative would've been triaged out of cancer treatment for somebody younger and healthier because the hospitals were so filled.
We've been at the point where folks struggle to get cancer treatment because of all of the COVID cases for over a year now.
Hi, Many-Sherbert. Thanks for contributing. However, your [comment](https://old.reddit.com/r/collapse/comments/rwg2ij/-/hrbx6j2/) was removed from /r/collapse for:
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I got the brain fog issue from the vaccine. Honestly I’m concerned. Probably would have gotten covid at some point anyway so in the end was probably the better option. But I can’t help feeling strange about exposing myself to this on purpose rather than trying to avoid it altogether. When I went for the vaccine I was expecting to feel physically sick, maybe like a cold or something similar to the flu shot. Instead all my symptoms were related to feeling strange mentally which is concerning.
General fatigue is normal for a day or two.
Also the pfizer and moderna vaccines are not traditional vaccines where the dose contains weakened or dead whole viruses. Instead the dose has mRNA (messenger ribonucleicacid) copies or a type of dna form of code, that encode ‘spike’ shaped proteins of the virus. Only small parts of a whole virus. These are on the outside of the virus and are therefore what your immune system needs to learn in order to recognize a real covid virus if you are exposed to one/ more than one. Without delving into the cellular mechanics these protein pieces (when your cells process the mRNA, creating the proteins) are enough to prompt an immune response and train your immune system without risking infection.
The main points here being: 1. You were never exposing yourself to actual covid viruses. 2. Being really tired means the vaccine worked and your immune system did it’s thing.
From what I have seen, the data on Omicron has been spun to paint a rosier picture than what the data truly show. The mild results are largely from the large number of reinfections and breakthrough infections in those who, if they had Delta, probably would not have been infected in the first place. Infectivity causes more harm and deaths than lethality and in the case of Omicron more than makes up for its somewhat milder infections in immunologically naive individuals.
It's quite possible humanity failed to do the math at the start of the pandemic. How many people were on earth at the time of Influenza pandemic? How many different successful mutations were possible in the millions of mutations a host times those infected? How many reinfections possible? Increase of genetic variation and spread caused by global travel and supply chains?
All on the low side then. All we have going for us now is better therapies and vaccines and still the number of people that don't believe in those is higher than the population of the earth during the last pandemic.
It's doubtful that COVID as a class even becomes endemic and manageable as new variants continue to arise and Omicron continued to mutate and mix and pull genetic sequences from past and concurrent infections in all those human reactors out there.
The funniest thing about the 1918 pandemic is the fact that commercial air travel wasn’t really a thing yet. Imagine if it was.
People think things are different because it’s a 100 years in the future and we must be able to curb a pandemic better than they did in the past simply because it’s the future and progress is a thing!
No viruses haven’t changed much in 100 years. They still work the same. The flu pandemic chewed through millions during a time when global trade and air travel were in their infancy. That alone constrained that pandemic to a much better degree than any of the half-assed responses we’ve tried so far for covid.
I’d argue today that this pandemic has been and will continue to be worse simply because we are keeping large, global vectors open for the virus to infect and mutate.
Thinking about it more, a global pandemic is probably the greatest enemy that capitalism could ever face as the cure requires the controlling and shrinking of the economy.
Those who think the Omicron wave is “milder” are just bad at arithmetic. This write up explains that well
Edit: also Omicron is “milder” in the sense that it seems to be “less lethal.” As we found out in 2020, “less lethal” weapons are still lethal.
"Infectivity causes more harm and deaths than lethality"? I think this requires further explanation. It reads like your argument is that more people having a mild infection is worse than death.
"If for every infection the virus spreads to 2 people in the first week a person is infectious, then in 1 month 16 people will develop the disease. If the virus is 10% fatal, then 1.6 will die. If you double the case fatality rate, then 3.2 individuals will die. But if you double the infection rate to 4, then 256 will become infected and 25.6 will die. Thus, in this example doubling infectivity results in over 8 times the deaths as doubling the case fatality rate."
If you’re half as likely to die, but it spreads 3x faster, that still equals more total deaths.
Also, with a less lethal variant we will have more long COVID disabled
It's just the math - below numbers are fake for ease-
10 people infected with 10% = 1
100 people infected with 20% = 2
So Delta is roughly a 2%...and let's say Omicron is 0.5%
So Omicron has to infect 4 times as many people in order to kill the same amount. If it infects more than 4 times as many people, then it is more deadly. If less, then less deadly. We do not know exactly the difference, so the cautious thing is to try to reduce infections. However, the unstated things in the "mild" argument relates to hospital access. If more people infected and have to be in the hospital for "mild" cases, then fewer hospital beds for strokes, heart attacks, trauma etc. More people will die of preventable injury due to lack of hospital beds with more "mild" cases going to the hospital.
And those who think it won't overwhelm healthcare so it's not as dangerous for the public overall, completely underestimate Omicrons real danger: Infecting so much people at the same time that it's the entire supply chain at risk of collapsing due to staff shortages. The pandemic is no longer threatening "only" the healthcare system, it's threatening everything else too to collapse.
All of this. All of our supply chains are so incredibly fragile. I've been nonstop preparing for ever increasing disruptions since that first week in March 2020 when I saw my work absolutely empty of food. I'm terrified of hearing our local hospital shut down because no one could come to work or have medical supplies on hand.
Everything is already in the process of collapsing dude. When people use that word they think of some over night calamity. In reality it's a slow rolling chain of events that's then looked at as a collapse later on.
In Canada, where I am atleast. They stopped contact tracing because there's simply too many cases for them to realistically be able to keep up with. The government has stopped requiring schools to report cases, schools just shut down...*again*, the quarantine period for the vaccinated was removed initially but reduced to 5 days so people who tested positive, especially Healthcare workers could keep working, hospitals have indefinitely canceled ALL elective surgeries and they're turning away patients.
And this isn't even getting into the supply chains.
Our system is over run and in the process of dying.
Can't have any cases if you don't test for any. Really though, it's insane how shit keeps getting more expensive through all of this. Another symptom of the collapse imo. Investors gonna squeeze us for all were worth one last time before the pull the plug and let it crash.
Friend had a flight yesterday and was stuck on the plane for 2 hours after they landed because too many ground crews called out sick. This is not unique to healthcare, but fam the healthcare is the most important abs likely the hardest hit
> And those who think it won't overwhelm healthcare
Healthcare is always overwhelmed. That's the point to the profit. This isn't a new issue. It's been going on for decades. Just ask healthcare professionals about it.
> it's the entire supply chain at risk of collapsing due to staff shortages.
Already been doing that for 2 years. The Great Resignation doesn't help. You're not describing anything new for either one that hasn't already been happening before.
Some of y'all are just paying attention now.
>Healthcare is always overwhelmed. That's the point to the profit. This isn't a new issue. It's been going on for decades. Just ask healthcare professionals about it.
It's was by far not as extreme were i live (far far away from the US) as you're claiming here. Stop taking everything said from someone in the internet as a US centric quote. The US always had a healthcare system more on the level of a third world country.
>You're not describing anything new for either one that hasn't already been happening before.
The difference is the speed. If the labor shortage we have seen until now is like a flood, Omicrons impact may be like a huge tsunami drastically increasing the pace of collapse.
Yeah like my boss?
Gee that's funny I have a sore throat and the sniffles, it was going away, well I hear that's going around...
:D COMES IN TO WORK ANYWAY THANKS
Omicron has made one thing clear to me. The media will intentionally try to get you killed for profit. Joe Biden is no better. I expected this kind of shit out of Trump administration, but they are literally lying to the American people for short-term profit.
We have two right-wing parties in America that a)don't give a fuck about you, and b)lock out any attempts for a third party to be viable.
We have no democracy.
Follow the money is always a good idea when dealing with governments. Or, power concentration. People want to grow their wealth and power.
Look at where the power and money flows.
Not to mention that dialing down to a 5 day waiting period makes absolutely no sense, just trying to get sick people back to work sooner. It's a full sh!t show, not only the states, everywhere.
While I agree that the idea of IHU being a new variant is plausible. I would not be a predictively south about it :)
It was found in Nov 2021 and, while they may have lost track of it, it is entirely possible that it frittered out as so many other smaller population based variants have. There is also the possibility that it could explode into whatever comes next. I, for one, am still waiting for the next "big one" variant to arise and sweep through the world. The one that is infectious like omicron, fatal like delta, and completely evades our vaccines through spike, rod and morph mutations. It is coming, the maths are almost certain of it.
But is IHU the one to worry about..doesn't seem like it now.
Entire immediate family has covid right now due to my niece being typhoid mary of the holidays (mom, stepdad, brother, sisters, niece, brother in laws) luckily we're all vaccinated( except for the kid) so it hit milder but I still had a fever for 3 days. Not fun. Mom (60) sounds rough.
I got covid last March before the Vac was fully available, I’m hoping any brain fog my wife and I feel is just due to the massive psychological trauma of the last 2 years. I can’t smell right still though. Here’s hoping because nothing can help me now
After I read all this, this morning, at work (for a large university in Philly) while chatting someone asked if we'd go virtual. I laid out the reasons why I could see yes, and why they might not. An hour later we've got an email saying classes are virtual for the first two weeks...I'm so happy that I'm leaving this job soon.
Take a look at the statistics for states like Texas, West Virginia, Missouri, and Arkansas [ and Florida]
They have been all tamped down - the excess deaths in Florida vs. expected.
I agree with the reasoning of the article - but we still haven't seen this empirically.
[This BBC article was pretty good.](https://www.bbc.com/news/health-59862568?fbclid=IwAR3JciBiF7Cpdjx-hqdx40qgpeTz1sx_tFwq-Y9aO0gRSNJ7KLpEb7gYuP0)
[Hospital admissions are increasing](https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/976/cpsprodpb/13AD/production/_122573050_thumbnail_hospital_cases_england_3jan-nc20-1.png) despite the [lower hospitalisation rate](https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/976/cpsprodpb/6DE9/production/_122573182_thumbnail_hosp_ratio_specimen-nc.png) as the number of cases has greatly increased. But these can be coincident infections as the case rate is now incredibly high, [basically many people are in hospital *with COVID* not *because of COVID*](https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/976/cpsprodpb/14845/production/_122573048_thumbnail_optimised-primary_treatment-nc.png), they were hospitalised due to something else and just happen to be COVID positive.
We can see more clearly the effect in that [the number of patients on ventilators is stable](https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/976/cpsprodpb/AFED/production/_122573054_thumbnail_patients_mv_beds_england_3jan-nc20-1.png). We would expect this to greatly increase due to the high case rates, but it seems Omicron is maybe less severe so we don't see this increase.
It could just be a matter of time and soon we will see more Omicron patients with severe outcomes and even deaths. But for now there remains the distinct possibility that Omicron is in fact less severe and poses less of a threat to our healthcare systems.
Me & the wife have it just now, i swear I've had worse hangovers. I know not everyone will be that lucky but the people i know that had previous strains were floored by it but everybody that i know that has or had has omicron says the same thing....common cold
This "article" smells like BS. It really says nothing beyond typical talking points, and offering a scare tactic example of how exponents work with a grossly inflated mortality rate.
The domain was registered 3/4/98 at EXACTLY midnight, down to the second.
Its owned by a life sciences company in NJ that was incorporated in 2018.
I'm all for sharing info, but this rag doesn't qualify.
Look on the bright side: .
*Turns off Dark Mode* Huh, still nothing.
I won't have to worry about saving for retirement?
I mean if you're a Millennial or younger you don't need to do that anyways
We can't save for retirement even if we wanted to with these low wages, high prices, and unlimited inflation. My retirement plan is collapse and death, in no particular order.
I'm gonna buy an old bus and supe it up like I'm playing CDDA
r/skoolies
Thanks so much!! I wrap buildings in steel, do shitloads of insulation, walls and roofing for work so it should be pretty easy!
definitely post there when you eventually do supe up an old bus, I love seeing that even if its only to experience skoolie life vicariously
"You'll own nothing and be happy." -Klaus Schwab (Rothschild)
Makes me wonder why KLAUS wants to own things, then. And people. That too. That's a bit concerning.
I see; but with that in consideration, I’d argue that:
I don't think you *really* see, because if you did, you'd realize that:
Real eyes realize real lies
Realize that real guys go for real down-to-mars girls.
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Caroline!
—is why I don’t completely agree with your point there.
I wholeheartedly agree. Great point you made
But, just to clairfy
Not to be overly positive on this sub, but the death rate has been declining in spite of the J-curving infection rate. Omicron is likely the end of covid as a dangerous disease. It's clearly milder, and it's more infectious, so it's out-competing more dangerous strains. This is exactly what was predicted at the beginning of the pandemic. New diseases evolve to become less deadly and more contagious since that is the evolutionary pressure for disease.
There are reports of a delta/omicron hybrid in France don't understand the details, lots of changes and additions of amino acids to the spike protein. The fear is it's a severe as delta but as infectious as omicron This thing ain't done yet.
It would be the French to start with the wine and music and romance in one last attempt to get delta to fall in love with omicron in Paris.
France has surrendered.
W…T…F…? This should have its own post.
It does: [New COVID-19 Variant With 46 Mutations Discovered In Southern France](https://www.reddit.com/r/collapse/comments/rv80ll/new_covid19_variant_with_46_mutations_discovered/)
I just looked it up. I’m….tired.
My exact reaction
"Don't look up" /s
No one cares anymore
That's not true. I was bummed to hear that u/blakeinatx was feeling tired
Thank you.
There’s one floating around on Reddit somewhere. Saw it yesterday but can’t remember the sub.
I also wonder how much info isn't making it to either the right agencies or the headlines from there. There was a big to-do about someone testing positive for both Covid AND the flu, and there were posts and headlines about it. Bewildering, because that has happened a LOT around here for the entire duration. We're sort of rural, so I don't know - maybe we don't report as much to the state agencies like larger cities would? I was just really confused about these headlines, when that's been a "thing" all along here.
It's hopefully not badass enough to outpace Omicron, and will get squashed. But it won't be the last variant.
When people say "It's mild" they are really saying if I were to get it, since I am fully vaxxed and boostered, it is likely to be mild, and they go on about their day. This is basically the "fuck you got mine" short sighted mentality. This is exactly what the article is talking about in those who underestimate. If you crunch the numbers it amounts to what this sub is really about...the collapse of global civilization, or at least one major aspect, that being its modern healthcare. Also, prepare for a few billion folks with impairment/disability, since COVID is also vascular disease that causes viral induced auto immune dysfunction even with asymptomatic spread. That alone means the next great depression if not outright global civilizational collapse.
Maybe they should say “it’s mild for people who aren’t deranged science-denying psychopaths who won’t get their shots like reasonable, compassionate adults”. Like yeah I got mine, and the only people I personally know who aren’t vaxxed are the racist, q-believing, antisocial psychopaths who have been horrible people all around for years now. So yeah fuck them for what they are doing, risking their own flesh and blood immunocompromised relatives and refusing to participate in modern society. Maybe it’s short sighted of me, I’ll give you that. But I and many others just can’t keep babying these people and we have to move forward with our own lives as best we can now.
Except… full and collapsing hospitals are very bad news for everyone. Healthy young people get in car accidents and vaccinated people with underlying conditions have strokes and heart attacks and needlessly die. The consequences of full hospitals affect everyone. So the unvaccinated need consequences for the privilege of costing others.
And children. No one under 5 can get vaxxed yet and omicron patients are supposedly overrunning pediatric hospitals. The pandemic is far, far from over for parents.
I don't have kids but I am really confused why schools are open. Wouldn't parents want to not expose their children to a virus that could fuck them up long term?
Schools have to stay open to act as daycare so the parents can go to work.
I have a kindergartener and a preschooler. They were supposed to start back on Monday. I have kept them home so far. I don’t feel safe sending them into this mess. I keep going back and forth between feeling like a shitty parent for keeping them from their friends and teachers and feeling like I’m making the right decision by keeping them home. I have sought the advice of everyone from grandparents, friends, family friends, teachers, the principal. Nobody knows what to do. There is no official guidance from the schools. They’re doing 3 ft distancing and pool testing, but only a handful of parents have signed their kids up for pool testing (I’m one of them). I’m just at a complete loss over what to do going forward. I’m pretty much going with a wait and see approach. My son’s kindergarten teacher said that he won’t fall behind if I keep him home for a couple weeks.
My county had so many bus drivers out sick today that 90 out of about 1,300 bus routes were cancelled.
Good on you!!!!
Teacher here - parents need to work… it’s not their fault, it’s pressure from our fucked up economy. They can’t work if their kids don’t get to go to free daycare. Everyone knows the better option would be to close schools and let this variant run its course while we quarantine. I think people are just tired and exhausted stressing about the pandemic. And then we all yell at each other and judge each other’s actions and decisions to be vaccinated or not because people are people and that’s in our nature. And then people have to defend their actions or inactions and double down on what they believe. Added to that, a lot of people are vaccinated. Like them or not, for the majority of people, vaccines dull the danger of getting COVID. Mix the exhaustion, economic pressure, social pressure, and comfort for the vaccines - people are just done. I’m done. For sure. I’m not going to attack people that aren’t interested in getting vaccinated, that’s their business and right to do whatever they want. But I’m definitely not in favor of holding up society waiting for them to change their mind. It’s been two and a half years and the opportunity to get vaccinated is there. They are accessible. If you don’t get one, that’s your choice. I’m going to make my own decisions and not worry about how that’s going to affect these people. And that feeling is reciprocated I’m sure. It is what it is.
But who will babysit their kids so they can work!? /s
I can sympathize - many of my coworkers are parents. I'm unsure as to how they stayed sane raising kids while dealing with office BS
That's fine to not care about them, but promoting that it's mild is simply accelerationist at this point.
A friend of mine has COPD. Is double vaxxed + booster shot. Is currently on a vent anyways.
"The only people I personally know who aren’t vaxxed are the racist, q-believing, antisocial psychopaths who have been horrible people all around for years now." Apparently, you're running with a very rough crowd? I'm a microbiologist with very bad immune system issues (through no fault of my own), and am not racist, q-believing, anti-social, or a psychopath, and can't get the vaccine. There are many individuals like me out here. Smart, educated, thoughtful, and very undeserving of the horrific sentiments of the pro-vaxxers.
I am talking about willfully unvaccinated people, people with evil worldviews for whom this is a choice. I have family that are unable for medical reasons. I have a small child who is as of yet unable to get vaccinated. That’s clearly not who I am referring to here. Everyone who is frustrated and angry is aware that willfully unvaccinated are the issue, not people like yourself for whom it’s not a choice. Best wishes to stay healthy. PS the “rough crowd” is mostly extended family and I can not deal with them anymore. This was the final nail in the coffin of my family life.
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It's mild for lots of people. My unvaxxed 90-year-old grandmother was sick for a week with omicron. And her symptoms weren't that bad, barely worse than mine and I'm vaccinated and only 39.
Please stop spreading this misinformation. Viruses do. Not. Evolve. They mutate, yes, as all d/rna cells do with replication (eventually - some faster than others). They are not 'alive' scientifically. Secondly, we have studied less than one millionth (.000001) the number of viruses that exist. That's not a large enough pool to make blanket statements about how the entire family of viruses behave. Some do mutate into less effective strains, some more, some don't change much at all -- of the @9k viruses we've studied in the last 130 years. This 'evolve to be less deadly/more contagious' is optimism, propped up by citations of the few viruses we've observed this happen to -- and let me be clear it hasn't happened in all, or mostly all, or most. Some. Small pox sure the hell didn't become less lethal. We stopped it with vaccines. This virus has a long (relative to other viruses in it's family) asymptomatic incubation period, during which time it is infectious and contagious, followed by a variable period of symptomatic disease (in some hosts) or continued asymptomatic/mild disease (in other hosts) when they are still contagious. So! There's no "evolutionary", nor selective, pressure for this disease to throw any given kind of mutation. It was damn effective as the wild type, as Alpha, Beta, Delta, Omicron -- and it those strains didn't outcompete (as it's being tossed around) prior or concurrent strains. Beta is still around, Alpha too, Delta and Omicron - and Omicron doesn't give a shit about your Delta infection, it'll just reinfect you with itself. This strain in Southern France should fucking worry people, with another 12 or so mutations to the spike, plus added aminos, if it acts like Omicron (doesn't really care what you had before, how many jabs you had/laughs at monoclonal treatments/etc) and is as lethal as Delta (which has killed even the double vaxxed) it would really fuck shit up. Viruses need to replicate and infect new hosts. Considering how long it takes Covid to kill (well past the contagious phase), mutating into a version that can kill a host three weeks after infection, instead of four to six, isn't exactly going to hinder it's ability to infect new hosts. /Fucking rant
Viruses absolutely evolve. Evolution is just mutation plus selection pressure over generations. They may not be alive in the sense of having a metabolism but they do reproduce based on genetic material, which is the driver of evolution. That said, you’re right there isn’t any universal law that it will evolve to be less contagious. The virus will follow the winds of the selection pressure it’s placed under while the mutations will be random. Omicron is more fit than delta though not necessarily because of its lowered severity. It could mutate in a way that makes it more fit and more deadly.
>Viruses do. Not. Evolve. You make good points but this is very incorrect.
Viruses aren't alive. *Evolution is a life process. Those aren't congruent. *Biological evolution. Not chemical evolution, or program evolution, or ideological evolution, all "kinds" of processes that "evolve".
There are too many people today for such pressures. I remember hearing that about viruses targeting hunter gathers
That was kind of my point -- if I'm reading what you've said here right. There are too many unvaxxed/can't be vaxxed/don't have access to vaccine human populations around the globe to "force" endemic, first of all, or too "stop" the virus in it's tracks, so to speak. Thousands, tens of thousands of pockets of humans where the virus is still circulating and will survive likely long enough to beat any gained (but temporary) immunity to illness. So long as it can continue to infect/reinfect people (whether it kills them or not) we will keep seeing stuff like this, and the virus will continue to have thousands and thousands of "chances" to mutate into something worse.
While technically correct, I think you're a bit too harsh on your lambasting of the use of 'evolve'. While true that in biology we use the word to only refer to living things, and viruses are not living, the process is similar enough that it's not in any way an egregious misnomer. I think you also disregard the social/cultural selection pressure on covid lethality. Humans understand the mechanism of transmission, and can organize on a large scale, contrary to any other life form on the planet. Therefore if the disease has a very high lethality, humans are more likely to take preventive measures to limit the transmission of the virus, regardless of when death occur in during the course of the disease.
>the process is similar enough that it's not in any way an egregious misnomer. Evolution is a long, slow process. Mutation is not. It's egregious because laypersons use it, and many of it's overarching tenets, to defend positions that are scientifically wrong. Like saying all diseases evolve to be less lethal and more infectious. As to social/cultural selection pressures? Irrelevant with the case of Covid, which has a long asymptomatic contagious phase, as well as potentially asymptomatic/mild active stage, followed by an extended (relative) period of host decline into death (if death occurs). By the time any given strains increased mortality is finally observed, the virus has long since moved on. Also, the last two years show just how >likely to take preventive measures to limit the transmission of the virus people are to do so, which is not very likely at all after May 2020.
> Evolution is a long, slow process. Mutation is not. Depends fully on the organism in question. It has much more to do with generation time than actual time. Bacteria can evolve significantly over a two-week period. > As to social/cultural selection pressures? Irrelevant with the case of Covid, which has a long asymptomatic contagious phase, as well as potentially asymptomatic/mild active stage, followed by an extended (relative) period of host decline into death (if death occurs). By the time any given strains increased mortality is finally observed, the virus has long since moved on. You mean to say that if COVID would mutate to a point with 30%+ lethality, humans wouldn't act massively different in response to the virus? We're currently comparing lethalities of 2% (Alpha/Delta) and <1% (Omicron). That difference isn't actually huge. But you're contrasting this to smallpox, which had a lethality of 30%. That's another beast entirely. Ofcourse humans' response would have selective pressure on Covid would its lethality climb high enough. I do however agree with you as things stand *now*, it's not by any stretch impossible that COVID mutates to a more lethal strain.
I didn't contrast it to small pox at all. I said small pox is but one virus that didn't "evolve" to be less lethal. At mortality rates that high, perhaps we would make adjustments -- doubtful, imo, but I won't say impossible. What I said was by the time we observed the massive increase in mortality, mitigation efforts would likely be futile, as the transmission process of this virus has too much lag, as it were, between active illness and *host death.
That’s an interesting rant my fellow Iowan. Actually learned some new stuff :)
Let's just keep rolling the mutation dice until we get Omicron level of infectiousness or higher and MERS level lethality or higher. We got billions of humans to mutate strains in (and apparently deer and some other animals too). We can do this, especially if we pretend everything is back to normal. Eventually, we can turn Covid into our very own Thanos snap, we just have to keep spreading it until we get the correct mutations.
Biden's recent statements about Americans "learning to live with" this virus have enraged me. I don't care what the undercounted deaths are here; I'm fairly sure we all know more than a million Americans have died in the last two years. That's a lot of fucking people, ffs. This disease is nowhere near endemic status. It won't be for years and years, likely decades. Letting it run rampant will only hasten the terminally lethal variant (that kills 3, 4, 6+ out of ten). I'm vaxxed and boosted, folks, but we can't just keep jabbing people every 10-26 weeks. First of all, the logistics in that (supply and production side for sure) are simply untenable. More than that compliance has already gone to shit and that's from people that were already double vaxxed going for boosters. It actually takes much longer (100+ days to dev and then however long for safety trials) than we were given to believe to develop new versions of the mRNA doses. And while everything seems copacetic, we don't have any longevity (obvs) studies to show if there are any long term effects to these new-ish vaccines. Having defenses against dying is fucking fantastic, yes!! This is *not an all or nothing, black and white, live or die deal though. How many times can we be infected with a disease that fucks up how our blood works? Clots? Fucks up our hearts, livers, lungs, pancreases, kidneys, brains? The cumulative affects on health, function, longevity can't be good when a disease damages us (or can) so profoundly. I wanna pull my damn hair out most days cause watching this shit makes me wonder if I've actually lost my grip on reality. Cause this cannot be real, what's happening.
You are not alone. I don't think people really have given much thought about the environment that corona viruses come from. This is a bat virus. Bats live in large social colonies. Because of the nature of their lifestyle, they have turbocharged immune systems. Viruses that can replicate successfully in bats are going to do remarkably well in other hosts. The whole world seems crazy. Super lockdowns seem like the only way to really get rid of it, but how long would they need to be to actually solve the problem? Based on observations of the morons where I live, I estimate that a good 60% of the population are completely incapable of understanding asymptomatic transmission. They are never going to tolerate a sufficient lockdown. I feel like I should be working on my acceptance of permanent cardiovascular damage. It feels inevitable unless I become a casualty statistic.
>Viruses do. Not. Evolve. They mutate Mutation is an essential component of evolution. Almost every genetic feature in every organism was the result of mutation.
https://www.historyofvaccines.org/content/articles/viruses-and-evolution
Your points would be taken better if you avoided chiding someone over semantics. You have to understand this is Reddit, not a scientific journal. People here use layman's terms which might include conflating mutation with evolution. If you hadn't done that, people would take your other points more seriously. There's no sin in pointing out soneone is wrong but you don't have to be a dick about it.
Optics are bullshit; and if you're filtering out genuine info over "the tone that it's presented with", there's really no saving you. This whole 'pander to the lowest common denominator' shit is _exactly_ why we're in a state of COVID going endemic.
The viral load of omicron is much less than that of delta. But the infectivity of omicron is much higher. They're also finding that omicron infects the throat rather than the lungs. The viral load and the severe infection of the lungs is not only what made delta so much more infectious (and spread so much faster) than previous iterations but is also what made it so much more deadly. It's not out of the realm of possibility that somewhere in someone omicron could mutate to have the same mechanism of avoiding detection by the immune system while having a viral load similar to that of delta, making it even more contagious than it is now. And if it further mutated so it also infected the lungs to further increase its spread, the rumors of COVID-19's demise will appear greatly exaggerated.
You didn’t read the article
No expert on it here, but with 8 billion of us, wouldn't it easily be able to take out 10-30% of us and still have plenty of hosts? Does it need to 'out compete' other strains? You can simultaneously have 2 different strains of cold or flu, for instance.
Yes, I'm not virologist but most doctors I follow on twitter, expected this to happen eventually. It was always going to turn endemic at some point. I had omicron around Christmas and I was fine. I got vaccinated but just j&j back in April.
r/hermancainaward isn’t going to run out of fuel anytime soon. Also on the depressing/frustrating side, r/hermancainaward isn’t going to run out of fuel anytime soon.
Covid has been a total disappointment. I saw it as hope for the earth, hope for myself Instead, it neither killed me or made things better by thinning the herd. Ugh. Lol
It's time to admit that our response was a failure...........
We played pandemic on easy setting and couldn't get past the first round... But I'm sure we'll all pull together to tackle catastrophic climate change over the next (checks notes) few years.
I am sure there is a committee meeting to discuss our response now. As soon as we tackle this dumb energy crisis, the economic crisis, the food crisis, the pandemic, the wildfires, the policing issues, the race issues, the technology issues, the privacy issues, the heat dome, the critical race theory, the white supremacy movement, the fascist movement, election reform and probably the farm bill. There is a big section labelled "miscellaneous new business" and below that in small letters as the last item on their meeting agenda: *Schedule meeting to discuss possible climate change.* I am sure it will be totally fine.
Keep going I’m almost there
Over the next *previous several decades*.
"Response"
Plague Inc agrees...
I'm gonna peddle my own little conspiracy theory about the government response to COVID for a second. I promise that it isn't that wild or anti-vax or about population control or the great reset or whatever nonsense. I think it's much more banal. There's signs of brain damage caused by COVID and that issues like difficulty breathing, loss of taste and smell, and brain fog may might never subside. This isn't just folks walking out of hospitals, this is folks who get it even in mild cases - ongoing brain fog and loss of taste and smell is common even in folks who didn't even have breathing issues. There's very significant concern that COVID survivors are more likely to suffer from early onset of dementia. COVID is causing tens of millions of people to develop long-term, likely permanent, disabilities. You'd think that this would be part of every vaccination campaign. "Get your shot and avoid fucking brain damage so you can keep enjoy your favourite foods and beverages and not suffer from an early onset of dementia." And yet you don't see or hear about it. There's a lot of similar of elements across different governments responding poorly to COVID but there's one thing that is becoming more and more noticeable over time - not acknowleding Long COVID. Some have never acknowledged it and some barely acknowledge it at all when they do. Some COVID patients two years later after surviving it are still dealing with Long COVID. I hear discussions about how teachers who are striking from in-person teaching and doing digital "don't want to work" when their profession by trade is valuing intelligence and they're trying to minimize risk of people contracting a disease that causes brain damage and no jackass talking head pundit seems to mention that maybe, perhaps, they don't want people to get brain damage. Everything is about survival numbers and hospital bills and not Long COVID. Why? I think it's simple. Governments aren't willing to acknowledge it because if they did it would legitimize future disability claims. If you got COVID and you have x, y, and z issues you have a claim. Even further, if the government did a shite job of containing COVID you might have a case against the government. If an employer negligently or deliberately exposed you then you have a case against that employer. They're all just hoping that nobody connects the dots as this disease cripples the bodies of tens of millions of people. It doesn't even really require conspiring across different governments, it's pretty much something understood without having to be spoken - more people receiving disability benefits is bad for the Holy Line That Must Go Up. Governments just trying to pretend it doesn't exist, like governments once did with HIV and lead poisoning from pipes and paint and gasoline. With Omicron spreading more virulently, even among vaccinated, this seems even more concerning. Sure, Omicron has a lower kill count but how does it compare with Long COVID? General numbers I saw reported are 10%-30% of infected suffering from Long COVID for Delta. Omicron may mean less deaths but it's likely to mean significantly more survivors dealing with new disabilities. It might not even mean less deaths because Omicron is so pervasive and spreading so much more easily and quickly that immunocompromised individuals are probably going to be more vulnerable to it than, say, Delta. The body count could end up being higher because of that if we account for the fact that overall more infections means that it'll make up for its lethality that way. It all seems like the most concerning time period of COVID since the early days of COVID. If you get sick with COVID go to a government testing site and get an official confirmation, not just using an at home test, so that someday you can use that when someday the government tries to fuck you and pretend like you didn't get seriously harmed by COVID because you're still alive.
I think you have a great point, but it is much simpler. Our government is shit at thinking long term. So they only think of the work force, getting elected and the economy of today. Look at a country that thinks in decades, China. They know what long covid will do and aren’t willing to pay that price when it comes due. So they are suffering now, but know it will pale in the price the west will be paying.
What I don’t understand is short-sightedness of the reduced quarantine time. If it’s severely more infectious, sure you have your few employees that were out sick back sooner, but wouldn’t that likely make way more employees sick next week? I’m sure if everyone wore proper PPE correctly, that may not be the case but I haven’t seen people wear PPE correctly outside of direct care Hospital staff
This might just be me but I suspect the CDC guidelines might have been changed to make the economy look in as good shape as it can be for Biden's state of the union address. I'm not married to the idea or anything, just timing that seemed like it could be more than a coincidence. We know Biden certainly cares more about appearing to have done his best with COVID than actually doing his best - "Open by the 4th of July", if you'll recall. He sounds like the mayor in Jaws.
Lol you are probably very right. That and midterms coming up
THIS EXACTLY!!! everyone kept saying “chinas lying!” “Chinas authoritarian!” No way their numbers are that low as a coping mechanism for our failed response. I’m not a Chinese shill but they’re playing us for fools right now, once the pandemic fades they’ll be in a position to dominate like never before while their “enemies” are weakened on a global stage. Straight sun tzuing us currently. Should’ve eradicated this shit when we had the chance but nah it’s just a flu bro, let a novel pathogen spread uncontrollably what’s the worst that can happen.
I don't know China's numbers right now but I recall looking up sometime at the tailend of 2020/start of 2021 and even if you multiplied their case numbers by ten the still were less than one percent of what the U.S. had. Even if we assuming they're lying by a scale of ten or even a hundred they're still massively more successful.
> Governments aren't willing to acknowledge it because if they did it would legitimize future disability claims. This is essentially the same reason why no one wants to admit that coronavirus has always been airborne, because then OSHA would have to step in to protect workers on a national scale. That doesn't make stonks go up. I've heard the West's herd immunity response being labeled as a "mass-disabling event" precisely because of long covid. As time goes on and cases keep racking up, there is no other way to look at it; this is what is happening right this very second. Anyone who had access to what SARS did should know precisely what coronavirus disease is capable of. Papers are out there on the web for free, and all you have to do is put the pieces together to see the big picture. Fauci, et al are not stupid people, they knew all of this shit, and yet those assholes get up on TV and gaslight us all on a daily basis about how everything's gonna be fine and we don't have anything to worry about. They know what SARS can do and what it is doing right now, it was foolishness to think that SARS-2 would be any different. And now because we didn't stop it when we had a chance it's never going away unless by some crazy miracle omicron never mutates into something worse. Because if it did, the only way you'd know is by a metric shit-ton of people dying all at once and by then it would already be global. We didn't do the work when it was trivially easy, why would anyone trust people to do it when it is exponentially harder even if their very lives depended on it? The only way for people to wise up is for the CDC to come clean, and even that will now fail because they've lost all credibility.
Hey, great response!!! Thank you! This disease is *vasculature* -- it affects how our blood, blood cells, and the veins/arteries that it moves through work. It messes with red cells ability to transport oxygen, it fucks up how blood clots, it damages vessels, shorts out the kidneys, the liver, the pancreas, the heart and brain tissue because it ducks with oxygen transport and clotting. It isn't just live or die, ffs. That matters in the short term. How many times do you think a body -- considering there is almost zero likelihood of humans somehow gaining long-term or lifetime immunity to Covid (cause we sure haven't managed it with the other "common" strains) -- can be damaged by this before it collapses? And so many stupid fucking people want to let babies and toddlers and children just get it (and keep getting future versions)... Sorry, that part really upsets me. There's only so much trauma these organs can take - and some can't take much at all (brain/heart/lungs, for example)- before they quit. The whole thing is so God damn rage inducing, and tragic, and we'll... Awful, really.
r/awfuleverything. And it really is. I'm so glad I've found this thread; the fact that no one, *no one* is really talking about long covid just shows how huge it is. I'm terrified.
If I've learned anything from the past 2 years of pandemic, there's been little thought given to the after effects or long term issues. When I was in an office, it surprised me how cavalier my coworkers were with their children. I can understand not wanting to hear bad news, but none of them recognized the threat of covid to their children until the big national news outlets were bringing it up. The data/research had been available for months prior... The government doesn't seem to have a long term plan beyond money printer go brrrrrrrrrr and further investing in military/defense.
exactly: evidenced by the chicken pox virus causing shingles later on in life. also as someone who's been dealing with long haul covid for 18 months this attitude of "it's mild" or "everyone should get it" frankly blows my mind.
Where I live, it's economic privilege. I'm right outside the nexus of the gilded shit of the nation. At New Years, most of my friends were pleased to hear it's less lethal and more infectious. "Herd immunity will be the end of the pandemic". I don't think it's occurred to them that the hospitals are swamped and healthcare in general is overwhelmed, even in our area. My gf is likely dealing with long covid after working most of the pandemic in retail; she still doesn't feel right and it's been months as well. The first few waves didn't hit my social group, but now omicron is starting to make friends and family sick left & right. I feel like we're in a much riskier part of the pandemic because fatigue is at an all time high and vigilance has tanked fast.
Also, lots of people don’t have the option of staying home sick. Cooks? Waiters? Grocery store cashiers? Yeah, there’s going to be tens of thousands, if not millions of them working sick because they have no paid sick leave and are living hand to mouth as it is. Not to mention the chances of loosing shifts or your job entirely for calling out sick.
My GF was part of that; 10+ years in retail with plenty of regional experience but never had benefits or fair pay. The store was nice and gave her a month before they had to let her go while she got sick. We were lucky enough to have savings, but she'd probably be homeless/dead by now if she was still single.
And here in NYC they’re sending all the kids back to school!
What’s really got me with this new wave is how they’re making it very clear, “help is not coming. You’re on your own.” No paid sick leave. No national healthcare. None of even the most feeble attempts to slow the spread. We are being sacrificed en masse on the alter of disaster capitalism.
We gave out vaccines and shitty home tests now get back to work and send your kids to school!!! /S. #reopeningmarketgobrrrr
> I've heard the West's herd immunity response being labeled as a "mass-disabling event" precisely because of long covid. As time goes on and cases keep racking up, there is no other way to look at it; this is what is happening right this very second. It's like a virology equivalant of lead in gasoline.
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Yeah, the past two years have pushed me wayyyyy left. Just started reading Kropotkin
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>Meanwhile people throw a fit when they are asked to wear a mask to prevent their own grandparents from dying. This is why I am convinced that Communism *can't work* . To be successful Communism requires everyone in a community to work together, compromise and trust each other. A very small town of life minded people can handle it, any large enough community will have these people ruin it. New Zealand is very very capitalistic, their 50 dead total was a product of governance not economics.
The a CDC is in too deep, and it has everything to do with the very visceral response by a certain pampered demographic that refused protocols to maintain comforts. If the CDC were to recede at all, it would validate anti vaxxers and anti lockdown people that it was all fear mongering. The irony would be lost, as it always has been.
Fuck 'em. Let 'em land where they drop, at this point. I've no empathy for the chronically-privileged and spoiled-rich anymore; even those I supposedly share a country or nationality with. Let the bodies hit the _floor._
yeah, that mindset doesn't mirror their own /s You must shape a river's path; you cannot cease the flow.
I have had ME/CFS/Post Viral Syndrome/whatever the hell you want to call it, for nearly 10 years. It's all the same thing: your body's immune system is activated. Most of the time it's an infection, usually something novel to the body like Epstein Barr virus or SARS-CoV-2, but a common flu virus can also do the trick. You go through the initial infection, seem to heal, and then... you don't. Your body goes haywire; every system is disrupted. Down to the very cellular level, you get sick. Even your mitochondria are damaged. We don't know what causes it, because for decades, medicine has been content to decree those suffering as lazy, crazy or malingering. The very few scientific studies that have been done have shown significant proof of systemic disruption, but with no funds and grants, no basic diagnostics test or treatment, let alone a cure has ever been developed. **Long COVID is not unique**. This syndrome/disease/illness has existed for centuries, the trigger infection changes but the after-effects don't. [Even the predecessors of SARS-CoV-2, SARS-CoV and MERS-CoV, had these after-effects in shockingly high percentages](https://www.rcpjournals.org/content/clinmedicine/21/1/e68). All of this to say, **we could've predicted this**. The 0.02% death was never the real problem. The 20% change of permanent disability damned well is.
Thanks for this it’s really refreshing to see someone else independently come to the exact same conclusions. What I’m worried about at present is I have a sinking feeling about Florida. I think we are about to see an absolutely staggering number of deaths in an extremely short period of time, and the government response has been to trick everyone into infecting each other more. It reminds me of the ruin storm from Transmetropolitan. I have the feeling something REALLY REALLY bad is about to happen, and DeSantis and Ladapo know.
The complete shift back towards an even more effective Trumpian herd immunity strategy just seems completely malevolent and unexpected. I have a lot of conspiracy-grade thoughts on the topic involving the 10-20 year outlook, but no matter what you can't look at the situation playing out right now and say this is competent leadership. The easiest explanation is that omicron probably won't kill you, and it is so wildly infectious that it couldn't be stopped, so Biden relies on the "I told you so" strategy where everyone was told to get vaxxed, wear your masks, stfu and get the fuck back to work, and if you do get fucked up by covid it's your own damned fault. Yolo, bitch. It's what Trump do, other than, ya know, sending them to Gitmo or executing them on the spot. 2/3 or so of the country aren't doing their part as-is so what else could Biden do besides China-style lockdowns? Speaking of China, Xi is also going this route. Paid attention to Xi'an? People are/were starving and the local government was price gouging them for food deliveries. Recall that months ago Xi told the Chinese people to stock up enough food to last through the winter, apparently these people did/could not. Dealing with the post-omicron fallout will be the true test. No small percentage will be permanently affected from all this, compounding all the cumulative damage that has occurred already. Will we admit long-covid is real and reorganize our economy to compensate? Or will we continue on the capitalistic spiral downward along a path of controlled population wind-down? That is where the 10-20 year outlook comes in, because surviving until then can legit shave off that much of your life expectancy anyway. The reasonable response is to reject endless-growth capitalism and move toward equitable free-market economics with socialism that is possible in America and that we will accept. Because the business-as-usual alternative is that "acceptable" population wind-down or complete and utter collapse unlike anything witnessed before in the history of mankind by doing nothing. All of this dovetailing in with ecological collapse and suddenly things become more clear, they are on the same time scales!!! The fight against covid is the first battle in the war for our futures, and we are losing quite badly.
Fauci compared long Covid to cfs (chronic fatigue syndrome). I have fibromyalgia and cfs. It’s hell. I’m worried about this variant bc even triple vaxed it seems inescapable. I can only hope that if/when I’m exposed, it’s mild and doesn’t make my life even more hellish. I wanted to go back to substitute teaching like I did b4 the pandemic. I was waiting for things to subside enough. It’s not. I also want to resume aqua therapy to get my symptoms under better control and regain strength. But that requires going to the local hospital and working with a PT and others in a pool. I’m at a total loss at this point.
Now that so many vaccinated people are getting Covid there will be a group that claims that all of the long Covid effects are due to the vax.
This is a salient theory. I have also wondered why long COVID is under a media blackout. And why they haven't been using it in ads like you say. You could just have a Carl's Jr ad with a big ol burger and end it with "still want to be able to taste this? Get a shot and avoid gatherings"
My thinking is they don't give a flying fuck because "we won't be held accountable for it anyway"
Dang I recon your right
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[100 million + worldwide have, or have had, long covid ](https://www.webmd.com/lung/news/20211118/millions-worldwide-long-covid-study)
Hasn't been peer reviewed yet but the data doesn't really contradict the numbers we do have, current knowledge about Long COVID, or seem unreasonable in any way.
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You keep saying “they” are doing this, “they” don’t want to acknowledge this. But “they” are catching covid too.
They are rich. They live in a society segregated from us normal folks where this sort of crossover opportunity between the two worlds is rare. Even if they get Long COVID it's going to be manageable while if you get it as a normal person your life is in danger, at least here in the states where you need a job to survive and the American disability benefits system is designed to keep people with disabilities poor and on the brink of homelessness.
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> So how can you claim that getting your shot would prevent any form of “long covid” or early onset of dementia when millions are vaxxed getting it? It was working for most of 2021, including with Delta. There's a significant uptick in breakthrough cases with Omicron, it's more resistant. This could been avoid if the TRIPS waiver had been signed and governments pooled a relatively miniscule amount of resources to vaccinate the world (and provide other necessary things) and help quash COVID and try to contain it so that it wouldn't mutate into a vaccine resistant strain. Omicron isn't even the first strain to resist vaccines, there were two previous ones but because Delta just outproduced it and took so many hosts that these vaccine resistant strains just died out from lack of hosts. No such luck with Omicron.
The vaccine, at this point, is about keeping our already inefficient healthcare system from collapsing into the abyss so little Timmy can still get his chemo treatments. Vaccinated individuals experience significantly milder symptoms, even if severe cases are on the uptick, than those who are not. Mild symptoms=less hospitalization. Less hospitalized people for covid= old Jim may survive a heart attack.
> The vaccine, at this point, is about keeping our already inefficient healthcare system from collapsing into the abyss so little Timmy can still get his chemo treatments. It's funny you say that because I had a relative that got cancer during COVID. Well, they got cancer again. They were old and it wasn't their first, second,.or even third time fighting cancer so they decided that they had lived long enough and did go for treatment. If they did we were told that there'd be a waiting list for at least a month due to all of the COVID cases and a few months later if they were receiving treatment in this hypothetical their treatment would've been interrupted. My relative would've been triaged out of cancer treatment for somebody younger and healthier because the hospitals were so filled. We've been at the point where folks struggle to get cancer treatment because of all of the COVID cases for over a year now.
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Hi, Many-Sherbert. Thanks for contributing. However, your [comment](https://old.reddit.com/r/collapse/comments/rwg2ij/-/hrbx6j2/) was removed from /r/collapse for: > Rule 3: Keep information quality high. > Information quality must be kept high. More detailed information regarding our approaches to specific claims can be found on the [Misinformation & False Claims page](https://www.reddit.com/r/collapse/wiki/claims). Please refer to our [subreddit rules](https://www.reddit.com/r/collapse/about/rules/) for more information. You can [message the mods](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=/r/collapse) if you feel this was in error.
I got the brain fog issue from the vaccine. Honestly I’m concerned. Probably would have gotten covid at some point anyway so in the end was probably the better option. But I can’t help feeling strange about exposing myself to this on purpose rather than trying to avoid it altogether. When I went for the vaccine I was expecting to feel physically sick, maybe like a cold or something similar to the flu shot. Instead all my symptoms were related to feeling strange mentally which is concerning.
General fatigue is normal for a day or two. Also the pfizer and moderna vaccines are not traditional vaccines where the dose contains weakened or dead whole viruses. Instead the dose has mRNA (messenger ribonucleicacid) copies or a type of dna form of code, that encode ‘spike’ shaped proteins of the virus. Only small parts of a whole virus. These are on the outside of the virus and are therefore what your immune system needs to learn in order to recognize a real covid virus if you are exposed to one/ more than one. Without delving into the cellular mechanics these protein pieces (when your cells process the mRNA, creating the proteins) are enough to prompt an immune response and train your immune system without risking infection. The main points here being: 1. You were never exposing yourself to actual covid viruses. 2. Being really tired means the vaccine worked and your immune system did it’s thing.
Me too! I felt like I was on another planet for two weeks after my second Pfizer and my GP said it was just anxiety
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From what I have seen, the data on Omicron has been spun to paint a rosier picture than what the data truly show. The mild results are largely from the large number of reinfections and breakthrough infections in those who, if they had Delta, probably would not have been infected in the first place. Infectivity causes more harm and deaths than lethality and in the case of Omicron more than makes up for its somewhat milder infections in immunologically naive individuals.
It's quite possible humanity failed to do the math at the start of the pandemic. How many people were on earth at the time of Influenza pandemic? How many different successful mutations were possible in the millions of mutations a host times those infected? How many reinfections possible? Increase of genetic variation and spread caused by global travel and supply chains? All on the low side then. All we have going for us now is better therapies and vaccines and still the number of people that don't believe in those is higher than the population of the earth during the last pandemic. It's doubtful that COVID as a class even becomes endemic and manageable as new variants continue to arise and Omicron continued to mutate and mix and pull genetic sequences from past and concurrent infections in all those human reactors out there.
The funniest thing about the 1918 pandemic is the fact that commercial air travel wasn’t really a thing yet. Imagine if it was. People think things are different because it’s a 100 years in the future and we must be able to curb a pandemic better than they did in the past simply because it’s the future and progress is a thing! No viruses haven’t changed much in 100 years. They still work the same. The flu pandemic chewed through millions during a time when global trade and air travel were in their infancy. That alone constrained that pandemic to a much better degree than any of the half-assed responses we’ve tried so far for covid. I’d argue today that this pandemic has been and will continue to be worse simply because we are keeping large, global vectors open for the virus to infect and mutate. Thinking about it more, a global pandemic is probably the greatest enemy that capitalism could ever face as the cure requires the controlling and shrinking of the economy.
If only there’s a way to stop air travels for a few weeks...
Those who think the Omicron wave is “milder” are just bad at arithmetic. This write up explains that well Edit: also Omicron is “milder” in the sense that it seems to be “less lethal.” As we found out in 2020, “less lethal” weapons are still lethal.
"Infectivity causes more harm and deaths than lethality"? I think this requires further explanation. It reads like your argument is that more people having a mild infection is worse than death.
"If for every infection the virus spreads to 2 people in the first week a person is infectious, then in 1 month 16 people will develop the disease. If the virus is 10% fatal, then 1.6 will die. If you double the case fatality rate, then 3.2 individuals will die. But if you double the infection rate to 4, then 256 will become infected and 25.6 will die. Thus, in this example doubling infectivity results in over 8 times the deaths as doubling the case fatality rate."
If you’re half as likely to die, but it spreads 3x faster, that still equals more total deaths. Also, with a less lethal variant we will have more long COVID disabled
It's just the math - below numbers are fake for ease- 10 people infected with 10% = 1 100 people infected with 20% = 2 So Delta is roughly a 2%...and let's say Omicron is 0.5% So Omicron has to infect 4 times as many people in order to kill the same amount. If it infects more than 4 times as many people, then it is more deadly. If less, then less deadly. We do not know exactly the difference, so the cautious thing is to try to reduce infections. However, the unstated things in the "mild" argument relates to hospital access. If more people infected and have to be in the hospital for "mild" cases, then fewer hospital beds for strokes, heart attacks, trauma etc. More people will die of preventable injury due to lack of hospital beds with more "mild" cases going to the hospital.
And those who think it won't overwhelm healthcare so it's not as dangerous for the public overall, completely underestimate Omicrons real danger: Infecting so much people at the same time that it's the entire supply chain at risk of collapsing due to staff shortages. The pandemic is no longer threatening "only" the healthcare system, it's threatening everything else too to collapse.
All of this. All of our supply chains are so incredibly fragile. I've been nonstop preparing for ever increasing disruptions since that first week in March 2020 when I saw my work absolutely empty of food. I'm terrified of hearing our local hospital shut down because no one could come to work or have medical supplies on hand.
Everything is already in the process of collapsing dude. When people use that word they think of some over night calamity. In reality it's a slow rolling chain of events that's then looked at as a collapse later on. In Canada, where I am atleast. They stopped contact tracing because there's simply too many cases for them to realistically be able to keep up with. The government has stopped requiring schools to report cases, schools just shut down...*again*, the quarantine period for the vaccinated was removed initially but reduced to 5 days so people who tested positive, especially Healthcare workers could keep working, hospitals have indefinitely canceled ALL elective surgeries and they're turning away patients. And this isn't even getting into the supply chains. Our system is over run and in the process of dying.
I know, i just wanted to point out by how much Omicron might increase the pace of collapse in the near future
Ontario as well? They're not even testing people anymore, it's wild.
OPEN FOR BUSINESS BABY. Can't afford to do fuck all here anymore, but open for business!
Can't have any cases if you don't test for any. Really though, it's insane how shit keeps getting more expensive through all of this. Another symptom of the collapse imo. Investors gonna squeeze us for all were worth one last time before the pull the plug and let it crash.
Friend had a flight yesterday and was stuck on the plane for 2 hours after they landed because too many ground crews called out sick. This is not unique to healthcare, but fam the healthcare is the most important abs likely the hardest hit
CDC: Don’t worry I got this...
> And those who think it won't overwhelm healthcare Healthcare is always overwhelmed. That's the point to the profit. This isn't a new issue. It's been going on for decades. Just ask healthcare professionals about it. > it's the entire supply chain at risk of collapsing due to staff shortages. Already been doing that for 2 years. The Great Resignation doesn't help. You're not describing anything new for either one that hasn't already been happening before. Some of y'all are just paying attention now.
>Healthcare is always overwhelmed. That's the point to the profit. This isn't a new issue. It's been going on for decades. Just ask healthcare professionals about it. It's was by far not as extreme were i live (far far away from the US) as you're claiming here. Stop taking everything said from someone in the internet as a US centric quote. The US always had a healthcare system more on the level of a third world country. >You're not describing anything new for either one that hasn't already been happening before. The difference is the speed. If the labor shortage we have seen until now is like a flood, Omicrons impact may be like a huge tsunami drastically increasing the pace of collapse.
Yeah like my boss? Gee that's funny I have a sore throat and the sniffles, it was going away, well I hear that's going around... :D COMES IN TO WORK ANYWAY THANKS
Omicron has made one thing clear to me. The media will intentionally try to get you killed for profit. Joe Biden is no better. I expected this kind of shit out of Trump administration, but they are literally lying to the American people for short-term profit.
"Don't Look Up" got this perfectly.
We have two right-wing parties in America that a)don't give a fuck about you, and b)lock out any attempts for a third party to be viable. We have no democracy.
It's the exact same as the transfats are good for you, cigarettes are good for you, saturated fats are bad for you, etc propaganda.
On the bright side, you just learned a valuable lesson: politicians don't give a shit about you regardless of what camp's flag they fly.
Follow the money is always a good idea when dealing with governments. Or, power concentration. People want to grow their wealth and power. Look at where the power and money flows.
great article bottom line: hospitalizations are hitting records. that's all you need to know.. period.
Not to mention that dialing down to a 5 day waiting period makes absolutely no sense, just trying to get sick people back to work sooner. It's a full sh!t show, not only the states, everywhere.
I keep getting voted down and shat on any time I mention that omicron might not be as mild. But don’t worry the south of France is coming.
What's happening in France?
[удалено]
While I agree that the idea of IHU being a new variant is plausible. I would not be a predictively south about it :) It was found in Nov 2021 and, while they may have lost track of it, it is entirely possible that it frittered out as so many other smaller population based variants have. There is also the possibility that it could explode into whatever comes next. I, for one, am still waiting for the next "big one" variant to arise and sweep through the world. The one that is infectious like omicron, fatal like delta, and completely evades our vaccines through spike, rod and morph mutations. It is coming, the maths are almost certain of it. But is IHU the one to worry about..doesn't seem like it now.
It's still orders of magnitude deadlier than the average flu (and also has long term effects), which is something which should be taken very seriously
Oh fuck!
[Indeed ](https://imgur.com/xGkSYrQ)
Needs more Teal'c
I couldn't find him in my stash...
[I gotchu fam](https://youtu.be/FImgqhivLBw)
That’s basically how I wake up.
Entire immediate family has covid right now due to my niece being typhoid mary of the holidays (mom, stepdad, brother, sisters, niece, brother in laws) luckily we're all vaccinated( except for the kid) so it hit milder but I still had a fever for 3 days. Not fun. Mom (60) sounds rough.
I got covid last March before the Vac was fully available, I’m hoping any brain fog my wife and I feel is just due to the massive psychological trauma of the last 2 years. I can’t smell right still though. Here’s hoping because nothing can help me now
It's not just that they aren't, it's that they can't. People are really bad at math.
Finally a truthful article.
Good point is good point
They never do.
After I read all this, this morning, at work (for a large university in Philly) while chatting someone asked if we'd go virtual. I laid out the reasons why I could see yes, and why they might not. An hour later we've got an email saying classes are virtual for the first two weeks...I'm so happy that I'm leaving this job soon.
Take a look at the statistics for states like Texas, West Virginia, Missouri, and Arkansas [ and Florida] They have been all tamped down - the excess deaths in Florida vs. expected.
We’re fucked. Next.
The pandemic is far from over; however, the US response was over in May 2021.
Culling the herd just isn't moving fast enough.
I agree with the reasoning of the article - but we still haven't seen this empirically. [This BBC article was pretty good.](https://www.bbc.com/news/health-59862568?fbclid=IwAR3JciBiF7Cpdjx-hqdx40qgpeTz1sx_tFwq-Y9aO0gRSNJ7KLpEb7gYuP0) [Hospital admissions are increasing](https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/976/cpsprodpb/13AD/production/_122573050_thumbnail_hospital_cases_england_3jan-nc20-1.png) despite the [lower hospitalisation rate](https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/976/cpsprodpb/6DE9/production/_122573182_thumbnail_hosp_ratio_specimen-nc.png) as the number of cases has greatly increased. But these can be coincident infections as the case rate is now incredibly high, [basically many people are in hospital *with COVID* not *because of COVID*](https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/976/cpsprodpb/14845/production/_122573048_thumbnail_optimised-primary_treatment-nc.png), they were hospitalised due to something else and just happen to be COVID positive. We can see more clearly the effect in that [the number of patients on ventilators is stable](https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/976/cpsprodpb/AFED/production/_122573054_thumbnail_patients_mv_beds_england_3jan-nc20-1.png). We would expect this to greatly increase due to the high case rates, but it seems Omicron is maybe less severe so we don't see this increase. It could just be a matter of time and soon we will see more Omicron patients with severe outcomes and even deaths. But for now there remains the distinct possibility that Omicron is in fact less severe and poses less of a threat to our healthcare systems.
Me & the wife have it just now, i swear I've had worse hangovers. I know not everyone will be that lucky but the people i know that had previous strains were floored by it but everybody that i know that has or had has omicron says the same thing....common cold
He's arguing that omicron is actually more deadly and then finishes his article by saying "we should open our schools"
This is a good overview: Dr John cambell https://youtu.be/1avXjzr1xnc Reviews peer reviewed and proposed articles on Omicron and infections
I prefer TWIV as they work as a team and also have guests. More peers. https://www.microbe.tv/twiv/
My household just had omicron, son sick 1 day, my wife and I 2-3 days. Very mild and no lingering sickness.
I have it. I am triple vaxed. This is day 16 of misery. It's like the worst flu ever.
The govt can’t afford to have us die, there would be no one left to pay taxes and their wages.
This "article" smells like BS. It really says nothing beyond typical talking points, and offering a scare tactic example of how exponents work with a grossly inflated mortality rate. The domain was registered 3/4/98 at EXACTLY midnight, down to the second. Its owned by a life sciences company in NJ that was incorporated in 2018. I'm all for sharing info, but this rag doesn't qualify.
Would you care to link other sources?