Does COVID still exist meaningfully in your part of the world?
In my country the first few waves were very strong, but after a successful vaccination campaign (among other things) COVID has completely disappeared in everybody’s daily lives.
I think they are referring less to the actual virus and more to the rapid deterioration of our discourse and politics that accompanied it. Or at least this is what I might mean when using "COVID" as an epoch.
> rapid deterioration of our discourse and politics that accompanied it
That has been happening way before Covid.
IMHO it started with the internet. Pre-internet the flow of information is gatekept by traditional media - newspapers, radio, TV, … etc. Everyone watched, listened to, read more or less the same things. This resulted in a more uniform set of opinions and more common ground between people.
The internet broke all that. People could choose what they watch/listen/read and different people picked different things, coming to very different conclusions. In the past you could ask someone if they watched X last night and there is a decent probability they did. Today it’s much harder to find common ground - you could both be on YouTube but watching completely different things.
Edit: Don’t just downvote. You got a problem with this post, say something.
I agree it was happening before COVID. I think the internet could be part of the problem. But it wasn’t freedom of choice that caused the problem, which is what you claim. There’s much less freedom on the internet now, and if anything it’s much worse. If we’re going to blame internet then blame ads and big tech. Don’t blame people for watching cat videos, that’s absurd.
I’m not blaming anything. But it’s my theory that whatever consensus we enjoyed in the past was due to the information landscape of the time - where information was controlled and curated by a dozen or so centralized entities and their affiliates.
The internet though is mostly chaos. There are gatekeepers, e.g. Google, but they don’t curate much - using a blacklist approach rather than whitelist - and instead just organize the information making it findable.
Niche ideas get air time and now compete in the market place of ideas.
What does the data look like in your country? England had 273 deaths and 3000 hospital admissions in the past week. It's still there, bubbling along in the background, it's just not getting media attention.
A teammate caught Covid this week, and they're now isolating.
Another teammate's family caught Covid last week.
Me and my wife caught Covid in August.
We're all vaccinated afaik (myself with 5 jabs), and thankfully we only got mild symptoms, but the problem with Covid is how easy it is for it to spread.
Do people in your life do a rapid test when they get sick? The only explanation I see for thinking that Covid has "disappeared", is that barely anyone still tests.
> You see, covid is NOT really a respiratory illness. Researchers at Oxford University call it a “Serious Vascular Disease with Primary Symptoms of a Respiratory Ailment”. So, you need to stop comparing it to colds and flus. No cold killed 30,000+ Americans in less than two months in 2023. Covid did so in January and February. So, please stop comparing them.
One thing that (by skimming again) both articles don't touch is: excess deaths.
I've seen people suggest that we're "past it", because the excess deaths (compared to 2 years before) are now subsiding... While ignoring the fact that excess deaths compared to 2 year before are comparing against when the first few COVID spikes happened (and we didn't have vaccines, so mortality was even higher).
We need to compare our society excess mortality to 2019 (and/or average of years preceding 2020), for the foreseeable future :/
That said, I'm not spending 100% of my day worrying about COVID, and I don't take as many precautions as I could... I wear FFP2 masks in public transport, but I usually don't bother in the office, for example
I'm on 0 jabs (apparently they don't slow transmission or virality, so I figured I wouldn't bother) and long covid is still really rough. A few things helped me get through long covid: surprisingly, nicotine and a lot of natural carbs from fresh ripe fruits. And by an excess, I mean 200+ grams a day by macro. It took me a month or two of nicotine gum, about 100lbs of fruit (12.5lbs a week) and so much sleep, but I'm starting to do better.
long covid is not something you can combat with fresh fruits, it can cause a life long disability, brain damage and more. it's quite obvious an anti-vaxxer would try to dismiss it as a "sucks but you can make it through". Look up the stories of people who still can barely get out of bed after years of long covid.
I'm offering what worked for me. There's other stuff out there that might work, but I haven't tried. For example, I've heard folks talk about paxlovid working to alleviate symptoms, or using standard courses of antivirals, and so on. I'm here sharing my own experience.
If I've dismissed anyone, I sincerely apologize. That was not my intent.
When I say "it sucks, but you can make it through" my desire is to offer hope to a group of people - that I'm a part of - that often lacks hope given the severity of their symptoms.
As for efficacy, I'd invite you to look into mitochondrial dysfunction and how long covid is related. I'll note that a carb heavy diet is one of the ways to reboot energy production on the body, which can be potent for reducing fatigue.
Given the tenor of discourse around C19, I cannot blame you for making this generalization. I'm not even offended. It's a shitty place to be when no one can hear anyone else because the conversation is so volatile. There's definitely division here. The gramscian Marxists would be proud. We've been played straight out of Rules For Radicals.
I'll note that I haven't done what you've accused me of, though. Perhaps that counts for something, Perhaps not.
And long COVID significantly increases your risk of death from other causes, including heart attack and stroke.
I did read recently that a long course of acyclovir may be a working treatment, possibly even cure, for long COVID. But in order to get that out to people, we'd have to start taking long COVID seriously.
This summer we finally relaxed a lot after years of masking, and BAM, a child coughed right on my wife's face and she got long covid. Fortunately she seems to be almost totally recovered now (fingers crossed for no relapse) , but she has spent two months with fatigue and headaches strong enough to prevent her from working or doing many daily activities.
My wife is in her 30s and healthy. COVID can still be quite brutal, although of course the extent of the measures one should take is highly debatable and subjective.
I got another round of rona in February of this year and suddenly became so tired. I needed 14+ hours of sleep and concentrating was next to impossible. The fatigue was overwhelming at times. Some six months later I'm on my way out of that now, with more good days than bad.
It's good that she had you to rely on. I did a lot of reading on long covid and there were and so are so many people isolated because they're basically spent all the time.
Yearly flu vaccines have been around since the 1940s and change yearly to adapt to the latest strains. I don't see why covid should be any different in this respect.
I mean, I don't think a flu shot is worth most people's time either. If you're around people with compromised immune systems sure, but for your average person it's really not beneficial.
> You got the shot 5 times, still caught it, and you call it a vaccine...
After almost 4 years of this virus, 3 years of covid vaccines, a presumably basic level of biological education, the baseline level of curiosity that I'd have thought would be present in anyone reading HN, and the world of free information at our fingertips, I don't rightly understand why people keep making elementary mistakes like this.
I mean, you'd probably still wear a seatbelt after having an accident... It's insurance, like the flu vax, not completely preventative.
By redefining "vaccine" only as something that provides "sterilizing immunity" (which actually only a few of them have ever provided, and thus, this expectation was never actually part of the original definition; see: https://theconversation.com/coronavirus-few-vaccines-prevent...) and thus impugning vaccine advocacy (or specifically, COVID vaccine use) as misguided at best, you are actually contributing to a narrative of science/medicine doubt that will literally lead to more death in the world. So please reconsider your carefully-worded position.
the main risk is long covid, not dying. exact risk of LC per infection is unclear but the order of magnitude of the figures i'm seeing for it are too high. i'm wearing ffp3 indoors in public places
In my country the first few waves were very strong, but after a successful vaccination campaign (among other things) COVID has completely disappeared in everybody’s daily lives.