Covid

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I haven’t been keeping up with what happening with Covid. I been very overwhelmed & not feeling like myself. What’s happening with Covid?

I have no idea. They don't seem to mention it on the news any more.

I don't think it's that bad any more and the vaccines definitely work. A few weeks ago they had covid going around at a care home for elderly people where a friend of mine works, and she said nobody died from it. They must have all been vaccinated. But most of the residents weren't even ill with it, it was just like having a cold going around.

It's still going around, just not as bad as past "spikes". I'd still take precautions, tho, esp. if you've not been "vaxxed", when going into crowded places.

I guess it has the same fate as what happened to swine flu some years ago?

People still wear masks in indoor spaces, where I am.
I don't know if they're required outside of medical settings but I'd say 75% of people wear them.

My sister maynot be very careful, she has Covid for the second time, she is very sick.

I almost Only see people wearing masks in medical settings anymore - and then I will, too. Other than that I've only seen a few people wearing masks in their workplaces - so I assume they're immunocompromised or protecting someone who is.

I'd say the general rate of mask wearing in public places has got to be way less than 5% these days.. maybe 1-2% ish. Almost no one is masking anymore.

I haven't ventured over to Richmond for anything in quite some time, and I do wonder if there might be a higher rate of masking still going on there due to the Chinese population that takes masking super seriously. If there was going to be a pocket of people still wearing masks my bet would be there.

Here in the UK almost nobody wears a mask any more, not even in medical environments.

I only wear masks when I'm working at school, during the school year. I'm unvaxxed, I've had it twice. I'm still kicking. Both times I tested positive it felt like allergies, my nose was the biggest annoyance. And I slept, a lot. No antibiotics from the GP, in their minds I probably deserved it for possessing the unmitigated gall to refuse the vaccine. I did just fine. I'm a smoker, too. My dog has some heartworm preventative here, that's Ivermectin. I'll just bite into one if I ever get a 'bad case.' I have no idea if Covid is a big deal or not, I just live my life.

..that's because covid is a virus, not a bacterial infection. Antibiotics would do nothing to treat covid.

I know, and it is causing me absolutely huge problems including imposing inordinate extra work onto myself as one of the only people left still acting appropriately to the actual risks of Covid that much of everyone else wrongly thinks has gone away. There is a disconnect between the public and scientists on this which the World Health Organization spoke about last summer, apparently to total silence from the traditional media.

I am finding that literally everyone around me in real life is giving me problems, all of them doing things that increase the risks and none of them aware that this is what they are doing. This includes all the people at the so-called health centre that put my caree into harm's way by failing to wear masks as well as all people going into there apart from himself that was wearing all the extra PPE I therefore have to provide but one-way masking is less effective and therefore our only measure left, based on multiple scientific facts about which few people are aware of. In short it has had me taking extra measures in my home for days and days since in order to try to ensure no onwards transmission of Covid to myself, given that the risks are infection and I do have, as I thought I might, an increased risk of long Covid from a pre-existing condition I already have that isn't my autism.

I am now taking so many measures and covering in advance for everyone's else expected failure, which they duly do not fail my expectations over but proves to be the case every single time, as well as myself taking additional measures of running around after literally everyone else doing all they possibly can to increase the risks - as I see every possible route of transmission and everything around me - and I continually jumping in immediately after with more measures of my own to deal with another and another risk they've just created again and again and doing so repeatedly and frequently every day is causing me so much work, diverting me away from everything to cover everyone else again and giving me distress and stress and I am nearly at the point of collapsing from it. This, right now, is the height of the pandemic, higher than it has ever been due to how long it has now being going on with much of everyone else in society having deserted me on it and now myself under more restrictions than ever, feeling under more burdensome height than ever with it being heavier than ever due to me being one of the few people against it given that near everyone else gave up long ago and therefore all the work onto me now that at least in 2020 people were, to some extent, together on this but not we are no longer together at all and it is almost just myself.

I am no help to people here though in that I'm unusual among autistic people - many autistic people have in fact had a hard time in 2020/2021 and some still having a hard time now from that, the research shows that autistic people in general fared even worse than non-autistic people. I did fairly well, despite a long-lingering illness that I could never pin down its source but was a bit too early to be Covid - could never rule that out though and therefore I did affect me a little, did so as a thorn in the side for me on 2020 during which otherwise I got better and better throughout as all my problems were caused back in pre-pandemic normal life and the allowing of the pandemic to spread put paid to that. I've been better since that happened and finally last year found the source of the long-running illness so that seems to have ceased as well now. Instead, I am now, right now in the past couple of months, increasingly falling down as everyone else gives up and puts all the effort onto myself and I am really feeling the pandemic more than ever today. However, the problem is even this place, which seems to be the place on Wrong Planet to provide Covid support, even here, with the autistic community, I feel excluded as you're all in a different world to me and therefore not even able to get support here now I need it.

The counselling and mental health services are also the same and everyone else there also the people causing me problems. Every single person on the street when I returned from the mental appointment for my caree last month - the whole lot creating more risk to me by what they are doing and not doing. My father, although he does understand me to some extent when I told him everyone was causing me problems without knowing that they were, within days he went and did something that has now caused me problems without him knowing it has done this so he is now one of the ones doing the same himself and despite what I said and therefore no hope contacting him on this as he is also part of the problem. The national and local autism groups are the same - can't even look at one of the local groups' facebook pages as they show more activities that are now creating more risk and that they're fallen into this unacceptable normal life as per 2019 behaviour, appropriate in 2019 but inappropriate in the fundamentally changed situation we now in fact all have in 2023 and the vast majority of people lacking situational awareness.

This is one of the problems. Because it isn't mentioned on the news anymore, people wrongly assume this means it isn't bad any more. The vaccines work but only partially (they have been undermined by putting nearly everything into them in the absence of additional measures that are, and always were, necessary to end the pandemic and instead the 'normal life' behaviour, with no measures to stop transmission, increasing the evolution of the virus so that it gets more ahead of the vaccines and newer variants over time have made them less effective) and they now provide relatively little protection against infection and long term risks including long Covid when the virus has changed last year and now much more has repeat infections. The long term risks are actually more significant for most people than the dying in ICU hospital. It is not necessarily all vaccination because there is an attempt to rely on previous infection as well (don't do it folks - your risks are increased even more with second and more infections - in fact after a first infection, on which someone may have been the vast majority that escape long Covid, getting Covid again actually has more risk of long Covid than I am in without any known infection to date with my increased risk from the stress condition I have. The problem is it may be (is) the vast majority but this still leaves a not-insignificant risk of long Covid with each infection and the risks increased on second and subsequent infections compared to the first).

The fact I have no known previous infection, which could have been devastating anyway in long term risks and there is a significant risk, means I am now very vulnerable more than six months after my last booster jab. I was in the invidious position here anyway, not going to be infected because that is too much risk, having protected myself to the extreme not been infected as far as I know and now, having likely having no infection, even more vulnerable now my vaccines have waned and not being offered any more vaccines now (with them assuming people have had infections). Plus the fact the effectiveness of the bivalent vaccines against *infection* from the XBB variants of Omicron, multiple of which are currently circulating, is not shown. It is infection that carries the risks of long Covid as well as increasing the risks of multiple other conditions, some of them serious ones. Advice: if you get infected, get infected as little as possible.

People think no-one died from it so that's fine. But not only are later conditions often not being linked back to the original Covid infection, it may be the case that the elderly people that were more vulnerable have already died before and also some elderly may have had infections earlier - in both cases this may mean we now have survivorship bias. I don't think it can be correctly said most people weren't even ill with it. The cold is just the symptoms that present on the outside - doesn't tell us what damage they may have caused to themselves. This virus is hugely deceptive and problematically confirms to people that what they've had is the mild illness that the partial-truth-telling, or maybe going on false with the evidence we have now, told them most people would have. In fact, given that repeated infections are now commonplace in Omicron (from about the second wave of it onwards around spring last year), something that wasn't the case earlier in this pandemic, the claim most people will have a mild infection was untrue. It is most people will have a series of repeated infections that all appear to be mild plus increased risks of... and I'll stop I don't want to make anyone feel worse, it's why I am wearing respirators that are our protection against this virus now and therefore protecting ourselves, preferably with ones that use straps and are a tight fit, actually more comfortable than the masks I used to wear, and therefore actually it is not hopeless against this virus.

Prepare to face worry about how every supermarket delivery driver is going to perceive us, that it is hard resisting therefore and protecting ourselves, and also the othering behaviour I got from one of them last week. However I've also had a very good driver that understood in the meantime - felt like I am always having to explain myself whilst being unable to go through all the science behind why I am doing what I am. I have complicated risk assessments including wind direction taken into account and use of HEPA filters indoors in case the virus gets here (I don't open doors alongside them normally - unless wind in other direction and even then with a HEPA moved on full blast and kept there for at least 45 minutes when door is shut afterwards during which I either don't remove my respirator in that part of the house or go elsewhere behind several HEPA filters - actually we thought the virus in Omicron could now last several days in the air indoors, in unventilated environments particularly, rather than 16 hours of before but we know think the virus can last alive 40 minutes in the air and breathing in dead virus is fine (lives longer if it lands on surfaces but they are not much an issue anymore although may be if they are disturbed and then virus potentially into the air, main route of transmission - I am less concerned about quarantining items but still maintain it anyway - increased to 7 days a while back now after 3 felt to be inadequate based on changing evidence and 28 days in the case of steel cans is attempted sometimes - not very successful but not too worried after about 7, even if I still wash thoroughly with soap and water and ensure at least 20 seconds whilst my caree breaches the quarantine repeatedly and I keep mentioning it may be a low 1% risk, but what I don't like is a 1% risk being taken a hundred times as one of those may materialise).

Yes I know the 45 minutes conflicts with the 40, that last thing I became aware of only recently. I think I do it now still just to be more sure, as it's all not a precise thing and varies depending on certain conditions. We may not be able to say that after 40 minutes all virus that has been in the air throughout is dead, that could be just the virus that they managed to sample. It is all very nuanced and numerous information on the news has been misinformation by failing to convey this. There have been numerous times when the full truth is in fact the opposite of the part heard on the news and which is likely to have resulted in many people being in the complete opposite belief to what I am in, myself relying on scientists from universities that pointed out the extra information we didn't have on the news and repeatedly corrected me therefore by what they've provided elsewhere.

In addition, I've heard almost none of the numerous scientific evidence throughout last year and to date on the news which has been showing how bad this virus is. They've mentioned a very small number of things, usually blink and you'll miss it, and all of the non-Covid coverage when referring to the pandemic has seemed to be in denial of its current existence, people continually speaking about it in the past tense. An online report on long Covid used (and I suspect uses as it is still likely up) a very small percentage figure in its headline when the body of the article itself mentioned the study made clear that this figure is an underestimate, claimed the study was a "landmark" study and despite other research including research now demonstrating the risk is a lot more than this. The heading for the coronavirus on the news home page of the relevant website was removed just as winter ended this year (around 21 March), possibly would give the false impression that this virus is a winter virus when in fact it continues all year around. We've had my local paper online claim there were 20 cases of the virus in my city. I do not for one minute believe that this is anything near the true amount. Testing has dropped through the floor, almost no-one cares anymore, weighed down it seems by the pandemic that they gave up on now long ago, and some collective trauma (of which I was never part) meaning many (at least non-autistic people) may need to have some level of denial about it to themselves, especially from the cognitive dissonance caused by behaving as if the pandemic has gone throughout the past 15 months or so. Whereas myself has no such dissonance as I have behaved consistently throughout and continue to do so, consistent with it being here ever present.

To clarify, it's not at its highest virus levels ever, but the height on me feels more than ever now, but since the end of 2021 after Omicron went up, it has ever since been regularly at higher levels than much of the time of 2020/21 so there is more Covid now that many people seem to think it isn't during Covid anymore. On the basis of infection it has been at the height from 2022 and possibly still to date, I wouldn't count it on having gone down as much data collection has ceased. I would reckon there are around 5,000 cases in my not large city (about 1 in 50 people infected, which is quite high even if what should be shockingly higher rates have been normalised in the past two years). We've managed to increase the mortality rate too in my country, from 1% to 3%, and on vaccines that were over 90% effective, that 'should' be a tenth of the direct ICU deaths compared to before, in fact on some measures the number of deaths last year may have been half what we had in 2020/2021. So, instead of a tenth of the deaths we've managed to multiple that by five and have perhaps half the deaths instead - spreading them out continually over the whole year so that people don't notice the constant less change - incrementalist death causing it seems to me - and the reduction by the vaccines then increased quite some back up by having way more infection with much more transmissible Omicron coupled with not much of anyone taking any measures to stop transmission and speeding up viral evolution.

The last I saw two-three weeks ago was that wastewater detections of Covid in Scotland and Wales were not increased (they discontinued them in England a while ago) but perhaps it is increasing in England before doing so in Scotland/Wales. The Zoe Covid study showed an increase, but it may be fairly inaccurate now with fewer people submitting tests and many areas of a number of big cities, including much of Greater London, not having enough contributors for there to be any data. These may be areas of lower vaccination and therefore more Covid than the study is picking up biased towards elsewhere, people who lack resources to be able to submit to the study and we know Covid has inequality, or maybe the infection isn't higher there because of previous infections in the absence of vaccination. We just don't know although we have a data analyst expert from Australia that a couple of weeks or so ago posted about "the current wave" in the UK. Therefore suggesting we are at the start of a new wave of Covid again. We've had continual waves after waves and a rising baseline of hospitalisations that now never go down to the 'lows' seen immediately after the waves in 2020/much of 2021. I see no evidence that the waves will have ceased and nothing to indicate the level of Covid is anything other than continuously high as it has been for at least 18 months now, even if the UKHSA was in denial about that one September in this time, when it happened to reach a lower point before promptly rising about a week after they claimed it was low, disagreed with by an independent expert who considered it high levels throughout (and were still in excess of what was usually seen outside of the waves in 2020/2021). It never went below 1 in 80.

Therefore, with data being removed I shall continue to assume the virus remains continually at high levels as it has done before throughout the whole time since 2021 as the authorities have done nothing to prove otherwise to me and it is reasonable to think is likely to still be the case based on what has been seen on the infections survey when it was carried out. Zoe Covid study now suggests there may be an increase. Unfortunately with Twitter now seemingly blocked from viewing by those that don't have accounts and restrictions on those that do, I am unable to see the posts from expert scientists on Twitter that I was reliant on (they are genuine scientists at universities in the UK and elsewhere and appear to represent the consensus away from the officials that downplay/deny/loudly proclaimed on Twitter when they can downplay but appear to be in silence for months after research now shows it is as bad as we think). Unfortunately the Twitter situation now prevents me continuing to follow what is happening since the past week onwards but by this stage I think those of us in the know now know much that we need to know anyway and now can just continue to assume it is a bad and slowly worsening situation to the point where something will have to be done within the next five years or else maybe even then people will be in denial and find every other explanation to pin it on except make the link to Covid.

In America with Covid? Pretty much the same. Much the same everywhere. In fact not that long ago, the World Health Organization's Covid-19 technical lead said Covid was still spreading intensely in every country on Earth: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newslett ... irus-fight It is still doing this now, including data from other countries such as Australia showing it doing so in winter and Japan, in the Northern Hemisphere, appears having a bad time recently. I suspect this is going on here even if we are not linking numerous of it to Covid anymore.

It was at least partially a narrativefrom the beginning. The pandemic is still technically here. But the biggest spikes are (likely) behind us. An agricultural society cannot function with an indefinite or multi/year lockdown. There was so much wrong with the entire lockdown that it never should have happened. The elite got richer and many among the working class struggle even today due to the inflation resulting from pouring currency into a system that produces less with heavy regulations. The entire idea of an "essential business" is nonsensical in a society based on trade and division of labor. It isn't essential to go to a bar, but it is essential that people who tend bars are able to make money. The narrative eventually fell apart when enough people realized
that we weren't forever going to mask or distance ourselves away from something. Omicron made COVID vaccines ineffective at stopping transmission so idea of the "pandemic of the unvaccinated " fell flat on its face. Forcing people to get a vaccine to reduce their own risk of severe symptoms is not tenable in a society with capitalist medicine. I think a lot of people worried excessively about COVID. While some them got it and the worst did happen to happen, most recovered just fine. To those people, getting COVID was a shock as they "did everything right". For some, catching covid was actually an emotional event as they realized that their efforts in the end only delayed the inevitable. But then they got over it. The discussion changed completely when the US Supreme Court shot down the OSHA vaccine mandate. Many(such as myself) were far more concerned with the effects of the mandates than the virus and that ruling really shut down the idea of the proposed "vaccine passports" which were already being used in some states. That ruling proved to me that the government's era of covid restrictions was about to end and many stopped following as much. Then Ukraine happened and America finally noticed the inflation that COVID policies indirectly produced and it became old news.

We don't know. The statistics are inaccurate because when rapid home tests became available they were not counted. And now a lot of times you have to pay for them.

The good news is hospitalizations and deaths are way down but still higher than from the flu. So apparently a combination of vaccinations and most people having gotten COVID already has created a level of herd immunity.

95+ percent of people have moved on or just learned to live with it as just another risk in life. The vast majority of mandated mitigation measures are long gone.

With a few exceptions, the only people I see wearing a mask are pharmacy employees. This means that if you are immunocompromised tough effin luck which is how it was before COVID. But now you have a slight risk of being verbally or physically abused by people who only meant freedom of choice for people for non-mask wearers.

If you still want or need to mitigate search the internet for #StillCoviding. There are all sorts of online spaces for people like you.