My wife pozzed three nights ago and is on Paxlovid. Mysteriously despite once again being massively exposed I am so far symptom free and consistently negative on rapid tests. Four times moderna most recently in May. I’ve never gotten Covid. Feels like I’m the last person in the universe who hasn’t sometimes.
For the first time in 2.5 years I’m really starting to have covid precaution fatigue. I’m the only person still masking in stores. One of a handful that still does at work. But it’s pretty clear 99.9% of the population just doesn’t gaf anymore. I’m starting to feel like I’m the irrational one.
I have a slightly compromised immune system, and I am around my parents very frequently. All of us are max vaxxed, and they managed to fade it when I was positive, unmasked, and in their home for an extended time. I really don’t want to get it again and pass it to them, or to get it and have a worse outcome that the relatively mild symptoms I had/have still, but man I’m finally getting tired of being the only person outside of my family making an effort and can feel my resolve slipping away.
/end rant
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I have been symptomatic twice, but I’ve only tested positive once. The first time only MrsWookie tested positive, and I did not burn one of our tests, because I was symptomatic with the same shit at about the same time, so what was a test going to tell me, really? I was going to isolate no matter what, because even a negative test could pretty easily be a false negative.
I’ll let you know in about 5 days. I got Covid during Christmas in Vegas and for some reason I think it’s a good idea to go back for the WSOP. Fully anticipate catching it. Going to wear a KN95 during but we will see.
Usually I can at least kinda see the thought process if someone making this kind of claim… and I can’t here. I could be wildly missing something but I don’t see anything interesting in those labs.
You’re not weird. It’s 100% natural human to just want to be like everyone else, or at least like everyone else in your tribe even if your tribe is different than others.
I don’t recall, how did you fare with your covid bout? If it was something you could live with again, then it’s not unreasonable to think about going back to normal, at least as long as data about hospitalization and death for the future variants aren’t looking that much worse for vaccinated people as they are now, and as long as you can test yourself and isolate if you develop some sort of symptoms. The name of the game isn’t to never get covid. The game is to not die of covid, and to not kill anyone else, and if for you and the max vaxxed people around you, it’s like a cold, you’re still winning even if you get it.
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I just want to say good riddance to Paul Marik.
I doubt anyone is familiar with him here, but he’s a rather well known ivermectin truther who just lost his medical license for some shitty controlled substance prescriptions practices.
While he’s obviously a quack with no reputation anymore, he used to be well respected and even affected how I practiced medicine.
He did a quite a few things in medicine in the care of sepsis. If you don’t know, sepsis is basically a fancy way of describing of how you frequently die from a bad infection, usually bacterial.
So he had a bunch of work done in this area that was pretty respected (but would fall apart).
In 2017 he published what seemed like a landmark paper. He treated sepsis patients with iv vitamin c, b1 and hydrocortisone. The results were spectacular. I remember reading the work and brushing away concerns about controls from a mentor of mine.
As years went on, rct after rct failed to show any benefit. Then he jumped into Covid quackery. His work was likely fabricated.
I’m not sure where I’m going with this, but fuck Marik. He can eat a bag of dicks
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I think most of society is in denial about long COVID because it sucks and because we’ve already given up as a society at stopping COVID.
But “it sucks” and “we don’t want it to be a thing” aren’t going to keep it from being a thing, and there’s increasing evidence that it is a thing.
I haven’t, my girlfriend hasn’t, my best friend and his wife and daughter haven’t, my parents haven’t. Most of my other IRL friends have had it.
I’ve been feeling plenty of it, and the dirty looks and rude comments are annoying, but the more I hear about long covid the more I think precautions are warranted.
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Lots of anecdotal stories going around about the second or third time being way worse than the first/second times. I don’t know if “Hey it can’t be any worse,” is a good assumption here.
How about shortening your life expectancy by 10 years after a series of who knows how many infections, or suffering long-term cognitive issues?
OK, post the data, especially the data showing that it’s much worse than flu.
Click my username, click posts in this thread, and scroll, and you’ll see a bunch of studies showing various long-term impacts.
Here’s one:
You’re making me feel like JT, but you guys are minimizing the risks of long COVID ITT and it’s not right. You’re literally hitting me with the classic: it’s not much worse than the flu.
What the hell, man? Three years in and you’re going with that?
This is the key. You’re different from most everyone else and that means you need to act differently from most everyone else. You might get some weird looks, but you’re being completely rational.
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Seems like she has some sort of long covid deal going on. I won’t say “racket”, let’s say, “angle”.
These seem like Eric Feigl-Ding type assertions based on suspect methodology pre-prints.
ETA: the only age breakdown in the study just referred to is < and > 65. If there are studies that show mild COVID in 20-50 year olds leads to appreciable increase of a variety of MACE, then show those.
I can’t speak for anyone else, but I still don’t think it is a thing. I will agree that there is increasing evidence, but still not nearly enough (right now) for me to be convinced that it is a thing.
Another way to look at it (not necessarily my way, but not unreasonable) is that even if long COVID is a thing, the changes needed to fade it over a lifetime seem unlikely to be effective. Sure, you’ve faded it for almost 3 years. You think you can fade it for 30?
Maybe you can reduce the number of times you get got, but then you have to believe not only in long COVID but that the number of infections substantially increases the severity of it or the risk of getting it. The evidence for that is even less convincing than it is for long COVID being a thing.
You’re also living a much less full life by taking such prophylactic measures. Might as well never drive or go outside.
I think it’s reasonable to assume that more exposures = more risk. It’s also not like you can roll back your decisions if you turn out to be wrong, which I think you will. I’d love to be wrong on this, but the evidence is piling up IMO - and it’s doing so in an environment when political leaders and corporate media don’t want it to.
But largely your arguments on this strike me as being similar in substance to the right-wing arguments on other things. Like…
Is kind of like saying, “It’s too late to put the toothpaste back in the tube, there are hundreds of millions of guns in America, better to just buy one to keep yourself safe!”
Like, go along to get along with the people who led us into this mess and trust their approach to be the best sounds like a strategic disaster. It seems like attempting to prevent infection for as long as possible, unless/until evidence indicates otherwise, makes a lot of sense from a health standpoint.
Unfortunately USA#1 and capitalism are kicking my ass on this approach, and forcing me to venture out more, but I’m annoyed by it and really fed up with the systems at work.
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In the last half hour, I’ve been hit with variants of:
It’s just the flu.
You can’t avoid it anyway, might as well just give in and catch it.
Gotta live life to the fullest now.
Is Unstuck the home of the right wing talking points on COVID now? Am I the crazy one? I don’t know anymore, I really don’t.
They have been saying this stuff since April 2020, or whenever seven days to stop the spread ended.
I don’t think it’s unreasonable, at this point, given community spread, the diminution of severity given vaccination-boosters, and most importantly the far greater understanding of treatment and outcome management, to recalculate risk at a much lower level than in 2020 or 2021 (or even first few months of 2022). At a level that results in markedly different behavior.