What organization is to be believed. Is it the CDC, or WHO, or perhaps the NHS, or should we follow the advice of all the conspiracy theory proponents with regard to the continuing covid pandemic that seems to have now left our collective consciousness.
With a current average of 1:40 contracting covid --- albeit at a reduced and non lethal variety---I am still scared of its long term affects. Should I be?
Scared? No.
Very Wary, yes. I don't tend to buy 100% what any governmental organization says, because they are susceptible to political pressure and meddling. (My Masters and PhD (unfinished) studies were in areas of governmental public policy implementation. I did more reading in the area than I ever wanted to do, or will do again.) At this point, I put my faith in a handful of the top academic scientists who work at the institution where I spent over 20 years, and in those individuals they recommend. These are very senior scientists, elected members of the National Academy of Sciences (a pretty selective honor, that). They are honest to the core - I would trust them with my daughter's life without question.
Condensed loosely from what I read them publishing and hear them say:
Covid 19 is here. It's not leaving. It will continue to mutate. It's not completely endemic, but not far from it in some respects. But that only counts if it doesn't mutate. At any point a more lethal variant can pop up and there's really not diddly we can do to stop it. (We missed the window to contain and eradicate the virus back in 2020.)
The current XBB strain is not as immediately lethal as, say, the Delta variant, but without vaccination and without supportive care, it's deadly enough. Especially for the elderly, persons with disabilities/health issues/comorbidities.
There's no real "natural immunity" to Covid - partially because it keeps mutating, and partially because any antibodies produced wane very quickly, in the grand scheme of timelines. (We're talking only a few months here.) Recent variants of Covid are thought to tinker with the immune system memory, making the body less able to recognize and fight off subsequent infections of the same strain of Covid.
Vaccines help keep people from becoming critically ill, in most cases, at present. They do not prevent (and have never prevented) anyone from catching Covid. They are especially helpful for the immunocompromised, elderly, and people with comorbidities. Their effectiveness begins waning in a few months, but they are still better than having no protection at all.
A surprising number of very young children died from Covid, or Covid complications. More than they initially thought would - it was expected to target the elderly more. It did go through the elderly population like the Grim Reaper, though. And those with "underlying" conditions.
The best ways to avoid catching it appear to be avoiding the virus - using well-fitting N95 masks (not surgical masks, which do almost nothing to prevent aerosol transmission), maintaining very good air quality (opening windows, filtering the air, etc.) and avoiding large crowds - indoors or outside.
The consensus among these scientists is that while there is some "droplet" transmission, Covid 19 is primarily distributed by aerosols. Think cigarette smoke - you get into an elevator where someone smoked 10 minutes ago and still smell smoke. Covid is in the air for probably a bit longer - and if you breathe it, especially with the most recent variants, you catch it - especially if there is a lot of it in the air you are breathing. (Hence the need for increased air filtration - we filter the water we drink (and eliminated Cholera in the modern world), but we think it's foolish to filter air for a known airborne pathogen?)
You can have a seemingly mild case of Covid that still wreaks havoc on your internal systems. Apparently the more times you have Covid, the more serious and long-lasting the damage can be. The damage includes to the immune system, the circulatory system (damage to blood vessels), kidneys, brain, etc., etc., etc.). It also hits the autonomic nervous system.
The more recent strains of Covid do not respond to monoclonal antibody treatment. So far Paxlovid still does. (So far.)
Women are turning up with long Covid in a higher proportion to men. Long Covid can last weeks to years. It can be anything from relatively mild (such as one feels when recovering from a bad case of the flu) to almost completely debilitating.
There's no real treatment for long Covid, although there is promise showing in Metformin (still being researched) as far as shortening the duration of long Covid in some test subjects. The only treatments, really, are palliative.
Pregnant women who have Covid while pregnant have an increased risk of death or untoward outcomes.
There are more, but I need my morning coffee. That's the "off the top of my head" basics.
People are afraid of it. They've been afraid of it for so long that they no longer can deal with it, so they don't. They want life "to go back to normal" so they act as if it is. That includes downplaying the seriousness of Covid, or denying it altogether. They don't wear the proper masks because that would mean it's real and still a dangerous world. The news doesn't cover it as they used to because people don't want to hear about it, and "the news" pretty much is a market - if people don't watch your tv news, your advertisers don't pay you. Etc. Governments certainly don't want people being close to stampeding all the time - it's bad for national/global economics. (I can see the reasoning. The capitalist system can't handle that kind of strain.)
Basically, at this point, "they've" put a band-aid on things and it's holding well enough for most people. The rest of us (those with comorbidities/immune issues/age) are expendable. Nobody really wants to think of it in those terms, but the bottom line is that we're not worth the discomfort the general public would have to feel, and the economic pinch, that would be associated with keeping those of us at enhanced risk safe.
Bottom line: you're on your own. It's best to find a source or sources of information you think are reliable and act (or not) based on what they say. If you don't want to just throw you chances to the wind, that is. You may catch some static from idiots (the folks who get their info from FaceBook or think it's "theatre" to wear a mask, or that "well, you're old", etc.) but everything costs us each in one way or the other, doesn't it? What's your life worth to you?
