COVID19 - How it's affecting you

Yeah, I was afraid of that. The officials were doing too much of the "stay calm, all is well" schtick that they fall back on so often there.

Sorry to hear it. 


According to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), Spikevax is simply a new name for a product the public is already familiar with — the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine. Comirnaty is also just a new name for a familiar product — the Pfizer-BoiNTech COVID-19 vaccine. They just changed the names for marketing purposes, apparently.

It's hard to believe it's just shy of 3 years since they started flying the first vaccines across the country here, and rolling them out via UPS and FedEx. I remember the network news breaking on the TV with live shots of the first trucks leaving the vaccine factories. I remember the incredibly long lines (and standing in one outside in the cold) for those first vaccines.  While I feel like hell from having just had the newest vaccine, it's nothing near as unpleasant and the first two jabs were. And now when I need one I just walk into a pharmacy and request it. I had my choice of appointment times - there were no lines yesterday. People have already forgotten.

The following article was published in May of the year-of-the-vaccine (2020), while the vaccines were still in testing.
 
https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2020/05/28/863710050/reckoning-with-the-dead-journalist-goes-inside-an-nyc-covid-19-disaster-morgue?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email   The audio version is slightly better.

I remember watching (from the UK) as the US Navy Hospital Ship Comfort sailed into New York Harbor and docked. The ship we send to other countries in times of humanitarian disasters. With people cheering, seeing it arrive.  I also remember seeing the trailers when we got home. I don't think I'll ever forget seeing the trailers.

My grandparents lived through the 1918 pandemic, which was also horrific. Without antibiotics, without much of anything to help. No vaccine. No hope of a vaccine. Nothing. With volunteers pulling carts in a "bring out your dead" scenario in some cities. Where people had to just leave the bodies of loved ones where they died, because there were too many to manage and nobody to come collect them. And no caskets to put them in. After living through all that, my grandmothers (both grandfathers were long gone before I arrived) never spoke about it at all. Ever. I understand that now.

Sometimes you just really can't look back, I guess.

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-67278517

Well, that goes to prove a point. I was getting that Boris's sentiment was the unofficial, but de facto stance while we were there from how things were flying. As I said to my daughter at one point, "it's good that we're leaving, because they'd just as soon we were dead. And if either one of us ends up in the hospital, that'll be the outcome." Looks like I was right. Let the elderly and those with disabilities keel over, and make more room for the rest.

Jeezus. 

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-67278517

Well, that goes to prove a point. I was getting that Boris's sentiment was the unofficial, but de facto stance while we were there from how things were flying. As I said to my daughter at one point, "it's good that we're leaving, because they'd just as soon we were dead. And if either one of us ends up in the hospital, that'll be the outcome." Looks like I was right. Let the elderly and those with disabilities keel over, and make more room for the rest.

Jeezus. 

It's still the attitude here, 100%. But it's similar in the US and Canada, and many European countries unfortunately.

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Well, the UK was the birthplace of the eugenics movement, so I guess there's still a strain of it loose somewhere....

I had an appointment at the hospital the other day and wondered into the wrong place.  Everyone was masked up and freaking out that I had walked through the door.  The receptionist was wearing all the PPE and said to me "We've got a Covid patient!"   It was all I could do not to laugh, everyone has covid.  I could walk down the street and meet 10 people with covid, nobody is testing or bothering to stay home.   

I had an appointment at the hospital the other day and wondered into the wrong place.  Everyone was masked up and freaking out that I had walked through the door.  The receptionist was wearing all the PPE and said to me "We've got a Covid patient!"   It was all I could do not to laugh, everyone has covid.  I could walk down the street and meet 10 people with covid, nobody is testing or bothering to stay home.

Honestly it's nice somewhere is taking it seriously again. Covid is causing a lot of hidden long term damage even from mild infections. Those of us with long covid from before there were tests have been all but abandoned.

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I had an appointment at the hospital the other day and wondered into the wrong place.  Everyone was masked up and freaking out that I had walked through the door.  The receptionist was wearing all the PPE and said to me "We've got a Covid patient!"   It was all I could do not to laugh, everyone has covid.  I could walk down the street and meet 10 people with covid, nobody is testing or bothering to stay home.

Other than statistically testing by the ONS I think only hospitals routinely test for Covid these days for elective surgery patients requiring an overnight stay. An 80 year old friend had a hip replacement on the 31st and he isolated for 2 weeks ahead of time. The surgery went really well and I’m taking him to the hospital next week to have the dressing changed and wound examined. No testing for out patient visits.

That pretty much proves the scenario. Old people, especially those in poor health, are not worth the effort to protect. And the disabled and people with ongoing medical issues. And children, for that matter. Anyone else can at least do something to protect themselves.

I'm still amazed by how many people treat Covid as if it's a bad cold. Maybe the initial symptoms, yes, but with every go'round the damage to their body is increasing.  The stats are horrific.   But on they go, with the "well nobody is masking.'  It's rather like seeing an iceberg with only a small proportion of it above water. They don't recognize the danger below water level. Cue the Titanic here now....

https://archive.ph/2023.11.07-165803/https://www.nationalgeographic.com/premium/article/covid-19-risk-heart-attack-stroke

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-022-05542-y

I guess my bottom line here is something my mother used to tell me when I was a kid and all the other kids got to do something I was not allowed, and I'd whine about it. She would say "So if everyone went and jumped off the Brooklyn Bridge, are you going to do that, too?"

It applies. Don't be stupid/foolish.

And, of course, on this side of the pond we've got the CDC trying to downplay pretty much everything. (See graphic, attached.)

JN.1 is an offspring of the BA.2.86 that has substantially increased immune evasion and that has been increasing at an exponential rate in Paris. That would translate into: while they still don't know if it's worse than the original Omicron strain was initially, the fact that it evades immunity means that "natural immunity" or vaccine, whichever, isn't going to be of much help to anyone who bumps into it. Quite frankly, Covid 19 without one of those immunities is still bad enough to kill you, under the right circumstances, so it's nothing to be trivializing by saying "well, it's no worse than...."

Other than statistically testing by the ONS I think only hospitals routinely test for Covid these days for elective surgery patients requiring an overnight stay. An 80 year old friend had a hip replacement on the 31st and he isolated for 2 weeks ahead of time. The surgery went really well and I’m taking him to the hospital next week to have the dressing changed and wound examined. No testing for out patient visits.

A friend has been in and out of hospitals recently for sepsis and only one of them tested her for COVID, none had masked healthcare staff even when asked. The continued lack of infection control and care for extremely vulnerable people at their worst is staggering, as you're much more likely to die if you catch covid while in the hospital. The Covid inquiry is weighing pretty heavily on me given the number of disabled people still isolated and the numbers that died.

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Here as well. Just know you are not alone in that.

The political control of literally life-or-death information is unforgivable. The CDC here is no longer trustworthy, so...  it is what it is. We have to find other resources for information that we can hope are reliable. As for planning for the next pandemic - and there will be one - heaven help us all.

Well, here we go again. Covid hospitalizations are up 9 percent this week from last week in the States (and that's averaging across the whole country - no idea where the hotspots are).  I believe I saw that in Italy it was 14 percent. I can't find anything reliable for the UK.  Which brings me to the message posted today by one of the researchers tracking such things (which, since I can't figure out how to link to it I will attach here). 

It just kind of makes me wince.

I had my Covid and flu boosters a couple of days ago. Grateful. 

People just really don't get it, do they.  Whatever. Sorry to be cold, but it's their funeral. Possibly literally. 

At this point I am now only concerned if it becomes my funeral, or that of someone close or for whom I have high regard. Unfortunately, the inaction of the others does have a direct impact on me and mine. Those who are coughing up a lung in the shops, with no mask, pose a direct danger to me and mine. That much matters to me. Obviously, we don't to them.

And for those folks who do matter to me, here's the latest advice from someone who's on top of JN.1 and has been all along. (See attached screencaps.)  Hopefully I'll "see" you all on the flip side of this in the Spring.