BA.5 Variant, the worst version of Omicron, is vaccine evasiive and surging across the country

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The people saying they won’t wear masks and immunocompromised people need to watch out for themselves will be startled when they catch covid for the fourth time and become immunocompromised and then people start telling them they need to watch out for themselves.

I feel so sad for the agoraphobic life you're still leading. It must be petrifying (not to mention miserable) to live with so much anxiety. Good luck. Hopefully one day you can join us in the present.

You have showed your true colors and not someone I’d ever want to know.

Like you know anyone other than your 72 cats.

[Anonymous]

We made a mistake. In hindsight we should not have all gone home. We should have masked but kept everything including schools going. People's fears now are based on what we did. No one should be at home now. Wear a mask if it makes you feel better. But get out there.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The people saying they won’t wear masks and immunocompromised people need to watch out for themselves will be startled when they catch covid for the fourth time and become immunocompromised and then people start telling them they need to watch out for themselves.

I feel so sad for the agoraphobic life you're still leading. It must be petrifying (not to mention miserable) to live with so much anxiety. Good luck. Hopefully one day you can join us in the present.

Hmmm. Well, I’ve been working in person all along. In an N95. And I was doing that before vaccines when everyone was scared to go get their dead plants from their office.

[Anonymous]

I would say that 60-75% of the people I know have had Covid in the past month and of those, maybe half have been very sick, like in bed and had to take, on average, a week off of work. This variant is definitely worse than other post-vaccine variants and/or our vaccines are wearing off right as its hitting. I have no desire to get as sick as I did with 2020 Covid, so yes, I'm still wearing a mask in crowded places. No, I don't wear it when I go into a restaurant to pick up a takeout order. Yes, I wear it when I go to pick up a prescription from CVS. I have my own risk tolerance and you have yours. There's no need to criticize me when I don't want to have to deal with the hellish recovery I had from Covid almost two years ago.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We made a mistake. In hindsight we should not have all gone home. We should have masked but kept everything including schools going. People's fears now are based on what we did. No one should be at home now. Wear a mask if it makes you feel better. But get out there.

I'm the PP who never wants to get as sick as I did in 2020 - did I mention I got sick because I've been going to work almost every day since May 2020? Not all of us got the break that you did.

[Anonymous]

A friend got covid twice within six weeks. I don't have enough sick time to cover multiple reinfections plus kids' sick days so I will continue to mask indoors. Still living my life and working in person but wearing a mask is much less of a hardship for me than dealing with the life disruptions covid can bring.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We made a mistake. In hindsight we should not have all gone home. We should have masked but kept everything including schools going. People's fears now are based on what we did. No one should be at home now. Wear a mask if it makes you feel better. But get out there.

I disagree that people shouldn't have gone home, temporarily, in ~March 2020 when things exploded. Flattening the curve made sense. Getting PPE and preventing overwhelming hospitals was a good call. Especially pre-vaccine.

But, after that, yeah, there should have been a change in strategy, and (in some places) there wasn't much of one, except (THANKFULLY) opening some childcare for those willing to use it. Still, there was excess death in places that took "no precautions" approach versus those that took extreme precautious. Schools should have been in person, but also, families should have been offered virtual options if that worked for them and they needed it (multigenerational homes or those with immunocompromised family members). School systems generally could not do both with the resources they had. It really isn't black and white, and we didn't make a mistake. The only choices were bad choices, and we did the best we could. (For the most part - of course mistakes were made, and some where not in good faith.)

And now that the idea of herd immunity is no longer an option, we still find ourselves left with poor options. Most of us should probably go on with life as "normal" at this point. But unless something significant changes, it is going to result in excess death in society (compared to pre-COVID-19 levels). I don't think individual choices can affect that much at this point. It is not great. But I'm also not forgoing travel and socialization for an additional 2+ years, for no clear benefit to either society or myself. It is great that vaccines blunt the toll that COVID-19 would have otherwise had, but COVID-19 is still a problem, and will be.

[Anonymous]

There is going to be a new variant surging every few months for the foreseeable future. The virus is never going away, it is in the process of adapting to become endemic. Your vaccines might work, masks are dubiously effective at K95 level and ineffective below that. Society is never ever going back to 2020 levels of response. Some of you have to reach that understanding.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The people saying they won’t wear masks and immunocompromised people need to watch out for themselves will be startled when they catch covid for the fourth time and become immunocompromised and then people start telling them they need to watch out for themselves.

The vast majority of people aren't catching covid multiple times. Please see NY's reinfection data, click on the "all infections" tab and look at rates per 100k of infections and reinfections. https://coronavirus.health.ny.gov/covid-19-reinfection-data

If someone caught covid 4 times this year, they probably have an immunodeficiency of some sort, and it is unlikely to have been caused by covid. Covid is not airborne aids, despite what you read on twitter.. Also evidence for low reinfection rate is that the BA2 peak is much, much lower than the BA1 peak, even using wastewater data (which mirrors the test data).

What are you talking about? I know lots of people who have caught COVID 3 times this year: January, April/May and June/July. Four times is admittedly rare as there have been three waves with different variants, but it's 100% untrue to say that people aren't catching covid multiple times. We all know people who have at this point. Lower risk of reinfection is out of date info.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The people saying they won’t wear masks and immunocompromised people need to watch out for themselves will be startled when they catch covid for the fourth time and become immunocompromised and then people start telling them they need to watch out for themselves.

The vast majority of people aren't catching covid multiple times. Please see NY's reinfection data, click on the "all infections" tab and look at rates per 100k of infections and reinfections. https://coronavirus.health.ny.gov/covid-19-reinfection-data

If someone caught covid 4 times this year, they probably have an immunodeficiency of some sort, and it is unlikely to have been caused by covid. Covid is not airborne aids, despite what you read on twitter.. Also evidence for low reinfection rate is that the BA2 peak is much, much lower than the BA1 peak, even using wastewater data (which mirrors the test data).

What are you talking about? I know lots of people who have caught COVID 3 times this year: January, April/May and June/July. Four times is admittedly rare as there have been three waves with different variants, but it's 100% untrue to say that people aren't catching covid multiple times. We all know people who have at this point. Lower risk of reinfection is out of date info.

Yep. We know multiple healthy people who have had COVID more than once. Some back to back Feb/May.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Wow, someone reported the posts about the interview with Paul Offit, and they deleted them! Good bye, open scientific discourse.

Why would they be deleted? The only "controversial" thing he said was that the modified booster has shown little improvement from a regular booster. I was contemplating whether to wait for a new booster in the fall or get the current available one. Now I think we'll get the current one. What else did I miss? (Honest question.)

It is a knee-jerk reaction on the part of some people to report/delete anything that is critical of the government's official vaccination policy, which includes the plan for the Omicron-specific booster offered by Pfizer in the fall. Also, they probably don't like Dr. Zubin Damania, because he is generally critical of alarmist takes on Covid, and he is friends with and a frequent interlocutor of Vinay Prasad as well.

I think the deletions have more to do with money, i.e. following Googles rules for advertising.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I had Covid last week. I wish I knew if I had this variant or the stealth variant.

I picked it up in NYC

If you tested positive, it wasn't the stealth variant.

Are you’d aging the stealth variant evades both vaccines AND testing?

Different poster. Stealth refers to evading vacc not tests.

No, they are actually saying it evades tests too. Theatre of the absurd

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I had Covid last week. I wish I knew if I had this variant or the stealth variant.

I picked it up in NYC

If you tested positive, it wasn't the stealth variant.

Are you’d aging the stealth variant evades both vaccines AND testing?

Different poster. Stealth refers to evading vacc not tests.

No, they are actually saying it evades tests too. Theatre of the absurd

Maybe we should shutdown for two weeks to sort all this out? You know, flatten the curve, reach COVID ZERO, and ascend to nirvana?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We made a mistake. In hindsight we should not have all gone home. We should have masked but kept everything including schools going. People's fears now are based on what we did. No one should be at home now. Wear a mask if it makes you feel better. But get out there.

I disagree that people shouldn't have gone home, temporarily, in ~March 2020 when things exploded. Flattening the curve made sense. Getting PPE and preventing overwhelming hospitals was a good call. Especially pre-vaccine.

But, after that, yeah, there should have been a change in strategy, and (in some places) there wasn't much of one, except (THANKFULLY) opening some childcare for those willing to use it. Still, there was excess death in places that took "no precautions" approach versus those that took extreme precautious. Schools should have been in person, but also, families should have been offered virtual options if that worked for them and they needed it (multigenerational homes or those with immunocompromised family members). School systems generally could not do both with the resources they had. It really isn't black and white, and we didn't make a mistake. The only choices were bad choices, and we did the best we could. (For the most part - of course mistakes were made, and some where not in good faith.)

And now that the idea of herd immunity is no longer an option, we still find ourselves left with poor options. Most of us should probably go on with life as "normal" at this point. But unless something significant changes, it is going to result in excess death in society (compared to pre-COVID-19 levels). I don't think individual choices can affect that much at this point. It is not great. But I'm also not forgoing travel and socialization for an additional 2+ years, for no clear benefit to either society or myself. It is great that vaccines blunt the toll that COVID-19 would have otherwise had, but COVID-19 is still a problem, and will be.

NP. There are by now several studies that show that "lockdown" measures made no significant difference in controlling the virus, so it's hard to argue that we did the right thing. That doesn't mean that individual choices to be cautious until vaccination didn't make a positive difference for the individual.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I had Covid last week. I wish I knew if I had this variant or the stealth variant.

I picked it up in NYC

If you tested positive, it wasn't the stealth variant.

Are you’d aging the stealth variant evades both vaccines AND testing?

Different poster. Stealth refers to evading vacc not tests.

No, they are actually saying it evades tests too. Theatre of the absurd

Maybe we should shutdown for two weeks to sort all this out? You know, flatten the curve, reach COVID ZERO, and ascend to nirvana?

Sadly, there are people out there who want this.