Notices by ikuo (ikuo1000@mas.to)

My son's school superintendent sending out an email about "post-pandemic absenteeism" and making NO mention of covid whatsoever while my daughter texts me that her college has covid outbreaks in at least 1 dorm and the band. 😠😡🤬

I just want to SCREAM!!!!! GAAAHHH!!!!!

#CovidIsNotOver

The ups 👍 and downs 👎 of covid:

👍 My college freshman kid says her seminar instructor wears a mask!!! 😷 👏 🎉

👎 My dad has a new diagnosis that is (another) high-risk condition for him. I gave (via text) him and my sister articles about covid and his diagnosis specifically, being sure to use reputable sources like CDC and NIH. They generally ignore anything I say about covid, but I make myself say them so I can sleep with a clear conscience that I tried. 😪

#CovidIsNotOver

@Ulrich_the_elder I said just the other day that yes, I am prepared to mask "forever" -- unless there's a sterilizing vaccine that prevents infection, which I will continue to hope for!

REALLY tired of people saying, "Why are you still worried about covid? It's endemic."

"Endemic" does NOT mean "harmless & without risk".

It DOES mean "here to stay" which means the RISKS of covid are here to stay, which means we're all living with a HIGHER baseline of risk which means governments & institutions & people should be making PERMANENT changes that address that risk.

I curse the journalists & "let it rip" "experts" that made people think "endemic" = "harmless".

#CovidIsNotOver

@maggiejk I absolutely CAN NOT STAND the argument - which my own school district has used - that we don't want masks because they are "too disruptive"!!!! 😠

As if having to close schools, or send them home early with no lunch, isn't disruptive?!? 😡

Or in the case of my kids' high school: As if having only 2 classes a day (out of 7 periods) because so many teachers are absent isn't disruptive??! 🤬

"Never underestimate a public school teacher." --Tim Walz #DNC

Just once I want to hear a formerly covid-cautious person admit, "I stopped masking because conforming to societal norms is more important to me than protecting the health of myself & others."

In all honesty, it's a legit position. People do all sorts of things like smoke & eat junk food despite knowing it's bad for your health. Just admit it.

I mean, if they suddenly have proof that discredits all the studies on covid's potential long-term damage, they could share that too. 🤷🏻♀️

#CovidIsNotOver

At the oncologist's today & not a single mask in sight.

Yesterday's appt was at an eye clinic & there were more masks there than here at a CANCER CENTER. 

Feeling... what's the word? Disappointed isn't strong enough... Not disillusioned because I wasn't EXPECTING better. I just hoped.

It's a feeling of seeing rock-bottom expectations being met, when I had reserved the tiniest bit of hope that maybe, just maybe, other humans might have exceeded expectations in some small way.

#CovidIsNotOver

@luckytran Pointedly, from the article: "Work on revising isolation guidance has been underway since last August but was paused in the fall as covid cases rose."

Soooo... the CDC's own work on addressing covid prevalence was delayed due to high covid prevalence, and their answer is to implement a policy that will only help to increase covid prevalence?!

🙄😠

@freemo @Gbudd @BlueWaver22 Again, I don't think comparing PEAK flu numbers to short-term BASELINE covid numbers is a helpful comparison.

Additionally, focusing solely on the deadliness of covid vs. flu ignores the potential damage of long covid. If I lose sleep over covid, it's not because I think I or my loved ones will die - I'm pretty sure we won't - it's because I don't want any part of long covid.

We really must agree to disagree. This is the last response I'll post. 🙂

@freemo @Gbudd @BlueWaver22 Thanks for pointing me to the weekly flu deaths graph! I was looking for it but just didn't scroll down far enough.

I think this is where we agree to disagree. I don't think it's helpful to compare peak flu deaths of 1000/week to covid's 2nd-lowest baseline of 1200 deaths/week.

Covid having a sustained 1200 deaths/week for 3-4 months during flu season makes it MUCH more deadly than flu. If anything, in week 50 of 2022, flu temporarily peaked into "covid territory".

@freemo @Gbudd @BlueWaver22 It's certainly a challenge to find data for apples-to-apples comparisons!!!

Looking only at published CDC data (which may or may not be obfuscating "real" data), they are reporting ~1200-1400 covid deaths/week since September: https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#trends_weeklydeaths_select_00

Sticking with the CDC, they are reporting 3200 flu deaths "so far this season". Assuming the season started in September, that's ~200/week; if the season started in October, that's ~267/week. https://www.cdc.gov/flu/weekly/index.htm

@freemo @Gbudd @BlueWaver22 Hmm... The CDC pages seem to say the opposite?

CDC flu estimates include all flu-related deaths (including pneumonia, etc.) & is NOT limited to flu being listed on death certificate, which "would be a gross underestimation". Source: https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/how-cdc-estimates.htm

CDC covid deaths ONLY include those that list covid (ICD–10 code U07.1) on the death certificate. Source: https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#trends_weeklydeaths_select_00

By CDC's own logic for flu, their covid numbers are surely a gross undercount!

@freemo @Gbudd @BlueWaver22 Totally agree we should prevent flu better. Lack of flu activity in 2020-21 basically showed that covid mitigations = flu mitigations!

I think the issue was the phrasing that 1000 deaths/wk "is the exact same rate the flu has killed people in the USA for decades."

Per the CDC page linked, only 1 yr in the last decade had 1000 flu deaths/wk & the avg for last 12 yrs was ~600/wk.

If the rate was closer to 1000/week in earlier decades, a source link would be helpful!

@inthehands I think it's not even so much that people need to SEE something immediate, e.g., at this point, everyone must know someone who has died or had a bad bout of covid. Seeing it may be enough to elicit sympathy for the case in front of them, but not enough to work towards meaningful prevention. I think most people need to experience it themselves, at a very personal level. Generally speaking, no one ever thinks bad things will happen to them, so they don't take action until it does.

@inthehands Yes, you're right. I think I am a hopeful pessimist? Or maybe just a naive one. I always want to think that people are CAPABLE of being selfless and caring. But the more I see of people's true colors, the more I lean towards begrudging misanthropy!

@inthehands Yes, good points!

Still, my pessimistic nature compels me to wonder if maybe it was a mixed blessing; lives saved is ALWAYS a good thing, but now I hear a lot of:

"Covid is over because Omicron is just a cold."

"It's good to get covid now because Omicron is so mild." (Completely ignoring that infection does not provide lasting immunity.)

If Omicron hadn't knocked out Delta, maybe more people would've continued to take covid seriously, ultimately keeping more people healthy? 🤷🏻♀️

@inthehands Yeeess, exactly, not having a known worrisome variant on deck right now is giving me hope that conditions will continue to improve!

Though, for the record, I also can't help but worry how that good news might be outweighed by the total lack of mitigations right now - no ventilation improvements in buildings, no masks in healthcare, no free rapid tests, waning immunity and fewer people getting boosters. 😬

@inthehands I appreciate you zooming in because I hate the way Omicron distorts every graph out there.

Of course we can only speculate on others' behaviors, but along with perceived seasonality & being influenced by better news from other regions, I think not understanding the scale of graphs plays a role! To the average person, the non-zoomed-in graph of wastewater in my county makes it look like covid is low, when really it is only RELATIVELY low compared to Omicron.

@chargrille @inthehands Seasonality occurred to me too. Maybe some of these previously covid-cautious people just associate covid & illness w/ winter & cold weather, so beautiful, warm, sunny weather makes them throw off their masks.

Every time we've had a low/low-ish period in wastewater, I've kept our masks because there was always chatter about new variants on the horizon. I'm not hearing as much chatter now, but still waiting for sustained actual lows before even considering going maskless.