SARS CoV-2 coronavirus / Covid-19 (No tin foil hat silliness please)

moses said:
I have it for the first time, and I've never known so many of my immediate friends and acquaintances to have it simultaneously.
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We've gotten slack, nobody cares anymore if they go out with covid, there are no guidelines.
 
I went to the supermarket earlier with a face mask on. I'm not going to be the only person adhering to guidelines. feck em
 
Seeing a lot more patients coming in with it over the last couple of weeks.

I have seen more unwell children than adults admittedly - albeit the adults have generally been quite fit people with no medical background.

I was expecting people to relax, which is fair enough given what we’ve been through, but I was hoping for some alterations to life being stuck with. Saw some knobhead in the gym earlier coughing away into his hand, continued to use the equipment and didn’t bother wiping it down afterwards. COVID or not, other viral infections still exist.
 
11101 said:
Clots were AZ and were actually quite a big deal at the time. Enough to get it pulled from use in numerous countries.

Heart inflammation was linked to Pfizer and Moderna but was much rarer / less severe.
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The az blood clot thing was a storm in a teacup. There was never an issue. Give enough people something and you'll get a few deaths.
 
A colleague of mine self tested as he was going to visit grand parents. He wasn't feeling ill or showing any symptoms. But he came out positive.

Isn't this endemic stage of infections with minimal serious outcomes the best case scenario we were praying/hoping for a year ago? Why the mini panic now? Is there a mini panic?
 
Ted Lasso said:
Ah that sounds about right.

Edit: pardon my venting below. I'm just really exhausted, frustrated from my current health status

I checked out a little then - I couldn't stand the rhetoric from either the pro or anti vaccine side on the issue. As expected, here we are a year onwards and a middle of the road voice would have once again been the correct answer: vaccines were effective but yes there are side effects, albeit rare.

Was reading that the heart complications are 1 in 10,000. That's classified as rare. Shame to fall into it but my biggest gripe was that the US didn't offer to subsidize any medical costs associated with ill effects. We don't have to debate the challenge in connecting the dots to approve payments but it's the principle. I'm nearing $1000 in medical bills and that's with outstanding private health insurance. Not to mention it's months between fecking specialist appointments because of a large hcp shortage.
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How are you getting on now? Is it arrythmia or something else that's causing trouble now?

In a way, it's hard for us Europeans to visualise the problem created by the lack of a public health service in the US on things like this. Compensation schemes here can be sluggish to pay out but at least you aren't clocking up medical bills as well while you're waiting.

I know there's a government compensation in the US as well, but I've no idea how quick, generous or inclusive it is.

In terms of the raw averages, we know that vaccines are safer than Covid - in all approved age groups. But certainly by the time you get to people talking about fourth booster doses in healthy under 30s, the numbers aren't nearly so clear cut.

At any rate, there's still a lot of monitoring and research underway, so hopefully we'll know more before any new booster campaign starts in the autumn.

Good luck getting your own health issues sorted.
 
Dumbstar said:
A colleague of mine self tested as he was going to visit grand parents. He wasn't feeling ill or showing any symptoms. But he came out positive.

Isn't this endemic stage of infections with minimal serious outcomes the best case scenario we were praying/hoping for a year ago? Why the mini panic now? Is there a mini panic?
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Having half a police/fire station, or hospital ward off work because they have covid won’t be good for anyone even if the virus is currently mild for most people.
 
Pogue Mahone said:
It’s not just anecdotal. There’s another big wave underway. The latest omicron sub variants seem capable of escaping existing immunity and infecting a whole lot more people.

On the plus side they’re already out the other side of this wave in South Africa and it hospitalised/killed fewer people than any of the previous waves.
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Do you think we might get a variant that becomes more deadly or will future variants continue to get weaker but more easily transmissible?
 
DeGea’sFeet said:
Having half a police/fire station, or hospital ward off work because they have covid won’t be good for anyone even if the virus is currently mild for most people.
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But the point is that if the virus is mild for the vast majority of people then the entire police force doesn’t need to stay at home if they have it. We didn’t shut down police stations or fire stations due to outbreaks of common cold, or even the flu, previously.
 
I’ve tested positive for this for the first time. I wouldn’t have thought twice about my symptoms pre COVID. So far it has been incredibly mild.
 
Anustart89 said:
But the point is that if the virus is mild for the vast majority of people then the entire police force doesn’t need to stay at home if they have it. We didn’t shut down police stations or fire stations due to outbreaks of common cold, or even the flu, previously.
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It’s going to be tricky to get the workforce back to normal working practices after covid. There’s been a big shift in attitude where most people who would have gone to work smothered with a cold/flu will never do that again. Theoretically it should reduce the total number off sick, as it cuts down workplace transmission. I’m not sure the equation is that simple though. It’s easily open to abuse though and might need a whole rethink about staffing levels everywhere.
 
DeGea’sFeet said:
Do you think we might get a variant that becomes more deadly or will future variants continue to get weaker but more easily transmissible?
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Not Pogue but, I don't think there are any guarantees. Alpha was both more infectious and more dangerous than the original Wuhan virus. Delta was worse on both counts than Alpha. Omega is more contagious, and a lot better at avoiding existing immunity but milder for most people.

In Europe we've already reached the point where the combination of people vaccinated and/or in who have past infection is so high that it's becoming hard to find people who are truly experiencing the virus for the first time. That means it's also becoming increasingly difficult to calculate whether the virus really is milder or if it's simply that our immune system is better prepared.

At the moment it looks like the latest version of Omicron is infecting mostly people who've not had Covid before but we won't have full data on that, or on its severity for a couple more weeks.
 
jojojo said:
Not Pogue but, I don't think there are any guarantees. Alpha was both more infectious and more dangerous than the original Wuhan virus. Delta was worse on both counts than Alpha. Omega is more contagious, and a lot better at avoiding existing immunity but milder for most people.

In Europe we've already reached the point where the combination of people vaccinated and/or in who have past infection is so high that it's becoming hard to find people who are truly experiencing the virus for the first time. That means it's also becoming increasingly difficult to calculate whether the virus really is milder or if it's simply that our immune system is better prepared.

At the moment it looks like the latest version of Omicron is infecting mostly people who've not had Covid before but we won't have full data on that, or on its severity for a couple more weeks.
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Just to add to this (which is spot on) you can think of the variants as branches on a family tree. So long as we keep getting branches from the omicron lineage we should be ok. And omicron is so dominant that seems likely.

The big worry is an immune evasive variant that branched off much further back on the tree. If this happens it will most likely come from an animal reservoir and could cause much higher lethality than the variants we’re dealing with now. Which sounds scary but it’s nothing we haven’t been on alert for with influenza, going back several decades.
 
So I've managed to dodge this shit 2 1/2 years and now I have family who insisted on going to huge events and visit afterwards...

Guess what they brought? Feckin hell
 
My father is 77, and just got it. First 2 days were hell, since he was already on antibiotics for a tooth extraction, which meant cough, bad weakness, fever, some breathlessness, but also a bad stomach and vomiting (probably from the antibiotics). Age made me really nervous. He seems better now.

Now my mother and me are probably getting it too - just a sore throat and blocked nose so far for both.
 
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berbatrick said:
My father is 77, and just got it. First 2 days were hell, since he was already on antibiotics for a tooth extraction, which meant cough, bad weakness, fever, some breathlessness, but also a bad stomach and vomiting (probably from the antibiotics). Age made me really nervous. He seems better now.

Now my mother and me are probably getting it too - just a sore throat and blocked nose so far for both.
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Sorry to hear that. My very best wishes to you all.
 
Anyone know if there is any plans around booster jabs for all in the UK coming into winter or is it just the most vulnerable?

I guess probably not and they’re just counting on everyone to have had a natural booster with how it’s ripping through the population right now.

I’ve somehow still avoided it despite pretty much everyone at work coming down with it in the last month.
 
Pexbo said:
Anyone know if there is any plans around booster jabs for all in the UK coming into winter or is it just the most vulnerable?

I guess probably not and they’re just counting on everyone to have had a natural booster with how it’s ripping through the population right now.

I’ve somehow still avoided it despite pretty much everyone at work coming down with it in the last month.
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JCVI recommendation is for those in the following cohorts to be offered another dose in the autumn:
  • residents in a care home for older adults and staff
  • frontline health and social care workers
  • all those 65 years of age and over
  • adults aged 16 to 64 years who are in a clinical risk group
It was also reported that the over 50's may be included too.
 
Yay, it's finally my turn. Avoided it for the entire pandemic. Left my freelancing to start a new job and within 2 weeks got it.
 
arnie_ni said:
I actually had to double take when I seen the supermarket post, hang on, didn't he just say he tested positive?
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I mean, if someone’s stuck they’re stuck. Not everyone has the support network to get them through proper isolation. But doing it because “if nobody else follows the rules, I won’t either”…

:rolleyes:
 
Special Covid leave scrapped for NHS staff in England

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-62018738

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Stanley Road said:
I went to the supermarket earlier with a face mask on. I'm not going to be the only person adhering to guidelines. feck em
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As someone who has spent a week indoors with two teenagers and 9 month old dog, I can assure had you followed the guidelines you wouldn't have been the only one.
 
moses said:
How are you feeling? I had two days where I felt like it was in a car crash.
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Extremely fatigued, achy all over. Bit grisly in my chest and nose and feel like I'm constantly on a the cusp of a fever that doesn't progress. I'm also craving salt and vinegar crisps and peanut butter on toast( separately ).
 
I was contacted to take part in a trial of an unnamed protein based covid vaccine (Novovax is a protein based vaccine I brlieve) that has been adapted for omicron. The study wants to look at how the new vaccine works with people who have already had 2 or 3 shots of an mRNA vaccine. I couldn't take part as my first two were AZ. Interesting though.
 
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Stanley Road said:
What are we boosting against? Boosting a vaccine not built for latest variant, pointless
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Huh? A third shot of anything seems to give a much better protection from Omicron than just 2 shots. There is some reduction in infectiousness and a big reduction in disease severity.
 
Wibble said:
Huh? A third shot of anything seems to give a much better protection from Omicron than just 2 shots. There is some reduction in infectiousness and a big reduction in disease severity.
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Its 7 months since I had my 3rd shot, covid has put me on my back for a week, rarely have I felt so dreadful in my entire life and this is the mild version. I really wonder how well we are all protected having had the booster so long ago. I wonder how different it would have been had I not been vaccinated at all. I really am surprised at how bad I felt and still need to sleep during the day.
 
Stanley Road said:
Its 7 months since I had my 3rd shot, covid has put me on my back for a week, rarely have I felt so dreadful in my entire life and this is the mild version. I really wonder how well we are all protected having had the booster so long ago. I wonder how different it would have been had I not been vaccinated at all. I really am surprised at how bad I felt and still need to sleep during the day.
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Surely you only need to see the death rates for proof of the effectiveness of the vaccines? You don’t think it’s likely that catching it without three shots would have been even worse for you?
 
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