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

For people that have had it recently, how long did it last? I’m seriously bored of it already.
 
Longer than you’d think. I only had a very mild dose but the sniffles lasted miles longer than a ‘normal’ head cold. Probably over a week?
Ffs. I feel like I’ve been hit by a train. Headache for the last 72 hours, non-persistent but painful cough due to throat being like razors, aching skin, night sweats but fortunately no loss of appetite or smell and my nose isn’t blocked. I fecking hate having a blocked nose.

My partner is in her third trimester so I’m more worried about her getting it, plus we’ve got a 6 month old collie that she’s currently having to look after by herself
 
Ffs. I feel like I’ve been hit by a train. Headache for the last 72 hours, non-persistent but painful cough due to throat being like razors, aching skin, night sweats but fortunately no loss of appetite or smell and my nose isn’t blocked. I fecking hate having a blocked nose.

My partner is in her third trimester so I’m more worried about her getting it, plus we’ve got a 6 month old collie that she’s currently having to look after by herself
Get well soon. Also congrats
 
Got it for the second time. 3 days in. Nowhere near as bad as when I had Delta. Not to say I don’t feel shit, but Delta made me understand how people were dying. This just makes me feel a wee bit shite.
 
Ffs. I feel like I’ve been hit by a train. Headache for the last 72 hours, non-persistent but painful cough due to throat being like razors, aching skin, night sweats but fortunately no loss of appetite or smell and my nose isn’t blocked. I fecking hate having a blocked nose.

My partner is in her third trimester so I’m more worried about her getting it, plus we’ve got a 6 month old collie that she’s currently having to look after by herself
Thinly veiled attempt at letting us know you’ve been shagging.
 
Ffs. I feel like I’ve been hit by a train. Headache for the last 72 hours, non-persistent but painful cough due to throat being like razors, aching skin, night sweats but fortunately no loss of appetite or smell and my nose isn’t blocked. I fecking hate having a blocked nose.

My partner is in her third trimester so I’m more worried about her getting it, plus we’ve got a 6 month old collie that she’s currently having to look after by herself
Holy shit I had no idea Covid could last trimesters. That’s fecking scary.
 


Natural selection at work. Which many of them also won't have believed in. Ironically.

The flaw being their idiotic views probably aren't genetically inherited. Which is a shame.
 
Ramping up massively again atm it seems based on the number of people I know that have gotten it within the last week.
 
Ramping up massively again atm it seems based on the number of people I know that have gotten it within the last week.

More infectious sub-variants, declining antibodies and boosters lagging = inevitable.
 
How do people know in UK that you have covid? No free tests around.
We still have a few boxes of free tests in our household. I rarely test now so the four boxes I hoarded before they stopped giving them out will probably last me quite some time.
 
One child got it and my other got a weird cold, but never tested positive last week.



You can still buy them,

Sorry that was slightly rhetorical. As in I imagine no one is testing as tests aren’t free. So it surprises me that they know covid rates are rising. I guess this news is directly from hospitals?
 
Sorry that was slightly rhetorical. As in I imagine no one is testing as tests aren’t free. So it surprises me that they know covid rates are rising. I guess this news is directly from hospitals?
In the UK we have hospital and similar stats plus the ONS random sample that tests people from all over the country. A lot less tests done (and even fewer results recorded) than before but still enough to get a statistically valid picture of what's happening.

Importantly, a good percentage of those positive tests then get processed further to look at the specific variants that are currently circulating. From that, you can see how some variants start to contribute more of the cases over time.

In England one of the worrying things is how many people are catching it in hospital. Routine testing in hospital has stopped. And now, Covid's symptoms are mild in most people, so the test doesn't happen. So it's only when someone who is is more vulnerable (or unlucky) catches it and starts showing more serious symptoms that it gets noticed.
 
In the UK we have hospital and similar stats plus the ONS random sample that tests people from all over the country. A lot less tests done (and even fewer results recorded) than before but still enough to get a statistically valid picture of what's happening.

Importantly, a good percentage of those positive tests then get processed further to look at the specific variants that are currently circulating. From that, you can see how some variants start to contribute more of the cases over time.

In England one of the worrying things is how many people are catching it in hospital. Routine testing in hospital has stopped. And now, Covid's symptoms are mild in most people, so the test doesn't happen. So it's only when someone who is is more vulnerable (or unlucky) catches it and starts showing more serious symptoms that it gets noticed.

I read a Twitter thread from someone who’s involved in tracking all the variants and there’s already been a load of new ones since omicron. However the mutations are constantly trending towards being either less contagious and/or less virulent. So all the signals are we should be able to stop worrying about this stupid virus in the very near future. The latest tweaked vaccines should be the nail in its coffin.
 
2.5 years into the pandemic and I’ve finally been collared by COVID.

My two baby kids (16 months and 3 months) have both been coughing like crazy last few days. Ive developed a cough but I ache like crazy - I only joked this morning to my wife that I feel like I’ve suddenly got old, the jumping out of bed in the middle of the night to do the feeds and I’m hobbling down the stairs / the duvet feels heavy when I pull it up in bed - I was like wtf has happened to me.

Hopefully it’ll pass and it doesn’t get any worse but I feel like I’ve been hit by a car.

Weirdly my wife who started feeling rough on Sunday has tested negative so maybe she’s had it and over the worst of it?

I blame my lad bringing it back from nursery but honestly who knows!
 
The minister for health was saying they are putting in place plans for rapid testing, wearing masks in public transport etc, all the usual stuff again. They also turned my warfarin clinic into a covid respiratory ward at Connolly hospital, away from the main building
 
The minister for health was saying they are putting in place plans for rapid testing, wearing masks in public transport etc, all the usual stuff again. They also turned my warfarin clinic into a covid respiratory ward at Connolly hospital, away from the main building
Better to have it all in place and not need it I suppose
 
The minister for health was saying they are putting in place plans for rapid testing, wearing masks in public transport etc, all the usual stuff again. They also turned my warfarin clinic into a covid respiratory ward at Connolly hospital, away from the main building

Winter is coming….

Seriously though. This is no big deal. Our hospitals get absolutely hammered every winter, since long before the first sneezy Chinese bat. And this winter will be worse than most because lockdowns have taken the edge off our immunity to the usual seasonal viruses. So it’s likely to be a more hectic winter than usual in our hospitals. That’s the main reason why the health service is gearing up for a rough few months.

I don’t think anyone is particularly worried about covid. We’re deep into the middle of our latest big wave and there’s hardly anyone in ICU with covid. The lowest number in years. I’d say the chances of any of us being told we have to mask up again in shops etc are slim to none.
 
@Pogue Mahone @jojojo you guys seem to be on top of the latest, is covid still classed as a pandemic at this stage, and if so how far away do you think we are from it being “downgraded” for want of a better word?
 
Winter is coming….

Seriously though. This is no big deal. Our hospitals get absolutely hammered every winter, since long before the first sneezy Chinese bat. And this winter will be worse than most because lockdowns have taken the edge off our immunity to the usual seasonal viruses. So it’s likely to be a more hectic winter than usual in our hospitals. That’s the main reason why the health service is gearing up for a rough few months. I don’t think anyone is particularly worried about covid.
You’re right. I don’t think they are worried about it on its own as such but more on top of the usual winter viruses, they are worried about capacity
 
You’re right. I don’t think they are worried about it on its own as such but more on top of the usual winter viruses, they are worried about capacity

Yeah, there’s a good chance it’s going to get grim enough in the hospitals over winter. Which has been a depressingly regular occurrence going back for years and years. But most people have been blissfully unaware unless they’re unlucky enough to end up in A&E themselves. It will be same again this winter.
 
@Pogue Mahone @jojojo you guys seem to be on top of the latest, is covid still classed as a pandemic at this stage, and if so how far away do you think we are from it being “downgraded” for want of a better word?

I actually have no idea. I get the sciencey/medically bits but know very little about global public health.
 
Yeah, there’s a good chance it’s going to get grim enough in the hospitals over winter. Which has been a depressingly regular occurrence going back for years and years. But most people have been blissfully unaware unless they’re unlucky enough to end up in A&E themselves. It will be same again this winter.
Yep. I think I’ve got a dislocated little finger and I’ve put off going into A&E as I can’t face a 12 hour wait. It’s not causing me huge hassle apart from when I wake up and it’s locked in a weird position and I have to correct it
 
Our health system collapses pretty much every day, a resurgence of Covid won't do much more.

It's funny, I've talked to numerous frontline nurses and doctors and most of 'em said that the first year of Covid was easily the quietest their hospitals had been for years because people just weren't going with normal injuries and flus. They'd probably love another clamp down! As I'm sure would the HSE.
 
@Pogue Mahone @jojojo you guys seem to be on top of the latest, is covid still classed as a pandemic at this stage, and if so how far away do you think we are from it being “downgraded” for want of a better word?

I think we are approaching the transition from pandemic to endemic. We will see how this winter goes. My (non medical, purely scientific) guess is that we end up with a flu like endemic status for COVID, but a level or so worse, with sporadic transitions to “epidemic” status (like flu did in 200?? With H1N1).
 
Our health system collapses pretty much every day, a resurgence of Covid won't do much more.

It's funny, I've talked to numerous frontline nurses and doctors and most of 'em said that the first year of Covid was easily the quietest their hospitals had been for years because people just weren't going with normal injuries and flus. They'd probably love another clamp down! As I'm sure would the HSE.
As somebody who managed a small community hospital and worked alongside doctors and nurses working in some of the biggest hospitals in Northern Ireland during that first year of COVID, I'd like to say that this is not my experience at all. Quite the opposite. It is true that a lot of the 'normal' stuff you would expect to see in A&E perhaps were not there in the same numbers, but the staff's time was taken up by so many people dieing or being severely ill with covid which more than made up for that. Now it is probably the busiest time any of us have ever experienced in the NHS because all those sick people who didn't get treatment over the past few years are now all coming in extremely ill and there isn't enough capacity to cope with it.
 
Our health system collapses pretty much every day, a resurgence of Covid won't do much more.

It's funny, I've talked to numerous frontline nurses and doctors and most of 'em said that the first year of Covid was easily the quietest their hospitals had been for years because people just weren't going with normal injuries and flus. They'd probably love another clamp down! As I'm sure would the HSE.

Depends where you work. I had friends working in units that bore at the brunt of the covid waves and they were pretty overwhelmed. That’s kind of besides the point though. Everyone who works for the HSE is used to being constantly incredibly busy. During covid they were just busy doing different stuff to usual. With the added stress and anxiety of risking exposure to a disease that everyone was pretty scared of.

The lockdowns did keep a lot of people out of hospitals but everyone working there knew that was just storing problems up that they’d have to deal with eventually. Waiting lists got longer and longer, people with chronic Illnesses slowly got worse and worse without proper outpatient care. All of which is coming back to haunt them now. I don’t think anyone working anywhere in the HSE would actually be pleased if we had another lockdown.
 
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I think we are approaching the transition from pandemic to endemic. We will see how this winter goes. My (non medical, purely scientific) guess is that we end up with a flu like endemic status for COVID, but a level or so worse, with sporadic transitions to “epidemic” status (like flu did in 200?? With H1N1).

Interesting, thanks.
 
Depends where you work. I had friends working in units that bore at the brunt of the covid waves and they were pretty overwhelmed. That’s kind of besides the point though. Everyone who works for the HSE is used to being constantly incredibly busy. During covid they were just busy doing different stuff to usual. With the added stress and anxiety of risking exposure to a disease that everyone was pretty scared of.

The lockdowns did keep a lot of people out of hospitals but everyone working there knew that was just storing problems up that they’d have to deal with eventually. Waiting lists got longer and longer, people with chronic Illnesses slowly got worse and worse without proper outpatient care. All of which is coming back to haunt them now. I don’t think anyone working anywhere in the HSE would actually be pleased if we had another lockdown.
But they told me so it must be right? Isn’t that how these things work, or something. Anyway fair enough, obviously it was a different experience depending on the person and location, and good point about the backlog making things worse.

they won’t lock down again anyway so it’s all fine. Wouldn’t be opposed to them bringing back mandatory masks now for winter though. Had to get public transport to work this morning and people were sneezing and coughing away. Definitely going into work with colds the morons. I haven’t had a cold since before Covid and I plan on keeping it that way!