[COVID-19], -20, -21, -22, -23, -24...

Hahnsoo1

This is the thread to discuss COVID-19 and how it has impacted you, your family, and friends, as well as updates on the state of vaccinations, treatment, etc. for the virus itself.

Here's where we're at in the US (apologies to those of you outside the US... I'm not deliberately excluding you!) in 2024:


Don't let the low magnitude on the graph fool you... it's only low by comparison to how awful 2020 and 2021 were. It's still killing more people than the flu. In 2023, COVID-19 was the fourth leading cause of death (even higher than Stroke) in the US.

As usual, please cite your sources and be kind to each other. A lot of us have been through a lot COVID-wise. Some of us have long COVID (I've dodged that bullet, but I know quite a few people in real life who are still struggling with it), and some of us have lost friends or family to it.

Get vaccinated and boosted, folks. The last vaccine targeted the XBB variants, and the upcoming one in the fall should target the JN.1 variant:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/ariannajohnson/2024/06/05/fda-panel-recommends-new-covid-vaccines-for-jn1-lineage-by-fall/

DiscoPirateBunny

Fuck every policy, every profit motive, every conspiracy theory, every self-serving political or ideological move, and every racist and/or classist asshole that made this last so long that we need yet another thread for it.

It was a test to see if, collectively, we could get our heads out of our asses and care about one another. And we failed.

Tumin

https://www.cdc.gov/nwss/index.html

The deaths number is nice and all but the wastewater numbers are more...interesting?

More reservoir == more mutation.


https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#ed-visits_separated_by_age_group

Seem to be in for the summer uptick again. Two new variants have emerged, vaccines still somewhat effectivr though.

While more studies are needed to see if KP.2 is better at evading current vaccines than other variants, Chin-Hong said his experience at UCSF's hospital over the past few weeks seems to indicate that vaccines are continuing to provide good protection.

He said the one common factor among all the patients hospitalized at UCSF with severe COVID is that none of them received the updated COVID vaccine that rolled out in fall 2023.

"If you haven't done, go ahead and get it," Chin-Hong said.

https://abcnews.go.com/Health/kp2-now-dominant-covid-variant-experts-us-summer/story?id=110166187

Thawmus

I have no fucking idea where I'm supposed to be at currently with vaccines. Really wish it was something my pharmacist or GP or the government gave a shit about and would take some sort of productive action to inform me if there's a vaccine booster I should be taking right now.

Seems like something we should have improved on in the past 4 years.

Hahnsoo1

If you had a booster since October 2023, you are pretty much up to date with the latest booster available. If you are immunocompromised (or similar situations... chronic diseases like diabetes counts) or over 60, then you should probably pick up another booster around 6 months after your last one. Otherwise, the next booster with the update won't be available until Fall 2024 at some point.

taliosfalcon

I saw this thread, realized it's been a year+ since I received a booster, and I'm immunocompromised (haven't caught Covid once yet though , knock on wood) Went on my provinces website to see pharmacies giving the vaccine and...so far I have called the first 7 listed, and none of them are doing it anymore, and to begin with none of the ones listed were on my side of the city anyway and involved driving to the other side. This is turning out to be quite the ordeal.

Havelock2.0

Welp time to get off my ass and get stabbed again because we’re Earth’s greatest fuckups

Lanz

Hey you know that graph hahnsoo posted up there and how bad it is?

well, I guess Kathy Hochul thinks that infected air is just A-OKAY to breathe, because only Scary protestor reprobates want to wear masks in public, surely there’s no actual health component as to why a bunch of lefty young folks are wearing masks in mass gatherings!

https://www.governor.ny.gov/news/icymi-audio-rush-transcript-governor-hochul-guest-cnn-laura-coates

Laura Coates, CNN: There is also a call some have talked about, some Jewish leaders actually in New York are calling tonight for a mask ban. Saying that covering faces allows protesters to have some level of anonymity to be more aggressive, to me more entitled to say what they want because they don’t fear repercussion in the same way. Would you support that endeavor?

Governor Hochul: There was a ban on masks before the pandemic that you couldn't have face coverings that didn't serve a purpose. For example, a surgical mask for someone who is elderly or ill — the pandemic removed that from our State Law. It was repealed at the time, but I absolutely will go back and take a look at this and see whether it can be restored because it is frightening to people.

You're sitting on a subway train and someone puts on a mask like this and comes in — you don't know if they're going to be committing a crime, they're going to have a gun, or whether they're just going to be threatening or intimidating you because you are Jewish, which is exactly what happened the other day. Absolutely unacceptable in the State of New York.

Hochul here joining a bunch of other states trying to return us to a shitty old, paranoid “law and order” status quo and increase our chances of getting sick because they’ve convinced themselves the pandemic ended the moment the vaccine came out, ignoring getting vaccinated is only a single step in mitigating COVID out of several necessary precautions, most of which we just tossed out the window in favor of huffing virus

ahava

boosters for adults down here are 6 months after your last booster, or 6 months after your positive for Covid.

mentioned at the end of the last thread but

apparently the policy for the kids under 16 here is that they only need the first 2 shots. I asked if we could get Ellie a booster (they're 8) and the answer was "if she's had 2 shots already she's fine until she's 16"

which seems.... odd? but the children's hospital website said basically the same thing.


Problem with our vaccines is, because we're you know, other side of the world, we're about a generation/iteration behind y'all. If not 2. so yes, I got my booster, but I have no idea which strains it's for and if it's even relevant to the newer strains.

But, it's something at least.

Lanz

Also be aware to check just what your coverage is for vaccines. I know a lot of folks, including myself, really got screwed with the government no longer covering them. Eventually I was able to talk with my insurer that they’d cover a certain amount but it was still like I think $90 after the amount they covered? (It’s been a few months so my memory is fuzzy)

A lot of folks though have just been shut out entirely because they relied on the government coverage and just can’t afford it or don’t have any reimbursement from their insurers for it

moniker

It's on the recommended vaccine list, so your insurance should be required to cover it at no cost:

https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/adults/pay-for-vaccines.html

There are some oddball plans that are allowed to be terrible, though mostly for various religious exemptions, that were expanded under Trump and reined back in under Biden. If you're on an Obamacare plan it is absolutely required to be free.

Lanz

moniker wrote: »

It's on the recommended vaccine list, so your insurance should be required to cover it at no cost:

https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/adults/pay-for-vaccines.html

There are some oddball plans that are allowed to be terrible, though mostly for various religious exemptions, that were expanded under Trump and reined back in under Biden. If you're on an Obamacare plan it is absolutely required to be free.

This is the part that’s the rub:

All Health Insurance Marketplace plans and most other private insurance plans must cover certain vaccines without charging a copayment or coinsurance when provided by an in-network provider.

In my instance, they said they’d totally cover it if I got the vaccine at a physician’s office.

Meanwhile, take a wild guess what no physician’s office in my whole ass area, if not the whole state as near as I could tell, was offering, and you could only get at pharmacies which they did not cover vaccines from in this way.

Hydropolo

Not even the big boy pharmacies? That's odd, usually those are in network with most insurance companies I've ever been on.

Lanz

Hydropolo wrote: »

Not even the big boy pharmacies? That's odd, usually those are in network with most insurance companies I've ever been on.

Nope! Literally would not pay for it in any of the major pharmacies I tried, and then when I finally talked to them directly they basically told me I’d have to pay out of pocket and file a claim, and that claim was only a large fraction of the amount of hte cost (which was somewhere between $180 to $200 out of pocket)

Phoenix-D

Yeah they're doing bullshit there.

The COVID vaccines are exempt from the out of network thing even!

A plan or issuer must provide coverage for and must not impose any cost-sharing requirements (such as a copayment, coinsurance, or a deductible) for any qualifying coronavirus preventive service described in paragraph (a)(1)(v) of this section, regardless of whether such service is delivered by an in-network or out-of-network provider.

proxy_hue

speaking of bullshit re COVID

https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa-covid-propaganda/

At the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, the U.S. military launched a secret campaign to counter what it perceived as China’s growing influence in the Philippines, a nation hit especially hard by the deadly virus.

The clandestine operation has not been previously reported. It aimed to sow doubt about the safety and efficacy of vaccines and other life-saving aid that was being supplied by China, a Reuters investigation found. Through phony internet accounts meant to impersonate Filipinos, the military’s propaganda efforts morphed into an anti-vax campaign. Social media posts decried the quality of face masks, test kits and the first vaccine that would become available in the Philippines – China’s Sinovac inoculation.

...

Some Filipino healthcare professionals and former officials contacted by Reuters were shocked by the U.S. anti-vax effort, which they say exploited an already vulnerable citizenry. Public concerns about a Dengue fever vaccine, rolled out in the Philippines in 2016, had led to broad skepticism toward inoculations overall, said Lulu Bravo, executive director of the Philippine Foundation for Vaccination. The Pentagon campaign preyed on those fears.

“Why did you do it when people were dying? We were desperate,” said Dr. Nina Castillo-Carandang, a former adviser to the World Health Organization and Philippines government during the pandemic. “We don’t have our own vaccine capacity,” she noted, and the U.S. propaganda effort “contributed even more salt into the wound.”

...

To implement the anti-vax campaign, the Defense Department overrode strong objections from top U.S. diplomats in Southeast Asia at the time, Reuters found. Sources involved in its planning and execution say the Pentagon, which ran the program through the military’s psychological operations center in Tampa, Florida, disregarded the collateral impact that such propaganda may have on innocent Filipinos.

“We weren’t looking at this from a public health perspective,” said a senior military officer involved in the program. “We were looking at how we could drag China through the mud.”

I could pull more quotes but the article itself is worth reading, as long as you can stomach it. I'm actually surprised Biden caught this and stopped it as early as he did, but that doesn't really help that the Pentagon still did this and seemingly feels justified for doing it. No wonder we've had such a difficult time- we've got these petty assholes trying to score points while people were literally dying in droves. The way one Pentagon spokesperson excuses this as just tit-for-tat... just. Man. Woof.

moniker

For fuck's sake. That's even worse than the CIA using polio vaccination as a cover


Just... how do people still not understand the implications of Germ Theory?

Tumin

From link

“The relationship is hanging from a thread,” another former senior U.S. diplomat recounted. “Is this the moment you want to do a psyop in the Philippines? Is it worth the risk?”

In the past, such opposition from the State Department might have proved fatal to the program. Previously in peacetime, the Pentagon needed approval of embassy officials before conducting psychological operations in a country, often hamstringing commanders seeking to quickly respond to Beijing’s messaging, three former Pentagon officials told Reuters.

But in 2019, before COVID surfaced in full force, then-Secretary of Defense Mark Esper signed a secret order that later paved the way for the launch of the U.S. military propaganda campaign. The order elevated the Pentagon’s competition with China and Russia to the priority of active combat, enabling commanders to sidestep the State Department when conducting psyops against those adversaries. The Pentagon spending bill passed by Congress that year also explicitly authorized the military to conduct clandestine influence operations against other countries, even “outside of areas of active hostilities.”

I love a disparate strategy with the military sabotaging long term efforts. Really solid approach.

Gilgaron

I guess it hasn't been a secret that a lot of western anti-vaxx stuff is from Russia but knowing we did it back is even more frustrating. Especially when it negatively impacts a regional ally like Phillipines...

Munkus Beaver

Those fucking dipshits

Phoenix-D

Bury them under Leavenworth. Fuck those people right unti the sun

DarkPrimus

[...China] announced an ambitious COVID assistance program, which included sending masks, ventilators and its own vaccines – still being tested at the time – to struggling countries. In May 2020, Xi announced that the vaccine China was developing would be made available as a “global public good,” and would ensure “vaccine accessibility and affordability in developing countries.” Sinovac was the primary vaccine available in the Philippines for about a year until U.S.-made vaccines became more widely available there in early 2022.

Washington’s plan, called Operation Warp Speed, was different. It favored inoculating Americans first, and it placed no restrictions on what pharmaceutical companies could charge developing countries for the remaining vaccines not used by the United States. The deal allowed the companies to “play hardball” with developing countries, forcing them to accept high prices, said Lawrence Gostin, a professor of medicine at Georgetown University who has worked with the World Health Organization.

The deal “sucked most of the supply out of the global market,” Gostin said. “The United States took a very determined America First approach.”

To Washington’s alarm, China’s offers of assistance were tilting the geopolitical playing field across the developing world, including in the Philippines, where the government faced upwards of 100,000 infections in the early months of the pandemic.

China’s growing influence fueled efforts by U.S. military leaders to launch the secret propaganda operation Reuters uncovered.

“We didn’t do a good job sharing vaccines with partners,” a senior U.S. military officer directly involved in the campaign in Southeast Asia told Reuters. “So what was left to us was to throw shade on China’s.”

This is indefensible. Better to have people refuse to engage in measures to mitigate a pandemic and for them to get sick and die, than to have them feeling grateful for pandemic assistance provided by China.

Abbalah

DarkPrimus wrote: »

[...China] announced an ambitious COVID assistance program, which included sending masks, ventilators and its own vaccines – still being tested at the time – to struggling countries. In May 2020, Xi announced that the vaccine China was developing would be made available as a “global public good,” and would ensure “vaccine accessibility and affordability in developing countries.” Sinovac was the primary vaccine available in the Philippines for about a year until U.S.-made vaccines became more widely available there in early 2022.

Washington’s plan, called Operation Warp Speed, was different. It favored inoculating Americans first, and it placed no restrictions on what pharmaceutical companies could charge developing countries for the remaining vaccines not used by the United States. The deal allowed the companies to “play hardball” with developing countries, forcing them to accept high prices, said Lawrence Gostin, a professor of medicine at Georgetown University who has worked with the World Health Organization.

The deal “sucked most of the supply out of the global market,” Gostin said. “The United States took a very determined America First approach.”

To Washington’s alarm, China’s offers of assistance were tilting the geopolitical playing field across the developing world, including in the Philippines, where the government faced upwards of 100,000 infections in the early months of the pandemic.

China’s growing influence fueled efforts by U.S. military leaders to launch the secret propaganda operation Reuters uncovered.

“We didn’t do a good job sharing vaccines with partners,” a senior U.S. military officer directly involved in the campaign in Southeast Asia told Reuters. “So what was left to us was to throw shade on China’s.”

This is indefensible. Better to have people refuse to engage in measures to mitigate a pandemic and for them to get sick and die, than to have them feeling grateful for pandemic assistance provided by China.

Yeah this is not describing a psyop, it’s describing a military operation that created a body count, specifically targeted against a civilian population, using a biological agent as its killing vector. A military operation centered around intentionally aiding in the spread of a deadly disease among a civilian population doesn’t stop being a bioweapon attack just because the disease you’re killing people with is naturally occurring.

Everyone involved should be made an example of.

Kelor

This was several years ago now, but I read and linked a few articles that said that China’s program of getting vaccine doses out to Oceanic, Central and South American nations at the time bought them a lot of good will when western aligned nations were using up most of the supply on themselves.

It caused a fair bit of realignment in several countries and some to even change the status of their recognition of Taiwan.

proxy_hue

Not to distract from the horribleness I shared earlier but:

https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/fda-recommends-covid-vaccine-update-target-kp2-strain-rcna157089

The Food and Drug Administration said Thursday it had advised drugmakers to update the Covid vaccines to target the KP.2 strain, a descendant of the highly contagious JN.1 variant that began circulating widely in the U.S. this winter.

The announcement came just over a week after an FDA advisory panel voted unanimously to recommend that the Covid vaccines for the fall be updated to target the JN.1 variant or one of its descendants.

They're actually targeting the currently circulating strain! Really good to see this.

Lanz

Phoenix-D wrote: »

Bury them under Leavenworth. Fuck those people right unti the sun

There is one Just punishment for what these fuckers did.

In the immortal words of Futurama:

https://youtu.be/KdtJvVgIG9Y?feature=shared

Mei Hikari

proxy_hue wrote: »

Not to distract from the horribleness I shared earlier but:

https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/fda-recommends-covid-vaccine-update-target-kp2-strain-rcna157089

The Food and Drug Administration said Thursday it had advised drugmakers to update the Covid vaccines to target the KP.2 strain, a descendant of the highly contagious JN.1 variant that began circulating widely in the U.S. this winter.

The announcement came just over a week after an FDA advisory panel voted unanimously to recommend that the Covid vaccines for the fall be updated to target the JN.1 variant or one of its descendants.

They're actually targeting the currently circulating strain! Really good to see this.

That is a surprisingly good turn. I really thought they would target the dying strain again.
Now to see if the CDC decides to restrict the booster to 70+ only...

Man in the Mists

I hope not! I want to be able to get this shot before PAX West.

Fencingsax

Esper was "one of the Adults in the room" that was supposed to contain Trump

Fuzzy Cumulonimbus Cloud

proxy_hue wrote: »

speaking of bullshit re COVID

https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa-covid-propaganda/

At the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, the U.S. military launched a secret campaign to counter what it perceived as China’s growing influence in the Philippines, a nation hit especially hard by the deadly virus.

The clandestine operation has not been previously reported. It aimed to sow doubt about the safety and efficacy of vaccines and other life-saving aid that was being supplied by China, a Reuters investigation found. Through phony internet accounts meant to impersonate Filipinos, the military’s propaganda efforts morphed into an anti-vax campaign. Social media posts decried the quality of face masks, test kits and the first vaccine that would become available in the Philippines – China’s Sinovac inoculation.

...

Some Filipino healthcare professionals and former officials contacted by Reuters were shocked by the U.S. anti-vax effort, which they say exploited an already vulnerable citizenry. Public concerns about a Dengue fever vaccine, rolled out in the Philippines in 2016, had led to broad skepticism toward inoculations overall, said Lulu Bravo, executive director of the Philippine Foundation for Vaccination. The Pentagon campaign preyed on those fears.

“Why did you do it when people were dying? We were desperate,” said Dr. Nina Castillo-Carandang, a former adviser to the World Health Organization and Philippines government during the pandemic. “We don’t have our own vaccine capacity,” she noted, and the U.S. propaganda effort “contributed even more salt into the wound.”

...

To implement the anti-vax campaign, the Defense Department overrode strong objections from top U.S. diplomats in Southeast Asia at the time, Reuters found. Sources involved in its planning and execution say the Pentagon, which ran the program through the military’s psychological operations center in Tampa, Florida, disregarded the collateral impact that such propaganda may have on innocent Filipinos.

“We weren’t looking at this from a public health perspective,” said a senior military officer involved in the program. “We were looking at how we could drag China through the mud.”

I could pull more quotes but the article itself is worth reading, as long as you can stomach it. I'm actually surprised Biden caught this and stopped it as early as he did, but that doesn't really help that the Pentagon still did this and seemingly feels justified for doing it. No wonder we've had such a difficult time- we've got these petty assholes trying to score points while people were literally dying in droves. The way one Pentagon spokesperson excuses this as just tit-for-tat... just. Man. Woof.

Yeah I read this earlier. Waiting to see if any other news agencies confirm as well. But reading it made me literally sick to my stomach. I rarely am speechless but this blew me away in terms of awfulness.

DarkPrimus

What in the article makes you so skeptical of Reuters' reporting that you want to wait on a separate investigation by another news outlet?

Fuzzy Cumulonimbus Cloud

DarkPrimus wrote: »

What in the article makes you so skeptical of Reuters' reporting that you want to wait on a separate investigation by another news outlet?

It's almost entirely off the record sources which at times has caused retractions in the past.

Fuzzy Cumulonimbus Cloud

Which now that there are more articles other than Reuters, yeah looks really bad.

DarkPrimus

Fuzzy Cumulonimbus Cloud wrote: »

DarkPrimus wrote: »

What in the article makes you so skeptical of Reuters' reporting that you want to wait on a separate investigation by another news outlet?

It's almost entirely off the record sources which at times has caused retractions in the past.

Would love some examples, please.

Fuzzy Cumulonimbus Cloud

DarkPrimus wrote: »

Fuzzy Cumulonimbus Cloud wrote: »

DarkPrimus wrote: »

What in the article makes you so skeptical of Reuters' reporting that you want to wait on a separate investigation by another news outlet?

It's almost entirely off the record sources which at times has caused retractions in the past.

Would love some examples, please.

No.

DarkPrimus

Fuzzy Cumulonimbus Cloud wrote: »

DarkPrimus wrote: »

Fuzzy Cumulonimbus Cloud wrote: »

DarkPrimus wrote: »

What in the article makes you so skeptical of Reuters' reporting that you want to wait on a separate investigation by another news outlet?

It's almost entirely off the record sources which at times has caused retractions in the past.

Would love some examples, please.

No.

Alright, cool. So why have you mischaracterized this investigatory piece as being based "almost entirely [on] off the record sources" as though they're heavily reliant on unsupported comments from anonymous sources rather than their interviews being supported by documentation and detective work?

Reuters points fingers at named individuals within the government and military. Government and military spokespeople declined to comment when asked by Reuters about this. They did not issue denials, because those denials would be on the record.

amateurhour

It's ok to look for a second news story reporting on something before shouting it into the streets.

Also FCC aren't you a research scientist or professor, I imagine you measure twice and cut once.

Hahns thanks for the booster update btw. We'll wait for the new ones this fall.

ahava

Got my booster last week.

Hubby came home early from work today with a cough and sore throat.

Have him take a test, faint line. Year is expired and the line was faint to the point I might have just been imagining it.

Go out to get dinner and pick up new tests.

Get home, test hubby again.

Two big red lines.

Welp.

Guess that's a thing. He was about a month away from his next booster.

Heffling

Sorry, Ahava. I hope he recovers quickly and has no long term effects.

Thawmus

Generally speaking with these tests you should trust any positive result no matter how faint, and not trust a negative result, and if you have a negative result, keep re-testing every few days while you have symptoms, be sure to isolate*, etc. as if you have covid.

*I understand a lot of employers these days aren't taking it seriously and will question you if you take sick days after a negative covid test. I've run into this and I know I'm not alone.

kaid

When I had delta covid I was still testing positive for almost a full month after having it that was the poop.