Democrats and Republicans can agree on one thing coming out of their respective conventions: Almost no one cares about Covid anymore.
Infections are running rampant after the Democratic confab in Chicago, with staffers on Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign, reporters and other convention-goers all stricken — and in at least one case claiming the positive test was “worth it.” Cases also cropped up after the Republican National Convention in July.
“Voters do not like it being brought up at all,” said Celinda Lake, a Democratic strategist and pollster for Biden’s 2020 campaign, who marveled at the near-total absence of masks at a Democratic convention where roughly 20,000 people crammed into Chicago’s United Center for a week. “They want to get over it.”
But “if it continues to worsen,” Bartlett said, “both parties will be forced to address it.”
The rhetorical vacuum around Covid comes even as cases have surged over the summer, hospitalizing thousands and killing nearly 700 people in one week in late July.
We’re in the middle of the largest spike in the last 2 years and school just started back up.
Yes, but can the hospital system handle it? We have these spikes just before school every year and there is not necessarily a huge spike in the excess death rate. Most people have antibodies now and the body will still recognize it with these mutations.
Wear a mask if you wanna.
There are consequences to disease other than actually dying.
Yes, and we have all accepted those consequences. What’s the solution anyway? More lockdowns? Mandatory masking? Most people who get sick get over it quickly.
Maybe you have, but just because you think it’s a new cold doesn’t make it true. Long COVID exists and people don’t just get over it. Even when you do and there aren’t immediately obvious consequences (not necessarily meaning there aren’t any), people don’t like to be sick for a week.
My employer still requires regular testing, uses air purifiers, and requires staying home until negative over multiple tests. We have family or friends that aren’t exclusively healthy 20 year olds and are scientists and engineers, so we know a 3% incidence rate of long COVID adds up. Responsible businesses care about exposing their employees and customers to potential long term health consequences. The choice isn’t do nothing or lockdowns.
That’s great that your employer takes those extra precautions on your behalf but I’m not sure it’s practical on a large scale. It sounds expensive and ineffective.
I have children in elementary school and we all get sick a few times a year and test every time we do. We’re all vaccinated and boosted as many times as we’re allowed and we haven’t had Covid since early 2022, which was the first time. We also all test every time we go see an immune compromised family member.
I’m not necessarily advocating that we all do nothing, I just believe we all need to navigate the risk for ourselves and our families. There are things we can do as individuals, but there is nothing we can do as a society except monitor the situation. As long as the hospital system is safe, this is an individual problem.
Why? Because your employer said fuck you? And “ineffective”? On what do you even think you could base that judgement? We catch cases every week and to our knowledge have never had an instance of in-office transmission.
We, as a society, could be better. We could have maintained free testing, mandated COVID leave, and invested in better air cleanliness. There’s a reason nurses aren’t just constantly infected, and it’s not because they have super vaccines the rest of us don’t get.
There’s a cost for these preventions, but there’s a very real cost for vax and forget. Millions more people have been disabled and removed from the workforce, every bout makes you more likely to get long COVID, and it’s compounding other health problems, leading to earlier death and unusual ailments. These are societal costs whether or not you individually have avoided being the unlucky ones.
To answer your questions, air purifiers are not enough to protect people from Covid according to the CDC, unless you’re masking, and you didn’t mention that. Also, regular testing is expensive and you mentioned nurses, they wear masks.
Otherwise I suppose I need to read more about long covid. However, a lot of the symptoms sound like a lot of other things, like depression or lupus or Lyme disease. I’ll take a look at your links in a bit and will be curious to see how it’s diagnosed vs other things. Regardless, I still believe there isn’t much we can do given cost, inconvenience and everyone longing for a sense of normalcy even still, agree to disagree on that I guess.
Flu and other regular seasonal illnesses also carry the risk of long-term health consequences. People focus on “long covid” because it’s new, but chronic health issues resulting from illnesses to which we are accustomed typically don’t even merit conversation let alone the sort of protocols suggested by some for covid. It used to simply be called “post-infectious syndrome” or “myalgic encephalomyelitis syndrome.”
I guess it’s not surprising that there is an equal and opposite ideology to antivaxxers, but I do find them just about equal in terms of intractibility and unreasonableness. Two extreme and unrealistic views bunkered in silos of their own creation.
N95s can be reused to reduce cost. Cycle through 5 masks so that each mask sits for 4 days between uses. Throw away if it gets wet, becomes hard to breathe through, is visibly dirty, or will no longer fit tightly.
Air purifiers aren’t enough to protect people, but they’re a simple passive solution that would impact infection rates for a population that largely doesn’t want to mask. Few people mask at my workplace. And air purification will help will all other sorts of disease, including helping us be resilient to the next pandemic, because it’s a when and not an if. You mentioned often being sick with non-COVID colds and flus. Even if it’s not a complete protection, wouldn’t it be nice to be sick 20% less? Your community has a major source of disease transmission right there that they could reduce.
We should be coming out of COVID better prepared, instead we’re even worse off.