Should I still isolate myself after a positive test? Is it ok to do my own shopping (with a mask) or should I call someone? Do I still wait for a negative test or simply to be free of symptoms? Since people around me don’t really talk about Covid anymore and my country doesn’t have any guidelines in place, I’d be interested in your takes. I don’t wanna be a d*ck to others but would also rather not overshoot and lock myself up at home for two weeks like in the early days. (I hope this doesn’t count as asking for medical advice.)

Edit: Thanks y’all. Guess I just needed to hear that even though everyone has been talking of “after Covid”, the situation hasn’t fundamentally changed despite our lives having normalized. I’ll be cancelling plans and staying home.

  • Melkath
    6•1 year ago

    It never went away. It’s always been here. You should still be behaving the same way you were behaving 2 years ago.

    • @thonofpyOP
      2•1 year ago

      I do not behave the way I was two years ago, nor do other people, both in private and in public (Where I live, seeing someone wear a facemask has become the exception. Big concerts have been taken place for a while, etc.). Because of that (together with the subject not coming up a lot in news and conversation anymore, masks and rapid tests going on sale, … ), I had come to the conclusion that the situation had generally relaxed. Am I wrong? At the beginning of this, I was anxious another major outbreak would be imminent, but nothing horrible seemed to happen, so I sort of lowered my guard. (Took a test when I had a sore throat or before meeting certain people, sometimes wore a mask when on particularly crowded trains, but otherwise started to live more or less like ‘before’.) Is Covid still a big deal and I sort of missed it?

      • Melkath
        10•1 year ago

        Early waves had extremely high ICU/death rates because it killed off the most vulnerable.

        That combined with vaccines reduced ICU/death rates, but they are still present. Infection rates have only ever been going up.

        For POLITICALLY motivated reasons, not for public safety reasons, most areas have stopped collecting data, concealing infection, ICU, and death rates related the COVID, making it look like things have subsided, but we dont know, because we arent maintaining the reporting systems.

        At present, I believe there are 3 new worry-some variants. They are EXTREMELY infectious, compared to earlier strains.

        There is also a disturbing trend in the newer variants that they don’t go straight for the respiratory system. You get infected, it incubates in some focused area of your body, you get a little sick for a day or 2, it continues to fortify its presence in the body for a week or 2, and then you get slammed with the full blown covid symptoms for a few weeks.

        That means the new strains are spreading without symptoms for a MUCH greater period of time, and the Long Covid effects of those strains are more severe.

        Here is a good metaphor. If Ukraine just got bored of Russia’s invasion and decided that they were just going to return to their life as it was before Russia invaded, does that mean that the Russian invasion is over?

        People just decided they were sick of masks and social distancing, and decided that it was over… but its not. Covid is now near endemic, and it is mutating at the alarming pace you would expect from Covid at endemic levels. Its only a matter of time until strains that REALLY go after the heart and the liver as well as the lungs surface, and when that happens, it will make Wave 1 of the pandemic look like child’s play.