The data shows masks aren’t helping much, Covid is endemic, tested cases are barely up ( https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us/ debate on where it lies between confirmed cases and actuality) the vaccines and boosters help serious cases prevent death but arent really preventing spreading, and Covid wasn’t affecting young (40-) people much anyway. It’s also true that there are people who have taken things too far by wearing masks while they’re alone in their own car. There really isn’t much for the reasonable person to do anymore. Whatever you do, it’s not moving the needle much, besides being a healthy individual by normal means of diet and exercise.
Tested cases are barely up because testing is at a small fraction of what it was even a year ago. Wastewater data, hospitalization rates, and deaths are all rising. Wastewater levels are currently about half of most previous peaks(https://biobot.io/data/covid-19), and that data lags by at least a few weeks.
Regarding masking in cars - best practice for good mask wearing is to put it on, ensure a good fit, then leave it on until you're done with it. If someone is running errands, it's better to just put leave it on instead of donning and doffing it repeatedly, making it more likely to cross contaminate or ruin the fit.
Pardon me, but can we clarify what you mean by saying that "masks aren't helping much"? Do you mean that masks are not effective in stopping the spread of COVID on an individual basis? Or do you simply mean that as a matter of policy, mask mandates have failed to stop the spread of the virus throughout the population in general?
Honest question - I know exactly where the "mask in the car" trope came from and why you're repeating it here but: why does it matter and why is it germane to this topic?
I think the point people are trying to make is that general masking behavior has not been guided by rational consideration of where it is likely to be beneficial. So, it's a warning to slow down and think about it.
If we were talking about alcohol consumption "slow down and think about it" absolutely makes sense: I might be having fun in my 20s binge drinking but there are very real negative consequences of that behavior long term.
But in the scenario where someone is in their car with their mask on I'm missing the "slow down and think about it" rationale. (Again, I've heard the talking points on this, so I'm looking more for a real answer).
I would contend that while, yes, there is a vocal contingent against - or without belief in - mask wearing measures, there are also quite a lot of people who consider it a trivial obligation.
“return to”… heh! I still wear a KN95 mask in any indoor place with other people in it (especially since people don’t feel any need to wear masks at all). I mean, I know one person who died from COVID, another who is indefinitely wheelchair-bound, and others who are just generally suffering life-altering effects (like years-long weakness and shaking hands and endless brain fog, probably-permanent deafness in one ear)… It’s funny, I haven’t been sick from any transmissible illness in over three years, despite how eager people seem to be to spread their ailments as much as possible.
I never stopped wearing a KN95 or better whenever indoors and also haven't gotten an airborne illness in over three years, which has been great. I think we will start to see long-term effects of people getting infected with COVID over and over (multiple times a year!) in the coming years.
Yeah, it's really disappointing how it has all played out. It's disappointing to encounter the persistent denial that COVID is a thing, or matters, day after day after day, for months and now years. If you're immune-compromised or just otherwise don't feel like rolling the dice with potentially being permanently crippled because of a ""cold"", you're just a total outcast from modern society and your sense of self-preservation is invalidated constantly.
I’ve noticed an uptick in students wearing masks in class (I teach at a university). Definitely a minority, but up from near-zero to now maybe 10-20%. Unlike previous waves, the university administration is studiously avoiding mentioning covid at all, and not recommending for or against anything, so it doesn’t seem to be driven by top-down policy decisions.
I don’t see as much of that as I did back when the university required masks. The students wearing masks now seem to be a self-selected subset who are more worried about covid than average.
I do see a decent number of surgical masks (vs N-95s). For me personally I would either wear something with good filtration or not bother, but I guess others disagree.
Double masking with surgical has been shown to get to 80% filtration efficacy because of better sealing. That said, there are brands of N95 mask that are more comfortable and easier to be heard through than a two-mask layer.
I know someone going through late-stage cancer treatment who, at a recent appointment with their oncologist (doctor specializing in cancer treatment), was asked to remove their mask so their temperature could be taken -- however the doctor themselves wasn't wearing a mask! An oncologist should know full well the weakened immune system their patients are dealing with! Like... seriously?!
Well, can you blame them? There was not real-life evidence, that mask wearing helped with anything. All those studies and fear-mongering were not reflected in real life.
Make your own decisions, and please consider if those so-called "experts" are really objective in their recommendations. We live in a twilight zone.
That's just about true. The original experiment showing that cloth between hamster cages reduced transmission was pretty strong evidence that it ought to work. And there have been some retrospective studies finding that masking was effective. The Cochrane study just came up with a not- statistically-significant result on their metastudy that included a variety of different pathogens, including COVID-19. The only reason to think that masks are a bad idea is that a lot of people and groups of people of various beliefs, desires, fears, phobias, hopes, etc, can find ways to react that effectively put us on a planet where masks do more harm than good. That's entirely possible, given that most people might prefer to live without the masks if they had a choice.
Not to be that guy, but isn't there a surprising correlation between the availability of the upcoming booster shot and the "uptick" in covid cases? The shot has been in development for a while, and it was only recently announced to be ready, followed shortly thereafter by a bombardment of articles about the covid uptick. How convenient.
Every time I've read these breathless claims of a resurgence of the pandemic, I've attempted to verify it through data analysis (number of positive covid tests) and the data has yet to validate the headlines. So please forgive me if I assume it's not the risk of contracting and dying from Covid that's suddenly increased, but rather the readiness of the latest pharmaceutical intervention.
I just had COVID for the first time. It's been two weeks and I still feel like total garbage. I'm thoroughly done being nice and pretending to be open minded about conspiracy thought at this point. If people want to "just ask questions" they need to be prepared for answers, which exist and are easy to find. The whole time I've been sick I've had to smile and nod at people trying to justify their dumb decisions two years ago. "Your body has an immune system..." and "are they just calling all respiratory infections COVID now?" is the kind of nonsense I don't want to hear when I can barely get out of bed.
This booster has been in development and testing for months. Any correlation between uptick in cases and booster availability is obviously just good planning. It's almost COVID/flu season and vaccine makers try to have a booster/shot ready in time for the predominant variant.
Everybody (at least pretty much everybody) should get a booster when it's available. COVID is awful and you don't want to get it. Feel free to "make your own choices" and "read the evidence". But if you want to go that route, be prepared to accept the answer that getting a vaccine is statistically the right choice for 99%+ of people.
> I just had COVID for the first time. It's been two weeks and I still feel like total garbage.
I'm confused how you open your comment with this statement, as if to express regret that you didn't get the vaccine and that's why you suffered from the symptoms of Covid. But from the rest of your comment, you don't sound like someone who's avoided Covid vaccines. In fact you go onto promote them.
So I feel it's worth asking: are you vaccinated against Covid? How many times have you been boosted? And if the answer to those questions is "yes" and "more than zero," then what is your basis for scolding others into "getting a vaccine?" I mean, did it work for you, or did you still get Covid and suffer from its symptoms?
For full disclosure, wary as I am of karmic retribution (from the universe, not HN users) for admitting it: I've not been vaccinated, I've not been boosted, and as far as I know I've not had Covid. I did have a sore throat and runny nose on a trip to NYC a few weeks ago, but if that was Covid, I hardly see the urgency to get vaccinated against it, and in fact I'm glad that I suffered from such a minor infirmity since it would mean I'm now immune to potentially deadlier variants, and likely to a degree more than anyone who's been vaccinated against earlier variants (research has consistently shown natural immunity from infection to be longer-lasting and more efficacious against a wider range of unknown variants than any vaccine).
I was vaccinated in 2020, had a booster in 2021, and the bivalent booster in 2022. There's no way to know with a sample size of one how well I personally was protected. I was definitely exposed several times to COVID and did not catch it until now. I'm disappointed that the new booster isn't available for me yet. I was a few weeks away and there's a good chance it would have prevented this infection, or lessened the severity.
It's telling how everyone I talk to that's avoided vaccines brings it up. They're nervous about getting COVID, they're nervous about having being wrong in the past. Several people have pulled the same "See? The vaccines don't work!" line. Clearly they work. Even 20% efficacy at preventing infection is valuable. Reducing severity is clearly valuable. Reducing spread is a societal obligation, even if the efficacy wanes.
"I had a runny nose so I don't need a vaccine" is a hypothesis. Poll an expert on the matter (like a doctor) and see what they recommend. Ask them why, if you're serious.
You're attributing nervousness to me when it does not exist. I'm pretty sure we both have as much desire to be right as the other. The difference is, I'm not telling you not to get vaccinated. You do what you want, I do what I want, and neither of us rubs it in the face of the other if we turn out to get the short end of the stick. That's the moral basis I've been operating on throughout this whole ordeal, and so far it's worked fine.
it’s not moral to “do what i want” when that involves causing risk and harm to others. vaccination is a numbers game, and you choosing not to be vaxxed is a choice to be sure.
I’ve vaccinated many hundreds of people. I followed the propaganda closely. The goal posts shifted quite a bit. At the first the promo flyers hinted that if you get vaccinated you won’t get Covid, you won’t spread it, you won’t get sick , you won’t go into the hospital, you won’t die. Over the next year from when they became publicly available the literal flyers and posters slowly changed from expressing the above, one by one the hints were removed until it was just “ You won’t go to the hospital and die” And now? The posters are gone.
These vaccines were never studied to reduce transmission (they don’t). I got my first case of Covid from a vaccinated coworker ( I’m still “unvaccinated” and will be for life). A year later Pfizer admits some of their deceit during European proceedings.
Furthermore, I will turn your phrase that it’s wrong to “do what I want” when it hurts others. Let’s forget about the grievous discrimination, slander, and hatred I suffered as I continued to serve on the frontlines (hero to zero!). People have legitimately been vaccine injured. Sometimes servely sometimes not, but a lot of those people were forced to do what you wanted (mandates, peer pressure, public hatred) and they got hurt. They got hurt with a forced experimental medical treatment that was presented as totally harmless, super duper studied and safe, extremely effective. Each pf those points are lies but a lot of people made a lot of money and power, so that’s good. Have you looked into how they calculated how the vaccines lowers your risk of death? Look at the actual numbers? 15 people died in the control arm, 14 in the vaccinated; ergo it’s highly safe and effective.
Anecdata of one: I got Covid recently, multiple other people around me got Covid recently. None of us got a new booster shot. Not even available yet. Now I don't need it either.
So from my point of view, you can keep your conspiracy theory.
I'll stick to my conspiracy theory if you take a second to look at the data for daily Covid cases, and admit to yourself that it shows no significant spike: https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/
Yes, I agree with the general premise, that "as covid becomes more normalized people stop testing / reporting their test results."
But it's hard to reconcile this justification for lack of data, with (a) the current headlines claiming a new surge in cases, and (b) the headlines from two years ago, insisting Covid prevalence was not simply overinflated due to prevalence of testing.
I have never reported any of the 3 times I or anyone in the family have had Covid and that comes out to more than 3 because we didn't all get it at the same time. And that was not just "after", this was even when you had all the 'test centers' everywhere and all that.
I know nobody I know who had Covid that ever reported their case. All just self-tested and stayed at home for the appropriate amount of time. Why stand in line with lots of people that very probably have Covid to get tested and if you don't actually already have Covid, get Covid? Just stay home and isolate and get better.
Again just anecdata of a few but extrapolate that up to a population level and you know why they are now doing the analysis through levels in waste water to get numbers. It's way more accurate.
One thing we can probably agree on is that those centralized test centers were the dumbest idea of the entire pandemic. For the same reasons you state, they always seemed absolutely insane to me. So you think you have Covid? Get in your car and drive to a gathering of a bunch of other people who might have Covid. If you don't have it now, you definitely will after!
Reported tests are almost completely gone compared to past waves, so reported positives will likewise be almost gone. Wastewater data in the US shows a very clear increase, with levels currently at least half of the peak of the previous two waves.
Nobody is even trying to get estimates via testing anymore, and the tests themselves have been growing increasingly unreliable as the virus mutates - the RAT particularly seems to hardly ever turn up true positives via nasal swabs. Look at wastewater COVID RNA load instead: https://biobot.io/data/
You are on to something. There definitely is a correlation between the availability of the upcoming booster shot and the "uptick" in Covid cases. It's not surprising though. It's called cold season. The entire point of the new booster shot is that it is targeting specific strains that are likely to be prevalent this fall.
Testing data is dependent on actually testing people, which we aren't doing. However, more accurate measures like wastewater are very consistent with the current narrative.
When a new variant that evades prior immunization arises and starts to spread, that both causes an uptick I cases and prompts the need for a new booster.
