I know most people have checked out of this, but this week had the fewest covid deaths in the US since the second week of quarantining, back in late March 2020. https://t.co/71EnrmNwl5 pic.twitter.com/rREU8j5R4S
— Zach Weinersmith (@ZachWeiner) April 22, 2023
A commentor (Currants, I think?) introduced me to a new resource, Your Local Epidemiologist. I personally found this helpful:
Do I need a spring booster?…
2. Timing. If you’re in one of the urgent groups, the next question is: When was your last infection or vaccine?
6+ months ago: Go get a spring booster today.
4-6 months: Schedule one, but you don’t need to rush to the pharmacy.
<4 months: Wait. But do not wait until past May/June, so that you enough runway time before the (anticipated) fall vaccine…
"Allowing the uninsured to access the vaccines at no charge is important but so is educating them about the program," said KFF Senior Vice President @jenkatesdc. https://t.co/dTFjGFLdNE
— KFF (@KFF) April 19, 2023
======
As those best informed among us have pointed out, this is at least as much about internal political control as it is international dissemination:
… That the Chinese government muzzled scientists, hindered international investigations and censored online discussion of the pandemic is well documented. But Beijing’s stranglehold on information goes far deeper than even many pandemic researchers are aware of. Its censorship campaign has targeted international journals and scientific databases, shaking the foundations of shared scientific knowledge, a New York Times investigation found.
Under pressure from their government, Chinese scientists have withheld data, withdrawn genetic sequences from public databases and altered crucial details in journal submissions. Western journal editors enabled those efforts by agreeing to those edits or withdrawing papers for murky reasons, a review by The Times of over a dozen retracted papers found.
Groups including the World Health Organization have given credence to muddled data and inaccurate timelines.
This scientific censorship has not universally succeeded: The original version of the February 2020 paper, for example, can still be found online with some digging. But the campaign starved doctors and policymakers of critical information about the virus at the moment the world needed it most. It bred mistrust of science in Europe and the United States, as health officials cited papers from China that were then retracted.
The crackdown continues to breed misinformation today and has hindered efforts to determine the origins of the virus…
It is impossible to ascribe a single motive to the crackdown. Beijing controls and shapes information as a matter of course, particularly in moments of crisis. But some of the censorship changed the timeline of early infections, a delicate topic as the government faced criticism over whether it responded to the outbreak quickly enough.
There is no evidence that the censorship is designed to conceal a specific scenario for the origins of the pandemic…
(link)
First person dies of the new #SARSCoV2 subvariant, XBB.1.16, also known as Arcturus. It's fueling Covid cases globally. The death attributed to Arcturus occrred in Thailand. Global cases are surging https://t.co/WjR8r4xkCC
— delthia ricks 🔬 (@DelthiaRicks) April 21, 2023
(link)
"Long COVID is costing the Australian economy at least $5.7 billion a year as tens of thousands are left unable to work by the debilitating disease"
Parliamentary Inquiry🙄🙄https://t.co/Y8W2QQ2om2
— David Joffe PhD, FRACP 🇦🇺 (@DavidJoffe64) April 23, 2023
(link)
The #Lula govt is struggling to rebuild #Brazil's healthcare system, which was devastated by #COVID19 and the policies of his rightwing predecessor, #Bolsonaro . https://t.co/wtt1GQQr8I
— Laurie Garrett (@Laurie_Garrett) April 25, 2023
======
Depressing, but well worth reading the whole thing:
Charlie McCone has been struggling with the symptoms of long COVID since he was first infected, in March 2020. Most of the time, he is stuck on his couch or in his bed, unable to stand for more than 10 minutes without fatigue, shortness of breath, and other symptoms flaring up. But when I spoke with him on the phone, he seemed cogent and lively. “I can appear completely fine for two hours a day,” he said. No one sees him in the other 22. He can leave the house to go to medical appointments, but normally struggles to walk around the block. He can work at his computer for an hour a day. “It’s hell, but I have no choice,” he said. Like many long-haulers, McCone is duct-taping himself together to live a life—and few see the tape.
McCone knows 12 people in his pre-pandemic circles who now also have long COVID, most of whom confided in him only because “I’ve posted about this for three years, multiple times a week, on Instagram, and they’ve seen me as a resource,” he said. Some are unwilling to go public, because they fear the stigma and disbelief that have dogged long COVID. “People see very little benefit in talking about this condition publicly,” he told me. “They’ll try to hide it for as long as possible.”
I’ve heard similar sentiments from many of the dozens of long-haulers I’ve talked with, and the hundreds more I’ve heard from, since first reporting on long COVID in June 2020. Almost every aspect of long COVID serves to mask its reality from public view. Its bewilderingly diverse symptoms are hard to see and measure. At its worst, it can leave people bed- or housebound, disconnected from the world. And although milder cases allow patients to appear normal on some days, they extract their price later, in private. For these reasons, many people don’t realize just how sick millions of Americans are—and the invisibility created by long COVID’s symptoms is being quickly compounded by our attitude toward them.
Most Americans simply aren’t thinking about COVID with the same acuity they once did; the White House long ago zeroed in on hospitalizations and deaths as the measures to worry most about. And what was once outright denial of long COVID’s existence has morphed into something subtler: a creeping conviction, seeded by academics and journalists and now common on social media, that long COVID is less common and severe than it has been portrayed—a tragedy for a small group of very sick people, but not a cause for societal concern. This line of thinking points to the absence of disability claims, the inconsistency of biochemical signatures, and the relatively small proportion of severe cases as evidence that long COVID has been overblown. “There’s a shift from ‘Is it real?’ to ‘It is real, but …,’” Lekshmi Santhosh, the medical director of a long-COVID clinic at UC San Francisco, told me.
Yet long COVID is a substantial and ongoing crisis—one that affects millions of people. However inconvenient that fact might be to the current “mission accomplished” rhetoric, the accumulated evidence, alongside the experience of long haulers, makes it clear that the coronavirus is still exacting a heavy societal toll…
(link)
Covid and the “substantially increased risk of developing a diverse spectrum of new-onset autoimmune diseases.”https://t.co/EMALanswU2 pic.twitter.com/C9ryALLAIb
— Eric Topol (@EricTopol) April 23, 2023
At 2 years #LongCovid: 4 Nordic countries, >22,000 individuals with Covid vs uninfected controls
"An overall 37% higher prevalence of severe physical symptom burden (PHQ-15 score ≥ 15, adjusted prevalence ratio [PR] 1.37 [95% CI] 1.23-1.52])." https://t.co/r4mnCTeMZB pic.twitter.com/C5R2OfIWzi— Eric Topol (@EricTopol) April 21, 2023
(link)
Can artificial intelligence predict future pandemics? Apparently before the 1st cases of #Covid became known, an algorithm based on AI developed by a Canadian company had already detected a new virus spreading across Wuhan. Why are we just finding out? https://t.co/jgV2ninhaX
— delthia ricks 🔬 (@DelthiaRicks) April 22, 2023
Joking is a natural defensive response, but this could turn scary:
we found the man jair bolsonaro aspires to be https://t.co/kAYDiBwujs
— the abbot of unreason (an archaeologist) ?? (@merovingians) April 24, 2023
Thread:
Perhaps the most important question that MUST be answered BEFORE removing masks in healthcare: What is the infection mortality rate of hospital-acquired covid? This is actually a straightforward question, and the answer is undoubtedly known/knowable – yet it's not shared. ?? 1/7
— Noha Aboelata, MD (@NohaAboelataMD) April 17, 2023
======
Pandemic relief efforts did not reach immigrant families
Immigrant families living in the United States took some of the hardest economic hits during #COVID19https://t.co/kInlpF6nzi pic.twitter.com/tBcxlNqJQ6
— CIDRAP (@CIDRAP) April 24, 2023
A group was formed to lay the groundwork for a federal commission into the US response to the #Covid pandemic. When a commission was never established, they issued a report themselves, an account of what went wrong & what needs fixing. https://t.co/p9VWDZVJil
— Helen Branswell 🇺🇦 (@HelenBranswell) April 24, 2023
1. It's not a Senate Report it's from "the Republican leadership of the Senate health committee".
2. No evidence presented, just conjecture, unrelated factoids.
3. And zero scientific publications, and you know why? For reasons stated in the previous sentence
4. Repeat & rinse https://t.co/QjkT5UalXP— Prof Peter Hotez MD PhD (@PeterHotez) April 18, 2023
Many people have "forgotten" there were mass graves in NYC in 2020, and without public health measures that would have happened everywhere.
Our new piece in @CMAJ is about a kind of historical negationism @CaulfieldTim and I call "lockdown revisionism."??https://t.co/z172KmgKfW pic.twitter.com/buhpQ9kFsD
— Blake Murdoch (@BlakeMMurdoch) April 17, 2023
This is a terrific??by @mileswgriffis. The callous insouciance, the vicious neglect that happened with AIDS, is happening again with #Covid. Our leaders do not lead. We pretend it’s all over. While hundreds die each day, we insist everything is A-OK. https://t.co/E9bLruBTVQ
— Gregg Gonsalves (@gregggonsalves) April 17, 2023
On The Road – Am in NC – More from Paris
NeenerNeener
Monroe County, NY:
22 new cases on 04/19/23.
30 new cases on 04/20/23.
37 new cases on 04/21/23.
26 new cases on 04/22/23.
25 new cases on 04/23/23.
21 new cases on 04/24/23.
12 new cases on 04/25/23.
Deaths now at 2247, up 4 since last week.
dmsilev
LA County hospitalized cases down to around 300 or so. That’s comparable to the summer lows last year, but not quite as low as summer of 2021 when the vaccines beat back the original strain but before Variant Hell.
Matt McIrvin
Still slightly cheesed not to be included in the eligible groups for the spring booster, but I guess I’m not the expert.
I admit I’m starting to behave in “pandemic is over” ways but I know it’s not. I went to Barcelona last week and almost nobody is masking there, anywhere–and I know Spain was a place that behaved in a relatively prosocial manner during the worst of it and avoided a lot of unnecessary death and suffering as a result. I masked up for most of the plane ride both ways, did not mask up everywhere when I was there, though there were some situations where I was sorry I hadn’t–dense crowds at a public market and on public transit.
But I still know the occasional person who is getting COVID, sometimes after traveling somewhere.
Nelle
My husband (79) and I (72) both got our second bivalent shot yesterday. No reactions as of this time.
Dangerman
I know it’s a couple years old and probably been read widely around these highly educated parts …
… but I just finished Michael Lewis’s “The Premonition”. Great author (duh), great book, really doesn’t go into the Politics of Covid too much (Trump’s name popped up a half dozen times or so; Fauci, only a few times).
It’s actually more of a Detective Story than a Pandemic story.
Fascinating read. Also, from the reviews, it really seems to be pissing off the people you’d expect to be pissed off by not worshipping Dear Leader.
Highly recommended. I’m a terribly slow reader (I think that’s a function of my Engineering background, where missing any detail is thoroughly unacceptable) and finished it in a couple days. Thoroughly enjoyable.
ETA: What are the rules on second bivalents? I think my first was … I don’t recall (f’ing decaf). RIght after it came out. November comes to mind.
dmsilev
@Matt McIrvin: I’m similar. I mask for air travel (sitting in an airport right now, and at a guess would say that maybe 1 out of 50 people are masked) and for crowd events like indoor concerts, but that’s about it now.
New Deal democrat
Biobot updated yesterday, showing acontinuing nationwide decline to 218 particles/mL, the lowest since the late February through early April period last year. All regions participated except (marginally) for the West.
Case and death information are becoming very sporadic. The CDC’s last update shows daily confirmed cases continuing to decline, down to an average of 13,400/day. This is the lowest ever except for several weeks in June 2021; but the level is totally unreliable. Only the declining trend is credible.
At 11,920, hospitalizations are the lowest for the entire pandemic except for 4 weeks last spring. Deaths have declined to about 170/day as of the CDC’s last update, the lowest of the entire pandemic.
According to the latest weekly update, there are no new variants besides subvariants of XBB on the horizon, and no subvariant of XBB is making much headway.
The CDC also issued a paper arguing that almost every American over the age of 5 has either been infected with COVID, or immunized, or both.
We appear to be well into the endemicity stage, where almost the entire population has some level of resistance, and COVID is becoming an early childhood disease plus a disease of the immune compromised. For the past month, deaths have averaged under 250/day, a rate of less than 100,000/year. It is noteworthy that *every* variant or subvariant in the past year has been a descendant of BA-2, and may be hitting some kind of cul-de-sac.
So, the (annual?) springtime lull continues, the next test is what happens when summer heat drives gatherings inside.
Scout211
We both got our second COVID bivalent booster shots on Friday. When we arrived for our appointment, the shot giver (pharmacy manager) at CVS was unprepared. He told us that the FDA had not yet approved a second bivalent booster. I had a thing or two to say to that young man. LOL. He checked with his regional boss and found out that I was correct. I told him that I wouldn’t have made the appointment if the front page of the CVS appointment scheduling site hadn’t announced it. It actually was a friendly conversation and he was very nice. We got our shots and the whole thing was very friendly. He said he only had one box of vaccinations left and hoped that they would send him more. He also laughingly told us that he was wondering why they suddenly had so many COVID vaccination appointments that day. Do these young people ever check the news?
So thanks, AL. Your COVID updates are much appreciated. I was better informed than the pharmacy manager at CVS. LOL
NeenerNeener
@Nelle: You were able to get a 2nd bivalent booster? Since I was denied back in March by the pharmacist at CVS I’ll have to see if the pharmacist as Wegmans will give me one.
KimK
Everyone should subscribe to Your Local Epidemiologist. Her free newsletter is full of very helpful info, written in very understandable terms. Big fan here.
Scout211
@NeenerNeener: Approved for age 65 and older or immune compromised only right now.
satby
A point not obvious from the Eric Topol tweet about new autoimmune diagnoses is that the study refers to UNvaccinated people:
HCP@Scienceynerdt Apr 23
Hi @EricTopol
– one thing your substack email failed to mention is that the Nature study was in UNvaccinated individuals. We need more accurate assessment of risk in vaccinated individuals, I suspect risk will be lower. Pre-vaccine data doesn’t always apply to fully boosted ppl
2/ Can you please update this on your substack? I’ve noticed there is a subset of people in the community (fully boosted who are continuing to isolate), now suffering from severe anxiety and depression and information like this without vaccination context is keeping them isolated.
Eric Topol @EricTopol Apr 23
Agree. The point was added. Thanks
Dangerman
The way I read the 2nd booster rules, it’s age 65 or medical need (immunocompromised, etc). As I further understand it, there aren’t any documentation requirements for the medical need thing. It’s honor based…
…and, although I’m an Eagle Scout and all that comes with it (no fibbing allowed!), I think working in a high density, highly transient/tourist environment, coupled with another potential heart procedure in June (this would be number 3 or 4, depending on how one counts one of them), I’m not sure it’s fibbing to say medical need. OK, maybe a teeny bit, but, I could live with myself.
rikyrah
Of the COVID stories that I have been following since the beginning is LONG COVID. Has terrified me. Continues to.
satby
@rikyrah: See my comment on the Topal tweet. Most of the long covid studies have been done in populations that were unvaccinated, either because the vaccines weren’t released or because they got covid before they became eligible. More studies needed that include people who had been vaccinated.
satby
@Dangerman: all that actually constitutes “medical need”. So go get the shot.
satby
When it’s in the environment to the point where deer test positive for it, I think it’s safe to call it endemic.
NotMax
Since the initial two shots have been sticking with whatever the most current vaccine is every six months. Plan to stick to that timetable absent some new catastrophic outbreak.
All have been Moderna. So far, so good.
Scout211
@Dangerman: From the CDC site updated 4/19/2023.
Added: An Eagle Scout could say (truthfully) that they are under the care of a cardiologist for a heart condition.
Matt McIrvin
@satby: I’ve seen one or two alarming studies–don’t have links to them now–that seemed to me to indicate that vaccination is not as protective against long COVID as we’d like: that, yes, it reduces the chance of infection considerably for a couple of months after you get the shot, but if you do get infected, it only reduces the probability of long-term illness by maybe a factor of 2.
But those studies may have been casting a very wide net as to what constitutes “long COVID”–I had a cough for weeks after I got it but I wouldn’t consider that a life-changing disaster. They also may have used old notions of what constitutes “full vaccination”; there are a lot of people out there who are just running with two shots in them from the spring of 2021, and that’s not going to cut it for up-to-date protection.
satby
@Matt McIrvin: the current (as of last August) state of studies via the Lancet: (which to me says much more study needed, but trends seem potentially positive)
Amir Khalid
Malaysia’s Ministry of Health reported 562 new Covid-19 cases on 22nd April, for a cumulative reported total of 5,066,877 cases. 560 of these new cases were local infections; two new cases were imported. It also reported one death, for an adjusted cumulative total of 37,011 deaths – 0.73% of the cumulative reported total, 0.73% of resolved cases.
3,355 Covid-19 tests were conducted on 22nd April, with a positivity rate of 17.8%.
There were 14,161 active cases on 22nd April, 320 fewer than the day before. 452 were in hospital. 16 confirmed cases were in ICU; of these patients, 12 confirmed cases were on ventilators. Meanwhile, 881 patients recovered, for a cumulative total of 5,015,705 patients recovered – 99.0% of the cumulative reported total.
The National Covid-19 Immunisation Programme (PICK) administered 290 doses of vaccine on 22nd April: 12 first doses, 41 second doses, 156 first booster doses, and 81 second booster doses. The cumulative total is 72,830,198 doses administered: 28,134,373 first doses, 27,547,655 second doses, 16,328,328 first booster doses, and 819,842 second booster doses. 86.2% of the population have received their first dose, 84.4% their second dose, 50.0% their first booster dose, and 2.5% their second booster dose.
Matt McIrvin
@New Deal democrat: A couple of new XBB subvariants seem to be taking over in a relative sense in the Plains states and Texas, but they’re not causing a new major outbreak. Yet. Maybe it’s just a matter of time… maybe not.
zhena gogolia
@Matt McIrvin: Every person we know who has taken a plane trip lately has said, “We came back with Covid.” Doesn’t make me want to get on a plane any time soon. They’re all quite cavalier about it, despite being well into the 65+ group.
Suzanne
@Nelle: SuzMom (72 and still recovering from broken hip/surgery) got her bivalent booster on Saturday. She said the same thing…. none of the grogginess/crappiness like with the first shots!
zhena gogolia
@Scout211: The Stop & Shop guy also told us it wasn’t approved yet. Walgreen’s is making appointments, so we’ll go there.
New Deal democrat
@Matt McIrvin: If you check back over the past month or so, several XBB variants have been a major proportion of cases in the Upper Midwest States of region 7. But they don’t seem to have made much headway outside of that region during that entire period, so I have come to discount their causing a new wave or even wavelet.
satby
And while I’m ragging on Topol’s attachment to dramatic graphs, here’s the summary from the study his second graph is pulled out of (bolding mine):
The prevalence was associated with acute COVID-19 severity: individuals bedridden for seven days or longer presented with the highest prevalence (PR 2.25[1.85-2.74]), while individuals never bedridden presented with similar prevalence as individuals not diagnosed with COVID-19 (PR 0.92 [0.68-1.24]). The prevalence was statistically significantly elevated among individuals diagnosed with COVID-19 for eight of the fifteen measured symptoms: shortness of breath, chest pain, dizziness, heart racing, headaches, low energy/fatigue, trouble sleeping, and back pain. The analysis of repeated measurements rendered similar results as the main analysis.*
*Study not peer reviewed at time of publication.
Matt McIrvin
@satby: Thanks for the link to the meta-analysis. The scientific situation seems frustratingly incomplete–and of course those studies weren’t recent enough to say much about the effect of boosters.
I have some online friends who seem bent on amplifying the most alarming news about this, and if you just read their stuff it starts to seem like long COVID is a threat to the survival of civilization, and the tendency of the authorities to treat the pandemic as winding down becomes maddening.
Suzanne
@zhena gogolia: Yeah. Mr. Suzanne took the younger Spawns on a plane to see his parents last month, and he had minor yuckiness for a couple of days when he got back…. but it’s also super allergy-ful right now.
But we decided to do our summer vacation driving instead of flying this year. Came back with Covid last year.
Soprano2
@satby: This is why the stuff about long Covid infuriates me. It has a tinge of desperate fearmongering, as if they’re trying really hard to make everyone deathly afraid of it so that there will be more money and studies devoted to it. Reminds me a lot of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, which for years was seen by most doctors as not even a thing. They’re afraid that will happen with long Covid, too.
Matt McIrvin
@zhena gogolia: We flew to Spain and back, rode subways and went to some crowded places there, and as far as I can tell, we didn’t get COVID. But I spent most of my airport and airplane time with an N95 mask on–not 100% of it though. The rest of my family did not bother with masks.
Spain, like here, seems to be in a lull right now. The same is not true of everywhere in Europe.
Matt McIrvin
@Soprano2: To a large extent, Long COVID (the worst type of it at least) seems to be Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. It’s a way you can get CFS.
Soprano2
@zhena gogolia: We went to Hawaii in October and as far as I know we didn’t get Covid. We were both completely up-to-date on vaccinations, though.
satby
@Matt McIrvin: it is maddening. This is a new disease and it hasn’t been around long enough for true longitudinal studies to say definitely one way or another what the risk of “long covid” is. Post-viral syndromes exist for many diseases, that’s been true forever. They’re classifying a lot of symptoms as post covid that may genuinely be from the virus or may not be at all. But to conflate findings from unvaccinated with people partially or fully vaccinated is misleading and terrorizes people needlessly.
Matt McIrvin
@satby: …That bolded sentence is particularly interesting given all the rumors I’d heard from zero-COVID advocates previously about mild/asymptomatic COVID being just as dangerous or even MORE dangerous than acute COVID.
Soprano2
I think this is the whole point of doing it, actually.
satby
@Matt McIrvin: Always, always read the source material. It often concludes something quite a bit different from whatever excerpt a person chooses to highlight, and that’s a key way misinformation spreads. Not saying Topol is deliberately misinforming, he’s probably assuming, or hoping anyway, that people click through to the studies. And almost no one does.
satby
@Soprano2: often true, though see above for my assumption about Topol.
nc lurker
my gf and i are leaving in two weeks for canada,our first major roady since this all began.
got our bivalent yesterday,and we both feel pretty bad.unpleasant.but not as intense
as the first few times.but be prepared for a reaction.
Matt McIrvin
@Suzanne: Blooming plants in the public parks next to the Sagrada Familia really did a number on my head last Thursday, and it had me wondering what was going to happen if I got desperately sick with COVID before I could get home. But the main cause was probably that, under jet-lag disruption, I’d skipped a dose or two of my allergy pills. I was fine the next day.
Cameron
Off tomorrow a.m. for 2nd bivalent. I’ve had almost no reaction to any of the previous shots, but I’m pairing this one up with my 1st Shingrex. Expect to feel pretty lousy through the weekend.
satby
And because how studies are reported really does matter, here’s Kevin Drum explaining the Florida Surgeon Genhack’s selective editing of a study affected how it got reported and misinformed.
YY_Sima Qian
The CCP regime absolutely wants to control the narrative, & will go extraordinary lengths domestically to do so. All of the subterfuge merely feed the lab leak CT, but I don’t think the regime cares. It can use the lab leak CT to discredit all foreign criticism to domestic audiences.
Meanwhile, China may be at the start of a new wave, as immunity from infections in Dec. – Jan. wear off. Apparently, the just concluded Shanghai Auto Show was a major super spreading event.
Cameron
I started my playreading class at Florida Studio Theatre on Monday – option of either in-person or Zoom. I didn’t know about the in-person part until the class started, and now I’m glad I used Zoom (which I hate), since nobody in the classroom was masked. I’ll dial in from Bayshore Gardens, thanks anyway.
YY_Sima Qian
@Matt McIrvin:
@satby:
I think Long COVID has been both largely neglected by MSM & exaggerated by some of the experts/research. It will serve as an additional drag on all economies going forward, but it will not end civilization as we know it. Unless multiple infections really does have significant unforeseen detrimental effect.
Bill Arnold
@NeenerNeener:
I got one (bivalent COVID-19 booster) yesterday at CVS yesterday for some impending travel; had to call 2 CVSs in the area to find one that had it (and my regular independent pharmacy was out). Under 65, no questions were asked to e.g. tick off an eligibility box.
Scheduled on-line (annoying forms and wants insurance id) but was able to schedule an appointed a few hours later same day.
frosty
@dmsilev: We gave up masking at the grocery store awhile back but I’ll still wear it for plane flights. And the airport.
Matt McIrvin
@satby: Wow–that is despicable behavior, clearly fraud with malice aforethought.
wenchacha
Anyone looking for Novavax to use as a booster?
Mike in Pasadena
We got our second bi valent vaxxes yesterday at Kaiser, no appointment required. Made pests of ourselves calling Kaiser two days ago. Both of us over 65 and immune compromised. Departing on international travel in two weeks. No post shot symptoms.
opiejeanne
@Suzanne: We caught Covid on the train last May, returning from Chicago to Seattle.
We are going to buy a new car very soon, gave our reliable Subaru to our son so we’re down to a pickup, so maybe we should go on a road trip instead of another long train ride. That was an adventure, but I’d rather not ever be that sick again.
opiejeanne
@Mike in Pasadena: That’s good to know. My husband has a nasty cold right now, the first one in over 3 years, so when he recovers we’ll head over to Costco. They’ve been our best resource for flu shots for years, and now Covid vaccines.
O. Felix Culpa
Thanks for this update. I just scheduled my vax appointment at Costco. Easy online application.
Ruckus
I’ve had 5 shots but it’s been 7 months since the last one, so I’m looking for the next one. I was lucky that I got my first shot in the end of January 2021. I hate shots. I’ve been stuck by needles so many times over the last 8-10 yrs I feel like a pin cushion. I used to hate them, now it seems normal to get a needle stuck in an arm every so often, vaccines, blood draws, IV ports. It’s a wonderful life………. That is snark, just in case you were wondering…
O. Felix Culpa
@zhena gogolia: I recently came back from a long plane flight. Didn’t get covid, so that’s a data point of one. :)
glc
My wife and I just got boosted … and of course we knew this was on the way early, via this site.
In terms of reactions, I got a sore arm accompanied by some very weird dreams … not for the first time. Enough to know it worked!
Ruckus
@NeenerNeener:
I’ve had 5 shots since Jan 2021. 2 at the VA and 3 at the CVS up the street. Never a question but of course I was able to start very early in the timing.
Mike in Pasadena
@opiejeanne: One benefit of continued masking and curtailed travel is the three and a half years since either of us have had sniffles, a cough, cold, flu, or anything else. Unfortunately, we have lost three years of travel, travel we had long planned. We dont have many years left for anything including travel. I am a vaccine believer, always have been since getting the polio vaccine when I was in kindergarten or first grade. It was a long time ago. I remember standing in a long line of four thosand others getting many vaccines shot into both arms by Air Force nurses. They did not care about my yellow international vaccine record. No exceptions. If we want your opinion, we’ll beat it out of you. Or something. Ahh, the military mentality of 51 years ago.
Other MJS
@KimK:
Seconded; I’ve been a paid subscriber for some time.
Ruckus
@Mike in Pasadena:
Ahh, the military mentality of 51 years ago.
Was often fun wasn’t it? My first exposure was 53 yrs ago but I’d bet it was the same as yours. I wonder (not very hard or long) if it is the same today. I’d bet that it is rather difficult to change that concept and reasons for it in an organization that big, old and structured in a lead/led manner.
StringOnAStick
It’s been almost a month since I had Covid. I got sicker than my husband did and I’ve always had a reaction to the shots for a day or so and he never did; who knows if that was any indication. I am convinced though that if I hadn’t been fully vaccinated that I would likely have required hospitalization at some point. Still struggling with fatigue and when I try to do my old physical activities, it is at a much lower level, with a significant cough, and I’m wiped out for a day or two afterwards. I’m hoping the cough and fatigue continue to abate.
lowtechcyclist
My wife and son and I have traveled several times by plane since we finally got brave enough to do so (and all vaxxed) in June 2021. No symptoms after any of those trips.
When we got Covid in December, we’d been unmasked around the attendees of our local theater group. Won’t make that mistake again anytime soon.
WaterGirl
@StringOnAStick: I’m sorry you got hit so hard by Covid, and that it is lingering for now. So shitty.