Mainly, sure.
My family is multiply immune compromised with poor vaccine response, problematic vaccine reactions, and at elevated threat for post-COVID problems (together with acute and everlasting flare up of pre-existing situations). The poor outcomes I see in folks with the identical diagnoses will not be captured usually statistics on COVID-19 outcomes. So I really feel like my head is in an analogous identical place because it has been. A whole lot of the individuals who have been most prone to lengthy hospitalizations and horrific ICU deaths already died, however the virus isn’t simply protected to catch now for individuals who can’t depend on vaccines to stop poor outcomes.
Transmission is absolutely excessive proper now with a brand new circulating pandemic variant and one other one in all probability on the best way for this winter (by wastewater estimates, which traditionally tracked fairly properly with case information, greater than 1 in 40 folks within the USA is at present contaminated). WHO acknowledges the pandemic as current tense; so far as I do know, it’s solely talked about as previous tense in political contexts?
I’ll say that even for wholesome folks, I’ve not seen proof to assist the concept that COVID-19 has related ramifications to the flu for any threat cohort. Except for all the opposite variations between the viruses, one bout of the flu sometimes confers immunity that lasts 5 years or so, so folks simply don’t catch it as typically over the course of their lifespan. Extra folks find yourself with new power situations after COVID than after flu. Extra folks find yourself with dysregulated immunity and for longer; extra folks expertise a brand new power sickness, organ injury, or a cardiac occasion publish an infection. Simply counting lengthy COVID syndrome and never different problems, the bottom current estimate for lengthy COVID following an an infection is round 3%.
My group continues to endure from absences and closures throughout these huge waves as a result of some individuals are simply too symptomatic to work sick. COVID-19 is a bit uncommon in that the best way it undermines immune perform invitations coinfections, so winter waves are particularly tough with folks getting one an infection after one other (not simply COVID) and typically greater than separately.
Even earlier than there was ever a vaccine, many individuals made the statement {that a} majority of sufferers skilled the virus as only a chilly and made the argument that it was advantageous to stay life as traditional. Many individuals did ignore it from the beginning and accepted the dangers to themselves or others.
When the vaccine got here out, the promise was that it could cut back transmission sufficient that individuals wouldn’t have to masks or isolate (and most public indoor areas wouldn’t want to satisfy increased air flow or filtration requirements for the air) so as to curb transmission, stop new variants from arising, and defend immune compromised folks in the neighborhood. However as folks dropped suppression measures, the virus rapidly evaded immunity to the purpose that there have been totally vaccinated tremendous spreader occasions. Extra folks have died since then than died earlier than. However vaccinated individuals who have been low threat to start with have been statistically even decrease threat as soon as vaccinated, and once more the acute signs have been all the time chilly like for a majority of sufferers, in order that they determined to just accept the dangers that others had already accepted.
All trigger mortality has continued to spike after each wave for so long as we’ve tracked it. Vaccinated folks fared higher than unvaccinated within the stats, however the one demographic whose mortality wasn’t elevated above pre-pandemic norms have been individuals who hadn’t had COVID in any respect.
I respect that individuals get to decide on their very own dangers to soak up life, how a lot time they need to spend beneath the climate, and what odds they discover acceptable for what outcomes; individuals are in every kind of various conditions.
