The problem is it has to stop everywhere for us to get complacent. Especially, given that everyone wants to travel -- and travel abroad.
Pandemic is here. Nothing is over. We are distracted with other things. Things are "good" in San Francisco and the Bay now. No guarantee it will be so tomorrow.
That's not really established for COVID-19.
Also, endemic doesn't mean something doesn't matter. In much of Africa, malaria is endemic.
What you mean is "As a society we stopped caring."
E.g. I see lots of young not wearing masks to protect themselves, and I see more older people protecting themselves with masks. Seems like a reasonable balance.
https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/pandemic-vs-endemi...
It does not describe severity. Ebola is endemic in parts of Africa. I still hope nobody gets it.
We can change the meanings of words for political reasons but who do we do a disservice too?
Given that it is a word from my mother language I find it a bit insulting when politicians decide to change my language though to benefit for a year or two.
Tl;Dr: Saying that covid is "endemic" to the whole world, is an insult to my ears, logic, and a whole language and people. They should pick a different word if they want to disagree with doctors worldwide.
I think we just have a new normal in terms of life expectancy and mortality :(
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_influenza_statis...
Furthermore, respiratory disease avoidance on a society-wide scale has never and almost certainly will never be achieved. The assumption that it is an attainable goal is truly nuts.
A CDC study found that people who wore N95 masks were 83% less likely to get covid than people who wore no mask,[1] but that overstates their effectiveness. People who wear N95s tend to behave differently than people who don't wear masks. They get vaccinated more, avoid gatherings, and generally try to reduce their risk of infection in other ways. Also the timing of the study is important. It was conducted before more infectious variants such as omicron were around. And since it was conducted when California required masks indoors, only 5% of participants claimed no mask usage. So the study compared N95 people against the most hardcore anti-maskers, not the typical person who doesn't wear a mask these days.
It is for these reasons that I would bet that the real effectiveness of N95 masks is around 50%, not 83%. Useful, but not something that lets you go back to normal life risk-free.
Covid definitely isn't over, it's just that we've gotten better at treating it and people have decided that they are over it. It is still killing almost 2000 people a week in the US and it's very possible that we will see a huge spike in that as we get further into winter.
the "next" booster is referring to the updated vaccine that more effectively targets the dominant "Omicron" variant.
https://alexberenson.substack.com/p/six-recent-covid-deaths-...
That's why the age skew is so high.
The last time it was under 2000 was july '21
Ah thanks for the context.
I've only gotten the J&J vax (the worst one?) back in April of 2021, no boosters. I considered getting one but by then they were recommending boosters every few months and I decided to just "risk" it by not getting them? (I'm in my 30s and in good shape/health so don't feel vulnerable, but I understand that could be hubris and back-fire).
Back in those first few months I was keeping an eye on reports of side-effects, and J&J actually looked like the safest of the 4 available in the US. But it and AstraZeneca got absolutely vilified while any claims against Pfizer and Moderna got ignored as crazy conspiracies.
https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#demographicsoverti...
These stats don't indicate whether other confounding factors led to an individual's death.
The boosters likely make sense for some people, but there's little real data on their effectiveness. Outside of the more vulnerable, I'd avoid them personally. The proof just isn't readily available of continuous boosters being worth it to me.
Los Angeles.
I know lots of vaccinated people who are getting infected. Just last week I went to a conference here in LA. I was going to meet-up this week with on of the people I saw there. He told me he got COVID at the conference.
Yes, I've had one booster. I travel a lot for business. I think it might be prudent to take further precautions. I have no reason to believe this is unsafe for me.
When I got it, I was a healthy, fit person without any of the comorbidities that go along with COVID.
Last week I had a mountain biking accident and broke half my ribs and punctured a lung. Then I got COVID in hospital. Fortunately it was quite mild, and even that was a bit of a nightmare as coughing was hell and I had quite low blood oxygen.
Given the risks of a booster are so low (though non-zero) and the risk that your health can change before you manage to contract COVID, it seems like the smart proposition to me to get the booster.
In my family sphere, covid is over. Though, to them covid was always overblown with the response being worse than the illness.
In my main friend group, most still feel we are still in the middle of covid. Though, from my perspective, their words/fears seem to differ from their actions.
Your San Francisco social circles are different from mine. Most people I talk to about this got the bivalent booster and got the old booster last year.
But people do not seem super worried at this phase. The booster is something routine like a flu shot.
I don't recall it ever being sold to me as that, and though I regularly get them, I've never gotten a flu shot with that expectation. It reduces your odds and makes the thing more mild. That's the point. That's what I've been told my whole life. They're not magic solutions to everything in your life, they can't even be 100% sure about how to tweak them for the dominant strains that season, but they help.
This stuff makes people go a little crazy with unreasonable expectations. I remember people complaining in pre-pandemic years ... "the flu shot is only x% effective so why bother?" And the reason has always been that x > 0, any two-digit number for x is pretty worth it, even if it intuitively sounds small. It's pretty similar for COVID.
I'm curious about this. In my world COVID is over now. I live in San Francisco. Nobody I know is getting boosters or is worried about it anymore.
Where do you live and what are the circumstances like there that you're considering getting your "next" one? (you've been boosted before?).