To Vaccinate or Not---The Rat Flu Odyssey Continues

Welcome to Iowa. Very small percentage of people wearing masks for months. We went to a wedding a couple of weeks ago and zero percent mask rate. Spent hours in a large room with hundreds.
Then a school orchestra concert for daughter with 1% mask rate.

The die hard mask hold outs where the wife works have all caught it the last few weeks. And others not so careful have also caught it coughing all over her office before turning positive. Maybe v1 Omicron has still kept her from being reinfected so far or maybe she is keeping up with the variants through microexposure. Wishful thinking prolly but that is where we are.

No outbreaks we know of at 97% maskless middle school for daughter which is ending Wednesday.

At this point we have just broasted our arms to the max and living our best lives in the soup. Multiple exposures and vaccines have changed how we operate. The risk of infection with Omicron V3.1415967 is still there but the likelihood it is catastrophic is nowhere near where it was

Personally still waiting to get my ass kicked by covid. Flu kicks my ass so bad.

The only precautions I am taking anymore are my innate attraction to outdoor spaces and natural aversion to indoor crowded places/ group social events unless required by the I'm a dad and husband grid.

Sent from my SM-G991U1 using Tapatalk

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by uglymoney

The only precautions I am taking anymore are my innate attraction to outdoor spaces and natural aversion to indoor crowded places/ group social events unless required by the I'm a dad and husband grid.

Sent from my SM-G991U1 using Tapatalk

---

Same boat here. Fingers crossed it avoids me for a while. Happy I run from crowds, (outside of music).

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by riser4

Yer fuct. Hope you and yours don't get too sick and have a speedy recovery.

---

reminds me:

Here's an odd one... In-law relative, substantially lost sense of smell and taste over a year ago for unknown reasons. Just had Covid the last week or two (had it kind of bad too, considering that she's vaccinated etc: Felt somewhat disabled, had considerable difficulty getting muscles to fire for the mechanics of get out of bed). Now, recovered from Covid... smell and taste are back for the first time in over a year.

That is odd, but good news. Wife is much better on day 8 but I am certain we will test positive when we do a Rapid tomorrow. Sweating being able to fly home on the 10th.

My 8 year old just popped a positive test, a week after the wife and I. Youngest is still showing as negative somehow, even though the two of them have been joined at the hip for most of the last week.

Well, I finally got it. I don't really know when- there were lots of ailments at our 16k base camp in Pakistan- were they covid or just being at 16k and eating different food and probably got giardia, etc.. I actually left camp a couple of days early after having some dizzy spells (perhaps early covid?). I had some other weird stuff too- really bloodshot eyes that were sore but getting better. Test in Islamabad was negative so I thought maybe I was past it and flew home, but the at-home test here was positive. Between covid and 11 time zones worth of jetlag I'm a mess and my dreams are freaking weird.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by JimmyCarter

My 8 year old just popped a positive test, a week after the wife and I. Youngest is still showing as negative somehow, even though the two of them have been joined at the hip for most of the last week.

---

Anecdotally, what I'm seeing with this recent wave is that everyone in a household gets it, but a lot will miss it because they give up testing or don't use PCRs. Testing positive 8, 9 ,10 days after the first person is not uncommon. The CDC guidelines are garbage.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by funkendrenchman

Anecdotally, what I'm seeing with this recent wave is that everyone in a household gets it, but a lot will miss it because they give up testing or don't use PCRs. Testing positive 8, 9 ,10 days after the first person is not uncommon. The CDC guidelines are garbage.

---

Yup. Under CDC updated guidelines, my 8 year old would never have tested positive, because she's asymptomatic and wouldn't have been tested.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/covid-v...arch-paxlovid/

Did an updated vaccine from Pfizer come out in March as promised?

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Percy Rideout

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/covid-v...arch-paxlovid/

Did an updated vaccine from Pfizer come out in March as promised?

---

It was created in March, but the current trial and approval process is still far too lengthy to keep up with the current pace of the variants.

A coworker came back into the office yesterday 9 days after testing positive. She is still positive. I closed my door and stayed away.

Reminder:

“Are you infectious if your test is Pos but it’s been 5 or 10 days?”

The answer is - ASSUME YES!

*This doesn’t mean you must remain in deep isolation*

Assuming infectious leads to MANY routes to NOT infect others even without isolation

Interesting article in the New York Times about how Omicron was much more deadly to older people than Delta was. I remember plenty of people suggesting here that Omicron wasn't really making people very sick. Perhaps on a percentage basis that's true, but in any case the sheer number of people infected caused a huge spike in deaths for those 65+.

Quote:

---

During the Omicron Wave, Death Rates Soared for Older People

Last year, people 65 and older died from Covid at lower rates than in previous waves. But with Omicron and waning immunity, death rates rose again.

By Benjamin Mueller and Eleanor Lutz

May 31, 2022, 12:03 p.m. ET

Despite strong levels of vaccination among older people, Covid killed them at vastly higher rates during this winter’s Omicron wave than it did last year, preying on long delays since their last shots and the variant’s ability to skirt immune defenses.

This winter’s wave of deaths in older people belied the Omicron variant’s relative mildness. Almost as many Americans 65 and older died in four months of the Omicron surge as did in six months of the Delta wave, even though the Delta variant, for any one person, tended to cause more severe illness.

---

Attachment 417795

Well

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mPb8tb3D6N0

Well shit. 26 months dodging this shit and not even a close call. Just found out some folks I did dinner with yesterday tested positive this morning. They felt fine yesterday and one developed symptoms overnight, other one has no symptoms.

Hope my vaccines hold the line!

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by uglymoney

…

The die hard mask hold outs where the wife works have all caught it the last few weeks. …

---

They held out for so long… sad

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by funkendrenchman

It was created in March, but the current trial and approval process is still far too lengthy to keep up with the current pace of the variants.

---

More likely the variant vaccine isn't looking any better than the current vaccine. I'm just guessing here--maybe someone here knows--but I'm thinking that the FDA was willing to give EUA after a quick trial if results were good. The companies likely looked at results early and decided they didn't justify getting an EUA.

Worth reading:

https://newrepublic.com/amp/article/...-omicron-covid

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by liv2ski

So doing my Google searches while my wife naps, I saw you can test positive for up to 30 days on a Rapid test. They suggested going to a Dr. to document your infection date so you could fly into the USA 10 days later regardless of test results needed. Anyone care to comment on that? Thanks

---

I saw the “doctor note” option on United app when I flew back to the States recently. That’s your way to get back home. Sorry about your troubles. Hope you and the Mrs get well fast.

A friend just flew back from Mexico. Tested positive the day of his flight. How did you make it back, says I?

“You can buy negative test results cheap in Mexico.”

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by funkendrenchman

Worth reading:

https://newrepublic.com/amp/article/...-omicron-covid

---

That's uplifting.

About 9 days in now, I ag tested negative today, but am still exhausted with irritated sinuses and attendant snotwads. Taste and smell are diminished, hopefully just because of the sinusitis.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Lvovsky

I saw the “doctor note” option on United app when I flew back to the States recently. That’s your way to get back home. Sorry about your troubles. Hope you and the Mrs get well fast.

---

Thx for the kind comment. My wife tested negative 36 hours ago and I woke up feeling good today. Sore throat, headache, cough and runny nose all gone. I hope to test negative by the weekend. I did save the verbiage needed from a Dr if needed though, but I hope not.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by funkendrenchman

Worth reading:

https://newrepublic.com/amp/article/...-omicron-covid

---

Stop blowing holes in the vaccine mandate crowd's narrative.

Are we stupid enough to deny the amazing benefits of vaccines 1.0 and not invest in vaccines 2.0 like nasal and universal coronavirus vaccines? Based on the reading comprehension of people like Percy, the answer is yes we are:

"And vaccines still matter. Although existing vaccines no longer offer the protection they once did, given new variants, they still help prevent severe illness in many people, particularly among those who receive boosters. “None of these variants we have seen so far has been able to completely evade our immune system,” Weiskopf said. While existing variants can evade antibodies, “all of them are recognized by our T-cells—the second line of our immune system,” she said. That’s what keeps an infection from progressing to severe illness. And the genes defining our T-cell response are the most diverse in all of the genes that the human body has, Weiskopf said—which means vaccines, even when they don’t prevent infection, will continue to help keep many of us safe."

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Percy Rideout

Stop blowing holes in the vaccine mandate crowd's narrative.

---

What holes? The vaccines reduce hospitalizations and deaths and make a big impact on being able to keep hospitals operational. Is it is going to create herd immunity? Not at this time, but that was NEVER the goal of the first round of vaccines.