The variant is called EG.5 and is a descendant of Omicron.

The Center for Disease Control and Prevention estimated that EG.5 accounted for roughly 17.3 per cent — or one in six — of new COVID-19 cases in the U.S. in the past two weeks.

  • BlameThePeacock
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    64
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    10 months ago

    The number of people ignoring this is terrifying. Study after study keeps showing its a problem.

    There’s going to be a massive accumulated health crisis in 10-20 years where a quarter of the population has a wrecked vascular system. On par with diabetes, but in this case untreatable which is going to kill millions far earlier than they should.

    • Takatakatakatakatak@lemmy.dbzer0.com
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      13
      arrow-down
      13
      ·
      10 months ago

      I’m going to play devil’s advocate to explore my own anxiety about this situation.

      My fears are exactly the same as yours.

      The part that I cannot reconcile is this: I took my initial doses of vaccine, I had a booster. I did all the right things in terms of minimising exposure and the risk to myself and my family.

      I still caught CV19 twice. Maybe it didn’t affect me as intensely as if I had not been vaccinated, who knows, but it fucked me up badly each time.

      My entire family have lived the same experience.

      Most people’s thinking in my circle now seems to be: why would I expose myself to the risk of cardiovascular complications by being continuously vaccinated, when I am still going to get infected and face those same cumulative cardiovascular risks again.

      From a risk management perspective if I am not in a disease cohort likely to face mortality from infection, am I not reducing my total risk by simply reducing my exposure to the spike protein overall and electing to skip vaccine boosters altogether? I am going to get infected either way, that much is clear.

      I am massively concerned about the long term consequences of repeated infection with this pathogen but it seems the world has moved on from giving a fuck.

      I don’t know a single person who has received a booster in the last 12 months and given the shift in media narrative here it is not hard to see why.

      • BlameThePeacock
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        43
        ·
        10 months ago

        You’re assuming the booster is giving you the same (or anywhere even close) to the vascular damage caused by catching the virus. As far as the studies I’ve read, the vascular impact from catching COVID is dozens of times worse than a booster.

        You say “Maybe it didn’t affect me as intensely as if I had not been vaccinated, who knows” The doctors know, that’s why boosters are being offered to everyone for free in Canada.

        This is one of the reasons why Canada, which has a much higher vaccination and now booster rate than the US is doing better than the US with it’s abysmally low booster rate. Canada is losing about 50 people per week right now, the US is still at around 2000 (40 times higher, despite only having a little over 8 times the population)

        What the world does or doesn’t do is completely irrelevant to your personal choices. If they all jumped off a bridge to their death, would you do it too? I’ve continued masking in crowded public areas, boosted regularly (last Monday was my most recent dose), kept my kids masked at school, boosted them regularly too, none of us have had COVID at all. Make your own choices.

        • Dull_Juice [he/him]@hexbear.net
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          6
          ·
          10 months ago

          Have you been boosting every 6 months? I’ve been mulling over getting another booster or waiting till the new one comes out. I’ve been more up to date than most, but last one I got was when the bivalent vaccine came out.

          • BlameThePeacock
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            5
            ·
            10 months ago

            Mostly, we had to adjust the schedule to happen a little earlier to get the kids done a few weeks before school starts back up each fall.

            • Dull_Juice [he/him]@hexbear.net
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              2
              ·
              10 months ago

              Yeah I’ll have to figure out when the new booster is going to come out and plan accordingly I think. Feel like I’m in no man’s land timing wise

      • corsicanguppy
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        33
        arrow-down
        1
        ·
        10 months ago

        I did all the right things […]

        I still caught CV19 twice.

        One can do all the right things and still win the bad lottery. It’s about reducing risk on the whole so all our chances are reduced.

      • TemporaryBoyfriend
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        31
        arrow-down
        1
        ·
        10 months ago

        The numbers are still in favour of getting vaccinated. Complications from the vaccine are as close to zero as any medical procedure could be. The complications from raw-dogging COVID are far greater, regardless of your cohort. Turning a life-threatening infection into an inconvenience is what the vaccines do. If your concern is minimizing total risk, getting a COVID booster each year with your flu vaccine is the way to go.

            • mranachi@aussie.zone
              link
              fedilink
              arrow-up
              1
              ·
              10 months ago

              Sorry about that, works fine for me. Thanks for trying to look i guess.

              Its Australian Technical Advisory Group on Immunisation (ATAGI) advice on COVID boosters. Your can probably find with duckduckgo.

              I’ve got a lot of trust for them, as they were always very clear with their recommendations and reasons during the pandemic.

      • Bloobish [comrade/them]@hexbear.net
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        31
        arrow-down
        1
        ·
        edit-2
        10 months ago

        Gonna be honest from the perspective of a current critical care nurse, as long as you didn’t end up proned face down in the hospital with a ventilator stuck down you and paralyzed on Nimbex and losing a lobe of your lung then you got out lucky.

        I have a damn near knee jerk reaction to talking about covid in which I tell people that “still got it” that as long as they didn’t need serious medical intervention then they should be fucking thankful for not having to endure whatever the fuck fever dream of Hell existed in the first two years of covid in most hospitals in the US. Shit was and still is fucked beyond fucked.

        edit: this is also not at all meant to downplay/ be mean everyone that got covid and luckily avoided a vent, many that contracted “mild” covid suffer from long covid with no end in sight.

        • TemporaryBoyfriend
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          1
          ·
          10 months ago

          This meshes with what I was told by my grandmother’s doctor early on in the pandemic. I met with him because my family had “concerns” about vaccinating her (i.e. conspiracy theories) and he basically said that COVID was one of the most cruel and agonizing ways to go, especially for older folks who were especially vulnerable.

      • Lmaydev@programming.dev
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        27
        ·
        10 months ago

        It was never claimed to stop you getting it. Same as many vaccines it doesn’t give sterilising immunity.

        But it’s completely possible it stopped you dying or going to hospital.

        The vaccine causes almost no damage but COVID 100% causes massive damage if you aren’t vaccinated.

        • areyouevenreal@lemmy.fmhy.net
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          1
          arrow-down
          10
          ·
          10 months ago

          It was never claimed to stop you getting it. Same as many vaccines it doesn’t give sterilising immunity.

          They literally claimed that it prevented symptoms in 90+% of people. This is an outright lie.

            • areyouevenreal@lemmy.fmhy.net
              link
              fedilink
              arrow-up
              2
              arrow-down
              3
              ·
              edit-2
              10 months ago

              Effectiveness when first made available in UK

              https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-55145696

              Effectiveness with Delta variant:

              https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-58257863

              You can’t “sources please” your way out of been wrong.

              I am not suggesting that people don’t get vaccinated, but it’s very clear these vaccines haven’t hit the targets they were meant to. I personally don’t think newer varients count for all of the huge discrepancy between the claims and reality. We need better prophylactics and medicines than this. More widespread use of antivirals might help with this.

              • Lmaydev@programming.dev
                link
                fedilink
                arrow-up
                3
                ·
                10 months ago

                If you read my comment I didn’t make any claims About it’s effectiveness. You did. Which is why I asked for sources

      • AOCapitulator [they/them]@hexbear.net
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        20
        ·
        edit-2
        10 months ago

        I still caught CV19 twice. Maybe it didn’t affect me as intensely as if I had not been vaccinated, who knows, but it fucked me up badly each time.

        there being a few 2000 year old roman bridges doesn’t mean they were good at building bridges that last a long time, they built LOTS of bridges and a couple out of tens and tens of thousands survived

        survivorship bias

      • UnicodeHamSic [he/him]@hexbear.net
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        8
        arrow-down
        1
        ·
        10 months ago

        I remember when vaccines rolled out. I would have to sit down and go over it. But there was a time where I stopped having to process bodies for the morgue at my job and that was a nice change. We still saw lots of sick people, they just didn’t die nonstop. So vaccine all thr way.