COVID BA.2: Silence
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Posted Mar 24, 2022, 12:28 PM UTC
450
Idk man. I’m vaccinated, booster, I wear a mask when I’m in a crowded place like the train or bus. What more do you want from me? At some point we need to make this (for society) chronic and not emergent. Something we have managed to the best of our ability and carry on with reasonable precautions in place. We are not gonna go back to March 2020 level lockdowns for each new variant, nor should we. It sucks but people are just tired of dealing with it, it is what it is.
We’re never getting rid of covid. That ship sailed about 2 years ago when people decided that staying home for 2 weeks and wearing a mask properly was just TOO inconvenient.
At this point the best case scenario, and hopefully realistic one, is that it becomes like the flu, there’s a new slightly tweaked vaccine that you get every fall and that’s that.
29
I’m with you. I’m boosted and wearing a mask, plus I work from home now. What else can I possibly do?
And yeah, we messed up in spring 2020.
9
What was messed up in the Spring of 2020 is that we imposed overly strict controls to the entire country, instead of a more focused containment approach. That backfired, as communities with virtually no cases were required to shudder businesses and schools. So by the time Delta came around, people were well over lockdowns and masks, and it spread like wildfire. Omicron quickly filled in all the reminding gaps.
Covid is now endemic. We need to live with it. It dominated the news cycle for 2 years, 24x7.
The media that profited from early fear mongering have realized most Americans would rather take their chances with a what equates to cold-like symptoms (or death) than change their way of life.
Right or wrong, that’s the way it works.
-6
Weird. I’ve been seeing all kinds of things on the news over the last two years. Not sure what news sources you turn in to but COVID 24/7 hasn’t been my experience whatsoever.
1
That’s pretty much what it’s going to be. Annual boosters just like the flu.
First company to combine the flu and CoVID vaccine boosters is gonna be rich.
4
Pretty sure that already exists, they offered it to me for my booster at CVS but I’d already gotten my flu shot earlier.
1
This is some speculation, but the "sweep" across Europe may also have a lot to do with the sudden massive uprooting of 1.5 million people or so and the measures needed to make sure they are taken care of.
16
I hear stuff daily about this. It’s an omicron sub variant, so since so much of the us population had omicron, the majority of the us population has antibodies for this variant. Severity is similar to omicron, just more infectious.
16
According to this it's basically the same but more contagious. No stronger against vaccines or worse on health
Edit: "more" swipe texted to "not"
12
I don't think there's any conspiracy, unfortunately the majority of the US has decided the pandemic is over despite that not being the case.
There are two large groups of people right now;
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Believe it's real, have been vaccinated/boosted and have decided that's good enough, they're bored and the weather is getting nicer.
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The ones that never really took it seriously in the first place.
There's small groups of "other".
We'll start hearing about the new variant when cases sky rocket here.
9
Putting aside the fact that “two majorities” is not really possible…
There’s a large group of people who are looking at the data, see it’s in recession, and understand that the disadvantages for mask wearing and other cautions in general are worse, at this moment, than the disadvantages of not doing them.
That could change. But at this moment that’s what the data says to me.
6
Fair point, editing my two majorities comment.
The issue is it likely won't be in recession soon because no one is being proactive about the new variant, always reactive. Cases will go out and we'll start over again.
2
It already is in recession.
Covid is not going away. Sorry we lost that with vaccine hesitation. The best we can do is be reactive to the data. At this point the data is low so we should loosen restrictions to help with mental health and other issues.
1
I hear all of that, I wish people could make it a little longer until kids under 5(or 6 I don't remember what the cutoff is) are eligible for the vaccine.
We're close.
3
I did everything I was asked to do for over two years at this point. I wore a mask when things just started to pop up here, even before the shutdown, continued to wear a mask as instructed for two years after that. I have gotten my shots and boosters, I have isolated when exposed, I have had countless swabs shoved in my nostrils and waited anxiously for results. My wife and I raised our newborn in virtual total isolation for two months in the spring of 2020. I have watched countless businesses that we loved close up for good. We’ve also done all of this while many around us disregarded all precautions and basically laughed at us and anyone else who were cautious. We’re done. Our daughter needs to be interacting with others more. Needs to see faces so she doesn’t have sensory overload when someone just smiles at her. Fuck, I need to see faces. I’m tired of nodding as someone talks to me even though I didn’t understand a god damn thing they said because of background noise.
The immunocompromised, those with social anxiety (seriously the number of times I have read people on here say that they love that everyone wears masks now), etc. should take whatever precautions they need to take, but I think it’s time we get on with life.
3
Because nobody cares?
2
Exactly
2
Not following, how does a conspiracy of silence lead to panic and profit? My general impression is that BA.2 is already here, more transmissible and mainly of concern to the unvaccinated.
Latest article on BA.2, related links and discussion embedded.
BA.2 is technically classified as a part of the Omicron family of viruses, but genetically this strain is very different, with about 40 mutations separating it from its cousin, BA.1. That makes it about as distinct from the original Omicron as Alpha, Beta, and Delta were from each other.
It is more contagious than Omicron's BA.1, which was already an extremely contagious virus with a basic reproduction number, or R-naught, of about 8, according to William Hanage, an epidemiologist at Harvard's T.H. Chan School of Public Health, which means that a single infected person could be expected to transmit the disease to an average of 8 others.
https://www.cnn.com/2022/03/22/health/ba-2-wave-us-other-countries/index.html
1
Its not radio silence as much as it is a diluted messaging. It's too hard to discern any difference in coverage now, than anything in the past 2 years. No one has really known anything about the virus to date until after the fact. So any conjecture at this point is common knowledge and just repeating the same stories from 2 years, 1 year , 2 months ago. Bad, inconstant, contradictory warnings from the CDC has caused people to tune out or lose trust in official announcements. So people are burned out, not tuned in, not willing to get hyped about the 4th wave after we've been through 3 already and see how these things end every time. Also I think people think we'll beat it this time.
1
Thank you johnbbean for your submission to r/Maryland, but it's been removed due to one or more reason(s):
Removed - Not Maryland Related - All posts on this subreddit should be related to Maryland.
Please feel free to send a modmail if you feel this was in error.
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blah blah blah
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[deleted]
-5
Took me about 20 seconds on google.
Symptoms are also widely reported.
Yeah, same with what I've read. Perhaps the overall silence is born out of general fatigue.