Siderea recommends: Mask up now

[sonia]

siderea recommends: If for some reason you stopped masking everywhere, now would be an excellent time to resume masking, and use a N95/KN95 or better.

You may remember her excellent posts in 2018 telling us all about the flu pandemic 100 years before, and then in 2019 and 2020, keeping track of "novel coronavirus" news and giving good advice like "stock up on groceries and supplies, pandemics move slowly and then very very fast."

Her post is fairly long because it contains extensive quotes. One from a hospital administrator in Tulsa, Oklahoma saying that they're slammed with all the usual suspects (flu, RSV, Covid) plus a new mystery illness that acts like Covid but all tests are negative. Many schools and school districts, mainly across the southern US, are suspending classes or going remote because of illness.

Relatedly, Five years of the COVID-19 pandemic: An interview with Dr. Arijit Chakravarty by Benjamin Mateus at the World Socialist Web Site, December 30, 2024. Lots of concrete scientific information about Covid's effects and how we could have (could still!) handle it better.

This is a difficult virus from a public health perspective, but public health couldn’t have handled it worse. Although it remains a solvable problem, the way it was addressed has undermined the ability of public health to do anything useful at this point, given the current leadership and controls over public health as they stand. They are doing nothing except reminding us to wash our hands and not eat raw eggs.

Comments

[sabotabby]

OKAY THIS MYSTERY ILLNESS THING

My partner, my best friend, his co-worker, the concierge at my mum's building, and multiple students all came down with a Thing. It's not covid. They keep testing. It's like a really bad sinus infection. Partner was repeatedly in the hospital, concierge was in the ICU. Nothing seems to kill it. No one seems to be able to identify what it is. No one seems to be as freaked out as I am.

[sonia]

Wow, that is scary! Best wishes to all for a swift recovery. Thanks for letting us know, and yeah, makes complete sense to be freaked out.

[silveradept]

Here's hoping that luck continues as well as my habits of masking have. (There's always risk, because food is a valid life choice, but I try to minimize it.)

I would certainly like to see many more masks around than I currently do.

[sonia]

Wishing you continued luck.

I figure, even if I catch something while wearing a mask, I'll get a lower dose of the virus and therefore not get as sick. I hope! That's what I tell myself when I start feeling ridiculous for still masking while very few others are.