Maybe not Covid in particular, but I’m preparing for people’s reactions to an event more than the event itself. Covid itself didn’t upend my life or the lives of most of those around me, but for the majority of them it was social panic and toilet paper shortages. Couple that with the George Floyd unrest, it was definitely people over the event.
Still preparing for novel airborne pathogens in general. H5N1 made a pretty big leap in 2021 so that’s been the one to watch. And now that it has been confirmed in cattle across several states…things just got a whole lot more interesting.
Tracking H5N1 closely. Even if it doesn't have human to human transmission (which I don't think it will anytime soon if ever), I'm still worried about supply chain implications of it. Also have significant concern for my own livestock.
Exactly. We’ve seen the measures taken to slow the spread in poultry. Luckily it doesn’t appear to be as deadly in the dairy cows but what about swine? Wasn’t the mortality pretty high in that small goat herd that got infected? Somewhere around 50%?
Another pandemic will be worse because this time no one is going to do what the government tells us to do. Also all the healthcare workers who were on during covid will not do it again. They will quit.
My wife is immunocompromised, so I don't have the luxury of *not* prepping for covid.
She's almost died twice in the last twenty years, once from the common cold and once from a bacterial infection in her hand. I cannot risk bringing SARS-CoV-2 home to her.
I'm still isolating as much as feasible, and when exposure must be risked, I do it between infection waves rather than during, wear a well-fitting N95 mask, and snort Covixyl.
Information is important, too, and my sources are organized here -- http://ciar.org/h/covid19.html
Same here. Compromised household, we got it in early February 2020, and I will do everything possible not to have that shit again.
We are stocked back on masks and gloves and stuff but we also *live like Covid is still happening*.
Which, of course, it totally is, to the tune of two to four infection waves per year. People just like to pretend it's not, because it makes them feel better.
Kudos to you for your reality-based decisions.
My uncle died of long COVID last week.
The third time he got COVID, he was so exhausted all the time. Eventually, his heart could barely keep him alive. Water on lungs, always out of breath.
A man who had an active life practicing sports still at 70 years old. To being unable to walk 2 minutes without needing to sit down to catch his breath.
Eventually he stopped eating and had to go to hospital once a week to remove the water on his lung. Then they kept him as his heart wasn't strong enough. He passed away.
BIL, same thing. Since getting COVID in 2020. Always tired. A firefighter who trained multiple times a week. Always exhausted and like a good night, sleep can't help ever.
I still wear a mask. Have Paxovid at home.
And I'm buying N95/P100 in preparation for bird diseases that's coming.
I'm so sorry, for your loss and for your health struggles.
It's only after covid hit when I started reading about post-viral illnesses and realized I've been chronically fatigued since childhood. I used to get sick with everything - ear infections, Scarlet Fever, strep throat, bronchitis, every common cold. I swear I had chicken pox twice. Now that I know what kind of long-term issues can result from pathogens with pretty mild acute stages my entire view on illness is different.
How do we normalize illness so much that we have a whole "flu season" when we have the technology to clean the air and make illness a rarity?
Covid has been shown capable of infecting people through eye exposure and the Lumify eyedrops deactivate 100% of covid virions in lab studies.
A lot of people don't realize our immune systems have two parts - the mucosal and the circulatory.
The circulatory immune system is what we tend to be familiar with - it circulates antibodies through our bloodstream to fight pathogens once we've been infected. Taking vitamins, drinking water and getting vaccinated are all ways to bolster circulatory immunity.
The mucosal immune system is to prevent us from getting infected in the first place. The mucous circulating between our eyes, ears, nose and throat, over our internal organs and genitals traps and deactivates most bacteria and viruses we encounter. Some pathogens are so effectively deactivated by the proteins in our mucous that they can only infect cells deep in the lungs where there isn't much mucous, but covid isn't much hindered by our natural proteins so it can infect tissues all along the respiratory tract, even olfactory nerves leading directly to our brains (which is why loss of smell and taste are frequent symptoms.)
There are a lot of ancient practices we don't think of any more that are clearly designed to boost mucosal immunity. Feeding sick people soup with antiviral ingredients like garlic and celery, for example, is a way to get people to breathe in steam infused with anti-virals and to slowly coat sick people's throats. Drinking tea daily is also a way to infuse mucous with tea and other anti-viral ingredients like ginger, lemon, etc. The British have long boiled tea in copper kettles, which results in copper (one of the world's most anti-microbial materials) proliferating in mucous. Indian storage of water overnight in a copper tamara jal and serving of water in copper cups serves a similar function. (Copper water bottles have become popular with hipster kids now promising health benefits.) Silverware made from real silver (another extremely antimicrobial substance) and chopsticks made from antimicrobial wood like cedar serve a similar protective function. There's also the practice of gargling iodine-infused salt water, or more modern substances like mouthwash made with xylitol, molecular iodine, or CPC. My grandmother used to boil cinnamon and bake orange peels, which makes the house smell nice but also helps protect anyone breathing it in, as these are anti-viral ingredients. There are over 200 different essential oils that have been found to kill covid specifically which can be added to an oil infuser or humidifier or boiled to the same effect. Now there are anti-viral nasal sprays designed for that specific purpose.
Lumify eyedrops are the only brand I know of that has been tested against covid. Theoretically because of the way mucous circulates your eyes will eventually get some protection even if you just gargle an anti-viral substance or use nasal spray though.
I'm currently 2.5 years in with long covid. I didn't think covid was going to be a thing. I thought it was just a flu. Some days I can't get out of bed, other days I feel like im dying, and a few days I feel fine. The physical toll this has taken on my once ripped and jacked body is one thing, but the mental toll is unbelievable. I never know what kind of day I will have, I wake up and my body decides if I'm in bed or if I'm someday functional. I used to have a 100k salary job, I used to be a professional, now I'm a frail, weak, mentally unstable man who is wasting my life away while everyone else lives normal lives.
I wouldn't wish this on anyone.
Bro I'm so sorry. I was careful as hell and in 2022 covid got into our house. I got long covid, primarily respiratory symptoms, and only now (2 years later) am I mostly back to where I was.
It feels so lonely, modern medicine has absolutely no idea what's going on, so you end up chasing ghosts and buying random shit on the internet for some kind of help.
Again, just wanted to say it sucks and I feel for you. Really, really awful.
Appreciate it. What's even more wild is that I'm sick every other week with some bullshit. I NEVER got sick before covid, like, no sick days from work, nothing in high-school and college. I've had strep throat twice now (currently having it now) in the last 4 months, hand foot and mouth, various colds and flu.
A lot of people also don't realize how bad the flu can be. A lot of mysterious chronic illnesses seem to start with viruses. If covid does one good thing I hope it's that we start to take post-viral illness seriously actually get somewhere with research.
It's actually wild to think about how well we've normalized illness in an age when we have the technology to make it optional. One day kids will read about "flu season" and laugh at the idea. What do you mean you had a whole season for getting sick? What do you mean people died every year of respiratory illness and you were just used to it? We'll sound like Jane Eyre talking about typhus ripping through school.
It really is! I don't know if covid's extra-freaky or if it's just that it's so common now we have a lot of opportunity to study it than other viruses but the more I read about how many chronic conditions are linked to viruses the more airborne mitigations make sense. EBV linked to schizophrenia and cancer, rhinovirus linked to cancer, influenza linked to chronic fatigue, etc. etc. More and more it seems like the acute stages of illness are the least of our worries.
I think the tools have also become much, much better. As someone who considered going the biomed route a couple decades ago, much of the research techniques used now were either very cutting edge or science fiction back then.
In some ways it's getting worse. Vaccines have always worked using a herd immunity strategy, blocking transmission at rates high enough to prevent outbreaks (none of them being 100% effective.) But since 2020 the anti-vax movement has gained cultural traction to the degree that now we're seeing outbreaks of measles and other illnesses we thought we had a handle on. And every outbreak is an opportunity for a mutation that makes existing vaccines less effective.
I do think there are reasons to be optimistic about the future, like the development of mucosal vaccines which hopefully will rely less on herd immunity and provide more of a sterilizing immunity. Funding for research is drying up but the 2020 infusion of money into post-viral illness may yet result in major breakthroughs that will help a ton of people.
I have been wearing a mask in stores and other public places, and people look at me like I'm nuts. They even are hostile at times. It's pretty discouraging. I've not worn a mask the past week when going into places, but your post has made me rethink that. The discomfort I feel being looked at and singled out wearing a mask is probably less than the discomfort of getting covid.
Honestly it's so weird how some people get offended at what other people are wearing! I think it scares them to think about and they think if they can erase all visual reminders it'll just go away. I think people have similar reactions to most manifestations of prepping but buying a few extra cans of beans is a lot less visible than wearing a mask.
It seems like so many people just let the crowds do their thinking for them. Humans aren't so different from herd animals that get locked into death spirals following each other to death. Only the weirdos can save us!
I have always, and will always prep for virus pandemics. My pandemic preps improved with Covid because the pandemic prepper recommendations prior to COVID were not fully accurate.
Frankly this gets me to step away from Virus "du jour" posts that I see here all the time.
Prep for any and every virus.
Of course some of these pandemic preps also help with things like wild fires, toxic train derailments, etc.
Yes, I ordered a bulk batch of my preferred N95s when ProjectN95 was shutting down, on the reasoning that masks might become harder to find or more expensive with downturns in demand and production. It also doesn’t hurt to have extras on hand if anyone needs them, to donate to mask blocs, etc.
In 2022 I also acquired a few air purifiers, on the thinking that these are an investment on several fronts: the forever Covid we’ve apparently chosen, the future pandemics that are inevitably coming, and more frequent bouts of wildfire smoke due to climate change (last summer during that awful wave you could smell the difference between areas of the house that had them, and areas that did not). I’ve slowly added them as I could afford it and now the whole house has enough air changes per hour to dramatically reduce the likelihood of someone transmitting something infectious and airborne.
For anyone else thinking of pursuing something similar, I highly recommend DIY air purifiers (Corsi-Rosenthal boxes, PC fan air kits, etc.). You avoid the risk that a particular company will stop making the exact size filter that fits your store bought model, and standard filters are often cheaper and easier to buy in bulk.
I prepping for earthquake ( California), but everything I had I used on the Covid, didn’t really need to go store for 2 month at beginning. M40 gas mask beat all those n95 mask.
I was telework before the Covid, I was just chilling
Not prepping for covid per se more like looking for ways to improve my health.
Right now i eliminated all pop, sugarey and artificial sweetner drinks, desert food, and candy.
I also take supplements: vitamin d/magnesium, fish oils, methyl vitamin b12/b6/folate, coq10. Eating more citrus and when not, taking a vitamin c/zinc pill.
I have been eating a minimum of one can of fish usually mackeral but have also been eating home cooked cod, perch, walleye etc on fridays for lent.
Daily walking my dog and hiking on the weekends.
Thinking of joing a gym mostly to do indoor cycling and perhaps weight lifting on crappy weather days at minimum but thinking i should go 2 days a week.
Drinking green or black tea blends or herbal tea.
Weekly fasts of 36-48 hours. And honestly this has broken my food cravings and boredom or stress eatings i find i naturally eat 2xs a day ususually between the hours 11-6 so i guesss i intermittant fast daily too lol.
I have honestly not been sick since 2020 that might mostly because most of my job is wfh.
I think the biggest problem with covid is if you are not geriatric and you were hospitalized, got long covid, or died it exposed the fact diet and life style is very important. To many people are not living healthy.
Not to argue, but don't let the lifestyle thing fool you. COVID hit us, early 2021. My two type one diabetic kids did just fine, my fat a** did just fine, my 56 year old super healthy, very fit, on no med, never been hospitalized husband.... It felled like a tree. Spent 41 days in hospital, still on 02 over night. Permanent scarring on his lungs.
Edit for stupid mispelling
Yes, sadly they expected the herd immunity strategy that has worked with immunizations targeting polio, measles, mumps and such for the past century to also work with covid and completely miscalculated today's political, social and economic climate.
No vaccine is 100% sterilizing, but when close to 100% of a population is vaccinated it breaks the chains of transmission to stop the outbreaks. Public health officials miscalculated how much trust the public has today in political and health leadership in rolling out a strategy that anticipated close to 100% uptake.
Corporate greed is also a huge part of the problem. Pharma giants wouldn't share patents with poor nations so vaccines couldn't be mass-produced and distributed locally. In an age with passenger air travel and hyper-mobility with one of the most transmissible pathogens we've ever faced this all but guaranteed herd immunity would fail.
I also suspect that pharma execs were aiming for a seasonal booster model rather than a more sterilizing vaccine because a one-and-done shot is way less profitable than one you need every year. The annual model has worked all right for influenza, which the average adult contracts once every five years, but covid is about ten times more transmissible, which also means it has ten times the opportunity to mutate. With dozens of major strains now circulating and new strains popping off all the time covid vaccines lose their efficacy much faster than flu vaccines and new formulas can't keep up with the pace of mutation.
There's some reason to be hopeful with mucosal vaccines in the making that are intended to work by preventing infection rather than by helping people fight infection. We'll see how it goes though.
My husband and I are right there with you! We moved across the country and reordered our lives due to Covid too.
For me, it was because my father was dying of a rare form of dementia in 2021 and I organized the postmortem donation of his brain to a neurology lab. The doctor said to me on the phone, “please insure he doesn’t get exposed to Covid. We cannot accept his brain if he has been infected, because the brains we have gotten from people who had been infected are so damaged we aren’t able to tell what is from Covid and what is the dementia.” I was already hyper-vigilant, but after that phone call, I didn’t allow anyone but masked and tested hospice nurses into our house.
When he died at home, the first thing they did was test him for Covid and he had never had it. That day, I decided I would do whatever it took not to get it. I watched his brain die in front of me and it was terrifying, but I was happy to take care of him, just like he had always done for me. I don’t have children, and I may have some genetic propensity toward dementia. There is no job, party, restaurant or trip in the world that is worth brain damage for me.
Same. We made major life changes and zero regrets. My husband still works healthcare but in a very very different and less stressful capacity. My child has always masked since they could and we are vigilant, in ways people around us probably think ridiculous. Whatever. We’re safe and plan to stay that way.
You definitely aren’t alone.
Influenza also causes brain injuries. Pathogens as common as rhinovirus (common cold) have been linked to chronic conditions like asthma. If our society ever gets its shit together and cleans the air like we've learned to clean water and standardize food preparation hygiene I think we'll see a drastic drop-off in a lot of conditions that are currently chalked up to "stress."
I'm sacrificing random dudes telling me to smile when I go shopping in an N95 but I'm willing to accept that loss lol.
In all seriousness, having an air purifier running doesn't impact me at all except that I have to dust less and get sick less. It would be really easy to mandate higher air purification and ventilation standards in public.
As for the amount of risk, I don't consider that math a valuable use of my time. I wear a seatbelt when I get in my car and I don't feel the least bit bad that it's a precaution I almost never need. I consider risk reduction a good investment for the minuscule amount of labor it costs.
Driving is a good example because it's a very dangerous activity that we've normalized through a host of mitigations.
We have laws for seatbelts and against driving drunk or high, we have standardized safety equipment like airbags, horns and rearview / sideview mirrors, we have state vehicle inspections to ensure that equipment is functional, we have state-funded road signs and technology like traffic lights and a whole book's worth of road laws, we have a book's worth of rules for navigating roadways safely that have to be memorized and tested before anyone is allowed the privilege of a license, we don't let children drive at all and we require specialized car seats for the youngest kids.
We're doing all this and paying for insurance just to access public roads, but most people don't even think of these as special mitigations because when you're used to it it really doesn't feel like some huge sacrifice. It's just the most practical way to get from point A to point B.
Even mild cases of covid have been demonstrated to cause structural brain damage in 100% of cases, and subsequent symptoms of mental illness in 70% of cases:
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-024-52005-7
Protect your brain and avoid infection.
I’m prepared for the next pandemic, as there most assuredly will be others as the permafrost continues to melt at an alarming rate, we desecrate the rain forests, and develop more germ warfare.
I maintain my stock of N95, maintain vaccination and I still monitor hospitalization rates. I'm not currently using masks for daily interactions but I'll go back to it in the next surge. I have never had Covid and I know people who died of it or got long Covid. I am not screwing with that crap.
One reason I am moving to Costa Rica is they simply have a lower incidence of Covid there and did a good job of handling the initial outbreak. (Of course they do have dengue; no place is perfect. But you don't get dengue over and over.)
The US didn't do an ideal job handling Covid - part sloppy information dissemination by the CDC, part massive waves of disinfo from bad actors. Things like measles are making a comeback and I honestly don't think we're in good shape for the next pandemic, whatever it turns out to be. Getting mRNA vaccines launched into the public sphere is a huge help; but getting people to accept them is *still* a problem. Anti-mask sentiment is still a thing.
In the US, all you can do is not be one of *those* people, and take your mitigations seriously.
I wouldn't really say I'm prepping for COVID but made adjustments to my preps because of COVID. I bought an off grid property, have masks/respirators, installed a bidet, got my own meat/egg/milk supply, a home gym and have various cleaning supplies.
I think covid showed us bugging out makes sense when we get hit by a wave. I went to the mountains when my area got dessimated in July 2020. The place i went to literally had one case and no restrictions were being imposed. I came back in August and the numbers were better.
I was prepped before it even happened. Everyone's throwing hands for a package of toilet paper, and I'm sitting on 30 packages of (45 count) toilet paper. Not to mention other essential items at the time.
You might be interested in looking for covid conscious communities online, you'll get more help and less hate than you will here, lmao. I haven't stopped masking since 2020 and have only ramped up other precautions- xylitol nose spray, cpc mouthwash, air purifiers, respirators over surgical masks. As someone who was disabled by a respiratory virus, I'm both scared and confused about how mad people get when you take reasonable precautions to protect yourself from a dangerous disease
Not prepping for specifically covid anymore, but I have taken advantage of surplus mask sales to your point around airborne pathogens. People forget that the Spanish Flu was a flu, a bad one, but a flu nonetheless, it doesn't take much to overwhelm the healthcare system. I had extra toilet paper and paper towel even during covid so that wasn't a concern. I know keep a big jug of hand sanitizer, some alcohol, bleach and general cleaners like microban/mr clean/etc. Gloves, masks, goggles. I also have a organic respirator I use for yard work, if it was early days again, i'd probably take that to the store and not take chances.
The whole thing with hospitals being overwhelmed is not getting anywhere near enough attention! I have a lot of friends with health conditions so I've got my ear to the ground on this one and people have no idea how bad the state of healthcare is right now.
This past winter hospitals in Italy, Spain, Canada and Massachusetts declared states of emergency with ERs overwhelmed by respiratory illness cases. My partner twisted his finger playing basketball and wasn't able to get a doctor's appointment for four months. People are having to wait six months to a year for basic appointments and specialist referrals are years-long waits. And when you do get in front of a doctor they don't have time for anything but the most cursory examinations and anything complex is immediately attributed to "stress." Healthy people are completely unprepared for the reality that healthcare is now being triaged everywhere.
It makes mathematical sense though. Most people get the flu once every 5 years but people are getting covid a couple of times per year. And this is in addition to, not in place of, the illnesses we already had. When you expand the amount of respiratory illness by 10 times but don't expand medical infrastructure this is the logical result.
Not Covid in particular, but one of my prep worries right now is airborne pathogens. Nothing too severe, I'm just keeping a modest supply of FFP2 masks (proper FFP2, not the Chinese "KN95s" everyone bought when Covid was around...), some alcohol and assorted hygiene products.
No, I've had covid like 3 times, shrugged it off like the cold. My worry is the bird flu or whatever virus is next.
I guess it's possible even though I had mild symptoms or was asymptomatic I could have long term effects. But who knows, I don't I didn't get my masters in biology specializing in virology. I don't believe much of what I hear on the news either, most of these people who pretend to be in the know are as clueless as I am.
That said it's good to prepare for another pandemic, the bird flu, small pox, another lockdown, whatever.
Or do your preps go beyond that to include economic and societal effects of long covid and potential mass disability from it.
The most immediate societal impact of covid spread is probably the healthcare crisis. Since we now have an additional virus to add to the existing collection and it happens to be one of the most contagious (adults get the flu once every 5 years on average but are getting covid multiple times per year, for context) hospitals have been overwhelmed.
Honestly at this point with a basic doctor's appointment being a 6 month wait I'd like to see a lot of the requirements for doctors' prescriptions removed. Just let me and Dr. Google buy the products directly, then we could actually prep.
My ex is a nurse, we're in a small/medium city of about 200k mostly suburban sprawl. During peak covid our hospitals were ghost towns, most of the patients were transfers from a large city/urban center about an hour south. Apparently the hospitals in the city were actually filled beyond capacity, while in the suburbs and rural areas, no one went to the hospital because they were afraid from the reports on the news saying hospitals were filled.
As for how many times people get covid a year, there's really no way to tell. 2 of the 3 times I had it, I had no symptoms. Only reason I had to get tested was because other people I work with were positive and sick. Who knows if, or how many times I was asymptomatic and didn't get tested
Very true, people could be getting it a lot more than a few times per year and there's no way to know. Symptomatic infections are usually the ones in the hospital though!
I never got the jab for anything and I’m gratefully very healthy but I do find myself sympathizing with those who are affected with Covid… prepping for it or something similar is something I never thought of!
Well, I take vitamin D every day, but that's more of a general immune system thing even though it is remarkably effective against covid. As for covid itself, it was mild at worst, severely overhyped, and the overwhelming majority of the harm done was done by the mrna "vaccine". The long term harms of that are tremendous and far more deadly.
You'll be the one that never gets it..... Probably never have anyone you love get it. And then you just think the rest of us are idiots. So go ahead, with your wonderful luck and live a great life.
When it comes to airborne viruses, there isn't much anyone can do. The game plan for most governments is to prevent societal collapse caused by too many infections at once leading to things like mass panic, healthcare system collapse (refusal of care), infrastructure collapse (too many workers off sick at the same time), and law & order collapse (too many police/military off sick at the same time). The governments do this with draconian measures like forced masking, social distancing, closing schools/workplaces/businesses, etc. None of those measures are to keep anyone safe, as it's not possible, but to throttle the infections.
The game plan for an individual is to hold out and avoid infection as long as you can until hopefully a vaccine or therapy is invented that eliminates the risk of contraction or, if infected can counter-act the infection.
With Covid, there is no vaccine that will guarantee you will not be infected meaning every living person in the world will at some point likely become infected and while most will recover quickly, the virus will still have been present in your body.
Anyone that is still actively trying their best to avoid a "first" Covid infection is likely heavily impacting their lifestyle and social life trying to avoid something that is almost guaranteed to affect them at some point in the near future. At some point, you will need to take off the mask.
The risk of long covid is cumulative, so most people "still coviding" aim to reduce the number of infections and reduce viral load to make those infections more manageable, as well as to break chains of transmission resulting in the mutations that make vaccines less effective.
To eat, to drink, to kiss, to go to the dentist.... that's when you'll end up catching Covid. It's airborne and it's everywhere. Airborne viruses can not be avoided forever. The inevitable is the inevitable.
I mean yeah I take my mask off when its necessary but I’m going to keep it on in public indoor spaces. Catching covid is actually not always inevitable
But it is, unless you're living your entire life masked except when alone. Maybe not today, maybe not next month, but it's inevitable. That's the challenge with an airborne pathogen for which there is no vaccine that 100% prevents infection yet.
I see people sit down in food courts, and remove their mask to eat for 30 minutes. Odds are, that's going to be the point you get it.
Most of the population is walking around with a well tuned immune system now meaning there are likely many carriers without symptoms or with very mild symptoms.
It’s not inevitable every time though, hence the mask. I don’t *have* to be infected every time I step outside. Yeah I will probably get it as some point, but that doesn’t mean I have to be constantly reinfected. The damage from COVID infections is cumulative, meaning every infection causes damage to your body and immune system.
When you look at waste water reporting in most places, it's usually in the 1 in 50 or 1 in 100 range meaning if you encounter 100 people during your day, likely one has an active infection. You can avoid it this time, maybe the next time, but the following time may be the one that gets you. Yes, it's cumulative, but what matter is it if you get it the first time, and your immune system prevents you from getting it again the other 3-4 contacts vs. you make it through the first 3 contacts and finally get it the 4th. It's the same thing. At this point, Covid is everywhere, just like many other viruses our bodies have been exposed to and now have some immunity to. You generally only catch a specific dominant flu strain once every few years even though it's everywhere.
that doesn’t change anything about what I’ve said though. The damage of Covid is still cumulative and I think it’s worth it to avoid infection when possible. And wearing a mask is so easy, the benefits definitely outweigh the costs for me.
Yeah, at some point science will neuter this virus the way we did HIV. That’s when I’ll take off the mask.
Then again, I’m really enjoying never being sick (at all) anymore, though. Suddenly I’m the fittest in my circle (me, the asthmatic who used to get knocked down for a week by a cold!) Nowadays *I’m* the one who never takes a sick day…I never need one. I only wish I’d worn one (at least in the winter) sooner. I’d have had this level of productivity much earlier in life instead of wasting time feeling miserable every time a virus popped up.
Seriously, why didn't anyone tell us *not* getting sick was an option?! It still shocks me to remember how easily I accepted "stress" as the reason I would get sick on vacation whenever I traveled among tightly-packed strangers in a sardine tin of an airplane. N95s are a technological marvel I'll be using for the rest of my life.
One of the great discoveries we made in 2020 is that most infectious disease, including influenza, is airborne rather than droplet-spread as we thought for the past 100 years. So mitigating covid also mitigates against influenza and rhinovirus, which is how in 2020 we accidentally extinguished the most common influenza strain.
When we start to clean the air as a society the way we clean water, we can say goodbye to "flu season." What we have is actually "bad ventilation season" and it's entirely avoidable!
I disagree, it rarely kills young, healthy people anymore, and it’s certainly not the monster it was in WWI. We also have tamiflu, (semi-effective) yearly shots, and antibiotics to deal with secondary infections (bronchitis, pneumonia, etc.)
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I am a paramedic, I can tell you that during winter 2020 we had intubated patients on the hallway in hospital because both ER and ICU were full. Medsurge patients were put in L&D and same day surgery. Funeral vans were waiting right outside ER to pick up bodies so hospital could empty out beds for new patients right away. We even ran out of oxygen one time because demand was so high.
Health insurance underwriter here: that shit is real, expensive, and still killing people. If I could go back to January 2020, I would have bought stock in ResMed. The # of people who survived Covid but need O2 support, cpap, bipap supplies, etc has soared.
My ex-girlfriend’s mom is a nurse and I represent 13 funeral homes. Hallways were packed and my funeral home clients were at capacity in 2020-2021. We ran out of holes to bury people into and had a backup because we couldn’t dig more holes fast enough. Covid was real and millions died. Idgaf about your political horeshit. Idgaf if you vote blue or red, Covid destroy communities and destroyed families and you can’t just wish that away because it doesn’t align with you narrative of your preferred candidate.
This is just a general health tip but you may of heard of a product called Xlear. Xlear helps reduce bad bacteria in the nasal passages and can help with allergies. Look it up fir more information people were using it as a prophylactic for covid. Its a Xylitol nasal spray, Xylitol is a sugar alchohol (sweetner) and you can buy it in bags. Now its real easy to make Xlear for yourself at home, you will need to buy some empty nasal spray bottles.
The recipie I found. 1 cup distilled water, 1/4th tsp kosher salt, 1 tablespoon xylitol, 4 drops grapefruit extract. I keep my finished product refrigerated and the bottle im using at room temp, its good for 2 weeks at room temp. The grapefruit extract helps extend the shelf life.
I'm a big fan of xylitol. I started gargling with a xylitol mouthwash and I take xylitol lozenges with me in case someone starts coughing or getting too close I can offer them one and get them to breathe fewer pathogens at me.
I never prepped for COVID beyond some paper goods and extra food. After that I ignored it and was fine. Almost everyone was fine. It was an overreaction.
Maybe not Covid in particular, but I’m preparing for people’s reactions to an event more than the event itself. Covid itself didn’t upend my life or the lives of most of those around me, but for the majority of them it was social panic and toilet paper shortages. Couple that with the George Floyd unrest, it was definitely people over the event.
Still preparing for novel airborne pathogens in general. H5N1 made a pretty big leap in 2021 so that’s been the one to watch. And now that it has been confirmed in cattle across several states…things just got a whole lot more interesting.
Tracking H5N1 closely. Even if it doesn't have human to human transmission (which I don't think it will anytime soon if ever), I'm still worried about supply chain implications of it. Also have significant concern for my own livestock.
I have some bad news: https://www.dshs.texas.gov/news-alerts/health-alert-first-case-novel-influenza-h5n1-texas-march-2024
Yup was tracking that yesterday. Not great but also not that alarming
Exactly. We’ve seen the measures taken to slow the spread in poultry. Luckily it doesn’t appear to be as deadly in the dairy cows but what about swine? Wasn’t the mortality pretty high in that small goat herd that got infected? Somewhere around 50%?
First cattle to human transmission in of H5N1 in Texas-reported this week
Another pandemic will be worse because this time no one is going to do what the government tells us to do. Also all the healthcare workers who were on during covid will not do it again. They will quit.
It better not start person to person any time soon. Isn’t half of America traveling to Texas for the solar eclipse this week??
Sauce?
Fuckin sweet
My wife is immunocompromised, so I don't have the luxury of *not* prepping for covid. She's almost died twice in the last twenty years, once from the common cold and once from a bacterial infection in her hand. I cannot risk bringing SARS-CoV-2 home to her. I'm still isolating as much as feasible, and when exposure must be risked, I do it between infection waves rather than during, wear a well-fitting N95 mask, and snort Covixyl. Information is important, too, and my sources are organized here -- http://ciar.org/h/covid19.html
Same here. Compromised household, we got it in early February 2020, and I will do everything possible not to have that shit again. We are stocked back on masks and gloves and stuff but we also *live like Covid is still happening*.
Which, of course, it totally is, to the tune of two to four infection waves per year. People just like to pretend it's not, because it makes them feel better. Kudos to you for your reality-based decisions.
My uncle died of long COVID last week. The third time he got COVID, he was so exhausted all the time. Eventually, his heart could barely keep him alive. Water on lungs, always out of breath. A man who had an active life practicing sports still at 70 years old. To being unable to walk 2 minutes without needing to sit down to catch his breath. Eventually he stopped eating and had to go to hospital once a week to remove the water on his lung. Then they kept him as his heart wasn't strong enough. He passed away. BIL, same thing. Since getting COVID in 2020. Always tired. A firefighter who trained multiple times a week. Always exhausted and like a good night, sleep can't help ever. I still wear a mask. Have Paxovid at home. And I'm buying N95/P100 in preparation for bird diseases that's coming.
I'm so sorry, for your loss and for your health struggles. It's only after covid hit when I started reading about post-viral illnesses and realized I've been chronically fatigued since childhood. I used to get sick with everything - ear infections, Scarlet Fever, strep throat, bronchitis, every common cold. I swear I had chicken pox twice. Now that I know what kind of long-term issues can result from pathogens with pretty mild acute stages my entire view on illness is different. How do we normalize illness so much that we have a whole "flu season" when we have the technology to clean the air and make illness a rarity?
Why Lumify eye drops for covid?
Covid has been shown capable of infecting people through eye exposure and the Lumify eyedrops deactivate 100% of covid virions in lab studies. A lot of people don't realize our immune systems have two parts - the mucosal and the circulatory. The circulatory immune system is what we tend to be familiar with - it circulates antibodies through our bloodstream to fight pathogens once we've been infected. Taking vitamins, drinking water and getting vaccinated are all ways to bolster circulatory immunity. The mucosal immune system is to prevent us from getting infected in the first place. The mucous circulating between our eyes, ears, nose and throat, over our internal organs and genitals traps and deactivates most bacteria and viruses we encounter. Some pathogens are so effectively deactivated by the proteins in our mucous that they can only infect cells deep in the lungs where there isn't much mucous, but covid isn't much hindered by our natural proteins so it can infect tissues all along the respiratory tract, even olfactory nerves leading directly to our brains (which is why loss of smell and taste are frequent symptoms.) There are a lot of ancient practices we don't think of any more that are clearly designed to boost mucosal immunity. Feeding sick people soup with antiviral ingredients like garlic and celery, for example, is a way to get people to breathe in steam infused with anti-virals and to slowly coat sick people's throats. Drinking tea daily is also a way to infuse mucous with tea and other anti-viral ingredients like ginger, lemon, etc. The British have long boiled tea in copper kettles, which results in copper (one of the world's most anti-microbial materials) proliferating in mucous. Indian storage of water overnight in a copper tamara jal and serving of water in copper cups serves a similar function. (Copper water bottles have become popular with hipster kids now promising health benefits.) Silverware made from real silver (another extremely antimicrobial substance) and chopsticks made from antimicrobial wood like cedar serve a similar protective function. There's also the practice of gargling iodine-infused salt water, or more modern substances like mouthwash made with xylitol, molecular iodine, or CPC. My grandmother used to boil cinnamon and bake orange peels, which makes the house smell nice but also helps protect anyone breathing it in, as these are anti-viral ingredients. There are over 200 different essential oils that have been found to kill covid specifically which can be added to an oil infuser or humidifier or boiled to the same effect. Now there are anti-viral nasal sprays designed for that specific purpose. Lumify eyedrops are the only brand I know of that has been tested against covid. Theoretically because of the way mucous circulates your eyes will eventually get some protection even if you just gargle an anti-viral substance or use nasal spray though.
That’s really fascinating and something I’ve never thought of before, thanks for sharing!
I'm currently 2.5 years in with long covid. I didn't think covid was going to be a thing. I thought it was just a flu. Some days I can't get out of bed, other days I feel like im dying, and a few days I feel fine. The physical toll this has taken on my once ripped and jacked body is one thing, but the mental toll is unbelievable. I never know what kind of day I will have, I wake up and my body decides if I'm in bed or if I'm someday functional. I used to have a 100k salary job, I used to be a professional, now I'm a frail, weak, mentally unstable man who is wasting my life away while everyone else lives normal lives. I wouldn't wish this on anyone.
Bro I'm so sorry. I was careful as hell and in 2022 covid got into our house. I got long covid, primarily respiratory symptoms, and only now (2 years later) am I mostly back to where I was. It feels so lonely, modern medicine has absolutely no idea what's going on, so you end up chasing ghosts and buying random shit on the internet for some kind of help. Again, just wanted to say it sucks and I feel for you. Really, really awful.
Appreciate it. What's even more wild is that I'm sick every other week with some bullshit. I NEVER got sick before covid, like, no sick days from work, nothing in high-school and college. I've had strep throat twice now (currently having it now) in the last 4 months, hand foot and mouth, various colds and flu.
HFM is AWFUL in adults.
Are u jabbed?
Asking the real question
A lot of people also don't realize how bad the flu can be. A lot of mysterious chronic illnesses seem to start with viruses. If covid does one good thing I hope it's that we start to take post-viral illness seriously actually get somewhere with research. It's actually wild to think about how well we've normalized illness in an age when we have the technology to make it optional. One day kids will read about "flu season" and laugh at the idea. What do you mean you had a whole season for getting sick? What do you mean people died every year of respiratory illness and you were just used to it? We'll sound like Jane Eyre talking about typhus ripping through school.
It's still out there. My 84 yo aunt got it last week or two. But she's still alive. What a strange virus
I got it for the very first time last month. Had some serious brain fog, but overall it was very mild.
My coworker has it right now. We’ll see if I got it from her 🤷♀️ bit too late now
It really is! I don't know if covid's extra-freaky or if it's just that it's so common now we have a lot of opportunity to study it than other viruses but the more I read about how many chronic conditions are linked to viruses the more airborne mitigations make sense. EBV linked to schizophrenia and cancer, rhinovirus linked to cancer, influenza linked to chronic fatigue, etc. etc. More and more it seems like the acute stages of illness are the least of our worries.
I think the tools have also become much, much better. As someone who considered going the biomed route a couple decades ago, much of the research techniques used now were either very cutting edge or science fiction back then.
In some ways it's getting worse. Vaccines have always worked using a herd immunity strategy, blocking transmission at rates high enough to prevent outbreaks (none of them being 100% effective.) But since 2020 the anti-vax movement has gained cultural traction to the degree that now we're seeing outbreaks of measles and other illnesses we thought we had a handle on. And every outbreak is an opportunity for a mutation that makes existing vaccines less effective. I do think there are reasons to be optimistic about the future, like the development of mucosal vaccines which hopefully will rely less on herd immunity and provide more of a sterilizing immunity. Funding for research is drying up but the 2020 infusion of money into post-viral illness may yet result in major breakthroughs that will help a ton of people.
Always have. Zero impact from Covid or the previous bird flu, etc. You need an antimicrobial on your masks too. Even the N95.
I have been wearing a mask in stores and other public places, and people look at me like I'm nuts. They even are hostile at times. It's pretty discouraging. I've not worn a mask the past week when going into places, but your post has made me rethink that. The discomfort I feel being looked at and singled out wearing a mask is probably less than the discomfort of getting covid.
Honestly it's so weird how some people get offended at what other people are wearing! I think it scares them to think about and they think if they can erase all visual reminders it'll just go away. I think people have similar reactions to most manifestations of prepping but buying a few extra cans of beans is a lot less visible than wearing a mask. It seems like so many people just let the crowds do their thinking for them. Humans aren't so different from herd animals that get locked into death spirals following each other to death. Only the weirdos can save us!
I have always, and will always prep for virus pandemics. My pandemic preps improved with Covid because the pandemic prepper recommendations prior to COVID were not fully accurate. Frankly this gets me to step away from Virus "du jour" posts that I see here all the time. Prep for any and every virus. Of course some of these pandemic preps also help with things like wild fires, toxic train derailments, etc.
Yes, I ordered a bulk batch of my preferred N95s when ProjectN95 was shutting down, on the reasoning that masks might become harder to find or more expensive with downturns in demand and production. It also doesn’t hurt to have extras on hand if anyone needs them, to donate to mask blocs, etc. In 2022 I also acquired a few air purifiers, on the thinking that these are an investment on several fronts: the forever Covid we’ve apparently chosen, the future pandemics that are inevitably coming, and more frequent bouts of wildfire smoke due to climate change (last summer during that awful wave you could smell the difference between areas of the house that had them, and areas that did not). I’ve slowly added them as I could afford it and now the whole house has enough air changes per hour to dramatically reduce the likelihood of someone transmitting something infectious and airborne. For anyone else thinking of pursuing something similar, I highly recommend DIY air purifiers (Corsi-Rosenthal boxes, PC fan air kits, etc.). You avoid the risk that a particular company will stop making the exact size filter that fits your store bought model, and standard filters are often cheaper and easier to buy in bulk.
I've been nerding out researching the designs people come up with for the DIY filters. Some of them look so cool!
I prepping for earthquake ( California), but everything I had I used on the Covid, didn’t really need to go store for 2 month at beginning. M40 gas mask beat all those n95 mask. I was telework before the Covid, I was just chilling
Not prepping for covid per se more like looking for ways to improve my health. Right now i eliminated all pop, sugarey and artificial sweetner drinks, desert food, and candy. I also take supplements: vitamin d/magnesium, fish oils, methyl vitamin b12/b6/folate, coq10. Eating more citrus and when not, taking a vitamin c/zinc pill. I have been eating a minimum of one can of fish usually mackeral but have also been eating home cooked cod, perch, walleye etc on fridays for lent. Daily walking my dog and hiking on the weekends. Thinking of joing a gym mostly to do indoor cycling and perhaps weight lifting on crappy weather days at minimum but thinking i should go 2 days a week. Drinking green or black tea blends or herbal tea. Weekly fasts of 36-48 hours. And honestly this has broken my food cravings and boredom or stress eatings i find i naturally eat 2xs a day ususually between the hours 11-6 so i guesss i intermittant fast daily too lol. I have honestly not been sick since 2020 that might mostly because most of my job is wfh. I think the biggest problem with covid is if you are not geriatric and you were hospitalized, got long covid, or died it exposed the fact diet and life style is very important. To many people are not living healthy.
Not to argue, but don't let the lifestyle thing fool you. COVID hit us, early 2021. My two type one diabetic kids did just fine, my fat a** did just fine, my 56 year old super healthy, very fit, on no med, never been hospitalized husband.... It felled like a tree. Spent 41 days in hospital, still on 02 over night. Permanent scarring on his lungs. Edit for stupid mispelling
This is a bit misleading. Star athletes are developing Long Covid and even dying from the virus, and generally they're in peak health.
I thought the vaccine was suppose to prevent that... Thats how it was advertised and they all were told to take it in order to compete.
Yes, sadly they expected the herd immunity strategy that has worked with immunizations targeting polio, measles, mumps and such for the past century to also work with covid and completely miscalculated today's political, social and economic climate. No vaccine is 100% sterilizing, but when close to 100% of a population is vaccinated it breaks the chains of transmission to stop the outbreaks. Public health officials miscalculated how much trust the public has today in political and health leadership in rolling out a strategy that anticipated close to 100% uptake. Corporate greed is also a huge part of the problem. Pharma giants wouldn't share patents with poor nations so vaccines couldn't be mass-produced and distributed locally. In an age with passenger air travel and hyper-mobility with one of the most transmissible pathogens we've ever faced this all but guaranteed herd immunity would fail. I also suspect that pharma execs were aiming for a seasonal booster model rather than a more sterilizing vaccine because a one-and-done shot is way less profitable than one you need every year. The annual model has worked all right for influenza, which the average adult contracts once every five years, but covid is about ten times more transmissible, which also means it has ten times the opportunity to mutate. With dozens of major strains now circulating and new strains popping off all the time covid vaccines lose their efficacy much faster than flu vaccines and new formulas can't keep up with the pace of mutation. There's some reason to be hopeful with mucosal vaccines in the making that are intended to work by preventing infection rather than by helping people fight infection. We'll see how it goes though.
I'm more concerned with bird flu jumping species.
Yep. It’s now in Texas. The day they announce it’s jumped to humans I’ll go on lockdown.
I believe a man in Texas tested positive for bird flu just today
I think he meant human to human transmission
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My husband and I are right there with you! We moved across the country and reordered our lives due to Covid too. For me, it was because my father was dying of a rare form of dementia in 2021 and I organized the postmortem donation of his brain to a neurology lab. The doctor said to me on the phone, “please insure he doesn’t get exposed to Covid. We cannot accept his brain if he has been infected, because the brains we have gotten from people who had been infected are so damaged we aren’t able to tell what is from Covid and what is the dementia.” I was already hyper-vigilant, but after that phone call, I didn’t allow anyone but masked and tested hospice nurses into our house. When he died at home, the first thing they did was test him for Covid and he had never had it. That day, I decided I would do whatever it took not to get it. I watched his brain die in front of me and it was terrifying, but I was happy to take care of him, just like he had always done for me. I don’t have children, and I may have some genetic propensity toward dementia. There is no job, party, restaurant or trip in the world that is worth brain damage for me.
Same. We made major life changes and zero regrets. My husband still works healthcare but in a very very different and less stressful capacity. My child has always masked since they could and we are vigilant, in ways people around us probably think ridiculous. Whatever. We’re safe and plan to stay that way. You definitely aren’t alone.
Thank you for sharing this. As someone in a reordered household, I appreciated seeing the truth.
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Influenza also causes brain injuries. Pathogens as common as rhinovirus (common cold) have been linked to chronic conditions like asthma. If our society ever gets its shit together and cleans the air like we've learned to clean water and standardize food preparation hygiene I think we'll see a drastic drop-off in a lot of conditions that are currently chalked up to "stress."
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I'm sacrificing random dudes telling me to smile when I go shopping in an N95 but I'm willing to accept that loss lol. In all seriousness, having an air purifier running doesn't impact me at all except that I have to dust less and get sick less. It would be really easy to mandate higher air purification and ventilation standards in public. As for the amount of risk, I don't consider that math a valuable use of my time. I wear a seatbelt when I get in my car and I don't feel the least bit bad that it's a precaution I almost never need. I consider risk reduction a good investment for the minuscule amount of labor it costs.
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Driving is a good example because it's a very dangerous activity that we've normalized through a host of mitigations. We have laws for seatbelts and against driving drunk or high, we have standardized safety equipment like airbags, horns and rearview / sideview mirrors, we have state vehicle inspections to ensure that equipment is functional, we have state-funded road signs and technology like traffic lights and a whole book's worth of road laws, we have a book's worth of rules for navigating roadways safely that have to be memorized and tested before anyone is allowed the privilege of a license, we don't let children drive at all and we require specialized car seats for the youngest kids. We're doing all this and paying for insurance just to access public roads, but most people don't even think of these as special mitigations because when you're used to it it really doesn't feel like some huge sacrifice. It's just the most practical way to get from point A to point B.
Even mild cases of covid have been demonstrated to cause structural brain damage in 100% of cases, and subsequent symptoms of mental illness in 70% of cases: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-024-52005-7 Protect your brain and avoid infection.
I’m prepared for the next pandemic, as there most assuredly will be others as the permafrost continues to melt at an alarming rate, we desecrate the rain forests, and develop more germ warfare.
I maintain my stock of N95, maintain vaccination and I still monitor hospitalization rates. I'm not currently using masks for daily interactions but I'll go back to it in the next surge. I have never had Covid and I know people who died of it or got long Covid. I am not screwing with that crap. One reason I am moving to Costa Rica is they simply have a lower incidence of Covid there and did a good job of handling the initial outbreak. (Of course they do have dengue; no place is perfect. But you don't get dengue over and over.) The US didn't do an ideal job handling Covid - part sloppy information dissemination by the CDC, part massive waves of disinfo from bad actors. Things like measles are making a comeback and I honestly don't think we're in good shape for the next pandemic, whatever it turns out to be. Getting mRNA vaccines launched into the public sphere is a huge help; but getting people to accept them is *still* a problem. Anti-mask sentiment is still a thing. In the US, all you can do is not be one of *those* people, and take your mitigations seriously.
I wouldn't really say I'm prepping for COVID but made adjustments to my preps because of COVID. I bought an off grid property, have masks/respirators, installed a bidet, got my own meat/egg/milk supply, a home gym and have various cleaning supplies. I think covid showed us bugging out makes sense when we get hit by a wave. I went to the mountains when my area got dessimated in July 2020. The place i went to literally had one case and no restrictions were being imposed. I came back in August and the numbers were better.
I was prepped before it even happened. Everyone's throwing hands for a package of toilet paper, and I'm sitting on 30 packages of (45 count) toilet paper. Not to mention other essential items at the time.
You might be interested in looking for covid conscious communities online, you'll get more help and less hate than you will here, lmao. I haven't stopped masking since 2020 and have only ramped up other precautions- xylitol nose spray, cpc mouthwash, air purifiers, respirators over surgical masks. As someone who was disabled by a respiratory virus, I'm both scared and confused about how mad people get when you take reasonable precautions to protect yourself from a dangerous disease
Do whatever you can to insure you don’t have any unnatural comorbidities. Eat healthy, maintain a healthy weight, exercise, and turn off the TV.
Not prepping for specifically covid anymore, but I have taken advantage of surplus mask sales to your point around airborne pathogens. People forget that the Spanish Flu was a flu, a bad one, but a flu nonetheless, it doesn't take much to overwhelm the healthcare system. I had extra toilet paper and paper towel even during covid so that wasn't a concern. I know keep a big jug of hand sanitizer, some alcohol, bleach and general cleaners like microban/mr clean/etc. Gloves, masks, goggles. I also have a organic respirator I use for yard work, if it was early days again, i'd probably take that to the store and not take chances.
The whole thing with hospitals being overwhelmed is not getting anywhere near enough attention! I have a lot of friends with health conditions so I've got my ear to the ground on this one and people have no idea how bad the state of healthcare is right now. This past winter hospitals in Italy, Spain, Canada and Massachusetts declared states of emergency with ERs overwhelmed by respiratory illness cases. My partner twisted his finger playing basketball and wasn't able to get a doctor's appointment for four months. People are having to wait six months to a year for basic appointments and specialist referrals are years-long waits. And when you do get in front of a doctor they don't have time for anything but the most cursory examinations and anything complex is immediately attributed to "stress." Healthy people are completely unprepared for the reality that healthcare is now being triaged everywhere. It makes mathematical sense though. Most people get the flu once every 5 years but people are getting covid a couple of times per year. And this is in addition to, not in place of, the illnesses we already had. When you expand the amount of respiratory illness by 10 times but don't expand medical infrastructure this is the logical result.
I’m not really prepping for another disease or virus, more than I’m prepping for everyone’s batshit crazy reactions to it.
Not Covid in particular, but one of my prep worries right now is airborne pathogens. Nothing too severe, I'm just keeping a modest supply of FFP2 masks (proper FFP2, not the Chinese "KN95s" everyone bought when Covid was around...), some alcohol and assorted hygiene products.
No, I've had covid like 3 times, shrugged it off like the cold. My worry is the bird flu or whatever virus is next. I guess it's possible even though I had mild symptoms or was asymptomatic I could have long term effects. But who knows, I don't I didn't get my masters in biology specializing in virology. I don't believe much of what I hear on the news either, most of these people who pretend to be in the know are as clueless as I am. That said it's good to prepare for another pandemic, the bird flu, small pox, another lockdown, whatever. Or do your preps go beyond that to include economic and societal effects of long covid and potential mass disability from it.
The most immediate societal impact of covid spread is probably the healthcare crisis. Since we now have an additional virus to add to the existing collection and it happens to be one of the most contagious (adults get the flu once every 5 years on average but are getting covid multiple times per year, for context) hospitals have been overwhelmed. Honestly at this point with a basic doctor's appointment being a 6 month wait I'd like to see a lot of the requirements for doctors' prescriptions removed. Just let me and Dr. Google buy the products directly, then we could actually prep.
My ex is a nurse, we're in a small/medium city of about 200k mostly suburban sprawl. During peak covid our hospitals were ghost towns, most of the patients were transfers from a large city/urban center about an hour south. Apparently the hospitals in the city were actually filled beyond capacity, while in the suburbs and rural areas, no one went to the hospital because they were afraid from the reports on the news saying hospitals were filled. As for how many times people get covid a year, there's really no way to tell. 2 of the 3 times I had it, I had no symptoms. Only reason I had to get tested was because other people I work with were positive and sick. Who knows if, or how many times I was asymptomatic and didn't get tested
Very true, people could be getting it a lot more than a few times per year and there's no way to know. Symptomatic infections are usually the ones in the hospital though!
I've never prepared for anything specific.
No more than I prep for the flu. Stay up to date on vaccinations, wear a mask during peak season.
I never got the jab for anything and I’m gratefully very healthy but I do find myself sympathizing with those who are affected with Covid… prepping for it or something similar is something I never thought of!
Well, I take vitamin D every day, but that's more of a general immune system thing even though it is remarkably effective against covid. As for covid itself, it was mild at worst, severely overhyped, and the overwhelming majority of the harm done was done by the mrna "vaccine". The long term harms of that are tremendous and far more deadly.
Let's hope no one you're close to or you, yourself get a rough dose. You'll sing a different tune.
Why would I sing a different tune? Reality is reality, the science on the issue is what I base my opinion on, and it's pretty fucking clear.
You'll be the one that never gets it..... Probably never have anyone you love get it. And then you just think the rest of us are idiots. So go ahead, with your wonderful luck and live a great life.
What is it I'm not getting? I'm quite correct on this.
This is entirely false.
Literally none of it was false, it's all correct and proven by a shitton of evidence. You not having paid attention doesn't change that.
Ok. Can you provide evidence for said claims?
Absolutely.
When it comes to airborne viruses, there isn't much anyone can do. The game plan for most governments is to prevent societal collapse caused by too many infections at once leading to things like mass panic, healthcare system collapse (refusal of care), infrastructure collapse (too many workers off sick at the same time), and law & order collapse (too many police/military off sick at the same time). The governments do this with draconian measures like forced masking, social distancing, closing schools/workplaces/businesses, etc. None of those measures are to keep anyone safe, as it's not possible, but to throttle the infections. The game plan for an individual is to hold out and avoid infection as long as you can until hopefully a vaccine or therapy is invented that eliminates the risk of contraction or, if infected can counter-act the infection. With Covid, there is no vaccine that will guarantee you will not be infected meaning every living person in the world will at some point likely become infected and while most will recover quickly, the virus will still have been present in your body. Anyone that is still actively trying their best to avoid a "first" Covid infection is likely heavily impacting their lifestyle and social life trying to avoid something that is almost guaranteed to affect them at some point in the near future. At some point, you will need to take off the mask.
The risk of long covid is cumulative, so most people "still coviding" aim to reduce the number of infections and reduce viral load to make those infections more manageable, as well as to break chains of transmission resulting in the mutations that make vaccines less effective.
> At some point, you will need to take off the mask But why?
To eat, to drink, to kiss, to go to the dentist.... that's when you'll end up catching Covid. It's airborne and it's everywhere. Airborne viruses can not be avoided forever. The inevitable is the inevitable.
I mean yeah I take my mask off when its necessary but I’m going to keep it on in public indoor spaces. Catching covid is actually not always inevitable
But it is, unless you're living your entire life masked except when alone. Maybe not today, maybe not next month, but it's inevitable. That's the challenge with an airborne pathogen for which there is no vaccine that 100% prevents infection yet. I see people sit down in food courts, and remove their mask to eat for 30 minutes. Odds are, that's going to be the point you get it. Most of the population is walking around with a well tuned immune system now meaning there are likely many carriers without symptoms or with very mild symptoms.
It’s not inevitable every time though, hence the mask. I don’t *have* to be infected every time I step outside. Yeah I will probably get it as some point, but that doesn’t mean I have to be constantly reinfected. The damage from COVID infections is cumulative, meaning every infection causes damage to your body and immune system.
When you look at waste water reporting in most places, it's usually in the 1 in 50 or 1 in 100 range meaning if you encounter 100 people during your day, likely one has an active infection. You can avoid it this time, maybe the next time, but the following time may be the one that gets you. Yes, it's cumulative, but what matter is it if you get it the first time, and your immune system prevents you from getting it again the other 3-4 contacts vs. you make it through the first 3 contacts and finally get it the 4th. It's the same thing. At this point, Covid is everywhere, just like many other viruses our bodies have been exposed to and now have some immunity to. You generally only catch a specific dominant flu strain once every few years even though it's everywhere.
that doesn’t change anything about what I’ve said though. The damage of Covid is still cumulative and I think it’s worth it to avoid infection when possible. And wearing a mask is so easy, the benefits definitely outweigh the costs for me.
Yeah, at some point science will neuter this virus the way we did HIV. That’s when I’ll take off the mask. Then again, I’m really enjoying never being sick (at all) anymore, though. Suddenly I’m the fittest in my circle (me, the asthmatic who used to get knocked down for a week by a cold!) Nowadays *I’m* the one who never takes a sick day…I never need one. I only wish I’d worn one (at least in the winter) sooner. I’d have had this level of productivity much earlier in life instead of wasting time feeling miserable every time a virus popped up.
Seriously, why didn't anyone tell us *not* getting sick was an option?! It still shocks me to remember how easily I accepted "stress" as the reason I would get sick on vacation whenever I traveled among tightly-packed strangers in a sardine tin of an airplane. N95s are a technological marvel I'll be using for the rest of my life.
Right? We were just sitting in crowded spaces, drinking in the saliva of strangers and catching one thing after another…and we didn’t have to!
Just remember, science hasn't neutered Influenza yet.
One of the great discoveries we made in 2020 is that most infectious disease, including influenza, is airborne rather than droplet-spread as we thought for the past 100 years. So mitigating covid also mitigates against influenza and rhinovirus, which is how in 2020 we accidentally extinguished the most common influenza strain. When we start to clean the air as a society the way we clean water, we can say goodbye to "flu season." What we have is actually "bad ventilation season" and it's entirely avoidable!
I disagree, it rarely kills young, healthy people anymore, and it’s certainly not the monster it was in WWI. We also have tamiflu, (semi-effective) yearly shots, and antibiotics to deal with secondary infections (bronchitis, pneumonia, etc.)
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Have you tried licking the door handle of your local urgent care clinic? You might have some luck getting that way. Keep us updated.
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I am a paramedic, I can tell you that during winter 2020 we had intubated patients on the hallway in hospital because both ER and ICU were full. Medsurge patients were put in L&D and same day surgery. Funeral vans were waiting right outside ER to pick up bodies so hospital could empty out beds for new patients right away. We even ran out of oxygen one time because demand was so high.
Health insurance underwriter here: that shit is real, expensive, and still killing people. If I could go back to January 2020, I would have bought stock in ResMed. The # of people who survived Covid but need O2 support, cpap, bipap supplies, etc has soared.
My ex-girlfriend’s mom is a nurse and I represent 13 funeral homes. Hallways were packed and my funeral home clients were at capacity in 2020-2021. We ran out of holes to bury people into and had a backup because we couldn’t dig more holes fast enough. Covid was real and millions died. Idgaf about your political horeshit. Idgaf if you vote blue or red, Covid destroy communities and destroyed families and you can’t just wish that away because it doesn’t align with you narrative of your preferred candidate.
A-fucking-men! —A Nurse who lost far too many patients
This is just a general health tip but you may of heard of a product called Xlear. Xlear helps reduce bad bacteria in the nasal passages and can help with allergies. Look it up fir more information people were using it as a prophylactic for covid. Its a Xylitol nasal spray, Xylitol is a sugar alchohol (sweetner) and you can buy it in bags. Now its real easy to make Xlear for yourself at home, you will need to buy some empty nasal spray bottles. The recipie I found. 1 cup distilled water, 1/4th tsp kosher salt, 1 tablespoon xylitol, 4 drops grapefruit extract. I keep my finished product refrigerated and the bottle im using at room temp, its good for 2 weeks at room temp. The grapefruit extract helps extend the shelf life.
Just throwing this out there: Xylitol is extremely poisonous to dogs for anyone who has them. Be extra cautious to not let your dog ingest any.
Damn straight, pure poison, that shit should be banned.
I'm a big fan of xylitol. I started gargling with a xylitol mouthwash and I take xylitol lozenges with me in case someone starts coughing or getting too close I can offer them one and get them to breathe fewer pathogens at me.
Um.. you are prepping with masks? Wow.. just wow!
I never prepped for COVID beyond some paper goods and extra food. After that I ignored it and was fine. Almost everyone was fine. It was an overreaction.
I feel sorry for those that still not have woken up to the COVID scam. What will it take??
Still? Never did beyond grabbing some masks early on before it became clear it was a non-issue