Anecdotal Reality

 

For anyone who reads this blog, but doesn't also read Divemedic :

1) Stop not doing that. He writes an eclectic collection, and covers more things we agree on than disagree, since ever. You'll find good stuff there.

2) He's recently changed ED jobs, and posted a couple of updates on how COVID is going down Florida way at his new shop. You should read them both.

I commented there, but for anyone's benefit, here's the same info I shared from hereabouts.

From an average of zero cases most of this year, my ED in Southern Califrutopia is now seeing 3-6 new COVID cases/day over the past couple of weeks.

The youngest was a patient several weeks old. The oldest was 102.

Of the ones we've seen, we've admitted exactly Z-E-R-O cases for solely COVID signs/symptoms. We routinely do COVID tests on patients we're admitting, particularly those with URI/respiratory symptoms, or suspicious chest X-rays.

None of them had COVID symptoms serious enough to merit hospitalization; the ones admitted were for other problems almost or entirely unrelated. For some of them, their signs/symptoms of COVID were so subtle as to be non-existent.

Which means five, ten, or eleventy mutations later, COVID is now "just the flu".

Three years ago was quite simply horrific. Now, for most of the ones testing positive, it's a nothingburger.

{For those curious: We use a bedside 10-minute test cassette, very similar to a home preg test. One snot swab, swished and dribbled, positive or negative. Period. Usually pops in 1-2 minutes, but the book says it's not over for 10 minutes. Whatever. Flu is a separate swab, and different test, and that one is run in the lab within an hour; it's the same one we've used for flu for a decade. COVID was never the flu, and the flu was never mistaken for COVID, now or ever.}

And the 2/3rds of staff who got double- and triple-vaxxed have all had a new case of COVID. Some of them, for the fifth or sixth time.

Of the one-third of us who refused Death Jabs, only one tested positive for COVID this time around; the rest of us are COVID-free, and have been. All the vaxxhole shit-talkers giving us endless mountains of sass for not getting the vaxx two years ago are now deeply submerged, running silent, and gone deep. 

They don't want to even mention the topic any more.

This last is completely understandable, because no one likes seconds on a shitburger.

The death rate during peak initial-wave COVID was 1-3%. Annual flu is 0.1%, since before anyone reading this was born.

If anyone is dying of COVID now, they're either extremely fragile, or someone was holding a pillow over their face to get their life insurance.

Wash your hands, and stay home if you're sick. Kids too. I still don't want your goddamned colds and flu bugs. Once school is back in session, all your mindless little juvenile spawn become petrie dishes for whatever URI crud has been waiting to spring free and sweep the nation, just like it does every year.

If you get sick, a URI virus wants rest, and fluids (alcohol and caffeine are diuretics, and make URIs worse, not better). Think water, gatorade/non-caffeinated sports drinks, soup, jello, etc. If you aren't peeing crystal clear, you're under-hydrated.

And COVID or not, unless your SpO2 reading is <90% on room air, no one cares. (Fingertip pulse oximeters to check your SpO2 go for $12 on Amazon and under $20 at the drug store, and they work fabulously well. You should have put one in your first aid kit three years ago, and/or keep one in the household medical cabinet, beside your thermometer.)

Don't come to the ED if you're not sicker than that; stay your ass home and self-treat. If you're panicky, call your family doctor for a prescription. Ivermectin is now an approved treatment for COVID, btw, and the EUA for most of the COVID experimental Death Vaxxes has been rescinded. Avoid all of them like the plague itself.

But anyone telling you to be afraid of COVID at this point is trying to steal another election. And/or has a 60 IQ. (The two are not only not mutually exclusive, they tend to be the same circle on a Venn diagram.)

And for the 12 millionth time: If you ever wore a simple face diaper mask, with the misbegotten impression that was to protect yourself from anything, you're in the same diagram circles, above. And always were. Like we told you, then and now.

That concludes your 2023 COVID briefing.

TL;DR: You have actual real issues to deal with. Bank real assets; stockpile food; and you never have enough sturdy boots, sturdy friends, and ready ammunition. Hard days are coming.

See to all that, if you please.

The unravelling of society accelerates exactly like a pandemic curve: slowly, then all at once.