*Who Else Feels Like One of The Only People Still Actively Avoiding Covid? (Poll) DKos *Cases, Masks [View all]

- Daily Kos, 'KosAbility: Who else feels like one of the only people still actively avoiding covid19?' (Poll). 5.30.22. Ed.

A common refrain of mine throughout the pandemic has been “well, it depends on your personal relationship with risk.” Friends and family know I’m paying attention to covid19 details to design my personal safety routines, so they ask me “is it safe to ...” as if there’s a clear yes/no answer.

March 2020: Is it safe to visit with friends outside sitting 6 feet apart?

March 2021: I’m vaccinated, do I still need to wear a mask?

March 2022: Is it safe to work out at the gym? What it comes down to, in terms of personal decisions, is how comfortable you are with uncertainty.

Over 2 years into the pandemic, few risk questions have definitive yes/no answers, a reality inherent in dealing with a brand new pathogen and the massive numbers involved.

* Here’s a definitive YES: Wearing a well-fitted mask protects you even if others aren’t wearing masks (N95s reduce risk by 83%, surgical masks by 66%). San Fran Chronicle article,
https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/pandemicproblems/article/Do-masks-work-against-COVID-in-a-classroom-where-17160695.php

My answers to friends’ queries always involve 3 components: These are the facts (few); these are the suppositions (many); your personal risk tolerance is what decides yes/no. That’s what I have for you today, very few facts, many suppositions, and an overarching question to answer in the poll below: Who else feels like one of the only people still trying to avoid covid19?

** Yesterday, I read that the number of new covid19 cases in the U.S. right now is 5 times higher than a year ago. Last Memorial Day weekend, cases were plummeting thanks to vaccines, immunity built up during the 2021 winter surge, and public health mitigation measures, although I wasn’t joyously rushing into “hot vaxx summer.”

Last year, we didn’t have in-home covid19 tests readily available so the case rates, based on PCR testing, were more meaningful than now, and the test positivity rates offered another good clue. This year, most people test at home. We don’t know how many of those positive tests are also reported to public health or confirmed by PCR and picked up in the official reporting data, more people are vaccinated and may not have noticeable symptoms, so now both the case rates and test positivity rates (still based on official lab tests) are much less relevant to risk assessments.

* The actual covid19 case rate is much higher than what is reported, but we really don’t know what it is. An infectious disease specialist at Columbia University “whose lab has worked to model the true number of infections … thinks the true number of cases may be in the ballpark of 8 times higher than case counts. In other words, instead of 100,000 new cases a day, the true number may be 800,000 cases per day.”

Although more than half the U.S. is currently classified by the CDC as having medium or high covid19 levels, images of concerts, protests, basketball games, and other events show bare-faced crowds shouting, singing, conversing ... just like the olden days. The only reason I know those images are current and not prior to 2020 is the sight of one or 2 people wearing N95 masks in clean air (no wildfire smoke)... More + 394 Comments,
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2022/5/29/2101133/-KosAbility-Who-else-feels-like-one-of-the-only-people-still-actively-avoiding-covid19-poll
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- *'Dominant Coronavirus Mutant Contains Ghost of Pandemic Past, AP News, 5.26.22 https://democraticunderground.com/114228248



- Doctor Schnabel (iDr. Beak), a plague doctor in 17th century Rome, c. 1656. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plague_doctor