NBC News put out this reporting last week that Covid cases are on the rise again this summer, only I couldn’t cover it until now because **checks notes** oh yeah, I’ve been holed up in bed with Covid! And it’s not only me (however much it feels like it). Cases are up in 39 states in the US, with California in particular showing a bump in positive Covid tests from 3% to 7.5% in the last month (and those stats are just for documented cases). One bit of good news? Though there’s a new crop of variants that disease experts are tracking, the data suggests that overall the cases are milder than we’ve seen from Covids past. Here are the important bits on the trends and variants popping up this summer, and the best ways to prepare:
Summer wave: The CDC no longer tracks Covid cases, but it estimates transmission based on emergency department visits. Both Covid deaths and ED visits have risen in the last week. Hospitalizations also climbed 25% from May 26 to June 1, the latest data available. … “It looks like the summer wave is starting to begin,” said Dr. Thomas Russo, chief of infectious diseases at the University at Buffalo Jacobs School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences. Covid infections have historically spiked over the summer, in part because of an increase in travel and people congregating indoors, where it’s cooler. This year appears to be no exception, though disease experts expect this season’s wave to be milder in terms of severe disease.
Flirting with disaster: Several variants are likely to be contributing to the nationwide trend, said Dr. Dan Barouch, director of the Center for Virology and Vaccine Research at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston. “We’re seeing the start of an uptick of infections that is coincident with new variants that are developing: KP.2 and KP.3 and LB.1. It does appear that those variants do have an advantage over the prior ones,” he said. … KP.2 became the dominant variant in the U.S. last month, and then KP.3 took over in early June. Along with a third variant that shares the same key mutations, KP.1.1, the group accounts for around 63% of Covid infections in the U.S. Some scientists collectively refer to the variants as “FLiRT” — a reference to their amino acid changes.
New kid on the block: LB.1 accounts for another 17.5% of Covid infections. Experts said its rapid growth indicates that it’s likely to become dominant soon, though scientists still want to study it more closely. “It’s sort of the newest kid on the block,” Barouch said. “There’s not much known about it.” A preprint paper released this month, which hasn’t been peer-reviewed, suggests that LB.1 is more infectious than the “FLiRT: variants and could be better at evading protection from vaccines or previous infections. “Assuming that preliminary data is true, that it’s more immune-evasive and that it’s more infectious than KP.2 and KP.3, that’s a winning formula to infect more people,” Russo said.
What you can do: Russo recommended that people who are the most vulnerable to infection — those who are older or immunocompromised or engage in riskier activities, such as attending large parties or gatherings — consider getting the latest Covid vaccine now if they haven’t already. He added that a monoclonal antibody drug called Pemgarda has been available since April for immunocompromised people. The antiviral medication Paxlovid should also help reduce the likelihood of hospitalization or death. But most young, healthy people can hold out for the updated Covid vaccines expected to arrive this fall, experts said. The Food and Drug Administration advised vaccine manufacturers this month to target the KP.2 variant.
Get vaccinated, y’all! I usually double up and get my flu shot and Covid booster at the same appointment shortly after they roll them out in the fall. And this was my first dance with ‘rona, so I credit that to staying on top of my boosters and consider myself very lucky. Main symptoms have been a deep, persistent cough, and the hugely distracting and unpleasant metallic taste in my mouth from taking Paxlovid. It’s definitely been worse than the colds I typically get, but at no point did I feel things were so severe that I should go to the hospital. So again, thank you to the scientific community for giving us vaccines and medicines to save our lives. (And bless their hearts for being dorks; the explanation for the “FLiRT” nickname cracked me up.)
As for avoiding large parties and gatherings… excuse me, but I’m a pro. I was livin’ the social distancing life long before it was being preached, thankyouverymuch. I will have to go back to the office though, as my boss did not hesitate to remind me that the CDC dropped the five-day isolation requirement. The guidelines stipulate that you just need to be 24 hours free of fever without having taken fever-reducing medication. Of course, fever was never one of my symptoms, but I’m used to being an outlier.
Photos credit: Marcus Aurelius, Mediocre Memories and Wendy Wei on Pexels
The idea that we can simply vaccinate our way out of the Covid pandemic is simply delusional. We are being failed by our entire public health agency infrastructure. People need to understand that Covid is airborne, meaning it lingers in the air, contrary to what they’ve been told since the beginning of the pandemic. People need to wear an N95 or KN95 or higher respirator style masks, when indoors, to protect themselves from getting transmitting Covid. Every bout of Covid increases the chance of long Covid, which currently has no adequate treatment and no cure.
We need to demand that our representatives take this public threat seriously and issue appropriate regulations for the filtration of indoor air. Indoor air quality is a major determinant of Covid transmission. Mask up, people! Covid is not over.
I submitted a similar-ish comment re masks that seems not to have made it. Essentially, I’ll never understand the difficulty in simply wearing a mask. The way people in the UK banged on about how it was an affront to their freedom, etc, was shocking. I still find it difficult to think well of people in my circle who wouldn’t wear a mask during lockdown; it’s almost like they thought their germs were higher class than other people’s.
The business interests who lost a lot of money, during lockdown, are very invested in making people feel like it’s time for business, as usual.
It’s like we have no sense of collective responsibility or public shame. Last week, on the subway, I sat across from someone with a truly nasty cough. He didn’t even try to cover his mouth. I was masked. He was not. Two tourists sitting next to him muttered: “He sounds like he has TB” when he exited the train. But nothing in our current social contract in this very blue, highly educated, tourist-destination city had an impact that could influence someone obviously ill, who had no problem hacking his phlegm all over a train car full of fellow travelers.
@Blithe, 🎯
Covid will never be over. We are in the “learning to live with it” phase. When I feel ill (Covid or not) I mask up. When I fly, I mask up. At the same time, I’m going to live my life and I trust others to make the right decisions for them. I’ve been vaxxed and boosted from the moment I was eligible and plan to continue to get the jab.
Youkre also trusting others to make the right decision for YOU. Communicable diseases work that way.
Ummmm, huge swaths of the population have refused to wear masks, and even when vaccinations were available at zero cost, refused to take advantage of this intervention— because the response to the efforts of our public health agency infrastructure were deliberately politicized. Hint: this politicization was NOT initiated by our public health infrastructure.
Some states are proposing bans on wearing masks — including throughout New York’s public transportation system — which is arguably one of the most crowded public spaces that one might consistently encounter.
Which “representatives” and which aspects of “ our entire public health infrastructure “ are you blaming here as failing us? Your goal is admirable, but it’s more then a bit disingenuous to fault “our entire public health infrastructure “ given the way intervention efforts have deliberately been highly politicized. As we get closer to the presidential election, I’m guessing there will be some superspreader rallies coming up. Fingers crossed.
I agree. The NHS was begging people to wear masks, get vaccinated, not go out. A box of masks was nothing to buy, a vaccine was free. It was the individuals who found it “difficult” to wear a mask who let down themselves and others and ultimately the public health care system. It boils down to the issue of individual responsibility towards the collective in general: don’t tell me I have germs and it’s up to me to not spread them; don’t tell me my huge car is pumping out harmful chemicals; etc. Some individuals don’t want to be reminded of their responsibilities because it makes them feel guilty about their selfish lifestyles across the board.
Which public health officials do I blame? Let’s see… where to start… How about the WHO and the CDC, who initially flat-out denied that covid was airborne, and dragged their feet on acknowledging the truth, for as long as possible—never, in fact, came out with a full-chested retraction (some of their tweets are still up)… Anthony Fauci and his team, who initially advised that people didn’t need to wear masks (because of supply shortages, they wanted health care workers to have those masks, instead), so that when they reversed themselves and tried to get everyone to wear masks, they had lost a good chunk of credibility, with the public… Public health authorities, all up and down the continent, all the way up to Joe Biden, who have allowed themselves to be captured by corporate interests and declare the pandemic “over”, adopting a business-as-usual strategy, as if all we need to do is vaccinate, instead of acknowledging the grim realities of this virus and insisting on clean air for us all, including our children.
Just a start.
Exactly this, thank you, bisynaptic!
You’re welcome!
We might not be able to vaccinate our way out of Covid, but vaccines sure were a big piece of getting us back to where we are now, and working a job with regular public contact means I’m getting one every six months and have been since they first became available. And thank goodness for N95s, which some of my co-workers wear daily. My-sister-the-writer did a long piece about Long Covid that was really instructive – it’s nothing anyone wants.
Stay safe, fellow Celebitches, and I’m glad you’re better, Kismet.
(Just found the link to my sister’s story: https://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/995322?form=fpf )
Yes, but not everyone can vaccinate.
Good point, and one argument for people who can to do so. Because it can help provide some level of protection for people who can’t.
Thank you to all you lovelies for the well wishes! I am definitely better, and wanted to confirm/respond to a few points:
*I was trained as a tot to cough into my elbow and the habit has stuck – it just makes sense!
*I’m wearing an N95/KN95 mask when venturing forth from my apartment.
*Thanks for the tip on combatting the Paxlovid metallic tang with a tongue scraper – I will be scraping enthusiastically!
Again, thank you bishes for caring, sharing, and scaring as appropriate. 😘
Getting vaccinated and boosted does not mean you won’t get covid. It means that your symptoms won’t be severe. For someone who has a weakened immune system it could mean that they won’t die from it. Get vaccinated and boosted please.
Yes. I was vaccinated and still got a variant. I only did a test because my partner, who’d also had the vaccine, was sneezing a lot, and we had a few kits hanging about. What we caught wasn’t anything at all, really, and probably diminished by the vaccine.
Getting vaxxed and boosted is not a guarantee that your symptoms will not be severe—it just reduces your chances. And for many people, the true threat of covid is no longer the immediate, first round of symptoms, it’s the longer-term impact of the virus.
Covid can cause damage literally ANYWHERE in your body, but here’s my “favorite”: There was a study that got some decent coverage a couple of months ago (I even saw an article in ‘People’) that found that even mild cases of covid caused, on average, a 3-point drop in IQ due to the virus’s ability to damage the blood-brain barrier. The coverage was okay, but most articles didn’t ask the obvious question: what about repeat infections? But the study actually did look into that, and found that yes, people lost a couple more IQ points with Round 2. (I don’t think there was data yet for even more rounds of infection.) The average American’s IQ is around 97 or so. Imagine the collective impact of us all slowly becoming steadily and unknowingly slower-witted with each infection! Truly, “vax and relax” has been a DISASTER for us, and I think we will be paying the consequences for generations to come.
tl; dr: Mask up, friends.
@Julia, louder for the people in the back!
But did you know the brain damage affects not just people’s intelligence, but also their behavior? Covid affects the fronto-temporal lobes, which results in more impulsivity, more anger and less empathy, all phenomenons we’ve all witnessed unfortunately. And it’s a vicious circle, basically the more you catch Covid, the more likely you will be to not care if you infect someone else.
If this keeps going for decades, we are so f-cked as a society!
Just one Twitter thread I read on this topic this week: https://twitter.com/AlanBixter/status/1806838795834470551. Scroll down for more relevant (depressing) threads.
@Julia yes, preach!
It’s so upsetting to me that the science on how Covid affects every part of the body, including that it crosses the blood-brain barrier, hasn’t gotten wider play. Public health leaders and governments have really failed us in not getting this message out in the name of making sure everybody got back to spending money to keep economies going. Thanks for spreading the word!
And thanks for continuing to write about Covid, Kismet. I hope you feel better soon.
@Julia is right. Listen to Julia.
I cannot get boosted due to having a stroke and it was determined it was micro clots caused by one version of the vaccine. I mask everywhere and isolate a lot. I did get covid once a year ago. But it is infuriating because I would love to be boosted and am waiting for more vaccines of the traditional variety that work to pop up so I can but yes to masking and I hatet how it’s been villified.
Have you looked into Novavax? It isn’t an MRNA vaccine
I just caught COVID for the first time. The week before I got sick I went to the dentist and the grocery store ONCE, so I have no idea how or where I got it. It’s EVERYWHERE. As for the CDC saying you can leave isolation after 5 days, as far as I’m concerned, the CDC is irrelevant now. A complete joke. They are now in the business of telling people what they want to hear, not what science determines is factual or best practice.
🎯
“… the summer wave is starting to begin”
“… seeing the start of an uptick…”
Look, I tend to be wordier than the average bear, but even I know that these officials should stick to straight talk when warning people about a spreading disease. “The summer wave is starting”. “Seeing an uptick”
That said:
I’m going to an adult Audubon camp on an island off the coast of Maine next week and was happy to see in their welcome pack something about “though we’ll be outside most days, we do require everyone to wear masks when riding on the ferry to the island and the shared Audubon van. Yay to having sane grown ups in charge!
Mask up in crowds and enclosed spaces, stay home and take care of yourself if you’re not feeling well, get boosters, vaccines when you can. (Not just COVID but flu and pneumonia too) A friend in his 40s got COVID a few years ago and is now struggling with long COVID, it’s completely upended his life (and his wife and kids’ lives) since he’s very debilitated, can’t work, struggles to do even mild activity on a regular basis. He’s working with a long COVID clinic at one of the major Boston hospitals and is seeing some improvement, but it’s a slog.
Kismet, glad you’re doing okay and hope you’re 100% too
Stay safe out there people.
That’s good news about masking at the camp, but it kinda surprises me because I just went to Maine for the first time in May and I was shocked at how MAGA everybody seemed. There were people parked at random spots on the road (not in front of a store or anything, just pulled over on the side of the road!) holding TRUMP 2024 signs and waving. Also RFK Jr supporters trying to talk to people at the start and finish lines of the races both days. Anyways, I’m off to google how I can go to Audobon camp now…
Like anywhere, there can be a mix, and IME it’s usually MAGAs who are the loudest, waving the gigunda (often vulgar) cult signs so they are more noticeable.
But Maine has sane bluer pockets and some sane pragmatic independent folks around (ie including some who depend on the health of the Gulf of Maine, oceans, environment for their livelihoods) who are not MAGA
Plus generally speaking though there may be some overlap between MAGA and state Audubon orgs’ staff, membership, I suspect it’s not huge.
The UK is going to have difficulties with a future mass vaccine roll out, should there be one, following the very unfortunate, sad, and thankfully rare complication caused by the Astrazeneca vaccine. Thinking about all the childhood illnesses I went through, mumps measles rubella scarlet fever, I checked my childhood injection records, which have just gone online. It was a shock to find out I had had barely any vaccines. It all makes sense now. My grandmother was totally anti medicine and vaccines. It seems she persuaded my mother out of vaccines for her children. My mother was a hospital biochemist. I can’t believe it. I was a very ill child. This raft of illnesses could have been prevented. I believe some of those illnesses have affected me into adult life, particularly when they caused me seizures through fevers.
I’m so sorry. ❤️🩹
An FB friend caught COVID about a month ago. He died about a week after contacting it. To say he is missed is an understatement. Love you, Scott.
I’m so sorry. May his memory be a blessing to you.💔
I had a doctors appointment yesterday and was surprised to see the doctors and staff wearing masks, including my doctor. He said recently someone came into their clinic and tested positive for COVID. And it was his first day back from vacation. So yeah, COVID is still a threat so stay safe CBs.
Are you outside the UK? Doctors here aren’t masking (GPs) and surgeon consultants aren’t, either. I was also surprised that handshakes are still the done thing with consultants. My colorectal surgeon shook my hand on the way in a couple of weeks ago, and then tried to grab it on the way out. I was so shocked, I let him take my hand the first time. Consultants were always shaking hands with patients prior to covid and I hoped they’d stopped by now, but no. Only opticians here seem to have the sense to wear masks routinely, in my recent experience.
I had a check up about a month ago. The nurse who was doing my vitals launched into a tale of woe about how she’d caught COVID twice from patients who came in unmasked knowing they had respiratory illness, COVID indicators.
Nurse was unmasked. I was masked. I was not surprised that the BP reading she took was much higher than normal. Being reminded that there are still COVIDiots willfully spreading illness FOUR years on is not conducive to healthy stress, BP levels. I told the doctor to please recheck it when she came in, and why and she was like “ugh!” at the nurse.
I’m going to keep masking up in crowds and in medical offices, and maybe other places too with the increased spread
That’s awful. Another thing I tend to do – never sit in a waiting room for ages before an appt. It’s asking for trouble. People just cough all over others. I tend to wait around, standing in the car park, looking through the window for my doctor. People must think I’m a bloody weirdo!
Incredible that she acknowledges the problem, but doesn’t take the immediate and obvious solution.
Doctors and everyone in health care never stopped masking here. I still have to wear a mask even just when I go to therapy, at least in the lobby area.
Eras, Glastonbury and the EURO2024 are super-spreader — and, eventually, mass-disabling — events, no matter that they take place outside.
What makes matters worse: they’re Ground Zero for the creation of new variants, because people come from all over the place to these gigs and may get re-infected with a different variant than the one they’re maybe still recovering from.
Too bad that Public Health everywhere seems to have forgotten to do their job, and no longer offers testing, or easy access to masks and vaccines.
So it was good to see Stevie Nicks masked up at Eras recently, even if most of the posts on Xwitter were sadly disdainful, misogynistic and uninformed.
Our family has been masking everywhere inside, outside in crowded spaces, despite getting quite some rude comments, and haven’t caught anything yet.
Please get well, Kismet and all other CBers who are sick, and keep in mind to take it easy for a while, even if you feel better. The sad thing is that we don’t feel/see (lab results etc) the damage from a possible lingering infection until it’s too late (=Long Covid)
🎯❤️🎯
Feel better, Kismet… Everyone PLEASE mask up if you have any symptoms. I have had COVID five times and can barely leave my house. When I do, I have a huge risk of getting sick for months after. Please, please help protect people with weakned immune systems. There are a lot of us.
I was retrospectively diagnosed with covid, which I had at the very start of the pandemic. I didn’t know what it was. I coughed for months, at one point being unable to make a full sentence without coughing. It took months until my lungs felt recovered. I recall people around that time saying they were suffering from this weirdly painful chest infection type thing. I had one call centre conversation with my phone company, and the customer service guy was coughing and I was coughing back. As the weeks went by, the kids got that rash thing and starting coughing. Somehow this first rollout of infection, when people were saying something odd is happening, gets forgotten in the mad tabloid rush to pretend it never happened.
Everyone being proud of vaccinating, but how many of us also mask up? We have to do both and people find it so difficult just to wear a mask. If you feel sick at all, you MUST wear a mask if you’re going to be around other people. And freaking cough into your elbow and wash your hands before you touch anything other people have to touch after coughing and wiping your nose (not just lather yourself with hand sanitizer).
My family is also suffering with COVID and I’m so annoyed.
North Carolina recently passed a bill outlawing masks and only added a public health exemption at the last minute. So there’s a lot of confusion in that state over masks.
I visited there last month and thought, “Screw it — if I’m stopped for wearing my mask in the grocery store, so be it.” (I’m white, so have the kind of privilege that allows me to be nonchalant about police encounters.) I wore my mask every time I went inside a store, and I wasn’t asked about it, but I was the ONLY person in those stores wearing a mask.
People are so freaking weird about this simple preventive measure.
(Glad you’re feeling better, Kismet!)
I wear an N95 everywhere I go, and if my state decides that’s going to be their mission (they’re horrific, so they might), I’m going to keep right on doing it. I think I will have to wear a mask in public for the rest of my life because getting any kind of upper respiratory illness triggers massive autoinflammatory flare ups I can’t manage without steroids, which reduce immunity even more. So if they want to try that BS here, they can see me in court. There are a couple issues I’m ready to throw down on in this state, if they keep pushing these outrageous radicalized policies.
I accidentally deleted my long comment so just let me say, thank you for writing about Covid regularly here! The science is exceedingly clear on that it’s definitely an infection we want to avoid, not only but also very much for our children in school.
I hope you feel better soon, Kismet! For the metallic taste – I bought a tongue scraper on a whim from Amazon before having a bad case of Covid last summer – it ended up being the only thing that saved me from the horrible metallic Paxlovid side effect (so nauseating, almost as bad as the other symptoms of Covid even though I knew the medicine was helping). If you have one I’d give it a try! A butter knife might also work in a pinch.
If this keeps picking up steam into fall, add one more variable to this election and how everyone votes (by mail).
Sigh. I’m so happy my paramedic husband isn’t on the ambulance side anymore and has moved to home hospital. He’ll still see COVID patients but at least they will have to wear a mask. I still remember all his stories about fellow medics and patients refusing to wear masks during peak COVID…..
I’ve had Covid once in 2022. I wash my hands and keep my distance. However, I continue to live my life. I refuse to let this virus get the better of me. I stopped getting boosters in late 2022 after having fainting reactions. Hope everyone keeps safe.
I hope you feel better soon. I’m fully vaccinated as a work requirement (healthcare) & caught Covid for the first time last December at a work event with a bunch of nurses & researchers. It was wretched. Then in May of this year got diagnosed with pneumonia. Otherwise healthy, no asthma or co-morbidities, and it knocked me all the way down. Doctors were like, welp you had Covid in the last 6 months and now you have to be careful.
I’ve BEEN careful!! So yeah, no, miss me with more variants. People need to stop acting like Covid is over or NBD.