Do the majority of infections clear completely?

The numbers are still unclear. Keep in mind that HIV/AIDS, TB et al have had a much longer time around to be studied. The researcher I quoted above mentioned studying HIV for 20 years. COVID is only approaching the end of year 5. In spite of its recency, we do still have a wealth of data to tell us how threatening it is, anyway. Being re-infected several times per year is certainly not tipping the odds in anyone’s favor, either.

The safest thing to do is also, thankfully, the simplest: wearing a well-fitting, N95-grade respirator whenever one is away from their home. These types of respirators are, regardless of anything you may have heard, extremely effective at protecting you and others from infecting one another, even one-way.

This is from 2 years ago, but was being discussed as early as 2020.

To be clear, McComsey isn’t suggesting that the viruses themselves are similar. Coronaviruses are not retroviruses like HIV, nor are they sexually transmitted like HIV. But it’s the way they make the people they infect sick that caught her attention. It hides in the body and continues to wreak havoc in the various organ system by driving inflammation and disrupting the immune response.

“HIV patients don’t die from the virus itself. They die from immune activation – from the high levels of inflammation that causes cancer, heart disease, liver and kidney disease,” she said.

“The only reason we cannot cure HIV is because the virus hides where the HIV drugs can’t go in. So it continues to fuel this high inflammation. That’s why somebody like me who has been studying HIV for the last 20 years found that COVID is extremely similar to HIV. It’s a virus that produces a lot of inflammation. We see a lot of conditions that are known to stem from inflammation, and now we have some evidence that it persists in different organs.” McComsey is referring to various published research papers that suggest the SARS-Cov-2 may linger in various organ tissues long after nasal swabs and blood tests come back negative.

If you wanted a more “academic” perspective, this is a study on “Long COVID” from this year.

We used ‘omic” assays and serology to deeply characterize the global and SARS-CoV-2-specific immunity in the blood of individuals with clear LC and non-LC clinical trajectories, 8 months postinfection. We found that LC individuals exhibited systemic inflammation and immune dysregulation.

This tells us that Long COVID manifests as persistent symptoms far after an acute COVID infection and appears to be, in reality, a continued infection by COVID that doesn’t go away, instead hanging out in various organs and constantly challenging your immune system – despite vaccination. Hopefully I don’t need another source to tell you why this is a bad thing.

It is no longer the acute symptoms one needs to worry about. This virus is like HIV/AIDS and will stay in your system long after you are “over it”.

no shimomura :(

I need to know what the pro-LGBT message is in fucking Sonic Adventure.

Sorcerers et al have always spoken to me, so I beeline for those if no one else is playing them in the group. If magic were real I would be a Shantotto or a Matoya, no question. Leave me alone with my frogs and brooms, all of you are losers. In FFXIV specifically I play the dwarf/gnome race, and small wizards are only a little bit cliche, so Iike being a beefy tank. I am small and fat IRL and if I could swing an axe like that with the rage of a thousand beasts you fuckin bet I would

I wear one of these things everywhere now and as an even further bonus I get to look like I’m from the cyberpunk future

use your very big brain, i’m sure the answer is in there somewhere

casual commander games do tend to drone on tbh. there is a whole…subculture? around basically not trying too hard, but not sandbagging, and it just leads to massive stale boards until someone hits their win condition eventually or whatever. cedh is a lot more fun to me because games dont take an hour or longer and no one cares about “feeling bad” because you play land hate (let’s not talk about the green player who just played four lands in one turn) or a counter spell lol.

I had so much more fun with magic when I decided that all constructed formats are bourgeoisie decadence and shitty day trading disguised as a game and that I would only play limited

Limited is the only real format(s?)

:fidel-catto:

Covid wasn’t even “that” deadly.

You people are going to make me lose my mind. Current estimates in the US are at about 1500 deaths a week. The last four years are the most excess deaths “during peacetime” that have ever been recorded. Ever. How much worse does it need to get???

Do you wear a respirator in public?

Do you wear a respirator in public?

Do you wear a respirator in public?

Actually I do, motherfucker, because I wear a god damn p100 everywhere I go. A fucking gas mask with removable cartridges and everything. Do that and get back to me. I get stared at, laughed at, pointed at, and I stare right back. My wife and I have been fake coughed at as we are passed. I go about my business. I organize with my local community to give out free respirators, information, and education to anyone who needs it. Now tell me what the fuck it is you do again?

I’ll say the same thing I said there: I don’t care how much of a struggle it is to mask in public anymore, because I do not get a choice. My immune system has been fucked up for the last 20 years due to biological lottery. I mask, or I die. You’re not saving the world by masking alone, but you are saving every sick person who has to go to the grocery store and brave the odds again for the 1500th day in a row (if they’re one of the lucky ones) from getting it from you, another potential risk vector. If your actions could swing the pendulum even slightly, if they could marginally tip the odds toward saving even one life in a tidal wave, why wouldn’t you do it? When you tell me your masking does nothing in the face of an apathetic society, when you tell me masking is “virtue signaling”, you tell me you are not serious. You tell me to my face that you are throwing your lot in with my enemy; you are ok with leaving me behind, for them. So I will treat you with the seriousness — and vitriol — you actually deserve, a grace not given to me or people like me as you kill us.

If you won’t mask: tell me why not. I could meet you in the grocery store. I could meet you on the train. It could be anyone in that store or on that train that gives me the covid infection that kills me, but it is just as likely to be you. Tell me why you wouldn’t wear a mask to prevent that possibility. Tell me in the same breath that you’d tell me you’re a comrade at the PSL chapter meeting. Tell me.

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“Nobody’s doing it so why would I” are the words of liberalism. Kill it or die with it. How dare any of you call yourselves my “comrades”.