Stumbling Through Adulthood

Dh had to explain to his sister the other day that "endemic" didn't mean mild, just a cold, no biggie.

Endemic means we're stuck with it, and depending on what variant is circulating, that might mean a lot of dead people.

Endemic used to mean that it was stuck in a given region... Endemic, say, plague in London wouldn't affect me in Seattle. Now, there is one region, all of our 360 degrees of longitude and 180 degrees of latitude.

Even so-called-mild Omicron is killing folks, in two ways: 1. Because it's Covid and it's a roll of a the dice with good odds if you are vaccinated and ok if you are not as to whether you get a really bad case and 2. Because of the pressure on hospitals, there is some evidence that events that should be survivable are not being survived, or that long term outcomes are compromised because of care being delayed.

So eh. Endemic Omicron is not my idea of a picnic.

That said, I thought this article was pretty good: The COVID-19 Endemic Will Not Be the End of All Problems – Here’s Why the Virus Will Continue to Be a Threat!.

The bullshit idea that many people seem to have, that anti-vaxxers and RWers have been pushing for over a year now, is that "viruses evolve to become mild", and that, alas, is very much not true.

I'm seeing evidence that we've given up. Eugenics, in the comment of the bitch at CDC is rearing its ugly head. I'm not talking about the part of her interview a few weeks back where Fox et al. pretended not to notice that she was talking about vaccinated people, not everyone. I'm talking about the part of her interview where she said, "The overwhelming number of deaths, over 75%, occurred in people who had at least four comorbidities, so really these are people who were unwell to begin with, and yes, really encouraging news in the context of omicron," in a display of who the fuck gives a shit about those unwell people. She did apologize for the comment later, but the dismissal of people with comorbidities as "unwell" is rather disturbing. Anyhow.

They saw the blue cities get hit first, way back in March 2020 and they hate blue cities, and the many of the people (BIPOC) who live in them.

They saw the people in the blue areas doing what needed to be done to protect our communities: social distance, mask, stay home.

They became opposed to those things.

Later to vaccinations.

While we try to keep as many safe as possible, they squander our hard work, and spew their covid-breath as far and as wide as they can.

Even as it kills them.

Why?

Stupidity is part of it. Having drunk the KoolAid urine, and gobbled the horse dewormer, they have shown themselves to have little to no access to basic common sense.

But why, time after time, the desire to stomp on any progress made, to squander, to set back.

Revenge.

Flat out revenge.

We deposed their Golden Calf (I won't make fat jokes, but, um, here it's really temping. I won't though.), and they will not forgive us. We've allowed -or so they think- open borders and millions of brown people into the country. We refuse to accept that children should go hungry. We insist that people have the right to health care. We demand access to the ballot box for all eligible American citizens. We have changed the economy from one of miners and farmers to one of tech workers. We want clean air and clean water and clean, zero emissions energy. We want to fight to avoid the catastrophic climate change related events from occurring. We try to make life better for people.

And by people. I mean... everyone. They could, maybe, forgive us if we only wanted good things for white people... but we want those things for the everyone.

And their racism does not allow them to accept that.

They have little power. What can they do? Vote for their gilded dog turd, and refuse to accept that he lost (or, as Biden would say, that he's the defeated former president, how I love that phrasaing).

But what they can do? Is prevent us from moving forward.

By the fillibuster in the Senate.

And by spreading Covid as far and as wide as they can. By keeping us hostage, keeping our lives, normalcy, hostage to the germs, they can exact revenge on us.

What if we can't go back to normal, ever?

What then?

The mouth-breather-anti-vaxxer solution, which it's sounds like the US Supreme Court agrees with, is just let it all hang loose, some will live, some will die, some will be disabled, but freedumb.

I don't like that solution.

I also don't relish the idea of masks forevermore etc, but in the end, it still seems like it's the path that leads to the least loss of human life, human potential.

Cases going up. There is some questions as to whether Omicron will boost immunity, most of the data I've seen says 'not likely'. We also don't know if it will trigger long covid.

So much that we don't know.

And what next? A new variant with higher lethality, as transmissible as Omicron? Despite the claims of right wingers, viruses are not "primed to evolve to be less lethal."

As I toss these things around my brain, usually in the middle of the night, the thought of "what if this is a species ending event?" always hits me. Because. It could be. It probably won't be, but it could. And it could also be that it's the kind of event that changes the course of humanity.

I mean, we now have proof that a high percentage of our fellow people are both profoundly dumb and, for all intents are purposes, sociopaths.

My babies left back to uni, WAH!

I miss them already. There is a certain sense of chaos and energy when they are here that just dissipates immediately when they leave.

It was a bit of a crunch, getting them out. I ended up having Perry take one test (negative), and Linnea is going to give the other test in the package to her roomie (who couldn't get a testing appointment before Thursday). I have no idea what the uni was thinking, letting all these kids come back to dorms without any provision for tests. I mean, had it been me in charge (LOL!)? I'd have had kids take RATs as they showed up.

Anyhow, we shall see. I expect both kids to get Covid some time in the next few weeks, I don't see how it's avoidable at this point. Which is very upsetting. Yes, we have N95-ish masks (not official N95, but meet the same standards, purchased at Costco, and I do trust Costco), and yes, they're triple vaxxed, but still.

Everyone reading, here's hoping all of you, and any of your kids starting up stay safe and avoid getting sick!

I didn't write anything up yesterday, but my boyo is 21. Yipes.

How fast those 21 years went by!

He's such a great kid... it's funny how some things have changed and others haven't... he still goes on long rambles about video games, for example!

But he's kind, he's fun, and I so enjoy his company.

The pandemic has been a total bummer is so so SO many ways. One in which it hasn't? Having Perry at home for all that extra time has been a wonderful thing.

1. So yeah, sis and BIL aren't coming for the holidays. As I expected her fallback plan after my brother and family couldn't make it was to go to Austin with her dh (to see his kids) and drive to Baton Rouge to see bro etc. Then flying became iffy (long story) so they're staying home. Sob. I'd be fine with nobody here, just my family, but since we are here, I'll have to make Christmas dinner for my MIL and the bitch, aka my sister-in-law. Ugh. MIL will complain incessantly about her neighbors, who are objectively awful, but when we found her a place she could afford in the brand new apartments AC is living at, she declined, because it wasn't enough square footage. OK, but the neighbors aren't drug dealing scum. Just ugh. I wish I could just cancel, but not gonna happen.

2. Not having a good morning here. Dh wanted to go walk the dog earlier, but I was still drinking my tea, so I said fine go by yourself, but he said he'd wait. Eventually I got ready, but he decided to clear off his work desk (so we can put up the tree) and now he has to eat lunch. I can't eat if I'm going to do any kind of exercise, and it's 2pm, and I haven't had breakfast yet. I'm being snippy and bitchy because I'm sad and frustrated.

3. The Biden admin has handled Covid... poorly. Yes on getting people access to vaccines. But hello? Where are the rapid tests at an affordable price? Heck, where are they, even expensive, LOL? I tried to buy some earlier this week but no dice at three places and I got sick of looking. The clinic at dh's work gives them out (two tests per person per week, apparently) but I didn't know that until last week and they were out for the week by the time I got there. Anyhow, the CDC director Walensky is, educated MD or not, a total and utter blathering idiot. First it was the profoundly stupid "Go ahead and take off your mask if you are vaccinated", which worked so well, yeah, oh hai Delta and fucking lying Republicans, now it's take a rapid test if you are gathering with family. That's nice dumbass. Need to test at least 2-3 times per person to be safe-ish, tests are expensive ($12 each, $7 at WalMart), if you can even find them. The whole admin "Insurance will pay for it!" BS is just that. Is that before or after my deductible? And oh, what about the people who don't fucking have insurance? Everyone talks about 'free covid tests' but it's not for everyone.

FWIW, I don't mind paying a reasonable amount for a test, but I think we're being ripped off right now, and the Administration isn't doing what it can to mitigate any of this. They should have had a plan in place, yes, even pre-Omicron, to get tests to everyone. I don't know why they didn't bother.

The thing is, what is making all this difficult is that we're relying on the scummy for-profit private sector for public health things. I'd been trying to get a booster. For each place I tried -some of them for each branch I tried, I had to enter sensitive personal information, which they saved, before I could even find out IF there were appointments (note: there never were, at least not before late Dec/early Jan). We ended up getting our boosters from the Snohomish County public health corps. King County has been useless: they've needed to focus on equity, so a lot of stuff available in South King County, nothing near me, and even those appointments were difficult to come by. I signed up with them a month ago to get in line for a booster, right after the state opened it to everyone and... still waiting. We got our initial shots from the National Guard (or Army?) at the FEMA site halfway across the state in Yakima. Both government sites made it easy to sign up, gave me the info I needed before I divulged a lot of personal information, and didn't ask for much to begin with.

Public health needs to be handled by public entities. Not private.

I was going to suggest to my sister that we all get PCR tests 2-3 days before the holidays and then just the rapid tests, but obviously no dice on that. They've wound down many of the gov sites for testing, that I can tell, and now we're at the mercy of Walgreens and its ilk. Your data for a chance to look at the schedule and see if there an appointment within 100 miles. Or you can go to Urgent Care and pay $300 per person, not sure if this is reimbursed. This is just non-tenable.

Anyhow. Trump caused a lot of these problems, but Biden and his incomp CDC director haven't made as much progress as I'd hoped they would.

Got my booster shot at noon-ish today.

It's 9 hours later. My arm hurts, I can't lift it above my head, I'm starting to ache, and I'm having chills.

This is going to be So. Much. Fun.

But hey, boosted, so it's worth it.

It'll be interesting to see how the next few weeks go with this new variant.

Linnea was exposed to Covid last week (probably Friday) in a class.

She wasn't feeling well this morning at workout and had a coughing fit and was tired and...

Told her to get to student health to get a test and to her credit, she figured out how to do that, and got a test.

Which just came back negative.

Phew.

I have to say... Linnea is getting to be so freaking competent I'm seriously impressed with her. She's navigating a strange environment with new requirements efficiently. And she's doing ok in classes to boot.

There's a word in French for people like her: dégourdie. It doesn't just me smart, it means smart and well, on it.

Saw a disgusting piece from CNN yesterday that talked to vaccine-stupids, and pretty much gave them a platform without any real rebuttal. That drives me nuts.

Two things:

1. At this point, I don't give a fuck if the stupids kill themselves or their families. I do, however, care that they put others at risk, who just happened to be near one of the stupids, and that they're breeding grounds for new variants.

2. These people almost invariably claim that 'they'll be fine' and then they get sick and go clog up hospitals putting others at risk. The stupids are often -not always- fat and older.

Which brings me to two other points I want to make.

1. While I despite these stupid, selfish asses, I'm of the opinion that we cannot, and should not agitate for, refusing them treatment, or should not use vaccine status as a determinant for treatment, no matter how tempting. Because I'm fat and I'll always be triaged to the back of the line, because it's my own fault (oh ha, as if I wouldn't be thin if I could, LOL. Do people really think fat people don't spend much of their lives desperately chasing thinness?), so since I don't want to see us going the route of using what would no doubt be called a 'personal choice' to be fat to deny me care, I will be on the side of not kicking the unvaccinated out of the hospital.

2. Fat people and Covid. Data looks pretty compelling, that fat people do poorly with Covid. That was what they said, what the studies showed as well, back in 2009 with H1N1, that fat people were particularly at risk. And then... someone did a meta-analysis a few years later and controlled for treatment... and lo and behold, the problem was medical bias: thin people got treatment earlier and fat people got lower quality of care in general. It'll be interesting to see if the small increase in morbidity and mortality in fat people in Covid get smoothed away once we account for how soon fat people got antibody treatment, how often/for how long they were proned etc.

Which brings me to two more points.

1. Approximately 74% of Americans are some degree of fat. 78% of people who have poor outcomes with covid (hospitalization, need of a ventilator, death) were fat. Excuse me while I don't think that the 4% difference is worth blaming every fat person for their own demise over, especially considering point 2 above. The data, btw, is often mis-reported as "78% of people with poor outcomes were considered overweight or obese" followed by '42% of Americans are obese.' Note the difference.... I also find it interesting that the data out of China (30% fat people) did not show an additional risk factor, nor did the initial data from NY or, even, King County. Again, not saying there is no effect of being fat, just that the data is, again, being blown out of proportion, and that it'll be interesting to see over the next few years, if anyone tries to tease out the balance between actual risk and the risk conferred by medical bias.

2. Fat lives are considered worthless. It's been horrific, over the past year and a half, to hear the chant, mainly from wingnuts, but also from the left, of 'well, they were fat, lol, what did they expect?' The immediate reaction after a death is announced was to explain it away "oh, they were fat" or to, in no uncertain terms, blame the victim, or worse, parents who lost a child.