Using wastewater data- the only data that measures the amount of circulating COVID-19 in an era of inaccessible tests and discouraged reporting- infectious disease modeler J.P. Weiland estimates that the US has yet again crossed the million-infections-per-day mark as of August 9, with about 1 in 33 Americans currently infected with COVID-19.

. . .

I’ve written before about how, in November 2021, nearly a year after the debut of the vaccines, Fauci publicly declared that US COVID cases would need to fall “well below 10,000 a day” for us to get a “degree of normality,” and allow us to return to pre-pandemic life. In the nearly three years since, the US has never had a single day with under 10,000 new COVID cases per day; in fact, we have never had a single day with under 100,000 new COVID cases per day.

  • This one I truly can’t comprehend. Even if we somehow made covid disappear tomorrow there’s no way in hell I’m rawdogging airplane air ever again.

    Even ignoring COVID, I just don’t want to be sick on my vacation? I feel like that’s obvious? I don’t want a cold, I don’t want the flu, I really don’t want covid.

      • zed_proclaimer [he/him]@hexbear.net
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        1 month ago

        I got stuck in Fort Lauderdale airport in 2020 when Covid became a thing. This was pre-masking when the government was saying they didn’t work. Most germ infested place I have ever been, got Covid on the way back home

        • Frank [he/him, he/him]@hexbear.net
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          1 month ago

          Lol i forgot the CDC just flat out lied and justified it with some bullshit about conserving masks for healthcare or some shit. I made a whole slew of cloth masks that never worked. I mean, they “worked”, but not enough to matter.

          • fox [comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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            1 month ago

            Cloth masks were never going to stop you getting sick, they were to stop you from spreading virus too far from your body. But that only works to slow spread if people even bother to wear them

            • AernaLingus [any]@hexbear.net
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              1 month ago

              And even as shitty as they are on an individual basis, they actually really helped when we had near universal masking at the beginning of the pandemic which significantly reduced the amount of virus in the air! The more people who are masking, the less perfect any individual’s masking has to be. Amazing what we can accomplish when we all work together to protect each other’s health!

              But of course, we live in “personal risk assessment” hellworld, so you’d better have an N95 or better and make sure it fits perfectly or you’ll get got thanks to everyone else blasting their aerosols into every cubic inch of the environment.

    • Frank [he/him, he/him]@hexbear.net
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      1 month ago

      Right? I haven’t had any kind of infectious disease - cold, flu, rsv, whatever, nothing, since 2019! It’s awesome. Yeah, i wear a mask and that sucks, but i also don’t get sick ever!

      We should have been doing this all along. Like, it was right there the whole time!

      • Ildsaye [they/them]@hexbear.net
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        1 month ago

        And it protects your lungs from wildfire smoke, and it makes it harder for the authorities to identify you, plus you look like a ninja