All but three US states have very high or high levels of Covid-19 in their sewage right now, according to the CDC. Due to a drop in efforts to count individual cases, that data is the most accurate way to paint a picture of the current extent of Covid cases—and it’s bad.
In addition to wearing respirators, getting the updated Covid vaccine (mRNA shots were approved last week, and the Novavax vaccine this week) is an important way to reduce one’s chance of getting the infectious disease. Even if a person contracts it, the shot will reduce their risk of death and developing Long Covid.
But for uninsured and underinsured Americans, the vaccine has just gotten significantly more costly. On August 22, the CDC sunsetted its Bridge Access Program, which provided free Covid vaccines to 1.5 million Americans over the past year. A CDC spokesperson told Mother Jones that the sunsetting was a consequence of the new 2024-2025 vaccines being approved—which meant the 2023-2024 vaccines could no longer be administered. But many people did not know that the program would only cover the vaccine approved last year—just that it would end in August, potentially after the new shots became available. The CDC’s page on the program, which was live until some point Friday, did not clarify any of this information.
Some people legitimately have a bad immune reaction to vaccines, for a wide variety of reasons. It could be a specific allergy to some component of the shot, or a number of other factors. This isn’t unique to the COVID shot. It’s relatively rare, but everyone who is unlucky to be one of that minority goes online to talk about it, so there this inflated sense of it happening that far outstrips the real world occurrence of it. I’m sorry that you have had bad reactions in the past. That sucks. Thankfully that’s not the experience of most people.
Yeah, I keep up where i need to, but yeah medicine always wrecks me. It sucks, I really have to be careful and try stuff on days where I have a few days to burn if i react poorly. Fortunately, I haven’t needed much medications growing up. But, yeah I’ll probably just schedule a weekend where I don’t need to go anywhere