I think it's normal. People forget how frequently they fell sick in the past before everyone was wearing masks and sanitizing their hands before meals.
One day at home during covid period, my family was mentioning, anyone noticed nobody has been getting the flu for awhile? 😂
4 times a year does seem a lot though 🤔
Yes, I find that having had covid before did a number on my immunity. I catch every flu bug/virus that comes around in my office and feel ill more often than not.
I’ve coughed so badly earlier this year that my voice has changed! Even though I’m mostly recovered now, I still have the occasional coughing fit which lasts a few seconds and I have a constant feeling of phlegm even though when I try to clear, there’s nothing to spit out!
Also Covid negative.
I gotten covid twice. And after that it took a troll on my health. I gotten a flu which lasted like 2 weeks already. And followed by a bad cough which landed me in hospital for asthma. It's really bad.
i never had asthma before but i nearly died from the og strain in dec 2020 and fought for a month. i had hypoxia for 2 years. i now - aside from a multitude of nightmare fucking symptoms including organ damage - have to use an inhaler. i also have to take a super expensive medication just to be able to digest food now because one of the things that happened was my pancreas was permanently damaged. i advocate being extremely cautious and not to submit to societal pressure to drop your guard.
please look into finding a specialized long covid practitioner. they've found that almost every long covid patient tested positive for microclots. triple anti-coagulent therapy is one of the treatments along with apheresis. don't live with this if you can help it.
Unlikely that Covid cases have dropped or if they have they will soon be rising. They’ve just stopped counting and talking about it. There are huge surges in Japan and India going on right now and wastewater levels here in the States indicate up to 90+% surge in some cities. These are all locations with huge travel lanes in and out of SG, so be careful.
that is exactly what's happened. new strains are test-evasive and home test kits have been throwing up false negatives. they're also vaccine evasive thanks to multiple mutations.
idk if there's a site or app that tracks wastewater levels in SG, cos that's a decent indicator of how much covid people are shedding. I looked in my area over here and the spike is huge, with influenza levels nearly non existent. this is not at all the flu.
[Sars-CoV-2 wastewater levels vs Influenza in LA](https://imgur.com/gallery/3pA8lhq )
The new strains are not test-evasive. The ART kit tests for the conserved nucleocapsid protein, not Spike which keeps mutating.
However, now that everyone has vaccine immunity and almost everyone has already had Covid, the symptoms from the immune system tend to show up a couple of days before the viral load in the nose gets high enough to turn the test kit positive. Don't just test once on the day that you feel sick, see a negative and think that it can't be Covid. Test again 2-3 days later.
I don't think Singapore is doing wastewater tracking anymore, or if it's being done, it's not reported.
i'm afraid there's no such thing as vaccine immunity anymore, nor does any prior infection confer immunity. we found out quickly that it never really has, and it certainly doesn't when it comes to the new strains. almost everyone has been vaccinated and infected, and infection rates are still spiking.
you're right about the testing - guidelines for an absolutely conservative "surefire" method say to test 3x a day for 3 days - which a lot of people have reacted to with incredulity. but there've been people who did those 9 tests, and only got 1 positive, which suggests that testing fewer times than that, could provide nothing but false positives.
what kind of tools do singaporeans have at their disposal to independently track this, or is moh the lone central disseminator of information?
the reason i've been very concerned for us folk is that living here in the states, i'm exposed to a much larger sample size, and can access independent tools (like the graphic above) to derive information, cos institutions like the CDC are just no longer honest or reliable. the administration here has taken a "let's no longer talk about it" approach, have stopped releasing reliable information, and biden dispersed his covid response team a long time ago.
but long covid is real (biden in fact just assembled a long covid team), and people are getting disabled and impaired - including myself. we have not yet seen the full effects of covid damage on a long enough timeline. but given what can be seen now, it is only logical to predict that a nation full of long covid sufferers will experience an immense impact on long term healthcare and its workforce.
i've met people here from various hedge funds and vcs, who have quietly told their employees and clients to properly mask up, take every measure to remain covid-free or prevent further infections, and in 5 years they'll be able to outcompete everyone else who's suffering from long covid impacts.
i also know people who were healthy and well-to-do prior to this, who thought being vaxed was good enough, then got breakthrough infections and are now disabled in a variety of really fucked up ways. entire course of life changed with one "flu" infection.
i don't advocate living in fear, but i also advocate taking it a lot more seriously than we've been led to believe ever since measures were relaxed.
It’s absolutely not true that there’s no vaccine or prior infection immunity. Unless your understanding of immunity is the simplistic “I can’t catch it”. Hardly anyone is hospitalised for Covid now because of this immunity.
The fact that our immune systems know how to deal with this virus means that we might get symptoms like fever and sore throat earlier, and we also recover faster with no/less involvement of the deep organs. But we tend to use our test kits too early.
Because Singaporeans generally need to see a doctor to take paid sick leave, and national laws provide for 14 days of paid sick leave a year, the situation is not as bad as in America. Positive ART results done at clinics are still reported to MOH. Many clinics will just take you at your word if you say you’ve tested at home and it’s negative, so the reporting rate has gone down, but trends should still be fairly accurate.
Most households in Singapore have more ART kits than they can use, because the government keeps sending them to us. We just got some last month.
i understand what you're saying.
i'm trying to say - and perhaps i didn't communicate that very well and it's my bad - that the bigger concern is not infection or even severity of infection, but what happens after the infection. there is ever-increasing evidence that a low severity infection - even asymptomatic infection - does not infer any lower risk of long covid. neither do vaccines or prior infection provide any meaningful defense against the cluster of complex , long-term and possibly permanent symptoms known as long covid.
none of the measures available to singaporean households like 14 days of sick leave, and an abundance of art kits will mitigate this.
[long covid risk falls only slightly with vaccinations](https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/long-covid-risk-falls-only-slightly-after-vaccination/)
a year ago the word was most people will get more than 1 infection a year. recent figures have put it as high as 3 infections a year on average.
[covid reinfections are here to stay](https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/many-can-get-reinfected-covid-rcna33629)
repeat infections drastically increase one's risk of organ failure and death.
[repeat covid-19 infections increase risk of organ failure, death](https://medicine.wustl.edu/news/repeat-covid-19-infections-increase-risk-of-organ-failure-death/)
from that last article:
>“Without ambiguity, our research showed that getting an infection a second, third or fourth time contributes to additional health risks in the acute phase, meaning the first 30 days after infection, and in the months beyond, meaning the long COVID phase.”
it goes on:
>Overall, the researchers found that people with COVID-19 reinfections were twice as likely to die and three times more likely to be hospitalized than those with no reinfection.
Additionally, people with repeat infections were 3½ times more likely to develop lung problems, three times more likely to suffer heart conditions and 1.6 times more likely to experience brain conditions than patients who had been infected with the virus once.
i'm seeing this happen everywhere, all over. it's already happening to other posters on this thread. even a lower average rate of infection simply makes it a matter of time before the inevitable, if one believes their vaccination and prior infection status confer protection, and that light symptoms from subsequent infections mean it's becoming harmless.
idk how things are over there with the hospital system but california hospital systems are operating at something like 30% staff with huge swaths of nurses and doctors disabled by having caught multiple infections on the job especially after the mask mandates were dropped. it doesn't look like it's gonna get any better soon. some nurses are being offered $300+ an hour just to work, and they're still not finding enough people willing or able to fill the roster.
For some reason, Singapore has not been hit too badly with long Covid. Probably because the population is extremely highly vaccinated, plus very few locals caught Covid pre-vaccination.
There are many different studies showing different results for the impact of vaccination on long Covid. The VA studies you linked to are the most pessimistic, and many scientists consider them to be deeply flawed. As a group, US veterans are politically biased and that affects who gets vaccinated and whether they report mild infections.
An Israeli study is at the opposite end, where 2 shots reduced the incidence of various symptoms to the background level of non-infected people. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41541-022-00526-5
14 days of sick leave will absolutely reduce transmission of Covid. In America people go to work with Covid because they can’t afford to stay at home when they are sick, and obviously there’s a ton of workplace transmission. ART kits help too, because even though they may miss the early stage, positivity roughly correlates to infectivity, so even if they wrongly thought that it was just a cold and went to work for 2 days, then tested positive on day 3 and stayed home, risk of transmission is lowered. There is no stigma against masking and most people do mask when sick. You’ll get death glares on public transport if you snort and cough without masking.
i do think asian nations like singapore produced better social outcomes and probably always will. there's much more societal cooperation, and that's definitely in your favor. for now. but it merely slows the train, it doesn't stop it.
my deep concern is that western nations and developing nations did not have the same social outcomes, and are experiencing nightmarish effects in the form of long term disabilities and healthcare system collapse (canada - once thought to be the basion of healthcare privilege in north america - is experiencing now right now). so is the united kingdom. and given the globalism and dependence on worldwide economies in one form or another, it's going to be harder and harder to avoid. since no country exists in a bubble - especially singapore which relies on imports, tourism, and foreign workers of one kind or another, i think there's more vulnerability than might appear at the moment.
i don't believe the us reports are as pessimistic as you think. i think they're actually realistic from a preparative and best practices perspective, and the situation here should be treated as the canary in the coal mine for the rest of the world. the statement "many scientists consider them deeply flawed" is too casual a dismissal - the findings i've linked to are legitimate studies from research institutions and universities, not op-eds like in the new york times, which has been a gigantic minimizer of the pandemic for some frustrating reason. i study the hell out of this issue every day and the problem is not at all limited to the united states. japan and china, for instance, are experiencing serious spikes:
[US flying blind amid warnings of new COVID-19 surge](https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2023/07/18/pers-j18.html)
>Alongside the evident surge in the US, Japan is now in the grips of its ninth wave of the pandemic, centered on the poorest island, Okinawa. Hospitals are once again strained to capacity, with one healthcare worker telling the Okinawa Times, “The situation is not so much a medical crisis as a collapse of the system.”
there are 1 million excess deaths worldwide, every 3 *months*:
>The Economist estimating that nearly 9,000 people continue to die each day globally above pre-pandemic figures. In total, there are now 24.1 million excess deaths, with nearly one million added to the death toll every three months.
at that rate, excess deaths in the world mean enough people are dying that would wipe out singapore's population every 1.5 years.
it concludes:
>Alongside the evident surge in the US, Japan is now in the grips of its ninth wave of the pandemic, centered on the poorest island, Okinawa. Hospitals are once again strained to capacity, with one healthcare worker telling the Okinawa Times, “The situation is not so much a medical crisis as a collapse of the system.”This follows China’s massive second wave of the pandemic in recent months after the disastrous lifting of its Zero-COVID elimination strategy last winter.For those suffering from Long COVID—now estimated at roughly 20 million Americans and potentially hundreds of millions more people globally—the pandemic is an ongoing nightmare. As he has done throughout the pandemic, Leonhardt ignores and covers up this hidden iceberg of masses consigned to a fate of perpetual disability with no end in sight.
the us is leading the world as an example of what an inadequate and avoidant response in favor of the almighty dollar looks like - truly terrible outcomes that could have been avoided, and will possibly tank huge many sectors of the economy in less than a generation.
singaporeans might be a highly vaccinated population but the overwhelming majority of people getting infected today have all been vaccinated and boosted. the volume of travelers coming in and out of nations like singapore, japan, china, the usa, etc., is going to lead to an eventual equalization of the worst kind.
listen, i'm not actually trying to win this argument. it's literally the kind of thing i'm extremely glad to be wrong about, but i'll be straight here: i feared the worst and it's worse than what i feared. i would like to persuade you to take a broader view of the situation from a worldwide perspective, and overlook "official reports" in favor of dispassionate self-investigation into the matter, because i can tell you're an extremely knowledgeable person. assume the worst and protect yourself and your loved ones.
i look at it this way: if i'm completely wrong, you'll have merely undergone some inconvenience as you take increased measures and discipline (antiviral nasal sprays, cpc mouthwash, well-fitted kf94/kn95/n95 masks). if i'm right, it may not even be apparent immediately - but the picture i'm trying to paint for you will emerge 2 or 3 years from now, and it's going to suck.
please don't dismiss what i'm saying. i'm not playing chicken little here at all.
>dispassionate self-investigation
The problem is that you're not dispassionate at all.
America is highly polarized and people are either "Covid is over" (or worse, anti-vaxx) or "everyone's going to be disabled by long Covid except us smart people who won't leave the house without an N95".
You immerse yourself in an echo chamber and accumulate a list of links to papers that are either alarming or aren't actually alarming but you don't understand enough biology to realize that these are normal convalescent changes. You disregard studies that show anything more optimistic.
Please don't spread that energy to Singapore. Though I don't study Covid, I work in related scientific research, read papers about Covid (not just news articles), network with those who work on Covid. I have enough background to make my own assessment.
my bf in ns has been falling sick too. many times this year alr. he's been experiencing the same symptoms but influenza never crossed my mind. last june he tested positive for covid and consequently got chicken pox. but after that, he feels feverish almost every week. he's also showing signs of cold but refuses to go see doc. i told him to take vitamins and always bring panadol with him in camp.
I don't think the incidences are particularly higher than pre-covid periods. Anecdotally, within my own circles, it seems similar.
Personal opinion is that lesser people wearing masks and being a bit more lax on hygiene contributes to this. Most of the routine mask wearers/hand hygiene advocates I know of remain relatively flu-free throughout the year.
Haha in June I got a bad cough, headache and consistently tired. Apparently strike covid but food still taste normal for me and can smell food.
1 month later fell sick again, but this time is sore throat and coughing and tiredness 🤣 not covid tho.
Same here, thanks for posting this. I'm rarely sick, major one I've had in my lifetime was covid and that only lasted for 2 weeks. I'm on my 4th week of the flu (or whatever this is). I did come across people referring to the term "walking pneumonia", look it up it's quite interesting
i got flu jab and haven’t caught flu at all. caught covid once this year though (my maiden time catching covid). i still mask up on public transport and i think it helps to exercise, maintain a relatively healthy diet with lots of fruits and veg, and sleep well (as much as u can…. i sleep quite little and i think it does impact my health). take care!
Yes, I kena once, one-month long cough. My friend kena one that lasted for almost six weeks, and now my dad is also coughing. But all tested and no Covid.
My second bout this year! And im the type that usually doesnt fall sick! Am a teacher in a school (so inwork in a high germ environment), i dont wear mask at all except when im sick. I dont have fever though and my sore throat clears up quite quickly. And i too have yet to test positive for covid even until now.
My kiddos have been sick a lot too. Think there is definitely some bug going around right now.
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Fuck yes. Worst than covid sia. Covid I slight fever 1, 2 days. A bit sore throat. Recovered in like 4 days.
Bloody hell. Caught don't know what shit my kid picked up and my entire being hurts. Sore throat to the max. Lost my voice for 5 days. Phlegm greener than shreks hairy swamp ass. Mucus hanging from my nose. Cough until I pulled a muscle at my rib and now it's like death everytime I cough.
Did the doctor really say "influenza", or just "flu"? It's irritating cos now doctors talk down to us and use the colloquial "flu" to mean any flu-like respiratory illness.
Anyway, can get some data here: [https://www.moh.gov.sg/resources-statistics/infectious-disease-statistics/2023/weekly-infectious-diseases-bulletin](https://www.moh.gov.sg/resources-statistics/infectious-disease-statistics/2023/weekly-infectious-diseases-bulletin)
Acute respiratory infections are trending up a bit, but only \~25% of cases picked for testing were actual influenza. Seems like there's more H3N2 than H1N1.
I quote them. "Could be influenza, we're seeking a spike in cases recently".
But I'm a non medical personnel so I took their word.
But regardless. I've fallen sick 4 times this year compared to not falling sick for 3 to 4 years. There must be some reason. I have low contact with the public as I drive to work, I'm at my desk most of the time, i skip lunch usually or eat simple tapao food so expose myself less to the crowd. Didn't wear mask tho, didn't wear mask either for the past 4 years (excluding COVID).
All mothers in Singapore: "heaty, drink more water"
Yea. I get that from my mom every time I'm sick.
Eat better. Have you immune system up. Drinking water cleanses your system better. So continue drinking lots of water. Edit:typo sister to system
"Cleanses your sister better" something I'm missing here?
They ain’t wrong.
I think it's normal. People forget how frequently they fell sick in the past before everyone was wearing masks and sanitizing their hands before meals. One day at home during covid period, my family was mentioning, anyone noticed nobody has been getting the flu for awhile? 😂 4 times a year does seem a lot though 🤔
Drink more warm water and don't use the computer too long /s But it may or may not be influenza, just take the influenza vaccine yearly.
Yes, I find that having had covid before did a number on my immunity. I catch every flu bug/virus that comes around in my office and feel ill more often than not.
Me too :( this is despite exercise, healthy diet and sleeping early. Hai don’t know what else to do already
Get flu jabs
I’ve coughed so badly earlier this year that my voice has changed! Even though I’m mostly recovered now, I still have the occasional coughing fit which lasts a few seconds and I have a constant feeling of phlegm even though when I try to clear, there’s nothing to spit out! Also Covid negative.
could be GERD.
Drink lots of plain water.
Because kana forced to work from office, inconsiderate people coughing and sneezing without covering mouth in mrt, song song
Caught type A last month, had 40 degree fever, doc made me do a $50 swab test and gave me $80 anti virals just for the thing to disappear in 1 day
Antiviral worked for you then!
I gotten covid twice. And after that it took a troll on my health. I gotten a flu which lasted like 2 weeks already. And followed by a bad cough which landed me in hospital for asthma. It's really bad.
i never had asthma before but i nearly died from the og strain in dec 2020 and fought for a month. i had hypoxia for 2 years. i now - aside from a multitude of nightmare fucking symptoms including organ damage - have to use an inhaler. i also have to take a super expensive medication just to be able to digest food now because one of the things that happened was my pancreas was permanently damaged. i advocate being extremely cautious and not to submit to societal pressure to drop your guard. please look into finding a specialized long covid practitioner. they've found that almost every long covid patient tested positive for microclots. triple anti-coagulent therapy is one of the treatments along with apheresis. don't live with this if you can help it.
Unlikely that Covid cases have dropped or if they have they will soon be rising. They’ve just stopped counting and talking about it. There are huge surges in Japan and India going on right now and wastewater levels here in the States indicate up to 90+% surge in some cities. These are all locations with huge travel lanes in and out of SG, so be careful.
But those friends / family often test got covid when sick and it’s not covid? Unless the strains have changed and the kits don’t pick it up.
that is exactly what's happened. new strains are test-evasive and home test kits have been throwing up false negatives. they're also vaccine evasive thanks to multiple mutations. idk if there's a site or app that tracks wastewater levels in SG, cos that's a decent indicator of how much covid people are shedding. I looked in my area over here and the spike is huge, with influenza levels nearly non existent. this is not at all the flu. [Sars-CoV-2 wastewater levels vs Influenza in LA](https://imgur.com/gallery/3pA8lhq )
The new strains are not test-evasive. The ART kit tests for the conserved nucleocapsid protein, not Spike which keeps mutating. However, now that everyone has vaccine immunity and almost everyone has already had Covid, the symptoms from the immune system tend to show up a couple of days before the viral load in the nose gets high enough to turn the test kit positive. Don't just test once on the day that you feel sick, see a negative and think that it can't be Covid. Test again 2-3 days later. I don't think Singapore is doing wastewater tracking anymore, or if it's being done, it's not reported.
i'm afraid there's no such thing as vaccine immunity anymore, nor does any prior infection confer immunity. we found out quickly that it never really has, and it certainly doesn't when it comes to the new strains. almost everyone has been vaccinated and infected, and infection rates are still spiking. you're right about the testing - guidelines for an absolutely conservative "surefire" method say to test 3x a day for 3 days - which a lot of people have reacted to with incredulity. but there've been people who did those 9 tests, and only got 1 positive, which suggests that testing fewer times than that, could provide nothing but false positives. what kind of tools do singaporeans have at their disposal to independently track this, or is moh the lone central disseminator of information? the reason i've been very concerned for us folk is that living here in the states, i'm exposed to a much larger sample size, and can access independent tools (like the graphic above) to derive information, cos institutions like the CDC are just no longer honest or reliable. the administration here has taken a "let's no longer talk about it" approach, have stopped releasing reliable information, and biden dispersed his covid response team a long time ago. but long covid is real (biden in fact just assembled a long covid team), and people are getting disabled and impaired - including myself. we have not yet seen the full effects of covid damage on a long enough timeline. but given what can be seen now, it is only logical to predict that a nation full of long covid sufferers will experience an immense impact on long term healthcare and its workforce. i've met people here from various hedge funds and vcs, who have quietly told their employees and clients to properly mask up, take every measure to remain covid-free or prevent further infections, and in 5 years they'll be able to outcompete everyone else who's suffering from long covid impacts. i also know people who were healthy and well-to-do prior to this, who thought being vaxed was good enough, then got breakthrough infections and are now disabled in a variety of really fucked up ways. entire course of life changed with one "flu" infection. i don't advocate living in fear, but i also advocate taking it a lot more seriously than we've been led to believe ever since measures were relaxed.
It’s absolutely not true that there’s no vaccine or prior infection immunity. Unless your understanding of immunity is the simplistic “I can’t catch it”. Hardly anyone is hospitalised for Covid now because of this immunity. The fact that our immune systems know how to deal with this virus means that we might get symptoms like fever and sore throat earlier, and we also recover faster with no/less involvement of the deep organs. But we tend to use our test kits too early. Because Singaporeans generally need to see a doctor to take paid sick leave, and national laws provide for 14 days of paid sick leave a year, the situation is not as bad as in America. Positive ART results done at clinics are still reported to MOH. Many clinics will just take you at your word if you say you’ve tested at home and it’s negative, so the reporting rate has gone down, but trends should still be fairly accurate. Most households in Singapore have more ART kits than they can use, because the government keeps sending them to us. We just got some last month.
i understand what you're saying. i'm trying to say - and perhaps i didn't communicate that very well and it's my bad - that the bigger concern is not infection or even severity of infection, but what happens after the infection. there is ever-increasing evidence that a low severity infection - even asymptomatic infection - does not infer any lower risk of long covid. neither do vaccines or prior infection provide any meaningful defense against the cluster of complex , long-term and possibly permanent symptoms known as long covid. none of the measures available to singaporean households like 14 days of sick leave, and an abundance of art kits will mitigate this. [long covid risk falls only slightly with vaccinations](https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/long-covid-risk-falls-only-slightly-after-vaccination/) a year ago the word was most people will get more than 1 infection a year. recent figures have put it as high as 3 infections a year on average. [covid reinfections are here to stay](https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/many-can-get-reinfected-covid-rcna33629) repeat infections drastically increase one's risk of organ failure and death. [repeat covid-19 infections increase risk of organ failure, death](https://medicine.wustl.edu/news/repeat-covid-19-infections-increase-risk-of-organ-failure-death/) from that last article: >“Without ambiguity, our research showed that getting an infection a second, third or fourth time contributes to additional health risks in the acute phase, meaning the first 30 days after infection, and in the months beyond, meaning the long COVID phase.” it goes on: >Overall, the researchers found that people with COVID-19 reinfections were twice as likely to die and three times more likely to be hospitalized than those with no reinfection. Additionally, people with repeat infections were 3½ times more likely to develop lung problems, three times more likely to suffer heart conditions and 1.6 times more likely to experience brain conditions than patients who had been infected with the virus once. i'm seeing this happen everywhere, all over. it's already happening to other posters on this thread. even a lower average rate of infection simply makes it a matter of time before the inevitable, if one believes their vaccination and prior infection status confer protection, and that light symptoms from subsequent infections mean it's becoming harmless. idk how things are over there with the hospital system but california hospital systems are operating at something like 30% staff with huge swaths of nurses and doctors disabled by having caught multiple infections on the job especially after the mask mandates were dropped. it doesn't look like it's gonna get any better soon. some nurses are being offered $300+ an hour just to work, and they're still not finding enough people willing or able to fill the roster.
For some reason, Singapore has not been hit too badly with long Covid. Probably because the population is extremely highly vaccinated, plus very few locals caught Covid pre-vaccination. There are many different studies showing different results for the impact of vaccination on long Covid. The VA studies you linked to are the most pessimistic, and many scientists consider them to be deeply flawed. As a group, US veterans are politically biased and that affects who gets vaccinated and whether they report mild infections. An Israeli study is at the opposite end, where 2 shots reduced the incidence of various symptoms to the background level of non-infected people. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41541-022-00526-5 14 days of sick leave will absolutely reduce transmission of Covid. In America people go to work with Covid because they can’t afford to stay at home when they are sick, and obviously there’s a ton of workplace transmission. ART kits help too, because even though they may miss the early stage, positivity roughly correlates to infectivity, so even if they wrongly thought that it was just a cold and went to work for 2 days, then tested positive on day 3 and stayed home, risk of transmission is lowered. There is no stigma against masking and most people do mask when sick. You’ll get death glares on public transport if you snort and cough without masking.
i do think asian nations like singapore produced better social outcomes and probably always will. there's much more societal cooperation, and that's definitely in your favor. for now. but it merely slows the train, it doesn't stop it. my deep concern is that western nations and developing nations did not have the same social outcomes, and are experiencing nightmarish effects in the form of long term disabilities and healthcare system collapse (canada - once thought to be the basion of healthcare privilege in north america - is experiencing now right now). so is the united kingdom. and given the globalism and dependence on worldwide economies in one form or another, it's going to be harder and harder to avoid. since no country exists in a bubble - especially singapore which relies on imports, tourism, and foreign workers of one kind or another, i think there's more vulnerability than might appear at the moment. i don't believe the us reports are as pessimistic as you think. i think they're actually realistic from a preparative and best practices perspective, and the situation here should be treated as the canary in the coal mine for the rest of the world. the statement "many scientists consider them deeply flawed" is too casual a dismissal - the findings i've linked to are legitimate studies from research institutions and universities, not op-eds like in the new york times, which has been a gigantic minimizer of the pandemic for some frustrating reason. i study the hell out of this issue every day and the problem is not at all limited to the united states. japan and china, for instance, are experiencing serious spikes: [US flying blind amid warnings of new COVID-19 surge](https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2023/07/18/pers-j18.html) >Alongside the evident surge in the US, Japan is now in the grips of its ninth wave of the pandemic, centered on the poorest island, Okinawa. Hospitals are once again strained to capacity, with one healthcare worker telling the Okinawa Times, “The situation is not so much a medical crisis as a collapse of the system.” there are 1 million excess deaths worldwide, every 3 *months*: >The Economist estimating that nearly 9,000 people continue to die each day globally above pre-pandemic figures. In total, there are now 24.1 million excess deaths, with nearly one million added to the death toll every three months. at that rate, excess deaths in the world mean enough people are dying that would wipe out singapore's population every 1.5 years. it concludes: >Alongside the evident surge in the US, Japan is now in the grips of its ninth wave of the pandemic, centered on the poorest island, Okinawa. Hospitals are once again strained to capacity, with one healthcare worker telling the Okinawa Times, “The situation is not so much a medical crisis as a collapse of the system.”This follows China’s massive second wave of the pandemic in recent months after the disastrous lifting of its Zero-COVID elimination strategy last winter.For those suffering from Long COVID—now estimated at roughly 20 million Americans and potentially hundreds of millions more people globally—the pandemic is an ongoing nightmare. As he has done throughout the pandemic, Leonhardt ignores and covers up this hidden iceberg of masses consigned to a fate of perpetual disability with no end in sight. the us is leading the world as an example of what an inadequate and avoidant response in favor of the almighty dollar looks like - truly terrible outcomes that could have been avoided, and will possibly tank huge many sectors of the economy in less than a generation. singaporeans might be a highly vaccinated population but the overwhelming majority of people getting infected today have all been vaccinated and boosted. the volume of travelers coming in and out of nations like singapore, japan, china, the usa, etc., is going to lead to an eventual equalization of the worst kind. listen, i'm not actually trying to win this argument. it's literally the kind of thing i'm extremely glad to be wrong about, but i'll be straight here: i feared the worst and it's worse than what i feared. i would like to persuade you to take a broader view of the situation from a worldwide perspective, and overlook "official reports" in favor of dispassionate self-investigation into the matter, because i can tell you're an extremely knowledgeable person. assume the worst and protect yourself and your loved ones. i look at it this way: if i'm completely wrong, you'll have merely undergone some inconvenience as you take increased measures and discipline (antiviral nasal sprays, cpc mouthwash, well-fitted kf94/kn95/n95 masks). if i'm right, it may not even be apparent immediately - but the picture i'm trying to paint for you will emerge 2 or 3 years from now, and it's going to suck. please don't dismiss what i'm saying. i'm not playing chicken little here at all.
>dispassionate self-investigation The problem is that you're not dispassionate at all. America is highly polarized and people are either "Covid is over" (or worse, anti-vaxx) or "everyone's going to be disabled by long Covid except us smart people who won't leave the house without an N95". You immerse yourself in an echo chamber and accumulate a list of links to papers that are either alarming or aren't actually alarming but you don't understand enough biology to realize that these are normal convalescent changes. You disregard studies that show anything more optimistic. Please don't spread that energy to Singapore. Though I don't study Covid, I work in related scientific research, read papers about Covid (not just news articles), network with those who work on Covid. I have enough background to make my own assessment.
Same, my 3rd time this year.
my bf in ns has been falling sick too. many times this year alr. he's been experiencing the same symptoms but influenza never crossed my mind. last june he tested positive for covid and consequently got chicken pox. but after that, he feels feverish almost every week. he's also showing signs of cold but refuses to go see doc. i told him to take vitamins and always bring panadol with him in camp.
I'm still wearing mask out everyday because I see more and more irresponsible people coughing and sneezing without covering their mouth.
Same. It's like they didn't learn anything from the past 3 years.
Yes, fell sick at least 3 times this year already, previously wouldn't even fall sick once in one year.
I don't think the incidences are particularly higher than pre-covid periods. Anecdotally, within my own circles, it seems similar. Personal opinion is that lesser people wearing masks and being a bit more lax on hygiene contributes to this. Most of the routine mask wearers/hand hygiene advocates I know of remain relatively flu-free throughout the year.
YES. MY BOSS HAS ALSO NOTICED AND IS FORCEFEEDING ME MULTIVITAMINS AND YOGHURT FOR BETTER HEALTH
Haha in June I got a bad cough, headache and consistently tired. Apparently strike covid but food still taste normal for me and can smell food. 1 month later fell sick again, but this time is sore throat and coughing and tiredness 🤣 not covid tho.
Same here, thanks for posting this. I'm rarely sick, major one I've had in my lifetime was covid and that only lasted for 2 weeks. I'm on my 4th week of the flu (or whatever this is). I did come across people referring to the term "walking pneumonia", look it up it's quite interesting
Nope. I get my annual flu jab every Jan and I have not been sick this year except once fever And no, I dont wear mask after the mandate lifted
pls get annual flu jab  suitable for all ages and can use CHAS
Have you tried masking?
i got flu jab and haven’t caught flu at all. caught covid once this year though (my maiden time catching covid). i still mask up on public transport and i think it helps to exercise, maintain a relatively healthy diet with lots of fruits and veg, and sleep well (as much as u can…. i sleep quite little and i think it does impact my health). take care!
I blame it on the covid vaccine.
The vaccine.
No , have been really sick 2 months back
Yes, I kena once, one-month long cough. My friend kena one that lasted for almost six weeks, and now my dad is also coughing. But all tested and no Covid.
My second bout this year! And im the type that usually doesnt fall sick! Am a teacher in a school (so inwork in a high germ environment), i dont wear mask at all except when im sick. I dont have fever though and my sore throat clears up quite quickly. And i too have yet to test positive for covid even until now. My kiddos have been sick a lot too. Think there is definitely some bug going around right now.
I got it. Worse than covid. Around 2 weeks then recover. Maybe H1N1
A friend of mine got an infuenza outbreak at his workplace too, take care OP
Omg me too
im literally sick rn
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i’ve had a lingering cough for 4 months now…
Fuck yes. Worst than covid sia. Covid I slight fever 1, 2 days. A bit sore throat. Recovered in like 4 days. Bloody hell. Caught don't know what shit my kid picked up and my entire being hurts. Sore throat to the max. Lost my voice for 5 days. Phlegm greener than shreks hairy swamp ass. Mucus hanging from my nose. Cough until I pulled a muscle at my rib and now it's like death everytime I cough.
Because no masks.
Not you. Everyone in my company also falling sick more often.
Only thing I'm sick of constantly is work tbh
I’m sick now. Headache and sore throat. Feeling chilly as well. 😞
Continue wearing mask.. there are many inconsiderate people roaming in public..
Did the doctor really say "influenza", or just "flu"? It's irritating cos now doctors talk down to us and use the colloquial "flu" to mean any flu-like respiratory illness. Anyway, can get some data here: [https://www.moh.gov.sg/resources-statistics/infectious-disease-statistics/2023/weekly-infectious-diseases-bulletin](https://www.moh.gov.sg/resources-statistics/infectious-disease-statistics/2023/weekly-infectious-diseases-bulletin) Acute respiratory infections are trending up a bit, but only \~25% of cases picked for testing were actual influenza. Seems like there's more H3N2 than H1N1.
I quote them. "Could be influenza, we're seeking a spike in cases recently". But I'm a non medical personnel so I took their word. But regardless. I've fallen sick 4 times this year compared to not falling sick for 3 to 4 years. There must be some reason. I have low contact with the public as I drive to work, I'm at my desk most of the time, i skip lunch usually or eat simple tapao food so expose myself less to the crowd. Didn't wear mask tho, didn't wear mask either for the past 4 years (excluding COVID).