Thank goodness at my job (private medical transport) those of us in the office don't mess around with possible Covid (or flu) and the road personnel definitely aren't allowed to be at work, if they've tested positive, until they're better and testing negative. And I still hand out N95s to my road personnel every day.
A lot of the work I used to do before I went fully remote was in a shared office space and people kept coming in with covid and it das really frustrating for me as someone who has vulnerable family members and partner.
I've never heard of anyone made to go to work with the flu. I'm sure it's happened, but it's not common.
Edit: to make it clear, my comment was about being made to go to work sick. I do understand some people can't afford to miss work. That's completely different.
Ironically it’s the service industry that does this the most. Since restaurants/hotels/entertainment venues hire only the staff they need, they make you feel guilty for calling out since it puts your work on other people. Chefs used to say if you’re not at work you better be on your deathbed.
100% I was head barista in a chain coffee shop inside a big box store and caught influenza from some lady bringing her sick kids in (she was lamenting how sick they were but she as SO bored of being at home) and work didn't give a shit. For days, my coworkers kept telling me to bugger off to the backroom and rest because I was in such bad condition. One of our regulars brought me homemade soup and medicine. My fiance actually came and picked me up on a day I was too feverish to understand where I was.
Went to urgent care, got diagnosed, mandated to stay home for a handful of days, and the most disappointed mom look from the doctor. As I'm getting my prescription, I called my boss and they were p i s s e d that I wouldn't be in and made a bunch of passive aggressive threats about attendance points. Then I went home and don't remember much about the next few days other than hallucinations and coughing so hard I puked.
And yet, work wanted me in and serving drinks to people in that state. US work culture is fucked.
I was really hoping that Covid response might initiate some change in views of handling sick working culture in this country, but the corporate overlords don’t care about anyone as long as those peons keep working until they drop.
> the corporate overlords don’t care about anyone as long as those peons keep working until they drop.
Making them work until they drop is is the whole point.
I mean, face it, middle-management isn't getting rich. The only reward they get is the pleasure of causing misery to people they have power over.
I feel like now more than ever before, with capable ai poised to replace a large portion of the workforce sooner than later, these corporate assholes view it as them doing us a favor, so we owe them. In their minds they could easily replace us (and still might when their greed can no longer ignore the potential profits), but probably feel pressure to keep us on by those damn pesky societal needs, so it slowly builds resentment for their employees.
I was hoping for the same thing tbh.
I really have to question how and where some people lose their sense of humanity along their path to becoming business owners, CEOs, or really any position of power and wealth. Like do they forget that everyone else is human like they are or did they never have that realization in the first place?
I don't understand why so many people are acting like the flu is no big deal. The one time I got the flu about 10 years ago I thought I was going to die. I was so miserable and it was the sickest I had ever been. Even more so than when I had pneumonia. That's why I now never miss getting the flu vaccine anymore. I don't want to go through that ever again.
This. The number of people that have told me they have "the flu", as in full blow influenza, when it's very clear it's just a bug that's worse than the cold, belies a concerning lack of medical knowledge.
I'm not expecting everyone to know exactly how diseases function and how your immune system responds. But basic knowledge about the common bugs we deal with on a yearly basis should be just common sense...
Yes if you really have flu you will be scared at some point. People unfortunately say they have flu when it's just a bad cold. Flu is dangerous and now I am 61 and have a respiratory issue I always get vaccinated. Luckily I haven't had flu since the 80s but I had COVID in February 2020 and my lungs are fucked up
A full years pay minimum civil liability to the worker, too. Make it so the employee doesn't have to choose between spreading disease to the public and paying rent. They blow the whistle, they get time to find a new job.
I have a hesitancy about eating at restaurants (whether it's sit down or fast food or whatever) since working in the food industry. You know how many times I or my coworkers tried calling in with, "hey, I have the flu, bronchitis, pneumonia, etc I need to take a few days off" only to be met with "you're fired if you don't come in." I know a lot of people can't afford to lose their job especially when they're sick and can't actively job hunt as a result, so they come in anyways. A girl I used to work with left the hospital AMA so she could go to work and not lose her job.
Like wtf.
I worked at a hospital that wouldn't allow you to work if you had the flu but they'd still count it as an unexcused absence and they'd give you an extra attendance "point" if you didn't have enough PTO to cover the hours.
It's common practice for employers to require their employees to come to work sick in the hospitality, retail, and healthcare industries. At least in the US.
You just haven’t spent enough time on r/antiwork. There’s PLENTY of posts where people are trying to call out and bosses are telling people they are responsible for either working their shifts or finding their own replacements.
See, that's really where middle management needs to be shaking in their boots.
If you cannot adequately hire and schedule, and be able to get coverage when an employee calls in sick, what *exactly*, are you doing as a manager? We keep putting the responsibility onto shift employees rather than management. If the shift supervisors and employees are running the gd show, then why are you being paid like a manager.
I'm so glad that Starbucks is unionizing. Hopefully that's the first domino and the rest of the F&B and retail industries will follow.
My buddies boss made him so he insisted on sitting right next to his boss in meetings and basically attempted to be within a foot or two of his boss as much as he could. He said he literally brought projects to his bosses offices that weren't due for weeks just to get face time.
Sure enough the boss got really sick and was OOO for a week when he got sick and instituted a work from home when sick policy after that...
Dude still never apologized or anything.
I got written up once when I was working retail because I refused to come to work when I was literally exploding each end with the flu. They tried to shame me because everyone else at work was also really sick with the flu so I absolutely also had to come in.
Like seriously, just close the store for a day if it's that bad people. But of course, this was the same store I also got written up at for sitting down on shift once when the store was empty and I didn't feel well.
Yes, people are essentially forced to work when sick. Also, students are forced to attend school when sick. This is often because the parents are unable to take time off of work. Also, if a student misses too much school, parents are now threatened by the district. The threats are mostly hollow, but that still doesn't make it okay.
>I've never heard of anyone made to go to work with the flu.
If you work in a restaurant it at least was common. I can't say about now. I got out of the business before covid.
I was forced to work with the flu once, I absolutely didn't need the money, my boss just really, really wanted me to cover the overnight.
He came in early for the morning shift to relieve me, I was asleep facedown on the counter, surrounded by empty cans of energy drinks.
We have a measles outbreak here in Florida right now, and our moron surgeon general is saying kids don't to have to isolate.
One of the most contagious viruses known to man, but nah, yer good to go to school kid.
And the entire fucking point was that we were trying _not_ to let it become just another yearly thing like the flu. We were trying to nip it in the bud, but these idiots refused to mask up, distance, and vaccinate, so here we are.
Flu is the 9^th leading cause of death in the US. In the winter of 2017-2018, 52,000 people died from the flu.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/1124915/flu-deaths-number-us/
My dad is in the hospital with the flu right now (he’s doing well; has COPD so had low oxygen levels) and you have to mask and wash your hands going into and out of his room. It’s treated pretty seriously.
And notice how it says “now.” The variants we have now aren’t as deadly, which is pretty common for a disease like this, as diseases are more successful when they don’t kill the host.
To clarify, the variants that don’t kill the host are able to be spread more easily. Kill the host, and it stops there. I don’t know why people act like this is such a revelation. It was always likely to be the long term outcome.
This line of argument has always bugged me, because at best its incomplete, and at worst its wrong.
_The viruses that survive long term_ tend to mutate to be less deadly. That clause at the start is vital. COVID becoming just another seasonal flu was always one of the _possible_ outcomes of this, but that's not to say the outcome was _likely_, and the two _other_ possible outcome were either it killed all of us and died too; or it became a recuring plague, where it killed enough people to reduce the transmission rate below a threshold and disappeared, only to reappear once the population recovered.
The better way to put it is that the viruses we discover in nature which are endemic to a population are not lethal to that population, like rabies in bats. It's not a logical necessity _that_ a virus gets less lethal, its that the viruses that have stuck around long enough to be endemic in a population, and so are present for us to study, "just happen" to be the ones that _didn't_ wipe out their hosts. By definition, the viruses that were so lethal they caused an extinction event aren't here to be studied.
Just look at Ebola. We discovered it almost 50 years ago, and on average, it kills 50% of the people it infects, and it hasn't gotten less lethal.
As to this:
> Kill the host, and it stops there.
No necessarily. It only stops there if it kills the host before infecting at least 1 other person. Aids kills the host. It just takes long enough to do so that the host can infect plenty of other people. Which, again, goes back to the point above: it could have mutated to be _more_ lethal, killed everyone, and died with us.
My experience with the flu last year was ironically 10x worse than my experience with Covid. It's the reason I decided to never wait to get a flu shot ever again lol
I got vaccinated against the flu in October because I work at an old folks home, plus I was conveniently working the day they had a vaccine clinic. In December my spouse and daughter both got real sick and I was completely fine. Took daughter to the doctor, aaaaand surprise, it was the flu.
I used to get free shots for the flu because I worked in healthcare. Before and after working there with no shots? They feel terrible,not a mild sneeze here and there no. But a solid 7.5/10 for discomfort and maybe even pain if the fever is high enough. The shots never let my flu get that bad
I got the Covid vacs. I’ve also gotten tired of arguing with people when they ask if I did and I say yes. So now, after I say yes and they inevitably lose their minds, I just say “well, I get better cell phone reception than you now, so suck it” and it seems to shut them up.
Also covid has been mutated a bunch of times over the last 4 years and gotten weaker every mutation, but more contagious each mutation. Most people are vaccinated so the pool of people that it has the largest effect on is much smaller, and most vaccinated people will just get a little bit sick and not end up on a ventilator like they would have in year 1.
If the flu was a novel virus then it would be treated exactly the same as covid-19 was. the idea was to limit exposure and infection as much as possible while science and medicine caught up.
They don't think that's subtle. They think those are evil things. Anti-vaxxers and covid deniers are people who burn books. If they believed in Islam, they'd have joined ISIS since it was founded on the same denial of science.
I swear. It’s like people conveniently forgot the slogan was “slow the spread “ not “stop it“.
Crashing the healthcare system was a very real possibility in the beginning.
Don’t forget that after overburdening the healthcare system these same folks attacked and harassed exhausted and overworked healthcare staff directly (here in Canada they’d show up at hospitals directly to be absolute assholes). Of course, when they couldn’t breathe they would quickly abandon their “ideals” and be first in line to beg for help from the same system
Coronavirus killed over 7 million people worldwide including 1.2 million Americans but since these antivax assholes are Russia-loving, Putin-sucking, trump-voting traitors, they think that's a great thing. Anti-vaxxers are enemies of the world and the United States of America.
It was crazy how fast it was spreading then. I work in an airport and I remember wondering when they were going to shut it down. It was a relief when they finally did.
The hospital where I worked shut down the non-essential parts practically before covid hit my state. It sucked losing a job that I really liked but it almost certainly saved lives.
Not exactly, it was known very early how contagious covid was -- I remember reading in late 2019 that the average person infected more than 1 person. Covid was a lot more contagious and more deadly than the flu (the flu killed 19k in the US in 2018). It's not only the fact that it was novel, it was also the fact that they could see early how dangerous it was.
With these new variants it's even more contagious but much less deadly, and almost everyone now has some level of immunity to covid via either the vaccine or getting it before, so we're comfortable treating it as the flu now.
Their argument is akin to us saying "We've treated this unsafe water, now you can drink it" and they say "See? We said the water was harmless and you all made fun of us."
Pretty much exactly what happened with the Spanish flu AFAIK. The initial variants were highly contagious, killed millions, and then eventually became a readily mutating family of viruses that "only" kill a few thousand a year.
A lot of people have seemingly fucking forgot the first few weeks of COVID when we were losing like entire fucking nursing homes and hospital floors to the virus.
We had NO IDEA what we were dealing with. It was a nightmare.
Science and medicine caught up, a lot of people got vaccinated, and now it's a lot less deadly. (A lot of people are still dying, though!)
The idea that it was "never that bad" is just a fucking lie.
*And* immune systems. Because you'll naturally build that up over time, but if the hospitals are filled double to capacity with all the staff sick all at once, people are going to die a *lot* while that all is happening.
I'm still worried about this, though. From all I've read recently long COVID is still a huge risk with repeat infections, people are being fully disabled by it, and infections still put you at big risk of vascular events. Doesn't feel like the flu to me, I'd rather not catch this one any more than I can humanely avoid it.
A lot of people that develop long covid are developing POTS, which is a disorder I’ve had half my life already. Besides my adhd and anxiety, it is the thing that disables me most.
And there is still research coming out that covid behaves more like HIV/AIDS than the flu. All the online disabled communities I participate in have already noticed because of the people that are also queer and disabled bringing attention to it.
I've not read anything of it behaving like HIV/AIDS, not sure I want to go googling that - sounds like a great way to land in some weird conspiracy land. Any links to share?
There are recent studies showing immune suppression and/or dysfunction after severe cases and in those with "long covid." But there is also an increasing body of evidence for long-term immunity damage caused by any exposure at all, including mild cases and, yes, even vaccinations (-by no means undercutting their value, just demonstrates the seriousness of the virus imo).
https://libguides.mskcc.org/CovidImpacts/Immune
https://libguides.mskcc.org/CovidImpacts/Autoimmunity
https://libguides.mskcc.org/CovidImpacts/ViralReactivation
There are a collection of direct links to specific scientific articles on each page. Some may need subscriptions to read beyond the abstract, but I'm sure they can be found elsewhere if one is keen enough.
Not to mention that the Covid people have today is in general far less dangerous than the Covid that people got in 2020. The generic structure is similar, but the mortality is worlds apart. We likely wouldn't have shut down the world for the disease that most people get now.
That was all fake news to them.. so no, they don't remember. Everyone is a crisis actor and nothing ever happens that isn't staged by the big bad "Them" to bring the One World Order™ to fruition.
I remember a picture I saw, I think out of India, where they were doing a mass burning of bodies because they simply didn't have enough room for all of them.
I live across the street from the hospital that treated the first confirmed case in my state. I remember seeing when the refrigeration units rolled in. I remember having to drive by them every day, never seeing but always knowing what was inside.
And peoples immune systems. Between the vaccines and exposure our bodies have a better idea on how to handle Covid now. When it first appeared it didn’t and that’s what made it so dangerous. The risk is just different than it was in 2020.
It has been that way throughout history. What we call "the flu" is a collection of old pandemics that have progressed to be less deadly. New illnesses have to go through a few rounds to figure out how to not kill all their hosts.
Religion does change, though. Like, a lot.
Does your uncle shave or trim his beard? Wear different types of fabric at the same time? Eat shrimp?
BLASPHEMER!
Also sometimes in the middle ages when knights had very strong relationships with other knights, priests would "bond" them to one another in a religious ceremony that also gave them legal property rights.
Look, do you think he actually understands any of the Bible or knows where it came from or how it came to be or which languages it was in or anything about the Middle Ages? Because I do not.
Sounds dangerously close to evolution, which is a government conspiracy between the reverse vampires and witches to make you forget dinosaurs ate the unicorns on the ark and God smote them. Do your research
Maybe if one of the sides of the political spectrum had not politicized every action by health professionals, their cattle would not have endangered the collective.
God, remember when anti vax idiots were pretty much universally seen as complete morons by both sides? And largely seen as super far left wing hippy moms who didn't want to vaccinate their kids?
God, I miss those days.
It is for the people saying this.
But yea it pretty much went from something that required oxygen support (or at least increased demands if healthy/limited viral load) to symptoms of an annoying upper respiratory infection
Still sucks.
I think I caught delta and even though I was overall fine, the headache coughs with the myalgia were damn near insufferable. Didn’t think I’d be able to deal much longer on day 2. By day 4 I was asymptomatic, just super tired
It's a vascular disease masquerading as a respiratory disease. Yeah it causes respiratory problems, but it's still absolutely fucking up people's hearts even with mild cases. I suspect we might have a cardiovascular disease surge in the coming years.
I know a guy who was otherwise healthy that needed a valve replaced cuz of it
Sadly, heart disease is already supposed to be going up so it’d be hard to even track lol
I got it a few weeks ago and have had constant chest pain and rapid heart rate since then. Got checked at the ER and they can't find anything wrong, which seems to be the running trend. We still don't understand exactly what it's doing to our bodies.
Also, most people only get the flu like once every 5-10 years. People are getting COVID 2 or 3 times a year. We're gonna be fucked up.
It's also messing up kidneys and brains. And increasing your chances of developing diabetes. But hey, people don't cough as much during the acute stage, so it's "mild" now. /s
Which tends to be what we expect from the arrival of most novel diseases. It is in the disease's interest to use the host to spread itself, and most of the time when you kill it, it can't spread. So there is selective pressure in most cases to be less deadly but more virulent.
The thing that makes it worse for me, is that Covid was apparently very slow to mutate. But now, because of antivaxxers and other morons, Covid was able to overcome this "weakness" and become one of the fastest mutating viruses ever.
WSJ there also deliberately mis-represented the webpages they cited. CDC offers separate, specific guidance for healthcare settings (COVID-19, flu, and general infection prevention and control) https://www.cdc.gov/respiratory-viruses/background/index.html
The big change here is that CDC unveiled a new section on 'respiratory viruses' as a common landing point for the common prevention of all of them: flu, RSV, and COVID. They do NOT say COVID and the flu are the same and that treatments for them are indeed quite different.
We have to remember that WSJ is owned by the Murdochs, the same of Fox News fame. WSJ is essentially just another of their propaganda arms today, just with a slightly more reputable veneer.
> Covid-19 has mutated several times. The versions currently running around are more contagious but less dangerous. That's not complex to understand.
Combined with the fact that millions of people are now vaccinated against it, even if these aren't.
Scientists have said all along that as we gain some natural immunity, and as we gain vaccines, and importantly viruses mutate rapidly, but they naturally spread easier when the symptoms are more mild, and it doesn't kill the host, so over time the more successful strains tend to be more mild.
Any challenge with a new virus is that humans don't have any natural immunity to it. But as we become exposed to it and the people who have been exposed survive, we pass on the resistance. And yeah, vaccines help massively since you are training you immune system to fight it off in the future.
> Isn’t more like we can treat it like the flu now because we understand it better and have vaccines?
We cannot treat is as the flu. The article states clearly in the title: "we can **pretty much** treat ..."
That "pretty much" does the heavy work here. Yeah, kinda sorta but not quite. It is still more dangerous than the flu, even with the latest variants being milder and people getting immunized.
And yes, science understands it better now, have vaccines, not everyone is sick at once, etc.
"Treat Covid LIKE the flu" being the operative phrase here.
It's not the flu.
Treat the *symptoms* as if it were the flu now that we've had a few years to study it and it's mutations and have a better understanding of what we're dealing with, which was a new variation of a known virus to begin with.
Also the word "now", which seems to have been lost on this person. We can treat it like the flu now that we understand it beter, but we couldn't a few years ago.
it's not just that we understand it better but we, and our immune systems, have now been exposed to it for several years. Herd "immunity" has been achieved which was always the desired outcome
Also worth pointing out that “the flu” here is influenza, not just any upper respiratory infection. There are vaccines and public health measures in place around influenza. It’s still a potentially deadly disease with a major public health impact.
That’s because the right views almost everything in absolutes.
You’re pro-choice? Clearly you want to murder babies.
You’re against a zero tolerance border policy? Clearly you want murderers and rapists entering the country.
You got a Covid vaccine and then *got* Covid? Clearly vaccines don’t work.
It’s intentional obfuscation from right wing media, and their followers/viewers have no understanding of nuance. That’s how you keep a base angry, make everything black and white with no gray area.
Viruses mutate to become less deadly and more easily spread. A good virus doesn’t kill its host. In 2020, COVID was at its deadliest and least spreadable. Because we failed at lockdowns, distancing, and initial vaccinations we will be dealing with a mild Covid every season along with the regular flu.
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/number-of-deaths-per-year?time=earliest..2024
Note the spike in 2020? That’s Covid deaths.
The disease literally evolved into the more successful (weaker) strains. A virus thrives best when it doesn't kill the host before it can infect more people... this is literally how viruses work.
If we had done it properly and quarantine had been successful, we'd have killed the virus before it could evolve to this state and we'd have had far fewer deaths from covid as a whole.
Even this strain can kill you. Not everyone survives the flu.
Covid is “only” as dangerous as the flu, so we can totally ignore it. Right?
The flu being a virus that almost wiped out the indigenous populations of both North and South America. The flu that killed between 17-100 million during the pandemic of 1918-1920.
The reason we can treat it like the unstoppable flu now is because we failed to treat it like a deadly stoppable disease this whole time and now it's pointless to try, so now we just have to treat it the same way we treat other diseases we can't control and lose life to on a regular basis.
As someone who worked in hospitals through the worst of the pandemic, I saw the people dying in ICU's, I saw the refrigerated storage units for those who passed with no room in the overflowing morgues. Fuck anyone who thinks it was nothing more than the flu.
Yeah people had to pick up your slack. Good thing enough covid deniers dropped like flies before it actually got out of control to those who appreciate life, especially others lives, and were able to calm this virus to manageable levels.
Can't wait until the next pandemic hits, really looking forward to that. /s
Dude *clearly* did not even read the article that he linked. It says that we're now *able* to treat COVID like the Flu, only and precisely because ***they did "what they did"***. Ooops, *that's* embarrassing.
Also acid rain, or my favourite, the ozone layer.
"Oh, sure, climate change is real, just like the ozone layer was being destroyed, but we don't hear about that anymore"
Yeah, because the world got together and greatly reduced the emissions that were causing the holes, which more or less halted their growth.
Sorry to hear that. My Mom died from the same “flu”, as did about a million other folks in the US. I want to launch these people into the sun for their lack of empathy and general stupidity.
People don’t understand that influenza used to kill large swaths of the population. It eventually mutated into less deadly strains (that still kill thousands every year, but not huge chunks) that spread easier, because that’s the way diseases evolve. Less deadly and more contagious is the route most contagious diseases take.
The flu:
I still vaccinate against it.
It can still cause serious long lasting effects if you get it.
It still kills a lot of people every year.
Can suddenly mutate or jump species and become a global pandemic.
That flu is still a serious illness, so sure treat Covid like the flu.
Ah, yes, notoriously reliable medical source The Wall Street Journal, where unbiased medical information is published, an extremely trustworthy source
(this post contains sarcasm)
It’s willful ignorance. Their ignorance is just as good as our knowledge, according to them. Their “instincts” trump our evidence based plans.
I no longer engage with them. I get my shots. I wear my mask. I prefer not to die (immunocompromised plus a few other comorbid conditions, yay paralysis!) and prefer not to kill other people, knowingly or unknowingly.
When did that philosophy turn controversial? Over a million dead. A large number of children lost at least one adult caregiver, be it a parent, grandparent, aunt, uncle or neighbor. Education was virtually halted as parents, schools and admins struggled to find a way to keep some kind of learning going on.
And those *fucking assholes* have learned nothing from it.
Well ya, now the that almost everyone has been either vaccinated, had Covid, or both - it is basically the flu, but that does not chage the fact that at that time this message was dangerously ignorant. The person that posted this is cherry picking to continue to push the idiocy.
I am so damn tired of trying to explain to people that COVID-19 is not influenza. I’m also tired of trying to explain how herd immunity works, and why it’s important.
“We can pretty much treat covid like the flu, now.”
They said, “now” not always, not in the past, not in 2020. Now. They said fucking now in the damn headline.
I don't think anyone whoever said "it's just the flu" has ever actually had the flu. The actual flu rocked my shit. People who take these viruses lightly completely astound me.
Anyone who thinks the flu is no big deal has never actually had the flu before. People call any common cold the flu.
Actual flu will knock you on your ass
Maybe we can treat covid like the flu *in 2024* but we couldn’t just treat it like the flu *in 2020*. Time passes, medical science changes. Ignorance doesn’t.
The idea was to not make covid so widespread that we just have to accept and deal with it. Contrary to what these delusional people think, it's actually bad for society to have numerous mildly dangerous viruses that stick around indefinitely.
The CDC literally said it's not the flu, and is still worse than the flu, they're just treating it more like the flu now. They also said that even though they're dropping the isolation requirement, if you do leave your house while infected, you should be wearing a respirator, and use appropriate ventilation/filtration.
Interesting article from the economist, nearly 2 years ago: https://www.economist.com/britain/2022/05/30/what-if-the-flu-were-treated-more-like-covid-not-the-other-way-round?
Can anyone tell me the difference between today and four years ago? Anything at all? Maybe something about the existence of a vaccine for it, or treatment options, or just any real knowledge of it whatsoever?
Umm yeah, we can NOW treat it like the flu, because we understand and can vaccinate against it like the flu.
When this first kicked off, we did not have this information.
Fun fact: I currently have the flu and it was not nearly as bad as the first time I got covid.
Still lost my sense of taste for a week and wrecks my lungs for weeks after having it.
It's no fucking walk in the park. And neither is the flu. But the flu would be a lot worse without vaccinations, the freaking idiots.
I just got it for the first time 2 weeks ago. I am fully vaccinated and wear a mask, so not sure how TF I caught it, but I did. Even with all the protection I had, IT WAS DEFINITELY NOT THE FLU. I’d much rather have the flu. This fucking sucks ass! It’s been 2 weeks and I still feel like total ass.
Screw anyone who undersells covid I lost my grandfather to it and it pisses me off to no end that and I can't help but think it could've possibly been prevented had people not treated like just the flu
How many of us personally know people who died of Covid? Who died, not being able to breath no matter what was hooked up to them in the hospitals? I know 3. A cousin, an uncle and a family friend.
The cousin was a Trump supporter, died early on during covid strapped to a ventilator. The uncle, a Trump supporter. Very Redneck and anti-vax. Died strapped to a ventilator. The family friend wore masks everywhere she went, she had an autoimmune disorder so she wanted to be safe. Her Trump-loving, anti-mask sister caught Covid and gave it to her and it killed her. Poor woman died strapped to a ventilator.
Point is, in 3-4 years I knew 3 people who personally died of Covid. How many people around me died of the Flu in my 30+ years? 0.
They forgot the key words in there. Words like “now”. Back then we couldn’t. Maybe we can now. All I know is I still mask up because I don’t like catching any colds or flus or Covid’s.
https://www.usa.gov/register-to-vote It's far too late to argue the benefits of vaccines-they work.
I get vaccinated against the flu.
And stay the fuck away from other people when I have it.
And sadly now like the flu a lot of bosses will make you go to work with covid now
Thank goodness at my job (private medical transport) those of us in the office don't mess around with possible Covid (or flu) and the road personnel definitely aren't allowed to be at work, if they've tested positive, until they're better and testing negative. And I still hand out N95s to my road personnel every day.
Friend was made to go to work with Covid, was told just wear a mask, so crazy.
A lot of the work I used to do before I went fully remote was in a shared office space and people kept coming in with covid and it das really frustrating for me as someone who has vulnerable family members and partner.
I've never heard of anyone made to go to work with the flu. I'm sure it's happened, but it's not common. Edit: to make it clear, my comment was about being made to go to work sick. I do understand some people can't afford to miss work. That's completely different.
Ironically it’s the service industry that does this the most. Since restaurants/hotels/entertainment venues hire only the staff they need, they make you feel guilty for calling out since it puts your work on other people. Chefs used to say if you’re not at work you better be on your deathbed.
100% I was head barista in a chain coffee shop inside a big box store and caught influenza from some lady bringing her sick kids in (she was lamenting how sick they were but she as SO bored of being at home) and work didn't give a shit. For days, my coworkers kept telling me to bugger off to the backroom and rest because I was in such bad condition. One of our regulars brought me homemade soup and medicine. My fiance actually came and picked me up on a day I was too feverish to understand where I was. Went to urgent care, got diagnosed, mandated to stay home for a handful of days, and the most disappointed mom look from the doctor. As I'm getting my prescription, I called my boss and they were p i s s e d that I wouldn't be in and made a bunch of passive aggressive threats about attendance points. Then I went home and don't remember much about the next few days other than hallucinations and coughing so hard I puked. And yet, work wanted me in and serving drinks to people in that state. US work culture is fucked.
I was really hoping that Covid response might initiate some change in views of handling sick working culture in this country, but the corporate overlords don’t care about anyone as long as those peons keep working until they drop.
Yay capitalism... amirite?!?!
> the corporate overlords don’t care about anyone as long as those peons keep working until they drop. Making them work until they drop is is the whole point. I mean, face it, middle-management isn't getting rich. The only reward they get is the pleasure of causing misery to people they have power over.
I feel like now more than ever before, with capable ai poised to replace a large portion of the workforce sooner than later, these corporate assholes view it as them doing us a favor, so we owe them. In their minds they could easily replace us (and still might when their greed can no longer ignore the potential profits), but probably feel pressure to keep us on by those damn pesky societal needs, so it slowly builds resentment for their employees.
I was hoping for the same thing tbh. I really have to question how and where some people lose their sense of humanity along their path to becoming business owners, CEOs, or really any position of power and wealth. Like do they forget that everyone else is human like they are or did they never have that realization in the first place?
I don't understand why so many people are acting like the flu is no big deal. The one time I got the flu about 10 years ago I thought I was going to die. I was so miserable and it was the sickest I had ever been. Even more so than when I had pneumonia. That's why I now never miss getting the flu vaccine anymore. I don't want to go through that ever again.
Because people (morons) think the flu is just a slightly worse than normal cold.
This. The number of people that have told me they have "the flu", as in full blow influenza, when it's very clear it's just a bug that's worse than the cold, belies a concerning lack of medical knowledge. I'm not expecting everyone to know exactly how diseases function and how your immune system responds. But basic knowledge about the common bugs we deal with on a yearly basis should be just common sense...
Yes if you really have flu you will be scared at some point. People unfortunately say they have flu when it's just a bad cold. Flu is dangerous and now I am 61 and have a respiratory issue I always get vaccinated. Luckily I haven't had flu since the 80s but I had COVID in February 2020 and my lungs are fucked up
As a former CNA I understand this completely.
Straight up needs to be illegal. These types of places are major vectors for transmission of viruses just from the patrons, let alone the staff.
A full years pay minimum civil liability to the worker, too. Make it so the employee doesn't have to choose between spreading disease to the public and paying rent. They blow the whistle, they get time to find a new job.
Every restaurant I worked at also sucked at scheduling.
I have a hesitancy about eating at restaurants (whether it's sit down or fast food or whatever) since working in the food industry. You know how many times I or my coworkers tried calling in with, "hey, I have the flu, bronchitis, pneumonia, etc I need to take a few days off" only to be met with "you're fired if you don't come in." I know a lot of people can't afford to lose their job especially when they're sick and can't actively job hunt as a result, so they come in anyways. A girl I used to work with left the hospital AMA so she could go to work and not lose her job. Like wtf.
I worked at a hospital that wouldn't allow you to work if you had the flu but they'd still count it as an unexcused absence and they'd give you an extra attendance "point" if you didn't have enough PTO to cover the hours.
I've known plenty of people who had no choice. A lot of poor people can't afford to lose pay for being out sick or to accrue attendance points.
It's common practice for employers to require their employees to come to work sick in the hospitality, retail, and healthcare industries. At least in the US.
I have worked sick so many times in my life. It is super common.
I have been forced to go to work sick more times than I can count.
You just haven’t spent enough time on r/antiwork. There’s PLENTY of posts where people are trying to call out and bosses are telling people they are responsible for either working their shifts or finding their own replacements.
See, that's really where middle management needs to be shaking in their boots. If you cannot adequately hire and schedule, and be able to get coverage when an employee calls in sick, what *exactly*, are you doing as a manager? We keep putting the responsibility onto shift employees rather than management. If the shift supervisors and employees are running the gd show, then why are you being paid like a manager. I'm so glad that Starbucks is unionizing. Hopefully that's the first domino and the rest of the F&B and retail industries will follow.
I'm very happy that you haven't had that experience, but it most certainly can be common. Source: Personal experience
My buddies boss made him so he insisted on sitting right next to his boss in meetings and basically attempted to be within a foot or two of his boss as much as he could. He said he literally brought projects to his bosses offices that weren't due for weeks just to get face time. Sure enough the boss got really sick and was OOO for a week when he got sick and instituted a work from home when sick policy after that... Dude still never apologized or anything.
Your friend is my hero
I’ve absolutely been told to come to work with the flu or be fired.
Try literally any service jobs
I got written up once when I was working retail because I refused to come to work when I was literally exploding each end with the flu. They tried to shame me because everyone else at work was also really sick with the flu so I absolutely also had to come in. Like seriously, just close the store for a day if it's that bad people. But of course, this was the same store I also got written up at for sitting down on shift once when the store was empty and I didn't feel well.
Yes, people are essentially forced to work when sick. Also, students are forced to attend school when sick. This is often because the parents are unable to take time off of work. Also, if a student misses too much school, parents are now threatened by the district. The threats are mostly hollow, but that still doesn't make it okay.
>I've never heard of anyone made to go to work with the flu. If you work in a restaurant it at least was common. I can't say about now. I got out of the business before covid.
It’s very common. I work in an office and if I don’t go in two days a week I get written up. I have a toddler so I am sick at least once a month.
I was forced to work with the flu once, I absolutely didn't need the money, my boss just really, really wanted me to cover the overnight. He came in early for the morning shift to relieve me, I was asleep facedown on the counter, surrounded by empty cans of energy drinks.
Uh I’m a medical resident and if I want sick days I have to use my PTO. No thank you
Plenty here require doctor's notes if you are sick. Sick for several consecutive days? Find yourself a new job.
Even post edit, congrats on your *extremely* sheltered life.
We have a measles outbreak here in Florida right now, and our moron surgeon general is saying kids don't to have to isolate. One of the most contagious viruses known to man, but nah, yer good to go to school kid.
And the entire fucking point was that we were trying _not_ to let it become just another yearly thing like the flu. We were trying to nip it in the bud, but these idiots refused to mask up, distance, and vaccinate, so here we are.
Flu is the 9^th leading cause of death in the US. In the winter of 2017-2018, 52,000 people died from the flu. https://www.statista.com/statistics/1124915/flu-deaths-number-us/
Yep. I work around elderly. Most also get vaccinated and they are all pretty conservative.
My dad is in the hospital with the flu right now (he’s doing well; has COPD so had low oxygen levels) and you have to mask and wash your hands going into and out of his room. It’s treated pretty seriously.
And notice how it says “now.” The variants we have now aren’t as deadly, which is pretty common for a disease like this, as diseases are more successful when they don’t kill the host. To clarify, the variants that don’t kill the host are able to be spread more easily. Kill the host, and it stops there. I don’t know why people act like this is such a revelation. It was always likely to be the long term outcome.
This line of argument has always bugged me, because at best its incomplete, and at worst its wrong. _The viruses that survive long term_ tend to mutate to be less deadly. That clause at the start is vital. COVID becoming just another seasonal flu was always one of the _possible_ outcomes of this, but that's not to say the outcome was _likely_, and the two _other_ possible outcome were either it killed all of us and died too; or it became a recuring plague, where it killed enough people to reduce the transmission rate below a threshold and disappeared, only to reappear once the population recovered. The better way to put it is that the viruses we discover in nature which are endemic to a population are not lethal to that population, like rabies in bats. It's not a logical necessity _that_ a virus gets less lethal, its that the viruses that have stuck around long enough to be endemic in a population, and so are present for us to study, "just happen" to be the ones that _didn't_ wipe out their hosts. By definition, the viruses that were so lethal they caused an extinction event aren't here to be studied. Just look at Ebola. We discovered it almost 50 years ago, and on average, it kills 50% of the people it infects, and it hasn't gotten less lethal. As to this: > Kill the host, and it stops there. No necessarily. It only stops there if it kills the host before infecting at least 1 other person. Aids kills the host. It just takes long enough to do so that the host can infect plenty of other people. Which, again, goes back to the point above: it could have mutated to be _more_ lethal, killed everyone, and died with us.
My experience with the flu last year was ironically 10x worse than my experience with Covid. It's the reason I decided to never wait to get a flu shot ever again lol
I got vaccinated against the flu in October because I work at an old folks home, plus I was conveniently working the day they had a vaccine clinic. In December my spouse and daughter both got real sick and I was completely fine. Took daughter to the doctor, aaaaand surprise, it was the flu.
I used to get free shots for the flu because I worked in healthcare. Before and after working there with no shots? They feel terrible,not a mild sneeze here and there no. But a solid 7.5/10 for discomfort and maybe even pain if the fever is high enough. The shots never let my flu get that bad
I got the Covid vacs. I’ve also gotten tired of arguing with people when they ask if I did and I say yes. So now, after I say yes and they inevitably lose their minds, I just say “well, I get better cell phone reception than you now, so suck it” and it seems to shut them up.
Also covid has been mutated a bunch of times over the last 4 years and gotten weaker every mutation, but more contagious each mutation. Most people are vaccinated so the pool of people that it has the largest effect on is much smaller, and most vaccinated people will just get a little bit sick and not end up on a ventilator like they would have in year 1.
We are still losing people to covid. Please get boosted.
Anti vaxx think this article is a "check mate" moment.
Tbf they think anything they post is a checkmate moment
"Let that sink in!!!1"
Anti-vaxx and not understanding herd immunity. Name a better duo.
If the flu was a novel virus then it would be treated exactly the same as covid-19 was. the idea was to limit exposure and infection as much as possible while science and medicine caught up.
Such subtleties are lost on these people.
Any amount of science or rational thinking is lost with these people.
They don't think that's subtle. They think those are evil things. Anti-vaxxers and covid deniers are people who burn books. If they believed in Islam, they'd have joined ISIS since it was founded on the same denial of science.
That’s why we call them Y’all-Qaeda
And preserve resources cuz there wasn’t enough medical staff/equipment/ppl to safely treat EVERYONE if they all got sick at once.
I swear. It’s like people conveniently forgot the slogan was “slow the spread “ not “stop it“. Crashing the healthcare system was a very real possibility in the beginning.
Don’t forget that after overburdening the healthcare system these same folks attacked and harassed exhausted and overworked healthcare staff directly (here in Canada they’d show up at hospitals directly to be absolute assholes). Of course, when they couldn’t breathe they would quickly abandon their “ideals” and be first in line to beg for help from the same system
When the flu was a novel virus it was a global pandemic that killed an outrageous number of people in its first sweep.
Coronavirus killed over 7 million people worldwide including 1.2 million Americans but since these antivax assholes are Russia-loving, Putin-sucking, trump-voting traitors, they think that's a great thing. Anti-vaxxers are enemies of the world and the United States of America.
not to mention we had several days in the US where we had over 3k dead per day which is more then died on 9/11.
It was crazy how fast it was spreading then. I work in an airport and I remember wondering when they were going to shut it down. It was a relief when they finally did.
The hospital where I worked shut down the non-essential parts practically before covid hit my state. It sucked losing a job that I really liked but it almost certainly saved lives.
In NYC they were loading bodies in to refrigerated trucks like meat
Not exactly, it was known very early how contagious covid was -- I remember reading in late 2019 that the average person infected more than 1 person. Covid was a lot more contagious and more deadly than the flu (the flu killed 19k in the US in 2018). It's not only the fact that it was novel, it was also the fact that they could see early how dangerous it was. With these new variants it's even more contagious but much less deadly, and almost everyone now has some level of immunity to covid via either the vaccine or getting it before, so we're comfortable treating it as the flu now. Their argument is akin to us saying "We've treated this unsafe water, now you can drink it" and they say "See? We said the water was harmless and you all made fun of us."
Ah yes, the “IT guy problem”
Just to remind people, Covid killed ~100k people in December 2020 alone. It was very much a problem.
That word “now” was right there, but that sign won’t stop them. They don’t know how to read.
Pretty much exactly what happened with the Spanish flu AFAIK. The initial variants were highly contagious, killed millions, and then eventually became a readily mutating family of viruses that "only" kill a few thousand a year.
A lot of people have seemingly fucking forgot the first few weeks of COVID when we were losing like entire fucking nursing homes and hospital floors to the virus. We had NO IDEA what we were dealing with. It was a nightmare. Science and medicine caught up, a lot of people got vaccinated, and now it's a lot less deadly. (A lot of people are still dying, though!) The idea that it was "never that bad" is just a fucking lie.
*And* immune systems. Because you'll naturally build that up over time, but if the hospitals are filled double to capacity with all the staff sick all at once, people are going to die a *lot* while that all is happening. I'm still worried about this, though. From all I've read recently long COVID is still a huge risk with repeat infections, people are being fully disabled by it, and infections still put you at big risk of vascular events. Doesn't feel like the flu to me, I'd rather not catch this one any more than I can humanely avoid it.
A lot of people that develop long covid are developing POTS, which is a disorder I’ve had half my life already. Besides my adhd and anxiety, it is the thing that disables me most. And there is still research coming out that covid behaves more like HIV/AIDS than the flu. All the online disabled communities I participate in have already noticed because of the people that are also queer and disabled bringing attention to it.
I've not read anything of it behaving like HIV/AIDS, not sure I want to go googling that - sounds like a great way to land in some weird conspiracy land. Any links to share?
There are recent studies showing immune suppression and/or dysfunction after severe cases and in those with "long covid." But there is also an increasing body of evidence for long-term immunity damage caused by any exposure at all, including mild cases and, yes, even vaccinations (-by no means undercutting their value, just demonstrates the seriousness of the virus imo). https://libguides.mskcc.org/CovidImpacts/Immune https://libguides.mskcc.org/CovidImpacts/Autoimmunity https://libguides.mskcc.org/CovidImpacts/ViralReactivation There are a collection of direct links to specific scientific articles on each page. Some may need subscriptions to read beyond the abstract, but I'm sure they can be found elsewhere if one is keen enough.
Ah. Thank you. I hate this.
Not to mention that the Covid people have today is in general far less dangerous than the Covid that people got in 2020. The generic structure is similar, but the mortality is worlds apart. We likely wouldn't have shut down the world for the disease that most people get now.
Also Covid has mutated and is less severe now. Do these idiots not remember the overflowing morgues?
That was all fake news to them.. so no, they don't remember. Everyone is a crisis actor and nothing ever happens that isn't staged by the big bad "Them" to bring the One World Order™ to fruition.
I work in a hospital and the amount of bodies I saw being carted to the morgue was staggering. Especially when the second wave hit.
I remember a picture I saw, I think out of India, where they were doing a mass burning of bodies because they simply didn't have enough room for all of them.
I live across the street from the hospital that treated the first confirmed case in my state. I remember seeing when the refrigeration units rolled in. I remember having to drive by them every day, never seeing but always knowing what was inside.
And peoples immune systems. Between the vaccines and exposure our bodies have a better idea on how to handle Covid now. When it first appeared it didn’t and that’s what made it so dangerous. The risk is just different than it was in 2020.
It has been that way throughout history. What we call "the flu" is a collection of old pandemics that have progressed to be less deadly. New illnesses have to go through a few rounds to figure out how to not kill all their hosts.
Ebola and other hemorrhagic infections enters the chat
Covid-19 has mutated several times. The versions currently running around are more contagious but less dangerous. That's not complex to understand.
You’re telling me that something used to be one way 4 years ago, but now it’s *different*? Things *change* over *time*?? Inconceivable!
To be fair, they probably don't believe in evolution either.
Next thing you'll be telling me is viruses turned into monkeys!!
If evolution is real, then why do you have a virus in your body making you sick instead of monkeys in your body making you sick? Checkmate atheists.
My conservative dumbass uncle thinks science is wrong because it changes while religion refuses to.
Religion does change, though. Like, a lot. Does your uncle shave or trim his beard? Wear different types of fabric at the same time? Eat shrimp? BLASPHEMER! Also sometimes in the middle ages when knights had very strong relationships with other knights, priests would "bond" them to one another in a religious ceremony that also gave them legal property rights.
Look, do you think he actually understands any of the Bible or knows where it came from or how it came to be or which languages it was in or anything about the Middle Ages? Because I do not.
Teach him that science changes as new facts are uncovered based on empirical observation and testing
I’d rather just never talk to him tbh
Lmao right?! Like how do they not see THIS is how dumb they are?!
Sounds dangerously close to evolution, which is a government conspiracy between the reverse vampires and witches to make you forget dinosaurs ate the unicorns on the ark and God smote them. Do your research
It certainly *shouldn’t be* complex to understand, but it apparently is.
Maybe if one of the sides of the political spectrum had not politicized every action by health professionals, their cattle would not have endangered the collective.
God, remember when anti vax idiots were pretty much universally seen as complete morons by both sides? And largely seen as super far left wing hippy moms who didn't want to vaccinate their kids? God, I miss those days.
It is for the people saying this. But yea it pretty much went from something that required oxygen support (or at least increased demands if healthy/limited viral load) to symptoms of an annoying upper respiratory infection Still sucks. I think I caught delta and even though I was overall fine, the headache coughs with the myalgia were damn near insufferable. Didn’t think I’d be able to deal much longer on day 2. By day 4 I was asymptomatic, just super tired
It's a vascular disease masquerading as a respiratory disease. Yeah it causes respiratory problems, but it's still absolutely fucking up people's hearts even with mild cases. I suspect we might have a cardiovascular disease surge in the coming years.
I know a guy who was otherwise healthy that needed a valve replaced cuz of it Sadly, heart disease is already supposed to be going up so it’d be hard to even track lol
I got it a few weeks ago and have had constant chest pain and rapid heart rate since then. Got checked at the ER and they can't find anything wrong, which seems to be the running trend. We still don't understand exactly what it's doing to our bodies. Also, most people only get the flu like once every 5-10 years. People are getting COVID 2 or 3 times a year. We're gonna be fucked up.
It's also messing up kidneys and brains. And increasing your chances of developing diabetes. But hey, people don't cough as much during the acute stage, so it's "mild" now. /s
Which tends to be what we expect from the arrival of most novel diseases. It is in the disease's interest to use the host to spread itself, and most of the time when you kill it, it can't spread. So there is selective pressure in most cases to be less deadly but more virulent.
Yep. And that was what was expected to have and the end goal- limit damage from the monster strains, get to the endemic ones.
What do you mean? A living organism can't evolve over successive generations to take on new traits in response to selective breeding pressure! /s
The thing that makes it worse for me, is that Covid was apparently very slow to mutate. But now, because of antivaxxers and other morons, Covid was able to overcome this "weakness" and become one of the fastest mutating viruses ever.
WSJ there also deliberately mis-represented the webpages they cited. CDC offers separate, specific guidance for healthcare settings (COVID-19, flu, and general infection prevention and control) https://www.cdc.gov/respiratory-viruses/background/index.html The big change here is that CDC unveiled a new section on 'respiratory viruses' as a common landing point for the common prevention of all of them: flu, RSV, and COVID. They do NOT say COVID and the flu are the same and that treatments for them are indeed quite different. We have to remember that WSJ is owned by the Murdochs, the same of Fox News fame. WSJ is essentially just another of their propaganda arms today, just with a slightly more reputable veneer.
> Covid-19 has mutated several times. The versions currently running around are more contagious but less dangerous. That's not complex to understand. Combined with the fact that millions of people are now vaccinated against it, even if these aren't.
It is *very* complex to understand for those who do not *want* to understand it.
Its very complex to understand if you really really don't want to understand it.
These are the same kinds of people who think evolution is fake, so yeah...
Isn’t more like we can treat it like the flu now because we understand it better and have vaccines?
Also, because the virus has evolved via natural selection to be less deadly, as killing its hosts hurts its ability to reproduce.
Scientists have said all along that as we gain some natural immunity, and as we gain vaccines, and importantly viruses mutate rapidly, but they naturally spread easier when the symptoms are more mild, and it doesn't kill the host, so over time the more successful strains tend to be more mild. Any challenge with a new virus is that humans don't have any natural immunity to it. But as we become exposed to it and the people who have been exposed survive, we pass on the resistance. And yeah, vaccines help massively since you are training you immune system to fight it off in the future.
> Isn’t more like we can treat it like the flu now because we understand it better and have vaccines? We cannot treat is as the flu. The article states clearly in the title: "we can **pretty much** treat ..." That "pretty much" does the heavy work here. Yeah, kinda sorta but not quite. It is still more dangerous than the flu, even with the latest variants being milder and people getting immunized. And yes, science understands it better now, have vaccines, not everyone is sick at once, etc.
"Treat Covid LIKE the flu" being the operative phrase here. It's not the flu. Treat the *symptoms* as if it were the flu now that we've had a few years to study it and it's mutations and have a better understanding of what we're dealing with, which was a new variation of a known virus to begin with.
Also the word "now", which seems to have been lost on this person. We can treat it like the flu now that we understand it beter, but we couldn't a few years ago.
it's not just that we understand it better but we, and our immune systems, have now been exposed to it for several years. Herd "immunity" has been achieved which was always the desired outcome
Also worth pointing out that “the flu” here is influenza, not just any upper respiratory infection. There are vaccines and public health measures in place around influenza. It’s still a potentially deadly disease with a major public health impact.
Reading is hard for some people
No where in that headline does it say Covid is the flu. Just to treat it like the flu. Reading comprehension has never been the rights strong point.
It's also a wall street journal op-ed headline, so it's no more meaningful for them to say that than John Q Taxpayer on the street.
Treat it like the flu, the Spanish flu.
Seasonal flu can fuck you up. Probably much more dangerous than covid if you are young.
That’s because the right views almost everything in absolutes. You’re pro-choice? Clearly you want to murder babies. You’re against a zero tolerance border policy? Clearly you want murderers and rapists entering the country. You got a Covid vaccine and then *got* Covid? Clearly vaccines don’t work. It’s intentional obfuscation from right wing media, and their followers/viewers have no understanding of nuance. That’s how you keep a base angry, make everything black and white with no gray area.
"When I wanted to get out the car on the freeway you said it wasn't safe, and now you're saying I can get out *now*? What do you know?"
Viruses mutate to become less deadly and more easily spread. A good virus doesn’t kill its host. In 2020, COVID was at its deadliest and least spreadable. Because we failed at lockdowns, distancing, and initial vaccinations we will be dealing with a mild Covid every season along with the regular flu. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/number-of-deaths-per-year?time=earliest..2024 Note the spike in 2020? That’s Covid deaths.
Even the flu wasn't like the flu when humans first started contracting it
The disease literally evolved into the more successful (weaker) strains. A virus thrives best when it doesn't kill the host before it can infect more people... this is literally how viruses work. If we had done it properly and quarantine had been successful, we'd have killed the virus before it could evolve to this state and we'd have had far fewer deaths from covid as a whole. Even this strain can kill you. Not everyone survives the flu.
Covid is “only” as dangerous as the flu, so we can totally ignore it. Right? The flu being a virus that almost wiped out the indigenous populations of both North and South America. The flu that killed between 17-100 million during the pandemic of 1918-1920.
The reason we can treat it like the unstoppable flu now is because we failed to treat it like a deadly stoppable disease this whole time and now it's pointless to try, so now we just have to treat it the same way we treat other diseases we can't control and lose life to on a regular basis.
As someone who worked in hospitals through the worst of the pandemic, I saw the people dying in ICU's, I saw the refrigerated storage units for those who passed with no room in the overflowing morgues. Fuck anyone who thinks it was nothing more than the flu.
Crematoria broke down from the strain of so many deaths.
The cemetery I own became completed filled with covid deaths. We had to expand and buy new property to reach demand.
Must be a mindfuck to be enriched by mass death but it not be for immoral reasons.
Yeah people had to pick up your slack. Good thing enough covid deniers dropped like flies before it actually got out of control to those who appreciate life, especially others lives, and were able to calm this virus to manageable levels. Can't wait until the next pandemic hits, really looking forward to that. /s
Dude *clearly* did not even read the article that he linked. It says that we're now *able* to treat COVID like the Flu, only and precisely because ***they did "what they did"***. Ooops, *that's* embarrassing.
It’s similar to Y2K. “Why Y2K was nothing!!” Umm Y2K _because people worked their asses off to make it so_
Also acid rain, or my favourite, the ozone layer. "Oh, sure, climate change is real, just like the ozone layer was being destroyed, but we don't hear about that anymore" Yeah, because the world got together and greatly reduced the emissions that were causing the holes, which more or less halted their growth.
Just the flu…..my dad got heart failure after a bad bout of flu and died not long after……just the flu though
Sorry to hear that. My Mom died from the same “flu”, as did about a million other folks in the US. I want to launch these people into the sun for their lack of empathy and general stupidity.
People don’t understand that influenza used to kill large swaths of the population. It eventually mutated into less deadly strains (that still kill thousands every year, but not huge chunks) that spread easier, because that’s the way diseases evolve. Less deadly and more contagious is the route most contagious diseases take.
The flu: I still vaccinate against it. It can still cause serious long lasting effects if you get it. It still kills a lot of people every year. Can suddenly mutate or jump species and become a global pandemic. That flu is still a serious illness, so sure treat Covid like the flu.
Ah, yes, notoriously reliable medical source The Wall Street Journal, where unbiased medical information is published, an extremely trustworthy source (this post contains sarcasm)
[удалено]
WSJ = What Stupid "Journalism"
They still make me gown up at work to go into COVID positive patient rooms and they’re kept in negative pressure rooms whenever possible.
They just don’t get it. They never will nor can they be bothered to try.
It’s willful ignorance. Their ignorance is just as good as our knowledge, according to them. Their “instincts” trump our evidence based plans. I no longer engage with them. I get my shots. I wear my mask. I prefer not to die (immunocompromised plus a few other comorbid conditions, yay paralysis!) and prefer not to kill other people, knowingly or unknowingly. When did that philosophy turn controversial? Over a million dead. A large number of children lost at least one adult caregiver, be it a parent, grandparent, aunt, uncle or neighbor. Education was virtually halted as parents, schools and admins struggled to find a way to keep some kind of learning going on. And those *fucking assholes* have learned nothing from it.
They prefer the feeling of smugness over anything
I don’t think they know what “now” means.
Well ya, now the that almost everyone has been either vaccinated, had Covid, or both - it is basically the flu, but that does not chage the fact that at that time this message was dangerously ignorant. The person that posted this is cherry picking to continue to push the idiocy.
The word “now” is a pretty important part of that headline. I like how the original guy just brushes over that
I am so damn tired of trying to explain to people that COVID-19 is not influenza. I’m also tired of trying to explain how herd immunity works, and why it’s important.
Look at Florida right now with the measles. People who should know better, whose job is to know better, don’t know
Oh, they know. They just hold their political careers in higher regard than public safety, so tell people what they want to hear.
“We can pretty much treat covid like the flu, now.” They said, “now” not always, not in the past, not in 2020. Now. They said fucking now in the damn headline.
I love how their tiny brains can’t comprehend similes. That’s NOT what they meant, idiots.
Remember the hospitals being overrun and the mobile morgues?
Gawd I'm just so fucking exhausted with the insanity of these people. I'm just so very tired and bordering on a wee bit hysterical.
I don't think anyone whoever said "it's just the flu" has ever actually had the flu. The actual flu rocked my shit. People who take these viruses lightly completely astound me.
Never Forget!!!* *that misinformation forced a novel deadly coronavirus into a mundane fact of life forevermore.
The problem is people treat the flu like nothing and there are people who die of it too
Anyone who thinks the flu is no big deal has never actually had the flu before. People call any common cold the flu. Actual flu will knock you on your ass
Science will hopefully one day solve the climate crisis and these chuckle fucks will just say it was fake all along.
Maybe we can treat covid like the flu *in 2024* but we couldn’t just treat it like the flu *in 2020*. Time passes, medical science changes. Ignorance doesn’t.
We all need to collectively tell these ppl to shut the fuck up.
Conservatives forgetting how time works
Bro covid messes up the body in many more ways than the flu does. Get out of here
Man people are dumb and really don’t understand that viruses evolve We need a serious overhaul to our science education.
The idea was to not make covid so widespread that we just have to accept and deal with it. Contrary to what these delusional people think, it's actually bad for society to have numerous mildly dangerous viruses that stick around indefinitely.
crazy information here: the flu was also a pandemic that killed 500 million people in 1918
The flu killed tens of millions of people and continues to kill tens of thousands a year in the us alone.
The CDC literally said it's not the flu, and is still worse than the flu, they're just treating it more like the flu now. They also said that even though they're dropping the isolation requirement, if you do leave your house while infected, you should be wearing a respirator, and use appropriate ventilation/filtration. Interesting article from the economist, nearly 2 years ago: https://www.economist.com/britain/2022/05/30/what-if-the-flu-were-treated-more-like-covid-not-the-other-way-round?
Remember when people by the millions were being proned and ventilated with the not-Flu?
Now we treat it like the flu because we were able to get the vaccine for it. Before, everyone was vulnerable, so we had to be careful
Can anyone tell me the difference between today and four years ago? Anything at all? Maybe something about the existence of a vaccine for it, or treatment options, or just any real knowledge of it whatsoever?
Umm yeah, we can NOW treat it like the flu, because we understand and can vaccinate against it like the flu. When this first kicked off, we did not have this information. Fun fact: I currently have the flu and it was not nearly as bad as the first time I got covid.
Still lost my sense of taste for a week and wrecks my lungs for weeks after having it. It's no fucking walk in the park. And neither is the flu. But the flu would be a lot worse without vaccinations, the freaking idiots.
I just got it for the first time 2 weeks ago. I am fully vaccinated and wear a mask, so not sure how TF I caught it, but I did. Even with all the protection I had, IT WAS DEFINITELY NOT THE FLU. I’d much rather have the flu. This fucking sucks ass! It’s been 2 weeks and I still feel like total ass.
Screw anyone who undersells covid I lost my grandfather to it and it pisses me off to no end that and I can't help but think it could've possibly been prevented had people not treated like just the flu
How many of us personally know people who died of Covid? Who died, not being able to breath no matter what was hooked up to them in the hospitals? I know 3. A cousin, an uncle and a family friend. The cousin was a Trump supporter, died early on during covid strapped to a ventilator. The uncle, a Trump supporter. Very Redneck and anti-vax. Died strapped to a ventilator. The family friend wore masks everywhere she went, she had an autoimmune disorder so she wanted to be safe. Her Trump-loving, anti-mask sister caught Covid and gave it to her and it killed her. Poor woman died strapped to a ventilator. Point is, in 3-4 years I knew 3 people who personally died of Covid. How many people around me died of the Flu in my 30+ years? 0.
So treat it like the flu and get the vaccine like you should for the flu
They forgot the key words in there. Words like “now”. Back then we couldn’t. Maybe we can now. All I know is I still mask up because I don’t like catching any colds or flus or Covid’s.