A new COVID-19 variant has emerged. Here's what we know about EG.5 so far

www.ctvnews.ca A new COVID-19 variant has emerged. Here's what we know about EG.5 so far

A new COVID-19 variant has emerged, serving as a reminder that the coronavirus continues to mutate and spread around the world, disproportionately affecting vulnerable populations.

The variant is called EG.5 and is a descendant of Omicron.

The Center for Disease Control and Prevention estimated that EG.5 accounted for roughly 17.3 per cent — or one in six — of new COVID-19 cases in the U.S. in the past two weeks.

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Idk what people are so worried about, I've been assured that the pandemic is over and we beat covid in ~~2020~~ ~~2021~~ ~~2022~~ ~~2023~~
- COVID-19 is now endemic, like influenza. However, we do have vaccines so every 6-12 months when we get a booster shot we can get a bivalent vaccine that contains some of the latest variant to help prevent serious illness. This allows us to recover much more easily, reduce transmission, and ultimately eliminate the clogging of hospitals.
  The real danger is from people who refuse to vaccinate because they're going to be more susceptible to the endemic virus and its subvariants.
  
  Nah, the real danger is the result of repeated cumulative reinfection damage from a still-poorly-understood virus that causes more and more damage to the vascular system and every organ connected to it. Long Covid is only beginning to be recognized for the mass disabling event it is, and the response of governments from the municpal all the way to the federal levels have been to let it rip, stop testing, shut down tracking sites, repeal mask mandates, and declare victory. Literally doing the thing they rightly mocked Trump for suggesting.
  Now over a million people have died in the US alone, and our government has decided to force everyone back to work to sustain commercial real estate profits, and in the process condemned us all to a lifetime of body-destroying reinfections by a virus who's key traits are infectiousness and rapid evolution.
  None of this had to happen. We could have had a real quarantine, just a month or two back in 2019, but that would require making slightly less money for a brief period of time, so instead we get to live in eternal plague world. The hobbling of any effective covid response by our ruling class in favor of more lucrative half-measures and non-measures is beyond a humanitarian disaster, it's a crime of unprecedented scale.
  
  The number of people ignoring this is terrifying. Study after study keeps showing its a problem.
  There's going to be a massive accumulated health crisis in 10-20 years where a quarter of the population has a wrecked vascular system. On par with diabetes, but in this case untreatable which is going to kill millions far earlier than they should.
  
  I'm going to play devil's advocate to explore my own anxiety about this situation.
  My fears are exactly the same as yours.
  The part that I cannot reconcile is this: I took my initial doses of vaccine, I had a booster. I did all the right things in terms of minimising exposure and the risk to myself and my family.
  I still caught CV19 twice. Maybe it didn't affect me as intensely as if I had not been vaccinated, who knows, but it fucked me up badly each time.
  My entire family have lived the same experience.
  Most people's thinking in my circle now seems to be: why would I expose myself to the risk of cardiovascular complications by being continuously vaccinated, when I am still going to get infected and face those same cumulative cardiovascular risks again.
  From a risk management perspective if I am not in a disease cohort likely to face mortality from infection, am I not reducing my total risk by simply reducing my exposure to the spike protein overall and electing to skip vaccine boosters altogether? I am going to get infected either way, that much is clear.
  I am massively concerned about the long term consequences of repeated infection with this pathogen but it seems the world has moved on from giving a fuck.
  I don't know a single person who has received a booster in the last 12 months and given the shift in media narrative here it is not hard to see why.
  
  You're assuming the booster is giving you the same (or anywhere even close) to the vascular damage caused by catching the virus. As far as the studies I've read, the vascular impact from catching COVID is dozens of times worse than a booster.
  You say "Maybe it didn't affect me as intensely as if I had not been vaccinated, who knows" The doctors know, that's why boosters are being offered to everyone for free in Canada.
  This is one of the reasons why Canada, which has a much higher vaccination and now booster rate than the US is doing better than the US with it's abysmally low booster rate. Canada is losing about 50 people per week right now, the US is still at around 2000 (40 times higher, despite only having a little over 8 times the population)
  What the world does or doesn't do is completely irrelevant to your personal choices. If they all jumped off a bridge to their death, would you do it too? I've continued masking in crowded public areas, boosted regularly (last Monday was my most recent dose), kept my kids masked at school, boosted them regularly too, none of us have had COVID at all. Make your own choices.
  
  Have you been boosting every 6 months? I've been mulling over getting another booster or waiting till the new one comes out. I've been more up to date than most, but last one I got was when the bivalent vaccine came out.
  
  Mostly, we had to adjust the schedule to happen a little earlier to get the kids done a few weeks before school starts back up each fall.
  
  Yeah I'll have to figure out when the new booster is going to come out and plan accordingly I think. Feel like I'm in no man's land timing wise
  
  Gonna be honest from the perspective of a current critical care nurse, as long as you didn't end up proned face down in the hospital with a ventilator stuck down you and paralyzed on Nimbex and losing a lobe of your lung then you got out lucky.
  I have a damn near knee jerk reaction to talking about covid in which I tell people that "still got it" that as long as they didn't need serious medical intervention then they should be fucking thankful for not having to endure whatever the fuck fever dream of Hell existed in the first two years of covid in most hospitals in the US. Shit was and still is fucked beyond fucked.
  edit: this is also not at all meant to downplay/ be mean everyone that got covid and luckily avoided a vent, many that contracted "mild" covid suffer from long covid with no end in sight.
  
  The numbers are still in favour of getting vaccinated. Complications from the vaccine are as close to zero as any medical procedure could be. The complications from raw-dogging COVID are far greater, regardless of your cohort. Turning a life-threatening infection into an inconvenience is what the vaccines do. If your concern is minimizing total risk, getting a COVID booster each year with your flu vaccine is the way to go.
  
  The best informed benefit/risk of subsequnt boostes is cohort based.
  https://www.health.gov.au/news/atagi-2023-booster-advice
  If you are unsure what's the best choice for you, you should chat with your doctor.
  
  I did all the right things [...]
  I still caught CV19 twice.
  One can do all the right things and still win the bad lottery. It's about reducing risk on the whole so all our chances are reduced.
  
  It was never claimed to stop you getting it. Same as many vaccines it doesn't give sterilising immunity.
  But it's completely possible it stopped you dying or going to hospital.
  The vaccine causes almost no damage but COVID 100% causes massive damage if you aren't vaccinated.
  
  I still caught CV19 twice. Maybe it didn't affect me as intensely as if I had not been vaccinated, who knows, but it fucked me up badly each time.
  there being a few 2000 year old roman bridges doesn't mean they were good at building bridges that last a long time, they built LOTS of bridges and a couple out of tens and tens of thousands survived
  survivorship bias
  
  I remember when vaccines rolled out. I would have to sit down and go over it. But there was a time where I stopped having to process bodies for the morgue at my job and that was a nice change. We still saw lots of sick people, they just didn't die nonstop. So vaccine all thr way.
  
  How come you found some sensible things in this community 19 days ago yet the last week or so you are only on wrecking behavior?
  
  At the beginning of the pandemic someone very correctly predicted that America was going to do the plague the same way we did Vietnam: enthusiastically for a little bit, then once we realize how expensive it is we were gonna give up, run away and loudly declare victory.
  
  Funny, I was just going to mention Vietnam; they did the lockdown as it should have been. Closed borders, no gatherings, the whole shebang. And wouldn't you know it; economic damage from the pandemic was extremely minimal because of all the people (read: workers, read: customers) that didn't needlessly die or were permanently disabled.
  
  This was the case with Cuba as well. They did the damn thing right and ended up in a position where they were exporting doctors and techniques to the rest of the world.
  
  Yup. Cuba even sent personal to Canada to help us out, all because we've imported and adopted the American denier mindset. :(
  
  You have said it very well.
  In Australia even our absolute harshest lockdowns made allowances for millions of "essential" industries.
  Unless you owned a business installing styrofoam nuns, you kept going to work in some capacity.
  We're an island for fuck's sake! We could have stopped this thing in it's tracks. But no, the flights must keep arriving. Business must business.
  
  Dayjob Orchestra fan right there!
  
  Me too. Was driving tow truck then. No passengers allowed and driving was a gd dream come true ... :)
  
  We could have stopped this thing in [its] tracks.
  You'll correct me for sure, but I remember Aus was banking on its internal vaccine and didn't want to lock down in vain while the vaccine was imminent; only when that vaccine failed to be effective and on time did they have to start Plan B, and that put everyone way behind.
  (I'm paraphrasing my nephew who lives there, so it's second-hand at best).
  But they seemed to start out with a fine, conservative fuck-the-plebes plan, at least.
  
  That's pretty much the gist of it. We also had a huge in-fighting between state governments and a stubborn refusal to work together or coordinate properly that led to some really bad outcomes.
  Almost the entire time this was compounded by flight after flight of VIPs arriving in Australia for 'diplomatic' purposes, or of course to play sportsball. We barely even stopped normal tourist flights either, yet our own expats were not allowed to fly home until months later. None of it made any sense.
  https://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-53776285
  This incident in itself made me highly suspicious of our governments competence and motivations. This was one of our major seeding incident here. Under no circumstances should this have been allowed to happen, yet this is just one of a long string of borderline malicious decisions by those in charge. We all forget too quickly.
  
  None of this had to happen. We could have had a real quarantine, just a month or two back in 2019, but that would require making slightly less money for a brief period of time, so instead we get to live in eternal plague world.
  Even if you could have gotten an entire country to agree that this was a good idea and pull it off, you still have other countries to worry about. Stopping it in one country wouldn't have stopped it anywhere else.
  Now, what I do agree with is that the response could've been a lot better, and many lives would've been saved as a result. But completely defeating COVID was always a fantasy.
  
  the result of repeated cumulative reinfection damage from a still-poorly-understood virus that causes more and more damage to the vascular system and every organ connected to it
  When I ask actual doctors, they disagree. Then we laugh about how anti-vax karen-convoy it sounds.
  
  anyone with significant experience (even just as a patient) in the medical system can tell you doctors are not infallible. most medical professionals i've encountered in my area don't even mask anymore and haven't for about a year and some change now. of the ones that do, most are still just wearing surgical masks (useless)
  
  surgical masks (useless)
  This isn't entirely true though. Yes they are far from perfect and yes they are worse than better masks, but they are still better than nothing and do actually reduce transmission.
  
  you're correct, i was being a touch hyperbolic. iirc it's like 23-27% effective or some shit, maybe in the 30s (it's been a while)
  that said, a solid 70% of the doctors i see masking have it either under their nose or on their chin so
  
  https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/do-repeat-covid-infections-increase-the-risk-of-severe-disease-or-long-covid/
  
  The idea that reinfections would be benign was inspired by politics and vibes. There's plenty of evidence that reinfections are bad. It's a virus that can damage all our organs, brain included, cause micro clots, vascular damage, and harm the immune system itself by trashing our t-cells, and it's a virus we can catch multiple times a year and is mutating so rapidly we are having trouble knowing what to target when we develop yearly vaccines.
  It's kind of a problem if reinfections are bad for us when we are counting on perpetual infections to "build our immunity".
  US dept. of Health and Human Services https://twitter.com/HHSGov/status/1659589815887712256
  New Zealand government covid updates https://nitter.kavin.rocks/covid19nz/status/1670943608428539905#m
  Another study showing cumulative risk upon reinfection https://nitter.kavin.rocks/i/status/1688769749868490752
  
  Are these the same doctors who insist on taking a wait and see approach to Paxlovid? If so, I'm not sure they should even be allowed to call themselves doctors.
  
  Yearly boosters
  HA!
  I should be so lucky. My last booster was over a year ago, and there are no plans to introduce them for any but the oldest and youngest people in Britain.
  
  Oh, man, the UK was an absolute disaster for getting vaccinated. In 2021 in my area there were literally crowds of young people at "walk-in" vaccination centres getting turned away and being told to wait for another 1-2 months. Meanwhile about 3 elderly patients were getting the shot per hour and the Guildhall looked empty besides.
  My friends in other countries were vaccinated months before me. Ended up getting all my boosters outside the UK because they couldn't give a fuck about anyone under 65.
  
  From an overseas perspective I can tell you that practically nobody in Australia is taking any form of booster. Elderly populations are, particularly those in a care setting but the general population are completely uninterested.
  This is a combination of most people having been infected with CV19 at least once and not being particularly badly affected, and most people having had either direct or indirect experience of negative side effects from vaccination, and the now predominantly negative media coverage of the vaccination campaign.
  If there is a marked shift towards increased mortality in any given strain, Australia is fucked. Thankfully that does not seem to be the trajectory of the virus at this time.
  
  combination of most people having been infected with CV19 at least once
  I remember when Americans were sending their kids to CoViD parties, thinking it was like the Measles.
  It ended horrifically.
  Talk to a doc and follow those recommendations.
  
  Just a note that "Measles parties" are also likely to end badly.
  
  The problem is that the latest vaccines don't contain the latest variant - they're always going to be behind the curve because it takes time to develop them after a new variant emerges.
  For example, here in NZ, we're still giving people the bivalent mix designed for the omicron BA.4/BA.5 variant (and the ones before it) which is now about 2 years old and hasn't been seen here for about 9 months.
  There's a non-zero level of protection from those vaccines, but they're not keeping up with the virus in real time.
  
  This is another major reason I have not stayed current with my boosters. What is the point of using something based on a strain that has not been seen for 9 months, and is in fact 2 years old? It doesn't make a great deal of sense to me.
  Sure it will offer SOME ability to improve the immune response to a CV19 variant given how short-lived the protection from natural infection and vaccination seems to be, but it certainly isn't going to be anywhere near as good as it could be. I'm still going to get horrifically sick again.
  
  At this point probably everyone has had omicron or one of the later less harmful variants. The trend of becoming more transmissible and less harmful is normal for corona viruses. Im with most people in being apprehensive about getting additional boosters. Why do you feel there's a real danger?
  
  I am one of the lucky few that has never had it.
  
  I never had a noticeable case of it either. I think I probably had an asymptomatic case
- I thought this was pretty clever and funny, nicely done:)
- It's kinda taboo to name it after places now. No more Spanish, Hong Kong, Wuhan flu.
- "it's only for a few weeks! Flatten the curve!"

81 comments

HA!