Jason Moyer was days away from a family road trip to visit his parents when his 10-year-old son woke up with a fever and cough.
. . .
“Six months ago, we would have tested for Covid,” Mr. Moyer, 41, of Ohio, said. This time they did not.
Instead, they checked to make sure the boy’s cough was improving and his fever was gone — and then set off for New Jersey, not bothering to tell the grandparents about the incident.
In the fifth summer of Covid, cases are surging, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has reported “high” or “very high” levels of the virus in wastewater in almost every state. The rate of hospitalizations with Covid is nearly twice what it was at this time last summer, and deaths — despite being down almost 75 percent from what they were at the worst of the pandemic — are still double what they were this spring.
Honestly, it’s astounding that humans have done as well as they have.
Lotta slaves and genocided populations in the ground underneath all that.
But even still it does seem like the awfulness should have been even more rampant than it has been.
Feels like dumb luck.
We had a good run
In Australia we have 95% vaccination rates and we haven’t had quarantine, testing etc rules in place for like 2+ years now. Everything is fine.
The US is sitting at around 80% vaccination rate. Therein lies the problem.
So, not so much “humans” as “some humans”.
I’m here in Australia and now, 4.5 years in, still haven’t had it. I mask whenever outside and use good hand hygiene at a times. I carry alcohol hand sanitiser and have wipes in the car for when I take my mask off in the car to wipe my face. I haven’t had a cold, flu, RSV, or covid since 2019 when I started wearing the mask because of bushfires. I work with vulnerable people who could get very sick from covid and so I don’t want to carry it person to person, and I also have an immune compromised partner who I don’t want to give it to. Honestly it is not a big ask and it is very effective to just mask up.