#RSV Flu and Covid in kids

[roytecharena]

RSV, Flu and Covid in kids-Signs and Symptoms

Do you know the early signs and symptoms of RSV, Flu and Covid in kids can resemble one another? Here, we are going to discuss the signs and symptoms of RSV, Flu and Covid in detail. 

Doctors are advising parents to be aware of the symptoms that indicate a serious illness as a number of respiratory viruses are spreading at unusually high levels in the U.S. and putting children in hospitals as the To read more

[chicago-geniza]

Once again I truly did not expect Asthma to be the defining chronic health condition of my adult life but I really do be getting Every Single Respiratory Infection In Chicago even with Xolair, two inhalers, a nebulizer, mast cell stabilizers, allergy shots, COVID nasal spray, and never leaving the house sans kn95 mask. My lungs suck sooo bad

[a-moment-captured]

People, if you are sick, stay the fuck home!

Stop spreading your flu and covid germs everywhere!

Not only do I have covid but my sister and brother in law do as well.

Now they are at the emergency department with my 6 month old niece who has a 103.4 fever, pulse ox was 88, and she was basically panting like a dog.

I can’t even go in because I’m sick! I hate this! I’ve seen so many babies and children come in on the weekends I work that have the flu, RSV, or covid. @heavyhitterheaux can tell you, it’s awful lately!

I see so many “adults” send their kids to school sick because they don’t want to deal with them (their words on Facebook because you know they think teachers are babysitters).

If you are sick, keep your ass at home!

[infiniteglitterfall]

know someone who enjoys horror stories? share this one! it's true!

hahahahahahahahahaha aarrggghhhhhhhhhh 3,000,000 deaths due to COVID-19 last year. Globally. Three million. Case rates higher than 90% of the rest of the pandemic. The reason people are still worried about COVID is because it has a way of quietly fucking up your body. And the risk is cumulative.

I'm going to say that again: the risk is cumulative.

It's not just that a lot of people get bad long-term effects from it. One in seven or so? Enough that it's kind of the Russian Roulette of diseases. It's also that the more times you get it, the higher that risk becomes. Like if each time you survived Russian Roulette, the empty chamber was removed from the gun entirely. The worst part is that, psychologically, we have the absolute opposite reaction. If we survive something with no ill effects, we assume it's pretty safe. It is really, really hard to override that sense of, "Ok, well, I got it and now I probably have a lot of immunity and also it wasn't that bad." It is not a respiratory disease. Airborne, yes. Respiratory disease, no: not a cold, not a flu, not RSV.

Like measles (or maybe chickenpox?), it starts with respiratory symptoms. And then it moves to other parts of your body. It seems to target the lungs, the digestive system, the heart, and the brain the most.

It also hits the immune system really hard - a lot of people are suddenly more susceptible to completely unrelated viruses. People get brain fog, migraines, forget things they used to know.

(I really, really hate that it can cross the blood-brain barrier. NOTHING SHOULD EVER CROSS THE BLOOD-BRAIN BARRIER IT IS THERE FOR A REASON.) Anecdotal examples of this shit are horrifying. I've seen people talk about coworkers who've had COVID five or more times, and now their work... just often doesn't make sense? They send emails that say things like, "Sorry, I didn't mean Los Angeles, I meant Los Angeles."

Or they insist they've never heard of some project that they were actually in charge of a year or two before.

Or their work is just kind of falling apart, and they don't seem to be aware of it.

People talk about how they don't want to get the person in trouble, so their team just works around it. Or they describe neighbors and relatives who had COVID repeatedly, were nearly hospitalized, talked about how incredibly sick they felt at the time... and now swear they've only had it once and it wasn't bad, they barely even noticed it.

(As someone who lived with severe dissociation for most of my life, this is a genuinely terrifying idea to me. I've already spent my whole life being like, "but what if I told them that already? but what if I did do that? what if that did happen to me and I just don't remember?") One of its known effects in the brain is to increase impulsivity and risk-taking, which is real fucking convenient honestly. What a fantastic fucking mutation. So happy for it on that one. Yes, please make it seem less important to wear a mask and get vaccinated. I'm not screaming internally at all now.

I saw a tweet from someone last year whose family hadn't had COVID yet, who were still masking in public, including school.

She said that her son was no kind of an athlete. Solidly bottom middle of the pack in gym.

And suddenly, this year, he was absolutely blowing past all the other kids who had to run the mile. He wasn't running any faster. His times weren't fantastic or anything. It's just that the rest of the kids were worse than him now. For some reason. I think about that a lot. (Like my incredibly active six-year-old getting a cold, and suddenly developing post-viral asthma that looked like pneumonia.

He went back to school the day before yesterday, after being home for a month and using preventative inhalers for almost week.

He told me that it was GREAT - except that he couldn't run as much at recess, because he immediately got really tired. Like how I went outside with him to do some yard work and felt like my body couldn't figure out how to increase breathing and heart rate.

I wasn't physically out of breath, but I felt like I was out of breath. That COVID feeling people describe, of "I'm not getting enough air." Except that I didn't have that problem when I had COVID.) Some people don't observe any long (or medium) term side effects after they have it.

But researchers have found viral reservoirs of COVID-19 in everyone they've studied who had it.

It just seems to hang out, dormant, for... well, longer than we've had an opportunity to observe it, so far.

(I definitely watched that literal horror movie. I think that's an entire genre. The alien dormant under ice in the Arctic.)

(oh hey I don't like that either!!!!!!!!!) All of which is to explain why we should still care about avoiding it, and how it manages to still cause excess deaths. Measuring excess deaths has been a standard tool in public health for a long time.

We know how many people usually die from all different causes, every year. So we can tell if, for example, deaths from heart disease have gone way up in the past three years, and look for reasons. Those are excess deaths: deaths that, four years ago, would not have happened. During the pandemic, excess death rates have been a really important tool. For all sorts of reasons. Like, sometimes people die from COVID without ever getting tested, and the official cause is listed as something else because nobody knows they had COVID. But also, people are dying from cardiovascular illness much younger now.

People are having strokes and heart attacks younger, and more often, than they did before the pandemic started. COVID causes a lot of problems. And some of those problems kill people. And some of them make it easier for other things to kill us. Lung damage from COVID leading to lungs collapsing, or to pneumonia, or to a pulmonary embolism, for example. The Economist built a machine-learning model with a 95% confidence interval that gauges excess death statistics around the world, to tell them what the true toll of the ongoing COVID pandemic has been so far.

Total excess deaths globally in 2023: Three million.

3,000,000.

Official COVID-19 deaths globally so far: Seven million. 7,000,000. Total excess deaths during COVID so far: Thirty-five point two million. 35,200,000.

Five times as many.

That's bad. I don't like that at all. I'm glad last year was less than a tenth of that. I'm not particularly confident about that continuing, though, because last year we started a period of really high COVID transmission. Case rates higher than 90% of the rest of the pandemic. Here's their data, and charts you can play with, and links to detailed information on how they did all of this:

Here's a non-paywalled link to it:

https://archive.vn/2024.01.26-012536/https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/coronavirus-excess-deaths-estimates

Oh: here's a link to where you can buy comfy, effective N95 masks in all sizes:

Those ones are about a buck each after shipping - about $30 for a box of 30. They also have sample packs for a dollar, so you can try a couple of different sizes and styles.

You can wear an N95 mask for about 40 total hours before the effectiveness really drops, so that's like a dollar for a week of wear.

They're also family-owned and have cat-shaped masks and I really love them. These ones are cuter and in a much wider range of colors, prints, and styles, but they're also more expensive; they range from $1.80 to $3 for a mask. ($18-$30 for a box of ten.)

[coulsonlives]

Tons of children are dying from RSV/flu here in Canada, and people and their kids still be walking around without fucking masks lmfao, what a world.

[covid-safer-hotties]

Also preserved on our archive (Archive.is link on this page if you can't access the original source)

By Iris Gorfinkel

The lack of masking in health care facilities will needlessly spread disease. As in past autumns, cooler weather will bring a spike in flu and cold viruses while kids in Ontario have settled back into crowded classrooms and COVID-19 threatens to reach a 3-year peak, writes Iris Gorfinkle.

Imagine you — or a vulnerable loved one — needs urgent medical care. If you’re lucky enough to have a family doctor, you head to their clinic. Like most, yours is housed in a building with low ceilings and little air filtration. You enter the waiting room where several patients sit shoulder-to-shoulder waiting.

You have no choice but to sit alongside people sneezing, coughing and blowing their noses. Few if any, patients and health care workers are wearing a mask. While grateful for the hand sanitizer on offer, you begin to wonder if that will be enough to prevent your picking up an infection you hadn’t anticipated.

It’s an all-too-familiar scenario.

The most common reason people see a GP is to assess an upper respiratory infection. They most frequently start after inhaling infected droplets or aerosols or from having touched an infected surface.

An N95 or KN95 mask helps block transmission, whether it’s SARS CoV-2, influenza or a common cold virus like RSV. They’re not perfect, but they reduce viral transmission by 30 per cent. Yet in spite of their benefits, most health-care workers and patients no longer routinely mask, even during assessments requiring close contact with an increased risk of disease spread.

Many of my most vulnerable patients are keenly aware of the potential health risks this presents. Yet most say nothing and would never dream of asking their clinician to wear a mask.

There are sound reasons for this.

The first has to do with long wait times. A visit to the specialist is a precious commodity that cannot be risked. Several months pass before patients are seen, raising the urgency for care.

This is only the first of many factors to come that can silence even the most assertive of patients.

Many don’t want to appear disrespectful by asking their health-care workers to mask. They fear being labelled “difficult” or “demanding” and become distressed at the prospect of questioning their clinician’s judgment, even if it should put them in harm’s way.

Patients become more passive when burdened with the anxiety, dread and fatigue that accompanies illness. Deep-seated fears are ignited that further increase the dependency on health-care workers and squelch any remaining likelihood of their requesting that their clinicians mask.

Masking policies in health-care facilities don’t have to be all-or-none edicts. Patients who are hard of hearing often benefit when they’re able to read lips. Both patients and health care workers sometimes struggle because of anxiety. Young children may not co-operate, and there are people who simply cannot — or will not — tolerate them.

These are special cases though, not the rule. Smart policies in health care facilities need to have latitude for such exceptions. But tightening the policy on masking also recognizes that SARS CoV-2 is a stealthy virus.

One-in-three people infected have no symptoms yet can still transmit COVID-19. It can result in serious physical and mental harms that last 3 years and possibly longer following the initial infection. Since the start of the pandemic to the end of 2023, long COVID has affected 6 per cent of adults and 1 per cent of children.

Vaccines don’t lower viral transmission. Where they shine is at lowering the severity of cases and keeping Ontario’s hospitals from being overwhelmed, but they’re poor at reducing mild cases. It’s short-sighted to gamble on the hope that future vaccines will prove any different.

What’s more certain is that the lack of masking in health care facilities will needlessly spread disease. As in past autumns, cooler weather will bring a spike in flu and cold viruses while kids in Ontario have settled back into crowded classrooms and COVID-19 threatens to reach a 3-year peak.

The duty of care doesn’t land on patients. It’s the clinicians’ job to ensure patients don’t pick up an unintended infection. Patients have a right to safety in health care facilities. In the meantime, I can only advise my concerned patients to wear an N95 or KN-95 when in health care facilities and suggest they not be shy when asking clinicians to do the same.

[theculturedmarxist]

Eugenics is still the rule of the fucking day.

"People 65-plus and people who are immunocompromised should strongly consider masking during flu, RSV, COVID season while in indoor public spaces," said Dr. Céline Gounder, a CBS News medical contributor and editor-at-large for public health at KFF Health News. "And for everyone else — it all depends on what their risk tolerance is."

"Depends on what their risk tolerance is." Are you fucking kidding me?

CBS News chief medical correspondent Dr. Jon LaPook says he likes to use the "weather report analogy" for the general public. "What's the weather out today? If it's raining, you will probably want to bring an umbrella. If you are in an area where there is an uptick in airborne respiratory infections like COVID, flu or RSV, you may want to take extra precautions, such as wearing a high-quality mask in indoor public spaces," he said.

People should be masking up before there's a fucking "uptick." That's how you prevent a fucking "uptick". Especially considering testing isn't the metric the people in power are going by any more, but hospitalizations, which are always going to be lagging indicators. By the time the "uptick" is registered these diseases are going to have been present and active for days or even weeks.

After COVID hospitalizations climbed nearly 22% this week, the CDC is predicting further increases over the coming month as new variants spread. This replaces previous projections from the agency that admissions would "remain stable or have an uncertain trend."

Oh, cool, so things are already bad and the are predicting that things are going to get worse, but the decision is being made to not do a fucking thing about it.

In a 2021 "60 Minutes" interview, virologist Paul Duprex explained the current (and future) emergence of new variants — a concept applicable to the current situation. "Is there anything we can do to stop the virus from mutating so much?" LaPook asked Duprex at the time. "We can certainly stop it making as many mutations by stopping it infecting as many people - if we block its transmission, if we wear a mask, if we get vaccinated, if we do social distancing," Duprex said.

None of which will be happening because "Covid Is Over" and doing any of the necessary things to prevent it are voluntary at best.

After news broke about the BA.2.86 variant earlier this month, the CDC said the agency's advice on protecting yourself from COVID-19 — which includes wearing a high-quality mask among other recommendations listed on its website — "remains the same."

Oh alright let's see what the CDC recommends

In addition to basic health and hygiene practices, like handwashing, CDC recommends some prevention actions at all COVID-19 hospital admission levels, which include:

Ugh. At least its recommendations implicitly admit that covid is airborne.

Still, some experts fear it could be hard to convince Americans to don masks again even if COVID cases continue to rise. Dr. Danielle Ompad, an epidemiologist at the NYU School of Global Public Health, said "It's a bit like putting the genie back in the bottle." Still, she has personally started wearing a mask again recently in crowded places, where the risk of exposure is greater.

Huh, I wonder why it would be hard to convince people to mask up again. Who's responsible for letting the genie out of the fucking bottle? Maybe they should be taken to task for this fucking decision?

"If I were with people who aren't public health-trained, I would wear a mask, particularly in crowded situations, because I really don't have time for COVID. Mask mandates are challenging because they make people really bent out of shape out of proportion to the ask."

What people are getting "really bent out of shape" by mask mandates? Just "people" huh? No specific people at all? Okay then.

"Who wants to get sick while on vacation?" she says. "If you're going to be in a crowded public place — the subway, an airplane, a crowded theater — those are the kind of places I would at least consider wearing a mask."

Hey maybe these fucking super-spreader places shouldn't be open especially with multiple variants spreading across the country with no mask mandates in place.

Though increased cases and hospitalizations are prompting precautions, Gounder says she doesn't see another lockdown in our future. "That ship has sailed. Has sailed for years now," she said. 

"That ship" just sailed itself, huh? Another development with no cause and no active participant? Just up and sailed on its own, did it? And there's no one to sail it back? Man, that's crazy.

[leighlew3]

BOOSTED.

And to be clear? To each their own.

For me personally, I developed long-COVID after a very slight, one day case of COVID early on, pre-vaccine. Nearly destroyed me and stole a year of my life via developing a minor heart issue, high BP, near stroke, exhaustion, etc.

I overcame that shit through natural remedies and sheer freakin’ will, and of course also I started vaxxing. I’ve been okay since.

Meanwhile my unvaccinated beloved mom is now dead from heart failure, a clot, double fistula, etc after barely symptomatic COVID back when I had it also. Keep in mind she’d had no heart issues prior and was a non-smoker, non-drinker, etc.

Do with that what you will, but this is my reasoning. There are risks in all things. For me, the risk of dying of COVID or developing extreme long-COVID again is not worth avoiding a booster for fear of rare short or long term side effects.

Again, that’s just me.

So please don’t come into my mentions with extremist propoganda, fearmongering, etc. If you don’t believe in these vaccines — ok! Do you.

I’m a firm believer in the more organic the better. And I don’t trust big pharma. But I do trust science. And the statistics don’t lie. And that’s what I’m going with. Along with a return to masking — since COVID, RSV and flu rates are on the rise and January might be pretty brutal.

Already, half my timeline has COVID. And 75% of people I know locally and nationally have or have had COVID, flu, or their kids had RSV — just over the last week or two. So if I can have an extra little layer of protection or two… I’m gonna do it. 🤷‍♀️

[macgyvermedical]

Hi all, because of the recent uptick in pediatric flu/covid/rsv cases in the US some pharmacies are reporting having limited supplies of children’s pain killers and fever reducers.

So if all you have access to is adult acetaminophen or ibuprofen, here’s how to use it safely for kids:

Note: the following assumes that one tablet of regular strength acetaminophen is 325mg, one tablet of extra strength acetaminophen is 500mg, and one tablet of ibuprofen is 200mg. If you have different strengths than this or extended release versions the following will not work and may be dangerous. Because of this, this information is intended as educational.

Acetaminophen (Tylenol)- if your child is...

15kg (33lb), give 1/2 reg strength tab every 4 hours

20kg (44lb), give 1/2 extra strength tab every 4 hours

30kg (66lb), give 1 reg strength tab every 4 hours

40kg (88lb), give 1 extra strength tab every 4 hours

50kg+ (110lb+), give 2 reg strength tabs every 4 hours

Ibuprofen (Motrin, Advil)- if the child is...

15kg (33lb), give 1/2 tab every 6 hours

20kg (44lb), give 1/2-1 tab every 6 hours

30kg (66lb), give 3/4-1.5 tab every 6 hours

40kg (88lb), give 1-2 tab every 6 hours

50kg (110lb), give 2 tab every 6 hours

12 and older can have 2 tab every 4 hours

[leaveherwildliketheflowers]

M has been sick on and off since she started daycare in July. She came down with another respiratory virus and has had a fever since Wednesday night (controlled by Tylenol). I posted a picture of us on my BeReal today and mentioned she was sick again. I promptly received a text from one of my best friends and the conversation went like this:

Friend: How is little M doing?

Me: Poor thing is sick again! Peds ruled out all the major things (RSV/Flu/COVID) but she has a fever so we kept her home for the second day in a row. I feel so bad for her.

Friend: She is building up an immune system at a rapid rate, I'm sorry! Do you need any help? Dinner? A break for a nap?

Me (hesitates before answering honestly knowing I could use some help and adult time): I don't want you to get sick, but if you wanted to bring dinner and have a fire and hang around tonight I definitely wouldn't say no.

Friend: That's a lovely invite but we have tickets to a show tonight so we wouldn't be able to stop by.

How I wanted to respond: 😑

How I actually responded: That sounds like so much fun, enjoy!

Now look, I don't ever expect anyone to help me and Hubs in our parenting journey. We chose this knowing it would come with challenges. My friends don't have children yet and I love that they are taking their time and living their lives before they settle down.

Here's where I get irritated. So many people, including my friends who do things exactly like this, are always telling me how much help we have with M. We have literally no help aside from my inlaws who live 1.5 hours away and can only come help on an occasional weekend. My friends offer to help and when I try to actually take them up on it (which I never used to but I'm actually trying to let myself be vulnerable in that way because I need help) they never follow through. It's an empty offer. I would rather they not offer to help at all instead of extending an olive branch and then acting like I invited them over unprompted when I try to take them up on it.

The worst part is I have been consumed by this all day. I feel humiliated for even trying to accept the help. I should have just said I was fine. I keep thinking that maybe I misunderstood her but what else could she have meant. She probably expected me to just say we don't need anything. I just don't understand why even offer it if you know you can't fit it in your schedule. Sometimes being the only one with a kid is isolating.

[your-krazy-uncle-bob]

By now everybody has heard the horror stories about learning loss suffered during the pandemic.

Shutting down schools for months or more, it turns out, wasn’t such a hot idea. Who could have guessed? Politicians are scrambling to escape blame, parents are getting madder by the minute, and editorialists are doing their chin-stroking think pieces about how unfortunate this all is–as if they weren’t at least as blameworthy for the crisis as anyone.

Yet the pediatric education crisis is only the most obvious of the many horrible consequences of the COVID fascist policies. Doctors on the front lines of pediatric medicine are being taught a real-time lesson in reality: immune systems work by fighting off bugs, developing defenses through exposure to bacteria and viruses. Because of this fact, the 2+ years of making children into “bubble boys” protected from every disease has made many children defenseless against the everyday bugs that plague everybody.

Katherine Wu at The Atlantic tells the tale:

At the height of the coronavirus pandemic, as lines of ambulances roared down the streets and freezer vans packed into parking lots, the pediatric emergency department at Our Lady of the Lake Children’s Hospital, in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, was quiet. It was an eerie juxtaposition, says Chris Woodward, a pediatric-emergency-medicine specialist at the hospital, given what was happening just a few doors down. While adult emergency departments were being inundated, his team was so low on work that he worried positions might be cut. A small proportion of kids were getting very sick with COVID-19—some still are—but most weren’t. And due to school closures and scrupulous hygiene, they weren’t really catching other infections—flu, RSV, and the like—that might have sent them to the hospital in pre-pandemic years. Woodward and his colleagues couldn’t help but wonder if the brunt of the crisis had skipped them by. “It was, like, the least patients I saw in my career,” he told me. That is no longer the case.

Across the country, children have for weeks been slammed with a massive, early wave of viral infections—driven largely by RSV, but also flu, rhinovirus, enterovirus, and SARS-CoV-2. Many emergency departments and intensive-care units are now at or past capacity, and resorting to extreme measures.

At Johns Hopkins Children’s Center, in Maryland, staff has pitched a tent outside the emergency department to accommodate overflow; Connecticut Children’s Hospital mulled calling in the National Guard. It’s already the largest surge of infectious illnesses that some pediatricians have seen in their decades-long careers, and many worry that the worst is yet to come. “It is a crisis,” Sapna Kudchadkar, a pediatric-intensive-care specialist and anesthesiologist at Johns Hopkins, told me. “It’s bananas; it’s been full to the gills since September,” says Melissa J. Sacco, a pediatric-intensive-care specialist at UVA Health. “Every night I turn away a patient, or tell the emergency department they have to have a PICU-level kid there for the foreseeable future.”

Of all the viruses out there to worry about, COVID-19 should have been near the bottom of the list of concern when it comes to children. Rather than using intelligence and reason, policymakers and some parents who got freaked out by the COVIDiots shoved every child they could into a germ free bubble to protect them from a disease that wasn’t terribly dangerous for them.

Many doctors knew that this was insanely stupid, but few had the courage to speak up. And those who did were vilified mercilessly. Some had their license to practice medicine threatened–including Minnesota’s current candidate for governor Scott Jensen.

For a while it seemed a miracle happened: kids weren’t quite so snot-nosed as usual. See! Protection works!

The long-term result? Kids are more vulnerable to diseases to which they should have developed immunity by now. And they are getting worse cases, more frequently, and winding up in understaffed pediatric ICU units. Pediatric ICU units that had often cut staff and beds because demand during the pandemic was abnormally low.

One of the great lies of public policy is that there needn’t be any trade-offs. Everything can be a win-win. Yet usually that is not the case. In the real world you balance risks vs rewards, costs vs benefits, and find messy solutions for even messier problems. People get sick, have accidents, deal with tragedies. You do what you can, but life inevitably happens. You can mitigate risks, but not eliminate them. And often you have to balance competing risks.

Yet with COVID, policy makers took the exact opposite approach, treating the virus as the ultimate evil and everything else was worth sacrificing to reduce COVID infections. This was always insane.

From the beginning of the pandemic it was obvious who was at most risk–very old and very sick people–and we should have focused our energies on protecting the people at most risk. Everybody else needed to get on with our lives.

We did the opposite. Politicians put COVID patients into nursing homes, killing off thousands of people prematurely. And at the same time they demanded children be isolated–shut up in homes planted in front of a computer to get their now revealed-to-be-worthless “education.” Not only was COVID not particularly dangerous to these kids, but lack of exposure to the unavoidable illnesses of childhood has left the kids more vulnerable to severe illness and death from common viruses.

Early on in the pandemic I got involved in the anti-lockdown movement, and I was struck by how taboo it became to refer to the immune system as a defense against illness. It was not uncommon to be accused of the most vile motives for suggesting that natural immunity can be a good and necessary thing. Vaccines depend upon stimulating the immune system, not some magic hocus pocus.

Our masters in politics and the media decided to bet on the magic, and everybody else is paying the price.

As I wrote yesterday, some are now calling for a COVID amnesty–a mass forgiveness for all the harm done by the COVID policy madness. My answer is no, not because making mistakes is unforgivable. All of us make mistakes and we all deserve more than a bit of grace when we do.

My answer is “hell no” because the COVID fascists at the top knew that what they were doing was wrong–how could they not after it became obvious?–and did it anyway. For money. For power. To transform society to their liking. That is unforgivable.

If the powers-that-be want amnesty then we need a “truth and reconciliation commission,” as they did in South Africa after Apartheid fell. Lay it all out on the table. The good. The bad. The ugly. The people who did this need to be exposed and to beg forgiveness.

Short of that, my solution is to politically destroy every COVID fascist politician and grind their careers into the dust.

What really is unforgivable about all this is that progressive adults were willing to inflict this horror on children for their own false sense of security.

[landunderthewave]

"Incredibly, despite the irrefutable reality that Swedish kids were never protected from viral infection, they too are jumping onboard the “immunity debt” train! Yes, according to Swedish health officials, masks their children never wore are making those same children sick two years later."

"Meanwhile, nations like Japan, Korea, Vietnam and China, which have consistently promoted mask wearing during flu seasons since well before COVID, never saw any such “immunity debt” mass sickness, nor are they seeing massive RSV or flu outbreaks now."

[aniron48]

If everyone will pardon me being deeply earnest on main for a minute, this is the situation parents and kids are in right now, at least in my corner of the U.S.: Flu, COVID, RSV, and a plethora of other viruses are running basically unchecked through the daycare/preschool aged population. My family has been sick with one or the other of these since before Thanksgiving. It's bad--many pediatric hospitals are running out of beds. A friend's otherwise perfectly healthy three year old was just hospitalized with RSV. Pharmacies are out of infants' and children's Tylenol and Motrin (which, by the way, are pretty much the only things you can give young kids for everything from ear infections to teething to lowering fevers, and almost every single one of the illnesses named above comes with a fever). Last week we had to take my son to the doctor because he had a virus that, in addition to congestion and fever, gave him an earache. He also had conjunctivitis. The doctor hand-wrote us a prescription for amoxicillin, because she said it's hit or miss whether pharmacies have this right now and we'd likely have to take it multiple places. She was right. Pharmacies are out of amoxicillin, the antibiotic that pediatricians prescribe for childhood infections and earaches. If I had to guess, I would imagine this is among the top prescription medications for kids of this age--it's the only thing my little guy has ever had a prescription for, for example. We have the wherewithal to take time of work (though just barely, and we're running out of leave) and drive to multiple pharmacies. Other families do not. Everyone in my family is exhausted. And last night, in the middle of the night, my son's temperature hit 101 again, with a new virus. Before he ever got over the last one. Our best guess is he got this during the seven hours he was healthy enough to go to daycare last week. We can't get a break. Please, please, please care enough about people to wear a mask in indoor public places right now. It's not just COVID.

[covid-safer-hotties]

Also preserved on our archive

By Jessica Rendall

Pfizer's and Moderna's formulas have been the go-to on pharmacy shelves, but Novavax remains an important option.

We're on the cusp of the fall season, which means respiratory viruses like flu, RSV and COVID are expected to keep spreading as weather cools and more people gather indoors.

Luckily, we've got vaccines in stock to help prevent respiratory viruses from turning into severe illnesses. In addition to flu vaccines for the general public and RSV vaccines for older adults and pregnant people, new COVID vaccines from Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna and Novavax are available this season to reduce the risk of hospitalization.

This means adults have a choice in which COVID vaccine they receive: an mRNA vaccine by Moderna or Pfizer, or Novavax, a protein-based vaccine that targets the virus in a more "traditional" way. All three have been authorized by the US Food and Drug Administration. While Moderna and Pfizer have been widely used over the last few years, the Novavax vaccine is building up a bit of a following.

Novavax, a protein-based vaccine, is an option for those who don't want or can't take an mRNA vaccine. Novavax may also be appealing to those wanting to experiment with the "mix-and-match" approach to COVID boosters as a way to potentially strengthen the immune response.

"Even though mRNA vaccines dominate the market for COVID vaccines, it remains important to have multiple different types of technologies against various pathogens because each may have specific use cases," Dr. Amesh Adalja, an infectious disease expert and senior scholar with Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, said in an email.

Here's everything we know about Novavax this year.

How is Novavax different from Pfizer and Moderna? Novavax is a protein-based vaccine, which people have associated with a "traditional" approach to vaccination. This is compared with mRNA technology, which does not use dead or weakened virus as an ingredient in the vaccine but instead uses genetic code to instruct the recipient's immune system to respond.

However, Adalja said that calling Novavax traditional may be a "misnomer" because it brings its own innovation to the table. Novavax uses an insect virus that has been genetically engineered to express spike proteins, Adalja explained, which are then incorporated into the vaccine.

"The vaccine itself is coupled with an immune system booster, called an adjuvant, which increases its immunity," he said, referencing a component existing vaccines have also incorporated.

This year, there are also slight differences between Novavax and Pfizer and Moderna's updated vaccines. Both mRNA vaccines have been tweaked to target the KP.2 strain of COVID-19, which is a slightly more recent version of the virus than what Novavax targets, which is KP.2's "parent" JN.1. While the FDA ultimately decided KP.2 was preferred in vaccines, all of them are expected to help protect against severe disease and death.

Who should get Novavax? Does Novavax have different side effects? Novavax was authorized by the FDA for use in adults and children 12 and older, so younger kids can't get this vaccine. But for most adults, which COVID vaccine you should choose depends on your preference and what your neighborhood pharmacy has in stock.

People may opt for Novavax for different reasons, though. For people who do not want to take an mRNA vaccine, having a protein-based vaccine like Novavax available means they can still be vaccinated for the fall and winter season.

Other people may be interested in Novavax for its use in the "mix-and-match" approach to boosting, which in the past has been associated with a strong immune response.

There is some early research that suggests Novavax may have fewer short-term side effects, such as muscle fatigue and nausea, but "we can't say this for sure," Joshua Murdock, a pharmacist and pharmacy editor of GoodRx, said in an email.

"This isn't proven, and side effects do vary by person," Murdock said. He added the CDC doesn't recommend one vaccine over the other, even in people who are immunocompromised.

In general, mRNA vaccines have been found to be fairly "reactogenic" compared to other vaccines, Adalja said, noting that it also depends on the individual. But if someone had a bad experience with the mRNA vaccine, Adalja said, they "may fare better with the Novavax vaccine."

Some flu-like side effects can be expected post-vaccine, no matter which one you choose. This includes symptoms like headache, tiredness, a sore arm and even chills. Not experiencing symptoms doesn't mean your immune system isn't kicking in, but experiencing some side effects may signal that your immune system is responding to the jolt, so to speak.

In rare cases, myocarditis or heart inflammation problems have been associated with COVID vaccination, particularly in younger men and adolescents within the two weeks following vaccination. Research so far shows that Novavax, like mRNA vaccines, may also carry this rare side effect though.

Following high levels of COVID this summer in the US, more information will be needed to see how all vaccines and their freshly targeted formulas fare against the virus that's expected to continue to spread this fall and winter.

"There's no strong evidence that one vaccine is preferable to another in specific individuals, but that will be an important avenue to study for more precision-guided vaccine recommendations," Adalja said.

How to find a Novavax vaccine Novavax announced on Sept. 13 that doses of its vaccine will be available at the following pharmacies:

CVS Rite Aid Walgreens Costco Publix Sam's Club Kroger Meijer Other independent pharmacies or grocers

Novavax also has a vaccine finder on its website. To use it, type in your ZIP code in the small search box, and pharmacies nearby with the vaccine in stock will be displayed.

[mxlabradorite]

I am heading up to NY, and I cannot express how upsetting it is how few people are wearing masks.

Covid's still happening, this year's flu is supposed to be real bad, and RSV is sending kids to the hospital in droves.

Why why why would you choose NOT to wear a mask?

[lightandwinged]

School pictures for 2022-2023!

I am thrilled that Sammy decided to go for the laser background. Didn’t even hesitate, as soon as he saw it was an option, he flat out told me, “I’m getting the lasers,” and that did my 90s kid heart good. His came later in the year because he was actually sick on the original picture day, but I love it.

With the twins, you can 100% tell that I bought their picture day outfits before we all sat down and chose backgrounds. Isaac wanted New York City because he is obsessed with Spider-Man, so he needed to be in front of “mine New York City,” and I accept this. Carrie chose pink flower blossoms because that is just how she do. I’m wholly pleased with their portraits and adding them to the roster of “look at my kids growing up.”

Also spring boarding off of this to talk briefly about school and sick days this year.

It’s all basically a lose-lose-lose-lose-lose situation.

If you’ve been watching the news, you’ve probably read about how kids are just all sick all the time this year and ending up in the hospital with RSV and pneumonia and the flu and Covid. Thankfully, we haven’t gotten any thing that particularly bad yet (I blame that Isaac got RSV every year until 2020 so we just know what to do immediately to keep it from settling in his lungs), but it’s a bit like Sammy’s first year at daycare with how often everyone is getting sick. The twins specifically--because their unmasked exposure to other kids has been very limited, they’re just getting every germ imaginable in a never ending cycle of boogers and coughs.

And on the one hand, yes, keep them home if they have any sort of congestion or cough, but this year, it’s to the point where doing that would mean basically pulling them out of school for the entire fall. We’ve been sending them with masks when their coughs get particularly severe, and even then, we have yet to experience a week this year where one kid wasn’t home sick several days. This week, it’s Carrie’s turn, at least partly because our kids tend to throw up when they get boogery and that’s where she is right now.

(well. Where she is right now is sleeping, which is how I know she’s feeling cruddy; she’ll be downstairs later, I’m sure, to revel in finally getting to watch TV without either of her brothers demanding that their show be the one everyone watches, which means today will be a solid 4-5 hours of Gabby’s Dollhouse)

And! And apparently a lot of parents have been dealing with calls from truant officers threatening CPS calls if they keep their kids home anymore, which is like... what? But all of these absences are apparently flagging families and nobody is going to get a doctor’s note for the cold that goes ‘round and ‘round, so parents end up sending their sick kids to school (I don’t mean just sniffly, I mean genuinely super sick), then those sick kids get sent home by the nurse but not before they’ve coughed or sneezed or touched things and gotten other kids sick.

There is legitimately no winning this year. If we all mask up, that’s awesome, but then eventually, masks do come off, and lmao at the idea of getting a healthy portion of the population to comply with mask mandates again (can you fucking imagine the bullshit drama that would cause?). Keeping kids home when they’re sick is also a great idea, but it means that kids are literally missing half the school year and then parents are getting threatened with CPS because their kids are missing school. It’s all an absolute fucking disaster.

You know what probably would have helped things? Improving school ventilation systems. You know what didn’t happen? Improving school ventilation systems.

Ugh. And I feel fairly confident that this is just for a year because it reminds me so much of Sammy’s first year of daycare, where he was sick literally all the time and had an ear infection every three weeks and I got in so much trouble at work over it, so I’m hopeful that next year won’t be like this, but UGH in the meantime.