If you've been lax about masking, now is a good time to pick it back up. Especially in busy public places.
There are two different variants that might be at play, the one that started in Asia/Australia is more contagious due to better ACE2 binding, which seems bad.
But the new strategy our country and most people I know are going with is "just catch it, spread it to as many people as possible, and get it over with so you can go back to brunch" so good luck to everyone.
Florida is seeing the largest increases in transmission of any state right now. Almost 3x higher than any time in the past 9 months.
Other southern and west coast states are rising too but not as quickly. Everywhere else is staying low+flat.
Are vaccines even effective at this point?
Yes, if you got one in the fall you probably won't have antibodies to fight an infection off immediatly, but will have t and b immune cells that should eventually recognize an infection and fight it off. The problem is covid has ways to evade the immune system and damages everything in your body it interacts with when it gets into the bloodstream until your body starts fighting back, and t-cells themselves work by destroying infected cells, which means some level of damage throughout your body. Hopefully it's insignificant, but there's large communities of people who haven't been so lucky and are just kind of fucked. Last time I heard the odds of some kind of long term health problem being aquired was about 3.5% odds, or basically the odds of rolling snake eyes on a pair of dice, every infection. The odds may have gotten better, but I don't think anyone's really keeping track anymore, and most people aren't testing for covid.
I registered for the covid vaccine five months ago on Mega Lo Mart's website, but the pharmacists realized they didn't have any when they went to get mine for injection. 🙃
At least I got a flu shot.
Did you get a rain check or something?
No
Just got my new dose of 5G, thanks comrade 😎