The news is horrifically frightening, and Taylor Lorenz must be going absotively, posilutely bonkers: almost everyone in the Pyrite State has a cold.
COVID surging in California, nears two-year summer high. ‘Almost everybody has it’
By Rong-Gong Lin II | Monday, July 29, 2024 | 3:00 AM PDT
If it seems like many people around you are getting COVID-19, you’re not alone.
Federal data show coronavirus levels in California’s wastewater are surging to levels not seen in summertime since 2022, indicating a wide and worsening spread of COVID.
“We are seeing … a definite, definite surge,” said Dr. Elizabeth Hudson, regional chief of infectious disease at Kaiser Permanente Southern California.
The surge is clearly apparent in doctor’s offices and clinics where people are seeking outpatient treatment, Hudson said. But, thankfully, not many people are having to be hospitalized because of COVID-19 at this point.
That’s from the Los Angeles Times original, but if readers are stymied by a paywall, the story can be accessed for free from Yahoo! News.
This ‘surge’ of COVID-19 isn’t being measured by actually testing of individuals, but by testing sewage to detect traces of infectious diseases circulating in a community, even if people don’t have symptoms. People infected can shed pieces of the virus when they use the toilet, bathe, or launder their clothing, and samples of the wastewater are taken and tested before the sewage is processed. The CDC are still testing for Monkeypox, though they now call it Mpox, because they don’t want to offend the poor dears who are most prone to contract it.
In particular, one of the FLiRT strains, known as KP.3.1.1, “has really taken off,” Hudson said. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that that strain accounted for 17.7% of coronavirus samples nationwide for the two-week period that ended July 20, up from 6.8% for the prior comparable period.
At that rate of growth, that strain is likely to become increasingly dominant in the next few weeks, Hudson said. “So, unfortunately, I think we are going to see a lot more cases.”
Coronavirus levels in California sewage are considered “very high” for a third consecutive week, the CDC said Friday. Thirty-seven states and the District of Columbia — home to nearly 3 in 4 Americans — have either “high” or “very high” coronavirus levels in wastewater.
For the seven-day period that ended July 20, the most recent data available, coronavirus levels in California wastewater were at 93% of the peak from the summer of 2022. They’ve already exceeded last summer’s height.
Naturally, the newspaper is reporting that some people contracting the FLiRT variant are feeling the worst symptoms yet:
“I’ve had COVID a few times but this is the worst I’ve had it,” wrote one person on Reddit. The person reported recurring fever, being so congested they couldn’t breathe out of their nose, “terrible sinus pressure and headache … and I can’t stand up for too long without feeling like I’m about to pass out.”
Another person wrote that their “throat feels like razor blades” and that they feel like they’re “in living misery.”
Naturally, the Democrats are not going to grossly overreact by ordering the stupid and unconstitutional restrictions of 2020-21, because there’s an election approaching! No one’s really going to call for universal masking, regardless of how much they might wish, because it’s so politically damaging.
In Los Angeles County, the nation’s most populous, there were an average of 286 COVID-19-positive people in hospitals for the week that ended July 20. That’s flat from the prior week’s figure of 291, and about half as many as last summer’s peak and one-quarter as many as the peak of summer 2022.
Yet we were also told that California has already exceeded the 2023 summer peak, which can mean only one thing: if serious cases of COVID-19 are fewer, despite a wider spread, then COVID-19 in 2024 just isn’t as bad as previously. “Almost everyone has it,” said Dr. Peter Chin-Hong, an infectious diseases expert at UCSF.
But if almost everyone has it, and we aren’t all dropping like flies, it simply cannot be serious anymore. It will be for a few people, but a few people die from the flu or measles as well.
COVID-19 has lost its ability to scare, and few believe the people who try to ramp up fear.
I’m curious as to how many rounds of mRNA shots the people who’ve had the Wuhan Flu multiple times have had?
Because I haven’t contracted it once. A few people I know have had it…all but one of them “vaccinated” (my brother got it before it had mutated to it’s currently mild “cold-like” form and before the “vaccinations” were available).
I’ve seen some claims that the more “vaccinations” you’ve had the more susceptible to contracting the virus you are. Based on my limited experience, I’d say there’s some credibility to that claim.