Moving into COVID-Normal...? Preparing for a post-COVID world, or "Living with COVID-19"

[countessalmirena]

We're not there yet. We're not yet at a stage where we can truly consider the world to have moved to COVID-normal. But we can see it on the horizon, and we can start to live in a way that is locally "living with COVID-19", barring any setbacks with more virulent or more infectious strains of SARS-CoV-2.

This is due to the vaccines that have been developed, approved, and administered in Australia and in many parts of the world.

If you read the thread State by State, Australia vs Elsewhere, in the age of COVID-19 and beyond, particularly in reference to the Australian CHO Prof. Paul Kelly's opinion piece, that article in the post to which I've linked raises some interesting points.

It brings to the forefront of my mind a perception that the deaths and adverse outcomes he mentions are not acceptable. In the same way, I do not consider any preventable deaths as acceptable. It may be a pragmatic reality that such deaths and adverse outcomes occur; however, there are simple things we can do to limit those outcomes.

I have been advocating for certain hygiene measures and air purification measures for some time. That has to step up now. Some of these measures cost absolutely nothing; some will require some financial outlay. But what is the cost of human life?

• We must keep up the hand hygiene, and pass on those lessons to the next generation and the generation beyond that. COST: negligible. (Soap and water; ~70% alcohol-containing hand sanitiser; alcohol wipes for doors, rails, high touch areas, to prevent transmission by fomites)
• It would be a good idea always to have a P2/N95 mask with us in the event of having respiratory symptoms, or being in the presence of anyone with such symptoms. COST: negligible for close-fitting cloth masks  washed daily. Higher cost if using reusable P2/N95 masks, and higher still if using single-use P2/N95 masks. Highest cost if test-fitted. (For immunocompromised individuals or those in close contact with such individuals or working in medical/health care settings, such a cost is not only affordable, but justified.)
• If we wear a mask (so, presumably in a risky setting) and in the course of doing so TOUCH OUR MASK, such as adjusting it, or even fleetingly coming into contact with the outside of the mask, we must as soon as possible sanitise our hands. Do not touch your eyes or your ear or anyone else or another surface before sanitising your hands. COST: nothing.
• There are crowded or high density settings that are unnecessary and can be avoided; maintain social distancing if possible and if appropriate. In social friendly settings, once we can relax and get back to hugging people and shaking hands, there will always be a risk but that is part of the price of being social beings and enjoying human relationships. COST: nothing.
• If we experience symptoms of illness, we must not have the attitude of soldiering on. We must STAY HOME, and get tested for COVID-19 if our symptoms are associated with those of COVID-19. COST: unknown. This may result in more sick days, but these sorts of things are the reason for us having sick days - not to "chuck a sickie" and hoof off to the cricket or the footie.
• If we are unwell, we MUST NOT VISIT HOSPITALS or AGED CARE or ANY INDIVIDUAL WHO IS VULNERABLE TO INFECTION. This includes stomach upsets and diarrhoea. Hospitals have had signs up warning visitors of precisely this for many years, but visitors persistently disregard this or talk themselves out of caring. That can no longer happen. We must stay away if we have or have recently had those symptoms, or we run the risk of bringing severe sickness or worse to the people we love most. COST: nothing.
• If you have visitors to your home, open up your windows. This will increase ventilation and lower the risk of transmission of airborne viruses. COST: nothing.
• Get a good HEPA air purifier if this is affordable within your budget. COST: variable, but  you can certainly get a good quality air purifier for $500 or perhaps a little more. There are mobile air purifiers available so that you can move it to where you are, thus maximising its effectiveness. Make sure it is big enough for the area, otherwise it will not provide the required purification effectiveness.
• Now that rapid antigen tests are available, they should be used in appropriate settings. They are not a substitute for a nasopharyngeal swab, but they have their uses.

We should attempt to make Australia a nation of healthy individuals, but this is an immense task. Being healthy and fit reduces risk factors, so it does make sense for us to optimise our state of fitness. COST: I could say "nothing", but the truth is that this is a magic health outcome that GPs and nutritionists have been trying to achieve for a very long time. Ah well, that's a discussion for another day.

All of these measures can only help us in this Delta-variant world if the great majority are vaccinated.

And... of course... we have a responsibility to make those vaccines available to each nation and each individual. If we don't help the poor, not only is that our moral shame but it is an ongoing risk to every single one of us.

[the_great_she_elephant]

I think the key to all this is BALLANCE - live healthily, eat healthily and take sensible precautions.

It is also worth remembering that some people have compromised immune systems and  some are more naturally resilient than others.

As kids in a pre vaccine era, my (non identical) twin and I caught all the usual childhood diseases -

She spent days gasping for breath with whooping cough - I had a mild irritation in the back of my throat.

She was nearly driven mad with a chicken pox rash that covered most of her body - I had a few itchy spots on my face.

She spent a week in bed recovering from measles  - I had it so mildly the doctor originally diagnosed it as rubella - thereby scaring the bejayzus out of my mum who was pregnant at the time. 

Same lifestyle, same diet, same genetic background - it was purely the luck of the draw.

[chameleon54]

Definately agree about the aged and those with lower immune response, as per my initial response to OP

" While the measures you propose may be needed for those who are particularly vulnerable such as in age care facilities and immune vulnerable people, "

This is a very nasty virus and as you say a balanced response is required. Something that has not always been advocated or achieved by our leaders.

[domino-710]

That which you are ' proposing ' - has been in effect for at least 18 months.

Why was it necessary to add ' valuation ' - everyone with property has had a huge spike in valution. 

[not_for_sale2025]

We don't know what will happen with Covid, - whether it will mutate into a more deadly virus or become less harmful or even friendly to humans. We each need to apply common sense, take precautions and minimize risk to the best of our abilities. How we go about this is somewhat dependent on our individual abilities or limitations. Society at large will not tolerate unacceptable risks. Also, have you noticed the lessening of the shock horror response to the number of deaths occurring? We are becoming more accustomed to the pandemic and less distressed by it's casualty numbers. We are starting to live with it for now!

[domino-710]

People have always been ' resilient '. lol

[domino-710]

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@chameleon54 wrote:

I live in a large regional center for family reasons, not by choice.

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Did it ever occur to you - living where you do for whatever reason - others have the very same criteria.

Jobs.

Family.

PS. Unless you're a Yank - it's centre.

[chameleon54]

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@domino-710 wrote:

Why was it necessary to add ' valuation ' - everyone with property has had a huge spike in valution. 

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It was a direct, factual response in answer to your comments below

" I'm not sure you even realise that with all the dreadfulness surrounding Covid - a lot of good has come from the professional advice given & taken.

No-one has been near an office - with it's temp controlled boxes, synthetic carpet, artifial light etc - most have been working from home - and will continue to do so - far into the future. "

Real estate values in Australia increased 18.4 % on average for the twelve month period to end of August 2021. Real estate values on my near city farm have increased  more than two and a half times the national average at 45 % official valuation and probably a lot more in reality. This is clear, factual, quantifiable evidence that despite what you tried to infer, not only am I aware of the trend for people to move to the country and work from home, I,m actually at the very pointy end of the trend.

The property adjoining my near city farm sold earlier in the year for a ridiculous price to a sales rep from Brisbane who moved to SA seeking a better life and who now flies interstate when needed, mainly working from home.

And you accuse me of treating people like imbeciles. Have you looked in the mirror lately ?

[4channel]

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@chameleon54 wrote:

No I dont think I missed your point. I just dont agree with it.

" Experiencing COVID-19 isn’t a rite of passage or a test after which we emerge stronger than ever. "

My point is that many here are ignoring the very simple fact that the vaccination will not prevent you from contracting the illness ( although it will reduce the chances of this occurring ) and it will not stop you and others from transmitting the virus to others. ( again it will reduce this risk, but not stop it )...........Yes that one again sorry.

Putting aside all of the other debates on other threads ( continue those discussions there if you want ) and directing this fact to this at this particular thread .............

Dr. Megan Belot, President of the Rural Doctors association in a COVID piece imploring people to get vaccinated ( published in the weekly Times a fortnight ago ) said exactly the same thing I have been saying for months. Her opening line to the article was " All of us are going to get COVID at some point "  after which she went on to explain how the vaccine greatly reduced the chances of adverse outcomes.

So if she is correct, the important thing is how well our individual bodies are adjusted to cope with infection and how well the hospital system and medical treatments are adapted to assist us through. Scientists have announced in the last few days that they have a medication that has proven to be effective in assisting patients to recover quickly from COVID ( No I,m not entering that other debate ) and i,m sure further advances in medicine are on the way.

https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/mercks-covid-19-pill-cuts-risk-death-hos... 

My point is we cant hide from this virus, we just need to manage it in the best way, once we are inevitably infected with it. And that means being as fit and healthy as possible, being vaccinated ( if you choose ) and having a strong immune system.

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Good points there mate. We have to manage things best we can. The main issue is that this pandemic has been mismanaged by incompetent administrations at both state and federal levels. Half of the politicians should be sacked and have any political entitlements that come after their career stripped from them. That's not possible obviously as there would be chaos. So we're in it for the long hall and bit by bit we can get good people in for once.  I hope that the National Party breaks away from that misleading named party, Liberals.

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Senator Johnson Expert Panel on Federal Vaccine Mandates and Vaccine Injuries
249,498 views Nov 2, 2021

SenatorRonJohnson 

32.6K subscribers

Selected comments below

Spoiler

Pam Kelsey
2 days ago (edited)

I had no intention in sitting here and listening to this entire 3+ hours event but I did. I could find no place to quit, everything was riveting and everyone deserved to be heard. The people who came forward were very powerful, very passionate, very brave and to be respected and honored. I’m so proud of representative Ron Johnson he is a champion to those who’ve been harmed or killed because of the shot but also to those of us who have refused the mandate. God bless all of you and make every provision for your needs!

Todd Cullen
1 day ago

107 people who disliked this video either didn't watch it or are the most heartless people on the planet. Perhaps it was CDC FDA NIH staff.
105

April Shari
4 days ago (edited)

This information is outstanding, thank you all the victims who spoke up, to the those that are honest and brave, thanks to senator Johnson
216

april H
2 days ago

This should be blasted on every news media outlet. The fact that it isn't is self incriminating to "news" media. Hold them accountable!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lepqvdXoA2E

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With regard to the above, this amazing clip with actual accounts and revealing info relates to our situation here today. How we adapt to .... 

Moving into COVID-Normal...? Preparing for a post-COVID world, or "Living with COVID-19"

depends on how our elected representatives interact with fact and how much integrity they have!

[countessalmirena]

chameleon, if you re-read what I've written, I hope you'll see the mention of appropriate hygiene, far from a preoccupation with it.

I truly think we have a similar viewpoint when it comes to washing your hands after doing gardening (not licking hands with soil under fingernails, etc.). That isn't the same thing as forbidding the making of mud pies or planting bulbs or just revelling in the sheer wonder of the earth in all of its natural beauties - mud, cow patties, and all.

When it comes to viruses, there are dangers which our bodies can't fight. Even the history of such pathogens appear to suggest (from ancient burial evidence) that viruses which caused respiratory illness have been infecting humans for thousands of years, and that they migrated from animals to humans as evidenced in aDNA. The timeline suggests quite a gradual rate of change, far slower than is evidenced today by descendants of those ancient viruses.

From the bioarchaeological and genetic evidence, those viruses were killers (it's speculative at best to estimate just how virulent they were, however), but they did not - as far as can be ascertained today - result in pandemics or epidemics in their earliest observed presence. The most prominent theories today associate the more rapid rate of mutations found in somewhat later burial evidence (Neolithic) with the rise in agriculture and settlement, and a move away from small extended family groups moving frequently and living off the land. (I don't really like the term hunter-gatherer...) It's asserted that clearing land for agriculture, keeping/raising livestock, created a new biosystem in that viruses then had more hosts/reservoirs to infect, and with the increased closeness to animals, the species jump would occur more frequently than before. With the increased opportunity for transmission, viruses would more frequently replicate with errors (mutations), and thus came the opportunity for those viruses to develop into strains that were more likely to be transmitted, as well as whatever other changed might occur as a result of those mutations.

This is theory; we can't go back into the past to prove the process. It may be - certainly is, in my view - that human beings in the ancient past had "cleaner" DNA than human beings in the present. DNA today bears witness to a long history of cumulative transcription errors; there is without question a highly sophisticated redundancy-upon-redundancy system in our DNA, as well as certain characteristics being coded for by a number of different gene clusters, in a way that mitigates quite a lot of potentially or actually damaging mutation.

So... is part of the slow rate of ancient virus mutation the result of our aDNA having been staggeringly better at providing us with deluxe immune systems? It is a question worth thinking about. Is it possible that, going back, our DNA gave us the ability not only to keep virus replication very very low, but to repel the actual siege and defeat of viruses upon human cells in the first place? Darn it, we will simply never know. I can't even advance it as a theory, as it is untestable. Let's call it a speculation which presupposes that the cumulative damage of present-day DNA must have had a point of beginning, somewhere far back in the distant past, such that at that point human DNA was at its fittest and strongest.

The point then is that whatever we do today, in terms of fighting pathogens, will be adaptations, imperfect variations upon the themes of defence and attack. Without (assumptive) pre-Neolithic DNA, we don't have the luxury of zoonotic viruses being slow-moving; there WILL always be errors in replication, and that means the errors that result by sheer probability in making that particular virus more likely to effectively invade a cell, or more effectively transmit from human to human, or shorten the incubation period (particularly if the incubation period is asymptomatic), and so on, will result in more concerning variants.

I'm not questioning the role that the current lifestyles globally play. You're absolutely right in pointing out that urban centres will be more conducive to the spread of pathogens than rural/isolated areas. Just as the agricultural periods gave viruses more opportunities (as I said, this is theoretical, but I'm running with it for the purpose of argument) than previous nomadic and small-group lifestyles, the rise of towns and larger settlements offered more opportunities by order of magnitude, and the more global and interconnected our lives, the more such viruses can sweep the globe.

Taking actions such as mask-wearing is not new. There's sufficient evidence about doctors wearing long beak-like masks being protected from the plague caused by Yersinia pestis, and from a range of other infectious diseases, some of which were caused by bacteria, some by mould spores, some by viruses. I advocate wearing masks when the situation warrants it, and when wearing it, the wearers must use it properly. That's common sense. It is not a suggestion that we all forever in perpetuity must now be masked.

From what you've posted, you're mostly concerned with the issue of sanitising surfaces, and filtering air. I should point out that sanitising is not the same as sterilising - not even close. Sanitising with alcohol will kill (denature) a broad range of pathogens. It is not indicative of a manic "Oh no, a spot of dirt, get rid of it, get rid of it!" approach. It's a considered approach that deals with e. coli, salmonella, etc. If I were speaking about sterilisation of surfaces, we'd be talking about ... oh, at the very least an army of autoclaves.

Overdoing it to the extent that antibiotic-resistant strains arise (such as e. faecalis) is part of the whole complex ball of wool that is human life and human interaction. You probably know that we need e. faecalis in our gastrointestinal system; they are wonderfully resilient and they need to be! They play a part in quite 'hostile' internal environments in our bodies... but trouble arises when they end up outside those areas, getting into the blood system or in wounds, for instance. Then their resistance is an increasingly worrying problem. (Hand-washing will prevent the very great majority of human-to-human transmission of e. faecalis, so we circle back to the hand hygiene issue.) A vital area of research is focused upon finding other treatments and other antibiotics which may be effective... but prevention is by far better than cure with this. I have nightmares about drug-resistant pathogens, and the huge need to prescribe antibiotics only when strictly necessary (and the right sort, too).

We don't need to sanitise every surface; on the contrary. We don't need to sanitise in every environment; on the contrary. I specifically mentioned acting so as to prevent fomite transmission. That is the setting in which we must sanitise. (Sanitise, not sterilise.)

The second issue was the mention of air purifiers. This comes into its own not only in terms of filtering viruses, but also the deadly particles resulting from bushfire smoke, which cause devastation in lungs, damage which may not be able to be reversed with current treatment options. In addition, the increasing number of people with allergies (hayfever, but allergies to many other types of pollen and mould spore as well) and asthma find significant relief in being able to minimise exposure to such allergens.

The development of these allergies and conditions is not as simple as saying "result of bad lifestyle choices". Genetic predisposition lies at the heart of these, and a simple and unforseeable trigger can kickstart the condition in such individuals. If they live in more rural areas, there are higher risks than if they live in a concrete block; nevertheless, ugh, who wants to live in concrete??

Having an air purifier does not result in a sissy, whimpy, non-resiliant people. Some resiliance will be the result of lifestyle choices - diet, exercise, rhythm of life, etc. Some will not - and it's by no means clear-cut about who will suffer an adverse reaction. Air purifiers neither build resilience nor dismantle it - but they can remove irritants and particulates that are deadly and that no amount of human resilience can fight...

Having said all of that, your lifestyle sounds tremendously engaging. Hard work, yes, but there are undoubtedly compensations in living close to nature and husbanding the earth, animals, etc.

I hear what you are saying about processed this and processed that, about environments that are very synthetic, about so much of the world's population living a life that is far removed from nature.

I acknowledge your concerns, but I really hope that I have addressed some of that from my perspective, at least in part.

[countessalmirena]

Oops. I didn't realise how long that post was.... Oops.