Several key COVID-19 trends that authorities track are now accelerating around the country, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced Friday. It’s the first major nationwide uptick in the spread of the virus seen in months.

The largest increases are in the Midwest and the Mid-Atlantic, the agency said in its weekly report updated Friday, though virtually all regions of the country are now seeing accelerations.

Data reported by the agency from emergency rooms and wastewater sampling have tracked some of the steepest increases so far this season in the region spanning Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio and Wisconsin.

Rates of infections of nursing home residents across this Midwestern region have also soared in recent weeks, higher than in most other parts of the country, approaching levels not seen since the peak of last winter’s COVID-19 wave.

      • ZoopZeZoop@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        My boss got the new booster and still got COVID over Thanksgiving. She likes to work while she’s sick (usually from home) and it still knocked her on her butt to the point where she actually only worked a few minutes each day.

        • CeeBee@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          It likely still helped to a degree. Meaning it may have been even worse had she not gotten the booster.

          • ZoopZeZoop@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            I’m sure it did help some. She is not as careful as she should be, probably, but at least she stays current on her vaccines (and masks up on planes).

  • pan_troglodytes@programming.dev
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    1 year ago

    it’s the new flu. the old flu is still a thing, of course. covid is here to stay & it’ll be a yearly thing for a long time to come.

    • Illuminostro@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      I agree. It killed most of those who were most susceptible already. We’ll adapt, as a species, to it over time.

      • MagicShel@programming.dev
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        1 year ago

        I’m not sure we will adapt. Killing off the elderly and infirm isn’t exactly applying a lot of evolutionary pressure.

        • Hotzilla@sopuli.xyz
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          1 year ago

          When you get resistant for it as young and healthy, it won’t be as dangerous when you get it again as older. It is good for the virus to spread as much as possible and not be leathal.

          • MagicShel@programming.dev
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            1 year ago

            Immunity doesn’t last though. If it was like chicken pox I think this argument would have merit, but it’s more like the flu.

            • Ranvier@sopuli.xyz
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              1 year ago

              To drive home your point even more, unfortunately chicken pox immunity doesn’t really last forever. It’s a herpes virus, a DNA virus, that integrates into cell genomes. It especially likes neurons, cells which you keep your whole life. Since it’s there for the rest of your life, it reactivates at inconvenient times. Shingles is probably the most benign form of reactivation, but it can cause meningitis, encephalitis, vasculitis too, among other things, all of which is very bad news for your brain. So for all the people out there with children, get that chicken pox vaccine. You don’t want that potential ticking time bomb living in your kid when there’s a way to prevent it.

              And for all the older people out there, get that shingles vaccine when you can. It’s not perfect but it’ll help “remind” the immune system to keep varicella virus in you surpressed.

            • Hotzilla@sopuli.xyz
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              1 year ago

              Resistance is different than immunity, you will get sick, but it won’t be as leathal. It is exactly like flu. Flu has been here for centuries, and when Europeans brought it to America, it was huge issue for native American without resistance.

      • Ranvier@sopuli.xyz
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        1 year ago

        Flu is a dangerous virus, I wouldn’t say we’ve “adapted to it.” Viruses evolve much quicker than humans. They go through countless generations in the time we have one. Flu in addition has an interesting genetic mechanism for change most other viruses don’t have, where it can exchange entire large sections of its genome at once with other distinct flu viruses, very quickly creating an entirely new strain. This is one of the reasons we’re constantly updating the vaccine.

        I’m the US, it hospitalizes half a million or so a year and kills between 10,000-50,000 a year, comparable to all people who die from gun violence in a year in the US including suicide. We’re always only one unlucky recombination event away from another 1918 flu pandemic, and the more infected people and the more it spreads the more chances for that to happen.

        Sorry, I don’t know if this was your intention, I just have a pet peeve for flu getting written off as no big deal. It’s a huge deal and we should be continuing to work on vaccine and treatment improvements. Oddly our anti viral treatments for covid are probably more effective than anti viral flu treatments at this pont, if people actually take them.

        https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/index.html

        I also cannot believe that after this recent experience governments around the world aren’t pouring even more investment into pandemic monitoring and response. I mean I can, we’re notoriously short sighted, but seems governments and people in general are all pretending the pandemic never happened and can never happen again.

  • inclementimmigrant@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Yes, welcome to the endemic. It’s just like the flu at this point where it’ll just be here year round and predictably spike just like the flu.

    • Silverseren@kbin.social
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      I don’t believe the most recent vaccine released is fully up to date with the most recent ascendant variants. Unfortunately, even with the increased speed of conception and production that mRNA vaccines allow, large-scale viral pathogens still manage to mutate at a faster rate.

      If the rate of spread was reduced through other measures than just vaccinations, we’d have a better capability to create up to date versions in time to be relevant.

      But we’re not doing any such measures, are we?

    • Vlyn@lemmy.zip
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      1 year ago

      Overall people actually need to get the booster to build immunity. And just because you’re vaccinated doesn’t mean you won’t get sick at all. That’s not how this works.

    • Iapar@feddit.de
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      1 year ago

      Yes, they updated the vaccine so you get covid from it. It is made by EA now and published by bethesda.

    • takeda@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      You know that vaccine (including mRNA one) works by exposing you to the pathogen and it is still your immune system that fights it?

      BTW: I don’t hear this being mentioned anywhere, but we already have a traditional covid vaccine called Novavax.

        • takeda@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          They are like subunit vaccines with one extra step. I should probably not use the word pathogen as it is just a part of the virus.

      • prole@sh.itjust.works
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        1 year ago

        That’s not how mRNA vaccines work. In fact, most modern vaccines don’t work that way. You’re referring to inoculation which is distinct from vaccination.

      • MrSqueezles@lemm.ee
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        1 year ago

        An mRNA vaccine works like a special set of instructions that tells your body how to make a pretend piece of a germ, but without using any real germ parts. Your body makes, then sees this pretend piece and learns how to protect you against the real germ. It’s like teaching your body to recognize and fight the germ without ever having to meet it for real.

        Remember the COVID spike proteins? That’s what the vaccine is teaching your body about, not any actual viruses.

        • takeda@lemmy.world
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          I am familiar with that, but if you start taking this way with antivaxxers you will lose them. This is just an implementation detail, the vaccines in one way or the other expose your immune system to the pathogen so you have opportunity to learn to fight it.

          We have:

          • weakened pathogen or variant that is less harmful (cowpox vs smallpox)
          • inactivated, the virus is there, but insurance of reproducing
          • subunit (just pieces of the virus)
          • mRNA (what you just said)
          • vector (almost there same as mRNA, but delivered by another virus)
          • and more

          The idea is always to teach your immune system to fight it, before we get the real thing. I don’t get why I was down voted to hell.

      • athos77@kbin.social
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        1 year ago

        NovaVax has been so frustrating for me! Each shot is always approved like a month after the equivalent Pfizer/Moderna, sometimes multiple months. And by the time it’s finally approved, it’s always been past the window in which I needed to get vaccinated.

        I finally managed to get it this year - but only because I was sick with parainfluenza and everything got pushed back two weeks. If that hadn’t happened, I would’ve had to go with Moderna again.