As predicted by covid variant tracker nerds on twitter in recent weeks, JN.1 is exploding. A 40% increase in covid cases since last week. Most sequences coming in to variant trackers are JN.1.

The biobot chart shows the last six months, if you zoom out we are at or approaching covid levels not seen since last winter, so not totally unexpected... but the CDC expects cases to peak in February. However JPWieland predicts it will peak after christmas due to the rapid growth of JN.1.

There are also outlier cities in Europe showing more covid in wastewater than ever measured during the pandemic. Canada isn't doing much better. The UK isn't doing well either.

Along with covid, flu and RSV are also hitting pretty hard at the same time, especially in the South, with a touch of mystery pneumonia in various places around the world as a treat.

Thankfully the latest vaccine helps against this variant. Unfortunatly vaccine uptake rates are abysmal now because capitalism.

I'm mainly still posting about covid out of anxiety and watching the health of friends and family who have been infected and "were fine" slowly deteriorate.

Good luck, everyone.

EDIT:

The CDC director is recommending wearing masks. So things will probably get pretty bad...

https://twitter.com/CDCDirector/status/1732547659292967203

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago (1 children)

I wish the general public still cared…

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

I hope i don't get a beat down for saying this, but i can't afford to care anymore. The people around me won't, and at first i tried to do my part and theirs. But it's not ending. I see now that there's never going to be an end.

So hey, i used to care you know? I used to try. I knew despair and apathy would come but i did fight! I just don't have the bottomless well of will required to keep runnin when there's no finish line

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

the dude quoting 1984 under the CDC director barely mentioning masks michael-laugh satire is dead

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago

Let's go COVID, disrupt Christmas and cause an economic downturn! I believe in you!

Seriously though, fuck all this shit. Everyone is coughing all the time.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

Hospitalizations and deaths in Finland

stonks-up

This is the highest hospitalizations have been in Finland since the pandemic started.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago

"As we prepare to record "Covid Year Four," Beatrice, Artie, and Abby discuss what is left of national covid data following the end of the public health emergency, how what's left has become so thoroughly abstracted, and how the CDC prioritizes representing deaths as an abstract percentage even as the official death count has been over 1,000 a week since August."

https://podbay.fm/p/the-death-panel/e/1701907200

[–] [email protected] 0 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Whatever happened to those Greek letter names? Is this somehow still Omicron? Still not giving us a new one?

[–] [email protected] 0 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

Omicron was so dominant that it pretty much outcompeted all other variants like delta and gamma and stuff. At this point nearly all variants existing are descendants of omicron in one way or another.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Omicron should have probably been called SARS-COV3 or something.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

yeah they need to change it already. If not for Omicron, then for BA.2.86. Also I should've acknowledged people have been trying to bring back the cooler names, like calling BA.2.86/JN.1 "Pirola," I just feel like it hasn't caught on as much. Maybe because normal people just don't care about covid anymore, so anyone still talking about covid is a scientist/has dug into the science, and using the pango terminology is just more specific

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago

We can appeal to the evangelicals if we stop calling it COVID at all and just pretend there's a new disease called Leviathan or Behemoth or something else biblical.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 11 months ago (1 children)

I had covid really bad two weeks ago, the whole house did actually. And my housemates girlfriend had covid a week ago. I wonder if it was this variant.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago

It's possible, especially if you live in one of the states that's dark blue on this map: https://www.cdc.gov/nwss/rv/COVID19-currentlevels.html

[–] [email protected] 0 points 11 months ago (1 children)

JN.1

Who names this stuff? They could at least give it a nickname?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago

It's unofficial nickname is Pirola, which can be shortened to "Pi" janet-wink

There are so many variants that they can't nickname them all, so they stick to naming the the ones with mutations that look most concerning.