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[None]

Welp, my folks got covid.

They were convinced it was just a flu because 'the turnaround time for infection to showing symptoms was too short' (four days by their estimate) and weren't inclined to do an at-home test as a result until my sister and I persisted and told them about the free ones they can get in the mail. They were still going to isolate anyways, but.

You'd think "I've never had a flu that felt like this before" might be a clue, bit now they know.

Good news is, they're vaccinated, so they're just miserable for now. Speaking of, that prompted me to look at recommendations for 2nd boosters, so if you're one of those few people that got BOTH the JnJ vaccine and JnJ booster, you're eligible whatever your age for a second booster of Pfizer/Moderna. I dunno that anyone here is over fifty, but if you are, you're eligible for boosting too as long as it's been four months since your last jab.

Or maybe you sit tight for a few more months:

If you are eligible, can you wait?
Even if you are eligible for a 2nd booster, you may consider waiting to get a 2nd booster if you:

    Had COVID-19 within the past 3 months
    Feel that getting a 2nd booster now would make you not want to get another booster in the future (a 2nd booster may be more important in fall of 2022, or if a new vaccine for a future COVID-19 variant becomes available)

So we're all due for a booster soon here anyways, and the greatest threat related to it comes from potential unwillingness to get one. Not that it's particularly new information, but it's current information. Stay safe, everyone.

[EuchreJack]

Thank God I got my booster two weeks ago.
And yeah, this one hits FAST.  I went from first symptom on Thursday to positive test on Saturday.
But weird incubation period, as I suspect infection occurred Monday.  So yeah, this little shit flies under the radar.

[TamerVirus]

Ok so basically
Return to Monkepox

[Egan_BW]

I mean, a virus which turns us all into monke would solve alotta problems, you have to admit.

[Starver]

Ook!

[Frumple]

I mean, a virus which turns us all into monke would solve alotta problems, you have to admit.

Sadly, the monkeypox makes no one gayer than a barrel of bonobos. Instead it makes you miserable and appears to have something like a 1-3% fatality rate, so. Here's to finding out if the US can lose another million to a new plague!

[hector13]

It’s not as virulent as covid, so it should (should) be fine.

[Sirus]

I haven't been keeping up with the news. What's this about a new plague? We can't even get rid of the first one.

[Ziusudra]

I haven't been keeping up with the news. What's this about a new plague? We can't even get rid of the first one.

It's actually old - 1st identified in the 50s I think - and it's a variant of chicken pox so we already hav a vaccine. It's called monkey pox because it was 1st identified in them, but the main place it's found is rodents.

[King Zultan]

Chicken poxs doesn't make us chickens and monke pox doesn't make us monkeys, I feel like they're lying to us with these names.

[scriver]

My news (Swedish Television news, as usual, so less likely to spread moralist rumours, I think) says this one variant seems to spread mostly via sexual contact. So after having completely isolated myself from the world for two years I am even more safe than I was before.

Shame. I would like to return to monke

[hector13]

I was under the impression it was, you know, any contact, but I guess some people need to be told to be a bit more picky about where they put their dicky.

[Starver]

It's just very close contact, but then so is sex. And because it appeared to have quickly vectored through a gay/bisexual community, some have taken the same attitude as they did with GRID ('Gay-Related Immune Deficiency') before it was more properly redefined as AIDS.

Of course the underlying pathogen isn't anything as dangerous and an existential threat as HIV. That one of the current standard preventatives/treatments is to use Smallpox vaccines might not convince some people of its relatively benign nature, but...

Oh, and and there have been warnings in the UK that those isolating due to (potential) monkeypox should also isolate from their pets (especially rodents, more a natural home to the disease than anything in the m-word line) and I believe some countries have arranged for pets to be actually taken to quarantine facilities.

(Right now, the stigma for having suspected monkeypox, or even a risk of it, is on various levels. If it doesn't calm down to near-zero quickly enough then expect the equivalent of haemophiliac-discrimination on some other sub-group that gets caught up in whatever moral-panics strike, in the gap between it being an apparently 'telling' rare disease and the realisation that it doesn't necessarily mean that you have behaved particularly unwisely/'immorally', to have been so afflicted...)

[Loud Whispers]

My news (Swedish Television news, as usual, so less likely to spread moralist rumours, I think) says this one variant seems to spread mostly via sexual contact. So after having completely isolated myself from the world for two years I am even more safe than I was before.

Shame. I would like to return to monke

Coughing on people can also spread it. The sexual advice warning is a recent addition because it was not known previously to be passed on via sexual intercourse, but logically if contact with an infected blanket can spread it, then so could sex. On the bright side because the symptoms are so obvious it is fairly easy to identify. One also interesting thing I learned from one of my big bosses who was recently in contact with a monkeypox patient was that you can treat monkeypox with a smallpox vaccine. One of the few diseases where the prophylaxis is also the cure

[Starver]

I think they've even suggested that if you have had (suspected) contact with the pox, then - after you're 'clear' but before a further eight weeks is up - you should definitely use condoms. Probably more for general moist-membrane-on-moist-membrane protection than ejeculate. I get the impression it's an over-cautious extension in the light of the nature of the festival event that is suspected to be the prime radiator behind many of these cases.

(Though, even in the current era of Prep, etc, I find that such an indiscriminate lack of precautions of this kind is far more risky, still, for other primary STDs... I think it says far more about the other potential health issues. But with a novel (outbreak of) disease like this I don't think the quite specific caution is excessively misplaced, and if it reinforces the best-practices to further mitigate the 'traditional' transmittable diseases then it can't hurt.)


I suppose I could hunt down the various advices and rationalise them, but I can't see them being relevent to myself and others (yourself?) with more direct contact with the healthcare system can probably work out what's important to know without too much rooting around in less-visited sources.