Should I still isolate myself after a positive test? Is it ok to do my own shopping (with a mask) or should I call someone? Do I still wait for a negative test or simply to be free of symptoms? Since people around me don’t really talk about Covid anymore and my country doesn’t have any guidelines in place, I’d be interested in your takes. I don’t wanna be a d*ck to others but would also rather not overshoot and lock myself up at home for two weeks like in the early days. (I hope this doesn’t count as asking for medical advice.)
Edit: Thanks y’all. Guess I just needed to hear that even though everyone has been talking of “after Covid”, the situation hasn’t fundamentally changed despite our lives having normalized. I’ll be cancelling plans and staying home.
Still the same disease it always was
Is it though? I was under the impression that, while still not harmless, the mutations we have been dealing with for the last couple of months lead to generally milder symptoms and do not put a comparable strain on health care etc. I do understand that this doesn’t fix anything for especially endangered people.
It can and still does kill people. We are no longer having a 9/11 every day. Now we just have one every two weeks.
Also, long COVID has no cure and no guarantee of ever being cured. Stay home.
As most viral illnesses, yes it has generally gotten slightly less lethal. It’s not super clear whether this is mostly due to existing resistances built up from past infections/vaccines or due to mutations. That said, it is definitely not a joke and still kills people in vulnerable groups every day, in addition to likely being the cause of permanent organ damage in many infection cases that don’t result in death.
In fact, going back to the initial question, these changes over time could make it even more important for sick people to fully isolate, as the infectivity is higher.
Is this actually true though?
There’s a lot of talk about how mutations are usually less lethal, which might be true in a theoretical sense, but is not necessarily true of actual covid infections.
Even if it is true, the important question would be, how much less lethal they are, which is probably unknowable.