I still take all of the precautions. The only people in my very small sphere of friends and family are all high risk. Unfortunately I have lost 3 people to Covid in the last 4 months, one just 3 weeks ago. It has been a particularly devastating year. One friend, who is currently clinging to life, due to multiple medical issues, almost died of Covid 3 months ago, after having caught it in the hospital where she was taken for complications from kidney disease. She had to be intubated, put on a breathing tube, and have a tracheotomy. As of tonight, she is back in the hospital due to more kidney problems.
I am fully vaccinated, but am hoping that I can get a second bivalent booster. If I have to go inside of a store (I try to avoid that as much as possible), I wear 2 KN95 masks with a filter. I do not eat in restaurants, and I avoid family events. I do not go to movies or concerts. Crowds, especially indoors, make me anxious, even small crowds.
All of the people that I know that have passed from Covid this year were all vaccinated. Each of those people had some underlying conditions, and two of them caught Covid while in the hospital where they were taken for treatment for other conditions. Two of them were in their early 40s.
In January of last year another friend passed away from Covid after attending a large friends and family ski vacation. No one masked, even though it was right after the Christmas holidays, and the CDC (at that time) were still advising people to use caution, especially after big holiday spikes. At least one child who was sick with Covid was taken on this trip too. She was also vaccinated, but may not have been boosted, and as far as we knew, had no underlying health conditions. She was in her late 30s.
Over the course of this pandemic, which is still very much with us despite the government bailing out and declaring the emergency “over” I have lost 7 friends to Covid. The first 4 were before there were any vaccines. At least 2 friends, people in their mid 40s and 50s have symptoms of Long Covid. Both of them had Covid at least twice, and possibly more than that. I say that because they, and a lot of other people keep having “mystery illnesses” but because no one tests anymore, and the home tests are not particularly accurate (and often don’t show a positive for 5–7 days, even when symptoms are present) and aren’t always taken at the correct stage of infection, even if they do test. So I’m guessing that a lot of people have had Covid multiple times and just chalked it up to allergies or a bad cold.
Everything that I have read seems to suggest that the vaccines and boosters effectiveness starts to wane after just a few months, rendering the bivalent booster I got in September of 2022 not very protective.
https://time.com/6276552/covid-19-vaccine-immunity-wanes/
One of my friends, a high risk mother of 3 kids, and the only other friend in my community who still masks and takes precautions (her kids are pretty much the only kids in their schools who mask) says that Covid is still running through the schools, both with students and teachers. It has wreaked havoc in the nursing home where her mother in law lives.
It boggles my mind that the CDC, and the government has decided that Covid is no longer an emergency, when clearly it is still prevalent, still spreading, and still taking lives.
I belong to 2 online groups, one local and one national, specifically for parents, and people with high risk people in their midst to find current scientific information, support, help with mitigation, and to discuss promising potential new treatments that might be coming down the pike. It can be very depressing reading about parents trying to protect their fragile children who have various medical conditions, such as cancer, having to navigate schools, doctors offices, and hospitals who no longer require even the most basic of infection control, wearing masks.
This article kind of sums it up for me:
https://niemanreports.org/articles/three-years-later-covid-19-is-still-a-health-threat-journalism-needs-to-reflect-that/