What is the risk when going to a food store with, say, 20 people in it?
DB2
How big is the store? If a corner store (in terms of size), don’t go. Delivery.
But still no info on if people infected are seriously ill. Fatalities? Are those hospitalized seriously ill or is it merely a precaution?
Yes, positive tests are increasing. A blinking yellow light. But is it a threat to your health?
Here we go again. Another drug marketing program. Or something that requires response?
The acute stage is now much less of a threat, and respirators for the ill are a rarity.
BUT
Long Covid is still NOT understood and is still extremely horrible and without reliable cure.
What Happens When You Still Have Long COVID Symptoms? > News > Yale Medicine.
I have one friend in his late sixties who a year ago was happily working and playing and engaging in the joyful intense athleticism essential to his character, and he is now a sad exhausted cripple.
I keep masks with me at all times. I always mask when entering crowds anywhere of any sort, or small shops with little ventilation, but especially while traveling. Since Covid’s earliest days I have acted on habits I learned in surviving HIV infection, and my ferocious intent to never ever get it sure seems to have paid off.
david fb
They do say Covid pneumonia is very serious when it goes that far. But pneumonia is always serious Covid or not.
I don’t know what it was (OK, I do) but I got something at Boston family Thanksgiving and by the time I flew home I was horizontal, and not in a good way. For two days I might have been up for an hour, not counting the times I sat up to cough my lungs up, and falling back down. I’m still getting rid of it, but there’s daily progress with 3 days so far of minor setback.
My niece brought her 18-month-old to Thanksgiving who had a cold. Actually diagnosed as HMPV-RNA, which the doctor told her is a childhood malady and adults don’t get it. Ha! Dr. Google and the Mayo Clinic and others concur, except down in paragraph 3 it says “or older people with compromised respiratory systems.” So I live down in paragraph 3. Meanwhile I was sitting next to her when she sneezed - a huge cloud of vapor and crud and my BIL said “Not to worry, it’s a childhood thing, adults don’t get it.” I moved anyway, but too late.
I have gotten out of the house just in the past week, not for long stretches, but Christmas is coming so there’s that. I made the mistake of walking down a store aisle with smelly candles yesterday and almost died, but that’s another story.
Anyway, we wore masks on every airplane flight, to every show we went to see pre-Thanksgiving, and not knowing what it was Mrs. Goofy and I segregated for a week when we got home, and she escaped. I’m coming back, but I fear that when Dr. Google says “symptoms remain for 2-8 weeks” that I’m on the 8-week plan.
Poor you. Rest up well. Always wise to not listen to anyone reassuring you that these deceptively similar seeming infections “only infect…” or “just a cold bug”. I just checked and this virus was only identified in 2001 so obviously won’t have percolated through to the level of non virologists…yet.
I remember back in the early-mid aughts…when I was suggesting to anyone who didn’t want to listen…that Andrew Wakefield’s self promotion/anti MMR stance was set to reintroduce some almost unknown childhood diseases back into circulation. Was met by skepticism (says she, euphemistically) on a couple of TMF boards. Over-reaction was a common sentiment. I certainly didn’t forsee just how right I was…or how the anti vaxx message would withstand even a pandemic caused by a novel virus.
Never heard much about adults getting this before…a dubious honour I’m sure you’d be happy not to have
@PucksFool Those are averages. If everyone is boosted the numbers go down sharply.
Not really a lot of choice 
Feels like a steamroller went over me. My BIL send me an “Acapella”, basically a big plastic dill pickle you blow into which vibrates and helps loosen the crud. Amazing - it works!
One doc says he thinks he hears phenmonia, but the X-ray is clean. Going for another next week. Jolly times at Christmas, I’ll say.
I might buy some life insurance on you.
Wakefield and the anti-vaxx movement is the gift that keeps on giving.
The quote following is from an LA Times story. I’m not providing a link to avoid the politics ban. If you google “LA Times measles” look for a 4 day old story by Michael Hiltzik you should find it.
Forecasting the future is difficult. But here’s an easy prediction: The anti-vaccination movement in the U.S. and globally is going to result in the deaths of more children.
This grim portent comes to us courtesy of UNICEF, which is reporting that 30,601 confirmed cases of measles have been reported in Europe and Central Asia this year through Dec. 5.
That’s up from 909 cases in those regions in 2022, or an increase of 3,266%.
I had a bit of a surprise last Summer (2022) We were in London in June for a scientific meeting and there was quite heavy news coverage of the polio virus that’d been detected in wastewater. From the Lancet (for convenience not irony)
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(22)01804-9/fulltext
Then the Glastonbury festival started and that took over. Not before there was a chance to find out what the MMR fueled scare had done to immunisation rates for polio. Yes…POLIO. One disease that you’d expect folk to still be concerned about even if they were daft enough to duck out of protection against imagined “mild” diseases like rubella etc. Turns out that, in 2022, one in five under-5s were unvaccinated. Add that to all the unvaccinated from years prior, that’s a heck of a lot of unprotected children, teens adolescents etc.
Given that it will usually be hanging in the air for an hour or so, the real risk has to be based on the number of people who have passed through the shop. We’re in Summer, but the wave is hitting us too, and I have an elastomeric N100 mask that offends the maskless.
I wear it in EVERY indoor store, on every train or bus, and whenever there’s any potential exposure.
But I haven’t even had sniffles for the past 4 years, and my allergy problem is greatly reduced. Who knew?
Have a hella holiday, mate.