Sadly I don't see us addressing Covid proactively again until we're adequately past the GOP threat...and that may not happen in my lifetime. We've been seeing a resurgence here but the only doctor's offices requesting masking are my PCPs and they don't enforce it with patients. Half the people I know who traveled for the holidays are now down with Covid and it's been pretty bad for a few of them, but not hospital-level.

I'm current with all my boosters including RSV and will continue to be. I have autoimmune issues and have had pneumonia three times so everything seems to attack my lungs. As @Julie808 pointed out, I only have so much time left and don't want to waste it fighting Covid. Interestingly, when I do mask, I think people presume I'm sick so they tend to don their masks. We are a very strange species indeed.

As always, thanks for the update.

Sadly this administration really does not need to give the far right nutters any more ammo than they already have for attacking every damn thing this ad min does. An extremely sad situation,
especially with the on going hearings, Fauci is set to testify. I think the health care profession needs to be held to some sort of account also, the people in the office have to do a better job of masking themselves and promoting the vaccine. Here in redneck stupid country it is not an easy thing and many in the profession are just gob smacked at the level of stupid they have seen.
That said I have not had my booster nor any of the other vaccines for RSV or the flu. I just have not been indoors for any length of time and wear my NK95 mask when I do go indoors.
Recently had a round with a member in this site over masks, what a fucking idiot. His claim is masks do not work at stopping the virus. No one ever claimed they did, the idea is to limit the viral load that flows from an infected person mouth and nose. AHHHH don't get me started.
Thanks for sanity posting!!!

If anyone is interested this is a really intense video on immune system research:

Ah yes Topol. He’s been pushing nasal vaccines for a while now. Eventually we may see them.

I got my XBB shot in September, so hopefully my antibody levels are still sufficient to respond quickly. There are memory B cells though. And T-cell immunity is important. It’s just that the time involved in staging a response means people might feel lousy for a few days or more.

Maintaining high levels of neutralizing antibodies circulating may be an unusual situation. Plus at this point with people having different vaccination and infection histories I wonder how important original sin (or imprinting) will become. There may be an offset between imprinting and B-cells being able to mutate toward matching newer spike antigens (epitopes). If imprinting is at play our immune systems may get stuck on a previous adaptive peak. If not mutation will allow our B-cells to migrate to peaks represented by newer vaccines or infections. With vaccines the issue is prediction and how close the match might be toward unforeseeable variant looks. Hopefully SARS-CoV-2 tames into a common cold in coming years.

I’ve pretty much thrown in the towel on masking. I think people are burnt out on this stuff and fatalistic. I’ll keep getting whatever shots come out…hopefully nasal at some point as allegedly those will result in greater mucosal immunity instead of the systemic immunity the current shots bring.

Sadly the proportion of people getting the updated shots is lower than with the first series. If there were like 80% or more people currently updated things might look a little different. The infections will update many of them.

In a way, we've got to admire viruses...they're clever, flexible and tough.

In short
Covid has not gone away, and like Spanish flu it will never go away, we've just learned to live with the inevitability of it for the sake of so called normality.

I got some fear for sale. You want some?

I still wear an KN95 mask on the plane, but that's about the only place nowadays that I wear a mask, simply because most everywhere I go is either open air or a large space where I am not very close to anyone.

Upon my flight home from Seattle to Kauai yesterday, I had my mask on as I took my window seat. The elderly couple in the seats next to me noticed my mask and promptly took out their own masks to put on, joking that I've shamed them into wearing their masks.

I said, oh, I'm just super careful. Personal preference. I'm actually a very safe person to be around. I want to be sure I stay healthy so I can work this week.

They said they each had had covid in 2020 and have had 5 shots, and I said me too! But they still wore their mask the whole 6 hours, except when the snack/drink cart came around, then their masks were back on. They were likely on the fence about whether they should wear their masks and were waiting to see what was the norm. They had their masks handy, so I think that was the case.

They were older than me, and traveling with friends seated in the row behind us. I think they didn't mind, and were perhaps relieved to feel okay wearing a mask on the plane, since it's right after holiday gatherings, when colds, covid and flu always seem to have an uptick.

It's just a personal preference for each individual, with no real guidance. I see the numbers and I hear the coughing. With being around travelers as much as I am, I just like to be careful for myself now. It used to be that I was careful for others.

At my age, I just don't really ever want to be as sick as I was in 2020, but with that immunity plus all my vaccinations, I'm pretty sure I won't ever get covid again, but I still want to be careful. I still have a lot of life to live. I don't want to waste any of it with even a common cold.