I’m sick and came to the doctor to get tested for covid, strep, and flu, since those are going around my work. I asked the doctor if I could get paxlovid if the covid test was positive, and he goes “Oh I don’t think you’d need it”

Motherfucker almost everyone who catches covid should be fucking taking it wtf is wrong with you. Oh I’m young and otherwise healthy? Yeah and I’d like to fucking stay that way thank you very much, and I’ll take any reduction in the chance of becoming permanently disabled.

Also of the medical professionals I saw today, they were only wearing surgical masks, not N95s and I can’t comprehend it. Why in the hell would you go into the room of a likely covid case not wearing an N95 are you insane?

I’m so fucking sick of being the only person in this entire town that’s actually worried about catching this disease, even the fucking doctors don’t care anymore. I work in a research facility attached to a hospital and when I go to the food court and shit at best like 1/25 people are wearing masks. In a hospital.

Thank you Mr Joe Brandon for ending the pandemic, you’ve truly cemented your place among history’s greatest killers.

covid-cool biden-harbinger

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[–] [email protected] 45 points 2 years ago (2 children)

Nobody can write the Black Book of Capitalism if there are no survivors.

It's fucking insane to me how people are acting with covid. It's like everybody stopped paying attention because it was too stressful. But I'm hearing people cough at work and I'm one of three people wearing a mask.

As far as paxlovid, I wouldn't be surprised if there was some extra reporting work required to prescribe paxlovid and the doctors don't want to bother with it. That's what I've noticed with our kinds of prescription or medical issues. Procedures are medications that can really help end up behind paperwork and medical professionals with fried brains.

[–] [email protected] 25 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 children)

was recently compelled by the state to appear for jury duty. I looked around the windowless, closed-door courtroom and out of around sixty people it was me and one other person wearing a mask, and the other person took it off after five minutes and never put it back on. I had to be in there for six hours

[–] [email protected] 12 points 2 years ago (1 children)

IIRC shouting "JURY NULLIFICATION" will get you booted out of selection pretty quick.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 2 years ago

That is illegal, so don't do this.

[–] [email protected] 24 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

The one doctor I can get urgent care with has covid culture war brain rot "just use XYZ supplements to boost your immune system" okay I will but that doesn't mean I will skip paxlovid to play Russian roulette with long covid or me/cfs.

It was a struggle to get him to prescribe paxlovid to my 68 y/o mother because her case was "too mild."

[–] [email protected] 27 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Shouting "get proletarianized" as I kickflip off some shithead GP's head because he told me to "just get some sun" when asking about my fucked up skin.

[–] [email protected] 20 points 2 years ago

That's literally the worst advice, that'll fuck your skin more

[–] [email protected] 27 points 2 years ago

Some doctors are just ignorant and bought into the"it's just a cold, bro" bs, or think covid is only dangerous if you're over 65, because thats the messaging we are getting from the media and health officials.

The only reason you wouldn't want to take paxlovid is if you are on a medication it can negatively interact with.

Considering there is no cure for long covid, why would anyone not try to decrease their chances of getting it?

[–] [email protected] 26 points 2 years ago (1 children)

If you didn't end up getting a prescription, you can do an online consult, I went to hidrb.com when I had COVID a few weeks ago and got a script sent to a pharmacy, it was relatively hassle free except for costing $15. Good luck friend!!

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[–] [email protected] 24 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

If you are COVID-positive, acknowledge to your doctor that he doesn't think you need it but tell him that you want Paxlovid anyway. If your doctor still refuses, Dr. B (https://hidrb.com/covid/paxlovid) prescribes you Paxlovid for $15

[–] [email protected] 21 points 2 years ago

Just eat the horse paste

[–] [email protected] 20 points 2 years ago (1 children)

I'm trying to decide if, when I eventually get it again, I should straight up tell the teleDoc that I will go from doctor to doctor until I get a scrip so they might as well give me one now, or if I should lie about my bmi instead.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Got depression (and who doesn’t lol)? You’re high risk. Use a prescriber bot. When I had covid I used Dr. B. It will check for medical interactions.

Gatekeeping paxlovid is completely nonsensical there’s gotta be mountains of surplus doses.

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[–] [email protected] 20 points 2 years ago

My doc was also not thrilled about prescribing it but agreed to if I... came into the office, where btw no one will be masking. I tried getting it through CVS online consult but they never called, at that point my symptoms were waning so I gave up. Long COVID for all!

[–] [email protected] 18 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (8 children)

Motherfucker almost everyone who catches covid should be fucking taking it

I've got a friend who is a pulminologist and he strongly disagrees. As he explained it, paxlovid has its own side-effects, there isn't a limitless supply of it, and if you're young and healthy and vaccinated already you're not going to see a meaningful reduction in symptoms. So the value-add of taking it relative to the self-inflicted suffering generally isn't considered worth it unless you're in an at-risk category.

I’m so fucking sick of being the only person in this entire town that’s actually worried about catching this disease, even the fucking doctors don’t care anymore.

I'm hard pressed to name anyone who hasn't caught it at least once by now, save for my 76 year old mother who was practically a shut-in before the disease started. I got it the first time from a foster kid I was caring for who got it from daycare (which are all basically petri dishes particularly given how understaffed they've become). I got it the second time from my friends' kids, during D&D, because public school is basically just daycare with more standardized tests now. We all came through it without long-term issues, because we were all vax'd, got bed rest during the peak of it, and we took care of one another.

At some point, you've got to trust the guy who writes the pharmaceutical prescriptions or whats the fucking point of doctors at all? This isn't a panacea for the pandemic. Because it doesn't interact well with other medications, it is absolutely NOT for everyone. And its generally not wise to over-prescribe something this new out on the market anyway, for a whole host of reasons.

I work in a research facility attached to a hospital and when I go to the food court and shit at best like 1/25 people are wearing masks. In a hospital.

That does seem dumb as hell.

If it makes you feel any better, other countries have people with more sense. I visited Japan in February, and practically everyone there was masked all the time everywhere.

Frustrating as hell that more people don't. But that's a much different issue than whether your doctor should issue you anti-virals.

[–] [email protected] 27 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 children)

there isn't a limitless supply of it

Fauci lied about the effectiveness of masks to preserve supply and turned half the US into anti-maskers, even though there's now a shitton of masks (with N-95s still being expensive instead of free like they should be). Pfizer could certainly maintain an artificial scarcity to jack up the Paxlovid price even more, but if more people are buying Paxlovid, they'll make more Paxlovid. It's pretty horrible that Pfizer has exclusivity to manufacture Paxlovid, and that exclusivity doesn't expire until 2041.

and if you're young and healthy and vaccinated already you're not going to see a meaningful reduction in symptoms.

This is inaccurate. Getting COVID depletes your T-cells for 2 years if you don't take Paxlovid, young & healthy or not. So the first COVID infection will likely be less severe, but depleted T cells means that the 2nd infection, 3rd infection etc. will be more severe.

Also, "healthy" is misleading, because it implies that being physiologically healthy is sufficient to be able to raw-dog COVID and turn out okay anyway. Anecdotally, my young and physiologically healthy, vaccinated friend got COVID in summer 2022. Neurologically speaking, though, he's on the autism spectrum, has major depression, OCD, and Tourette syndrome, which makes him high risk for more severe symptoms. I pushed for him to get Paxlovid, but a family member in the medical field convinced him that Paxlovid was unnecessary, citing reasoning similar to what you suggested above. He got long COVID, has trouble thinking and focusing, and now, 14 months later, it hasn't gotten any better. He has to deal with long COVID from that single COVID infection for life, all because someone convinced him that a young, physiologically healthy, vaccinated person like him didn't need Paxlovid.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 2 years ago

Fauci lied about the effectiveness of masks to preserve supply and turned half the US into anti-maskers, even though there's now a shitton of masks (with N-95s still being expensive instead of free like they should be).

I think it is worse than that, in some ways. It is why I don’t really blame people for being anti-mask, or even mask ambivalent, even though a lot of them are just petit bourgeois and selfishly looking for their personal failings to be somehow vindicating. Fauci said that he was lying, and that it was to preserve masks for healthcare workers. But it is really unclear to me that he wasn’t just very completely wrong and saying that he lied in order to maintain a level of credibility. So, either way he is untrustworthy. People were right to be skeptical of his advice, but liberals ignored this and insisted on him being infallible. Questioning Fauci became its own political statement, and liberals identified it as reactionary.

But, the reality is that Fauci was highly inept and political and identifying his advice with “science” removed the capacity for the CDC to ever influence public behavior short of physical violence. If 50% of the country now looks at the CDC in an oppositional way, it is a collapse of credibility that renders the institution itself meaningless. It is the absolute worst outcome from a public health perspective, but another 50% of people still act as though he is good. They aren’t even bothered to see the damage it did and instead blame mostly working class people for being reactionary (when in reality, reactionaries were simply using selfish petit bourgeois impulses and mask-skepticism in an opportunistic way)

When Biden “rewarded” people who were vaccinated by ending mask mandates for them, but only working on an honor system, Fauci was parroting that shit even though there was no evidence it was a good idea, and socially it had the actual effect of ending the only pandemic measure they were willing to insist upon. It happened and then immediately we stepped into the delta wave. Liberals still became hostile when I pointed out it was Biden and Fauci making an objectively political decision that killed hundreds of thousands. That was when I realized that the Pandemic was “over” and that it had essentially become an unsolvable problem under our political-economy. Its why I basically just count my blessings that I survived and that there is little I could do.

Our social system failed, it is continuing to fail us all. Working people are mostly just responding to the material reality of that, and sometimes it is ugly. I think it just ticks off another box as to why the need to build a communist movement is an existential crisis in itself. I have given up on the pandemic in some ways, but I have become obsessed with organizing instead, because that is something that could resolve these contradictions, eventually. Anyway, sorry for the rant. I hate Fauci. I don’t get mad when people don’t wear masks. Most of the working class has been forced to contract it already by our social system, so it has caused most working class people to give up. Whether they understand it or not, they behave as if they have no control, probably because they unconsciously know they are subjects now. It is a manifestation of the callousness of capitalism and the dictatorship of bourgeois “democracy”.

[–] [email protected] 22 points 2 years ago

I'm hard pressed to name anyone who hasn't caught it at least once by now

It's me I've never caught it. Part luck, part being very careful.

At some point, you've got to trust the guy who writes the pharmaceutical prescriptions or whats the fucking point of doctors at all?

Doctors in the US kinda suck. They are low on time due to patient:nurse/doctor ratios (due to capitalism) and end up (1) harboring a lot of ridiculously bad ideas, even when it comes to healthcare, and (2) relying heavily on computer systems and rote-memorized protocols to fill in gaps. The only time I feel okay relying solely on a doctor's opinion is if I have no other choice - no second opinion, no weeks of time to study a topic and self-diagnose about as well if not better than they can (figured out my own chronic issue this way after a battery of stab-in-the-dark tests and offers of black label meds didn't lead anywhere).

I don't expect them to, on average, have the time or environment for good critical thinking. It's structural.

[–] [email protected] 20 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (14 children)

Plenty of “young healthy people” are in the ground thanks to covid my very close friend among them

From personal experience when I had covid I felt like absolute dog shit started paxlovid day 2 and by day 3 felt 70% better.

I trust the for profit American health care system 0%, and I trust doctors as much as I trust pit vipers. If something is out there that is going to help better my odds I’m taking it, and fuck anyone who tries to convince me otherwise your vampire pulmonologist friend included.

The drug interaction concern is a good one but that research is publicly available for you to do.

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[–] [email protected] 16 points 2 years ago (6 children)

Does your pulmonologist friend mask?

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[–] [email protected] 12 points 2 years ago

At some point, you've got to trust the guy who writes the pharmaceutical prescriptions or whats the fucking point of doctors at all?

good point nicholson-yes

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[–] [email protected] 17 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 children)

Of all the dumb arguments I've heard from others, the "we're young" one might be my most hated. My friends and I are all in our 30s now. If you think repeated infections of the same virus over and over again isn't going to have lasting negative health effects in general, let alone as we age, it's a shame you even made it this far gulag . This is true for anything, but the brainworms are turned up to 11 for Covid.

All of the cautionary tales about smoking cigarettes or binge drinking or eating too much sugar or other risky behavior leading to complications down the road don't map to Covid because…reasons, I guess? All of the things we're supposed to do/avoid to protect the developing minds and bodies of children just don't really matter for this one illness? Life expectancy in the US has already dropped. When an entire generation of "young and relatively healthy" 20- and 30-year-olds all suspiciously exhibit the same chronic issues with their cardiovascular, pulmonary, and endocrine systems in the next decade, will any of these people attribute it to getting Covid 2+ times a year every year?

[–] [email protected] 15 points 2 years ago (1 children)

When an entire generation of "young and relatively healthy" 20- and 30-year-olds all suspiciously exhibit the same chronic issues with their cardiovascular, pulmonary, and endocrine systems in the next decade, will any of these people attribute it to getting Covid 2+ times a year every year?

Seriously. And frankly, that's optimistic. We're less than 4 years into this shit and every wave exhibits an epidemic of opportunistic infections; Strep, flu, shingles, RSV, pneumonia, fungal infections. People who think they're gonna get covid once or twice a year and still be healthy and/or alive in ten years aren't living in reality.

"Hey, you know what I always wanted, but wasn't sure I'd be able to afford until retirement? Early onset dementia."

[–] [email protected] 11 points 2 years ago (3 children)

Strep, flu, shingles, RSV, pneumonia, fungal infections.

Pure coincidence. That's a result of our collective immunity debt sweaty maybe-later-honey

But yea . It's frightening how easy it was to manipulate people into this position and how powerful peer pressure can be. I can sometimes see the gears turning when bringing up how the pandemic didn't end, we just decided to play dumb to all its effects, but it doesn't translate into any meaningful response. My housemate works at a hoity-toity private school and despite going back to in-person classes in the fall of 2020, they were actually adhering to some standards like testing, universal masking, and indoor air purifiers for a lot longer than the public schools did. It wasn't until last September when the school "followed the science" and regressed to mask-optional as the only mitigation. After we both caught it at the beginning of this year they basically gave up caring 100%, and it's been absolutely exhausting raising any concerns about it to them or most of my friends, save for one whose partner has MS. I started a new job that went hybrid about two months into me starting (they were so proud of how much they innovated going full remote when I interviewed, too) and I'm surrounded by parents of young, school-age kids. I'm one of maybe three people who mask at the office. I'm thinking how it's just a matter of time before someone brings it home again, and our last box of tests is about to expire. deeper-sadness

Pro-tip: long bouts of depression induced by this shit isn't much better for one's health down the road, either. There are exactly zero upsides to the "Infinite Covid" strategy.

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[–] [email protected] 16 points 2 years ago

I'm sorry you're going through that. I just caught it for the first time, and they gave it to me. I didn't know it was difficult to get for some, I'm grateful I didn't have to go through that. But I know what you mean about being the only one worried. I live in a county of about 30k, and the next county over where Walmart is is about 40k. Whenever I go out, I am literally the only person wearing a mask most days. When I went to urgent care to get diagnosed, no one wore a mask until after my test results came back. Like, wtf? Horse is out the barn, chief.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 2 years ago

As an immunocompromised person I fucking hope you get it so there's less chance I could get it

[–] [email protected] 14 points 2 years ago

Nooooooooo we need to save it for old people who aren't going to take it anyway!

[–] [email protected] 9 points 2 years ago

lotta people ITT talking like they libertarians

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