this post was submitted on 14 Dec 2023
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I am not sure how it feels in the USA but in Europe 2020 ended last year. 2023 has absolutely 0 covid feeling. People talk about it like they're nostalgic sometimes.
Literally almost all of my and my partner's friends and coworkers who are in Europe (including Germany, UK, Finland, Czechia, Greece, and more) have been sick with COVID in the past couple months to (especially) right now — it's very real in Europe still.
People are all talking about COVID right now, in messages, emails, video calls, Mastodon, and more. (It's usually to inform others that they're sick and can't work or meet up. But also complaining that doing basic stuff is difficult.)
Europe is a large place, of course, but at least in a lot of it, COVID is sadly still going strong.
The flu is also going strong, but people aren't saying it still feels like 1918. I don't know the definition of COVID-19 becoming endemic but it certainly feels like it has become that.
And any reference I hear to it is no more common or strange than a reference to the flu or some other common illness.
Yeah I'm sure it is endemic at this point, but it's still killing 100 Americans a day. I don't think the flu is near that level, but I could be mistaken. Vaccines are still crucial against both.
Source: https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us/
Edit: I'm wrong, they are at nearly identical mortality rates.
Flu kills about 36k each year in America, so actually very close to 100 a day.
Covid is just a thing that exists now unfortunately.
Wow I stand corrected
its not that COVID isnt a thing here anymore it is just that COVID has become just the flu but different
I have it right now and it fucking sucks man. Like 90% of my workplace is home sick currently.