SGU Episode 862

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SGU Episode 862
January 15th 2022
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SGU 861                      SGU 863
Skeptical Rogues
S: Steven Novella
B: Bob Novella
C: Cara Santa Maria
J: Jay Novella
E: Evan Bernstein
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Introduction

Voice-over: You're listening to the Skeptics' Guide to the Universe, your escape to reality.

S: Hello and welcome to the Skeptics' Guide to the Universe. Today is Wednesday, January 12^th 2022, and this is your host, Steven Novella. Joining me this week are Bob Novella...

B: Hey, everybody!

S: Cara Santa Maria...

C: Howdy.

S: Jay Novella...

J: Hey guys.

S: ...and Evan Bernstein.

E: Good evening folks!

S: How is everyone feeling, we're right at the peak of the Omicron surf.

B: Woo-hoo!

S:

E: I'm feeling fine.

S: It's amazing to think, if I told you two years ago, that in two years, we would be breaking records for new infections with the pandemic that would've been mind-blowing.

J: Yeah.

B: Yeah.

C: Oh yeah, yeah we would definitely think we'd be on a downswing by now.

E: Yeah, these variants, though. Who knew there could be, I don't know 50 variants by now?

C: Probably most epidemiologists (laughs) They were like we totally saw this coming.

J: Well, of all the zigz and zagz though I mean this, this potentially could be the normalization or downturn of the pandemic, you know? Like things might actually start to become a little more normal.

E: You mean it burns itself out?

J: Yeah, like, you know, Omicron is less dangerous to a certain degree. Right, this is what I'm reading.

S: More infectious.

C: Depends on what you mean by dangerous.

S: It's still a bad virus. Don't, I think the reason most people who are getting infected have a very mild infection, cause they're vaccinated. Among the unvaccinated they're still going into the hospital and dying. It's still a severe illness.

E: Yeah, oh my gosh, so scary.

J: And at this point, they're not gonna get vaxxed, you know, the numbers are so moving slowly slowly. So I wanted to ask you Evan...

E: Jay.

J: Are you experiencing any fatigue?

E: You mean still, now that I'm basically three weeks removed from my initial diagnosis? My initial test?

J: Yes, yeah.

E: My fatigue has gone, I'm back to feeling myself again pretty much head to toe. But, but, for about 14 or maybe 16 days there I was feeling fatigue, no doubt about it. Took me a couple weeks to get right.

J: Yeah, I'm still feeling it. I'm still feeling that fatigue and I was reading about it and you know it's like they're saying like it's totally legit. You know having a virus like this could, can fatigue you up to weeks, some people up to months.

C: Yeah and people with long Covid even longer, people who had super severe infection and are still dealing with that. It's also one of those hard things cause there is so many Jay variables at play. Like I was looking into, I have friends that are pregnant right now and some of them who have Covid. And I was trying to look at the literature on pregnancy outcomes and I came across some interesting studies that in some findings are showing that there is a slight correlation of like low birth rate. But not with active Covid infection. They were finding that people who tested positive and those who tested negative who gave birth during the pandemic have lower birth rate on average.

E: So what's that attributable to...

C: Stress.

B: Yeah.

C: You know it's not a healthy time for anybody. And so it's one of those really hard things where it's like, I'm fatigued and I ain't even had Covid. And I think that this is a common experience for a lot of people. We're isolated, we're not having the same interactions that we'd been having with colleagues, with coworkers. We're constantly feeling that sort of chronic fear and concern about infection, you know, all day every day, thinking about what if, and thinking about life out there versus the safety in here. It's not a healthy way to live.

J: Oh yeah, I know I mean I have friends who are telling me things like 'I don't care anymore, I gotta get back to my life'. And you know, as I'm talking to them and I'm saying, my inner voice is saying 'you should tell them don't do that'. But I, lately I've been going 'yeah man, I get it' (laughs) you know what I mean? Like I totally understand like I can't even argue anymore. Like enough already.

C: Yeah. It's like how do we find that happy medium.

S: It's a combination of a new variant that's very infectious and pandemic fatigue that's responsible for the explosion, you know, the spiking numbers. I mean I can't it seems like everyone I talk to either has recently had Covid or know somebody who has family members or people close to them who did. Very different that at any point during the pandemic, really, you could feel how much more common it is at this point in time.

C: It's so common and also anecdotally in my experience all of my friends and sort of people that I know who caught it traveled over the holidays.

E: Interesting.

S: Yeah the holiday was another factor. But we'll get through it, you know a lot of people are asking us, is this the way to herd immunity, and the answer is yes and no. I mean because so many people are catching it that will absolutely increase antibody resistance afterwards. But it's still not the way that we wanna get there. Because it's still a bad idea and absolutely do not deliberately catch it for the immunity part of it, cause you're better of getting immunity from the vaccine ad it could still be a serious illness, you get still get long Covid. Don't count on this being mild and should continue to try to avoid getting the disease. But we're, we're at the hospital getting overwhelmed peak now, you know.

C: It's seems like the most promising evidence though coming out of South Africa is that this hopefully will not be a long lived peak. Like South Africa is already sort of on the other side of their peak. And so the hope is that that's going to happen to us soon. Think it was a umber of things, we happen to get Omicron at the right time like you said, at sort of the time where everybody was dealing with pandemic fatigue. And also right over the holidays.

S: And over the holidays. The perfect storm.

E: Yeah the holidays.

C: Yeah, yeah yeah yeah but hopefully it is gonna sort of slow down soon. And we will get that relief. What I'm finding too, are you seeing this Steve, that a lot of e-mails that I'm getting from the hospital are saying things like, they're back to cancelling─

B: Elective.

C: ─certain surgeries, yeah elective surgeries and things like that. But they're saying it's not so much because they're overloaded with patients but because so much of the staff is out sick.

S: Yeah, exactly. Like with schools we can intend to keep the schools open but teachers are out quarantining cause they have Covid, you know.

E: Right, what's the point.

S: Might not have a choice. GET VACCINATED.

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S: —and until next week, this is your Skeptics' Guide to the Universe.

S: Skeptics' Guide to the Universe is produced by SGU Productions, dedicated to promoting science and critical thinking. For more information, visit us at theskepticsguide.org. Send your questions to info@theskepticsguide.org. And, if you would like to support the show and all the work that we do, go to patreon.com/SkepticsGuide and consider becoming a patron and becoming part of the SGU community. Our listeners and supporters are what make SGU possible.

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