i've learned more about the real on-the-ground ugliness of COVID from r/nursing than I've learned from any other source. Even the most unflinching media portrayals of what COVID does to the unvaccinated and the people who have to care for them leaves a lot out.
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for example last week i learned that a lot of nurses have had to deal with maggots in the intubated bodies of COVID patients, because anybody who has to be intubated for as long as many COVID patients do makes an attractive home for fly larvae, even when they're still alive
Making me feel better about the potential for Vaccines to genuinely get this under control. Covid is never leaving, but if we can reasonably keep protection up with vaccines (scoping out problem variants ahead of time and preparing new vaccines for those, similar to the flu) then I'll take that as a hopefully possible outcome.