Buddy of mine that was "forced" to take the vaccine to keep his job (former employer...now employed at a Regional Airline) just told me he has Covid. AGAIN!!! JSMH...

He took the J&J jab and has had Covid MULTIPLE times since. Me, on the other hand, got FIRED from my job (have since been re-hired...case pending) for standing firm for my religious freedom and medical autonomy. You HAVE to know...HAVE to know...I've been exposed to Covid thousands of times since this bullshit started. I have yet (thank you Lord) to get even a sniffle. I've had my normal seasonal allergies, but nothing worse. These "vaccines" have done nothing but DESTROY people's immune systems.

What a crock of pure-dee shit!!!

quote:

I've been exposed to Covid thousands of times since this bullshit started. I have yet (thank you Lord) to get even a sniffle

Just like the flu, it is possible for you to be infected but have zero symptoms. You can have it and spread it but never be impacted. They say up to a third of people can fall into this category.

After learning this I wondered if I would be one of those people because I have never had the flu. I have had Covid once.

This isn't the first time our government has made things worse by pushing/forcing vaccines:

WW1 ended sooner than expected, leaving HUGE quantities of unused experimental vaccines. Fearing that soldiers coming home would spread diseases to their families, The U.S. government pushed the largest vaccine ‘fear’ campaign in history. They used the human population as a research and development lab to field test experimental vaccines.

Tens of millions of civilians died in the same manner as did the soldiers. Instead of stopping the vaccines, doctors intensified them, calling it the great “Spanish Flu of 1918”. As a result, ONLY THE VACCINATED DIED.

WW1 U.S. soldiers were given 14 – 25 untested, experimental vaccines within days of each other, which triggered intensified cases of ALL the diseases at once. The doctors called it a new disease and proceeded to suppress the symptoms with additional drugs or vaccines.

Source for the above Dr. Sal Martingano, FICPA – THE 1918 “SPANISH FLU”: ONLY THE VACCINATED DIED

On The Spot Observer

Eleanor McBean who wrote under the name of Elben, however, wrote in her book Vaccination Condemned “I WAS AN ON-THE-SPOT OBSERVER OF THE 1918 INFLUENZA EPIDEMIC” and argues that “THE 1918 INFLUENZA EPIDEMIC WAS A VACCINE-CAUSED DISEASE”

https://expose-news.com/2023/0...-and-present-danger/

quote:

Originally posted by erj_pilot:
Buddy of mine that was "forced" to take the vaccine to keep his job (former employer...now employed at a Regional Airline) just told me he has Covid. AGAIN!!! JSMH...

He took the J&J jab and has had Covid MULTIPLE times since. Me, on the other hand, got FIRED from my job (have since been re-hired...case pending) for standing firm for my religious freedom and medical autonomy. You HAVE to know...HAVE to know...I've been exposed to Covid thousands of times since this bullshit started. I have yet (thank you Lord) to get even a sniffle. I've had my normal seasonal allergies, but nothing worse. These "vaccines" have done nothing but DESTROY people's immune systems.

What a crock of pure-dee shit!!!

Like you, I am sure I have been exposed countless times. I've been ill twice with Covid.

First time was early January 2020 before there was any test or really any publicity about it. My wife's son was visiting for the Christmas week and he was sick with a terrible cough. He was in the Navy and had been working with others who had been all over the planet and who were quite sick just before he visited us.

My wife caught it first, and had a terrible chest cough like she's never had before. Finally the doc gave her a course of steroids and it cleared up in a few days. We now know that steroids suppress the cytokine storm which causes the respiratory distress. I was closely exposed to her while she was ill, and then I got it just as she was recovering. It was a minor flu-like event for me for maybe 5 days.

I worked a lot during 2020 and 2021 and never caught it. The airline crewed almost the entire system out of SLC, putting the remainder of the pilots on either furlough (unemployment was generous for FOs), or voluntary paid LOA. Lol, we were the most senior base in the system and got hosed in violation of pretty much the entire "contract", with the happy consent of the pilot association leadership. (sorry for the rant!)

The next time I caught it was May 2022 when it was Omicron. Again, I was in pretty close contact with my wife who was pretty sick with fever and cough/cold symptoms. After a week I finally came down with it for about 3 days of moderate cold symptoms.

It took a big dose of germs before I got sick. She, unfortunately, let her doc talk her into the first 2 shots (Moderna), and her immune system has not been nearly as robust since. She's had it several times, mostly very minor except in May 2022.

quote:

Originally posted by chellim1:
This isn't the first time our government has made things worse by pushing/forcing vaccines:

WW1 ended sooner than expected, leaving HUGE quantities of unused experimental vaccines. Fearing that soldiers coming home would spread diseases to their families, The U.S. government pushed the largest vaccine ‘fear’ campaign in history. They used the human population as a research and development lab to field test experimental vaccines.

Tens of millions of civilians died in the same manner as did the soldiers. Instead of stopping the vaccines, doctors intensified them, calling it the great “Spanish Flu of 1918”. As a result, ONLY THE VACCINATED DIED.

WW1 U.S. soldiers were given 14 – 25 untested, experimental vaccines within days of each other, which triggered intensified cases of ALL the diseases at once. The doctors called it a new disease and proceeded to suppress the symptoms with additional drugs or vaccines.

Source for the above Dr. Sal Martingano, FICPA – THE 1918 “SPANISH FLU”: ONLY THE VACCINATED DIED

On The Spot Observer

Eleanor McBean who wrote under the name of Elben, however, wrote in her book Vaccination Condemned “I WAS AN ON-THE-SPOT OBSERVER OF THE 1918 INFLUENZA EPIDEMIC” and argues that “THE 1918 INFLUENZA EPIDEMIC WAS A VACCINE-CAUSED DISEASE”

https://expose-news.com/2023/0...-and-present-danger/

Aspirin was a newly off-patent product and it was given in enormous doses when someone was sick with the flu. Undoubtedly it was responsible for many of the flu deaths.

It makes sense that the experimental vaccines caused all kinds of problems, and then the addition of lethal doses of aspirin did in the people who had managed to survive the earlier treatments.

The New York Times ran a story this morning headlined, “What to Know About the New Covid Booster Shots.” The sub-headline ominously added, “The updated vaccines could become available within a few days.” A remarkable admission was quietly tucked into the story.

The article ostensibly let us know the FDA approved both Pfizer and Moderna’s new 2023-model boosters yesterday, and the CDC is expected to rubber stamp them today. This time, not that anyone cares, it’s without any clinical trials, not eight mice, not even one mouse.

That is completely boring, and I wouldn’t have covered it except for an odd little nugget of interesting information buried halfway down the story. You see, last year’s jab innovation turned out not to have been so much of an innovation after all. It looks less like dynamite and more like a wet noodle:

Unlike the bivalent shots from last fall, the latest mRNA vaccines developed by Pfizer and Moderna are monovalent, meaning they are designed to protect against just one variant: XBB.1.5… Initial data from preprint studies has suggested that the bivalent formula from last year was no more effective against BA.4 and BA.5 than the original vaccine it replaced because of so-called “immune imprinting” bias.
“Our immune system, when we have seen something, is biased to seeing that again,” Dr. Ho said. “So if you include the original components, the immune system will react mostly to the original component and not to the new version of the virus.”

Ho, ho, Dr. Ho! We fooled ‘em again! Suckers.

But there it was, in 12-point type, straight from the New York Times’s own ghastly orifice: The Bivalent experiment failed. It’s back to the monovalent drawing board. And, how do you like that, they do know about “immune imprinting” after all. When they want to.

Last year’s amazing bivalent concept drug was supposed to be the Next Big Thing, multiple spike proteins in one shot — the mRNA shot-gun approach! — but it was just another predictably horrible experiment the drooling white-coated maniacs deployed last year on the luckless medical fetishists who rushed to impale themselves on the latest, greatest covid shot.

One easily imagines the board meeting where they decided to test out the bivalent idea. Twelve Pfizer fatcats sitting around the boardroom on the 60th floor overlooking Manhattan, smoking the finest Cuban cigar leaves rolled in hundred dollar bills. Between puffs, one languidly remarks, “you know what, gents, this bivalent thing never going to work because of immune imprinting.” A scowl erupts from the Saville Row-dressed head of the table. “That’s just a theory!” he barks, slamming his fist down and getting cigar ashes all over the mahogany conference table. “It might work! You’re talking out of your hat again!” A grey-haired executive halfway down the table quickly but gently interrupts, offering a peacable compromise: “No reason to quarrel, gentlemen. Let’s just try it. What’s the worst that could happen? Nothing!” A gentle group chuckle follows, then a murmur of agreement arises in the room like a sweet-smelling cloud of cigar smoke, and the contended puffing, so rudely interrupted, resumes in earnest.

Last year they literally tested the bivalent shot out on everyone knowing that it probably wouldn’t work against new variants. And they are doing it all over again, because XBB.1.5 has gone the way of the actual Kraken, faded away into the nebulous fog of ancient history, legends, and covid lore, and now we face a new, stiffer challenge in the expanding Pirola variant, which allegedly has 30 different mutations in its spike compared to XBB. You probably didn’t even know the spike had thirty parts to mutate.

One is tempted to suspect all this attention to highly-mutated Pirola is just to tee up their annual excuse for why the new booster shot didn’t work.

And … Haha! The old-and-not-improved “bivalent” jabs aren’t the only thing they’re trying to sneak down the memory dispose-all: For some reason, they’ve stopped calling XBB.1.5, “the Kraken!” Which for a while was their very favorite covid name. Now, poof! Just letters and numbers.

But we have not forgotten their ridiculous, hysterical moniker.

They literally picked the biggest animal they could think of, the Kraken!, to describe the tiniest virus in the lineup.

I guess they wanted to boost covid’s confidence or something.

Anyway, you should be able to get injected with Big Pharma’s latest lab experiment later this week, if for some insane reason you actually want the awful thing, which offers tons of risk and no benefit.

https://www.coffeeandcovid.com...ack&utm_medium=email

quote:

Originally posted by Bytes:
[FLASH_VIDEO]<iframe frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/Glq7era7BqM" width="560"></iframe>[/FLASH_VIDEO]

This is what happens when you rush a vaccine through and ignore the normal process. I wonder how long it will be before this Dr. is charged with something and shut down.

quote:

Originally posted by Bytes:
[FLASH_VIDEO]<iframe frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/Glq7era7BqM" width="560"></iframe>[/FLASH_VIDEO]

This is an important next step in exposing what went wrong with the vaccine. This Dr is getting results, and treating the wide variety of illness which have confused the establishment medical community and especially pharma. Thus far the lack of any link has also allowed them to escape any criticism or responsibility. Thanks Bytes!

CIA tried to pay off analysts to bury findings that COVID lab leak was likely: whistleblower

https://nypost.com/2023/09/12/...dings-whistleblower/

The Central Intelligence Agency offered to pay off analysts in order to bury their findings that COVID-19 most likely leaked from a lab in Wuhan, China, new whistleblower testimony to Congress alleges.

A senior-level CIA officer told House committee leaders that his agency tried to pay off six analysts who found SARS-CoV-2 likely originated in a Wuhan lab if they changed their position and said the virus jumped from animals to humans, according to a letter sent Tuesday to CIA Director William Burns.

Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic Chairman Brad Wenstrup (R-Ohio) and Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence Chairman Mike Turner (R-Ohio) requested all documents, communications and pay info from the CIA’s COVID Discovery Team by Sept. 26.

“According to the whistleblower, at the end of its review, six of the seven members of the Team believed the intelligence and science were sufficient to make a low confidence assessment that COVID-19 originated from a laboratory in Wuhan, China,” the House panel chairmen wrote.

“The seventh member of the Team, who also happened to be the most senior, was the lone officer to believe COVID-19 originated through zoonosis.”

“The whistleblower further contends that to come to the eventual public determination of uncertainty, the other six members were given a significant monetary incentive to change their position,” they said, noting that the analysts were “experienced officers with significant scientific expertise.”

Wenstrup and Turner also asked for documents and communications between the CIA and other federal agencies, including the State Department, the FBI, the Department of Health and Human Services and the Energy Department.

In a separate letter, the House committee leaders identified former CIA chief operating officer Andrew Makridis as having “played a central role” in the COVID investigation and asked him to sit for a transcribed interview.

“At CIA we are committed to the highest standards of analytic rigor, integrity, and objectivity. We do not pay analysts to reach specific conclusions,” CIA Director of Public Affairs Tammy Kupperman Thorp told The Post in a statement. “We take these allegations extremely seriously and are looking into them. We will keep our Congressional oversight committees appropriately informed.”

Makridis did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The FBI was the first US intelligence agency to conclude the COVID-19 pandemic most likely originated with a lab leak. In February, the Energy Department also concluded a lab leak was likely, based on new intelligence.

The US intelligence community declassified its 10-page reporton COVID origins in June, which found “biosafety concerns” and “genetic engineering” taking place at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, but most of its “agencies assess that SARS-CoV-2 was not genetically engineered.”

Several scientists at the Wuhan lab also became sick in the fall of 2019 with symptoms “consistent with but not diagnostic of COVID-19,” the report states.

The CIA and one other intelligence agency “remain unable to determine the precise origin of the COVID-19 pandemic, as both hypotheses rely on significant assumptions or face challenges with conflicting reporting,” it says.

But some former US intelligence officials have disagreed with the assessment. In April, former Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe told Congress that the so-called “lab leak theory” was the “only” credible explanation for the pandemic, which has since claimed the lives of nearly 7 million people across the globe, according to the World Health Organization.

“My informed assessment as a person with as much access as anyone to our government’s intelligence … has been and continues to be that a lab leak is the only explanation credibly supported by our intelligence, by science and by common sense,” Ratcliffe told the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic in a hearing.

“If our intelligence and evidence supporting a lab leak was placed side by side with our intelligence and evidence pointing to a natural origins or spillover theory, the lab leak side of the ledger would be long, convincing, even overwhelming — while the spillover side would be nearly empty and tenuous,” added Ratcliffe, a former Texas Republican congressman who served as President Donald Trump’s second and last director of national intelligence.

more at link

GMAFB!!!!

https://www.thegatewaypundit.c...utm_content=breaking

IT’S BACK! Providence Hospital System Imposes Draconian Mandatory COVID Vaccine for Healthcare Workers – Non-Compliance Results in Unpaid Leave and Potential Termination



DO NOT COMPLY!

Providence Hospital System has just dropped a bombshell on its employees in a move that can only be described as Orwellian.

The healthcare giant announced on its InOurCircle app—a platform designed for employees to “stay up-to-date on company news”—that all workers (including those who are vaccinated and boosted by previous shots) are now required to receive the latest COVID-19 vaccine. And get this: failure to comply could result in unpaid leave or even job termination!
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<snip>

LGB
FJB

quote:

DO NOT COMPLY!

Providence Hospital System can only get away with this if most people comply.
100% of them should walk away. Shut it down.

Dr. John Campbell talks about the Nuremburg code.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_oZAPk_Xpow

I wonder how many in positions of authority actually know anything about the Nuremburg code.

quote:

Originally posted by chellim1:

quote:

DO NOT COMPLY!

Providence Hospital System can only get away with this if most people comply.
100% of them should walk away. Shut it down.

Amen!!!!

Watch this!

Newly crowned Wimbledon champion Novak Djokovic reflects on how Aussie govt made him feel like a villain in 2022 and the BBC reporter who couldn’t understand why he would give it all up.

Guess who ended up with a title and no vax induced myocarditis and VAids???

https://twitter.com/_aussie17/.../1701930732145516947

quote:

Originally posted by chellim1:
Watch this!

Newly crowned Wimbledon champion Novak Djokovic reflects on how Aussie govt made him feel like a villain in 2022 and the BBC reporter who couldn’t understand why he would give it all up.

Guess who ended up with a title and no vax induced myocarditis and VAids???

https://twitter.com/_aussie17/.../1701930732145516947

You know, I’ve often told my kids not to idolize sports stars. This guy is an exception. What an absolute champion and role model. He endured tremendous pressure and stood strong on values I share. And he prevailed in spectacular fashion. I wish him the best!

Dr. Peter McCullough is the most, if not one of the most important doctors in the long, difficult pandemic pushback effort. His extended chain of impeccable credentials — many now stripped away — and his clear, credible, precise, and persuasive speaking style make him an extremely effective advocate for early covid treatment and against the jabs.

Peter is a hero in the full modern sense of the word. He has freely sacrificed much for many, for millions of people he does not even know.

The doc gave a terrific speech last week, and it’s well worth a watch if you have 17 minutes or so. Otherwise, I’ve transcribed a bunch of it, so you can read instead of watching, or watch and skip the transcription, or watch and read. You get the idea.



Dr. McCullough's Speech at the European Parliament on Rumble (17:35).

On Wednesday, Dr. McCullough appeared as a on of nine panelists in a European Union Parliament breakout session on the W.H.O., the pandemic, and the vaccines. In his segment, Dr. McCullough named names, called out individuals like Jerome Powell and Peter Daszak, and encouraged the EU to completely withdraw from the W.H.O., persuasively arguing the international health agency is a sold-out co-conspirator in a harmful bio-pharmaceutical syndicate.

As usual, Dr. McCullough did not mince words. Here’s just a tiny sample of how he characterized the WHO:

“The WHO has played an adverse role from the very beginning, deceiving the world on the origins of SARS-CoV-2… they effectively created an environment of scientific nihilism.”

The longest section of his presentation was about the vaccines. But it was worth it, since Dr. McCullough summarized everything we know for sure — what we can prove — about the horrible jabs and their devastating injuries. First, McCullough described the single biggest problem with the mRNA shot — it’s made of a toxic protein that never goes away:

The vaccines have ravaged the population of the world… the genetic code for the potentially-lethal spike protein part of the virus. It was the worst idea ever to install the genetic code by injection, and allow unbridled production of a potentially lethal protein in the human body for an uncontrolled duration of time.
Everything we’ve learned about the vaccines since they came out is horrifying. There’s not a single study showing that the messenger RNA is broken down. Because it’s pseudo-uridinated. It’s made synthetically. It cannot be broken down. There’s not one study showing it leaves the body.
We now have papers by [Kestroyuda-sp?] who demonstrates the messenger RNA circulating for a month.
That’s as long as they’ve looked!

We have the spike protein — the lethal protein from the vaccines — found in the human body after vaccination, circulating at least for six months, if not longer, and if people take another injection in another six months, that’s another installation, and more circulating, potentially-lethal spike protein.

Next, McCullough organized officially-verified vaccine injuries into four groups, or “domains”: cardiovascular, neurologic, blood clots, and immunologic problems. His list is understandably incomplete. I completely understand why McCullough omitted other emerging domains such as turbo-cancers. The link between turbo cancer and the jabs is not yet sufficiently proven in the literature or recognized by regulatory agencies, and the credibility that has propelled McCullough to speaking at the EU lies in his careful, scientific precision.

Let’s dig in. Here’s Dr. McCullough’s description of the first group of jab injuries: heart attacks.

The spike protein is proven in 3,400 peer-reviewed manuscripts to cause four major domains of disease.
Number one is cardiovascular disease: heart inflammation, or myocarditis. Every regulatory agency agrees the vaccines cause myocarditis.
I’m a cardiologist. When there’s myocarditis, people cannot exert themselves in athletics. It will cause cardiac arrest. And yet, across Europe and across the U.S., sports leagues have been injecting young people who had no medical necessity, no clinical indication, and we have seen a montage of cardiac arrests in young individuals.
I’m telling you — as an expert cardiologist — these cardiac arrest are due to the covid-19 vaccine until proven otherwise. They are.
The cardiovascular domain of damage in the human body from the vaccine is substantial. More than anything we’ve ever seen with cholesterol, high blood pressure, or diabetes.

Next, Dr. McCullough turned to brain damage:

The second domain is neurologic disease. Stroke, both acitic and hemorrhagic, Guillain-Barre syndrome, ascending paralysis, which can lead to death, and which has lead to death, with messenger RNA vaccines. Which is agreed to by all of our regulatory agencies. Small fiber neuropathy, numbness and tingling, ringing in the ears, headaches. These are all common.

Next, Dr. McCullough described group three: the nightmarish, tapeworm-sized types of blood clots that doctors have never squished into before:

Blood clots. Blood clots like we’ve never seen before. The spike protein is the most thrombogenic protein we’ve even seen in human medicine. It’s found IN the blood clots.
The spike protein causes blood clots. Blood clots bigger and more resistant to blood thinners than we’ve ever experienced in human medicine. I have patients with blood clots going on two years now and they are not dissolving with conventional blood thinners due to these vaccines.
We can’t get these [clots] out of the body. [Probably because] we can’t get the messenger RNA or the spike protein out of the body, as it is continually produced.

Finally, Dr. McCullough described the fourth domain of recognized injury: wrecked immune systems:

The fourth and last domain: Immunologic abnormalities. Vaccine-induced thrombotic thrombocytopenia and multi-system inflammatory disorder are early-acute syndromes, well-described, published, they have their own acronyms, all agreed-to by the agencies.

Let’s pause for a minute to celebrate. Look how far we’ve come in a relatively short period of time. A year ago, there was only one domain of injury the regulatory agencies grudgingly recognized (myocarditis). Now there are four. Next, think about the fact that, at this point, McCullough was presenting at the EU. And nobody is presenting on how successful the shots have been (except possibly at financial conferences, but that’s not what I mean).

We are winning the mind war.

Back to McCullough. Having laid out all these potential types of injuries, and knowing most of his audience was probably jabbed, Dr. McCullough then addressed the elephant in the room: Who’s next?

So, all of you in the room and all of you listening online are asking, Is it me? Is it my family member? Is it my loved one? Who is going to be the next person to drop after the vaccine? We’ve seen cardiac arrests now two years after these shots. Two years.

I’m the senior author on the largest autopsy study ever assembled of death after covid-19 vaccination. Worldwide. We searched the literature, 600 papers, all the clinical findings, we reviewed them with contemporary knowledge, [using] experts in pathology and clinical medicine.

Our conclusion: 73.9% of the deaths after vaccination are due to the vaccine. When it’s suspected myocarditis, it’s 100% of the time that it’s due to the vaccine.

Before I get to the good news, the final bit that I transcribed for you was Dr. McCullough’s warning to the ministers not to believe the latest fake narrative that “long covid” is causing the excess deaths:

The first false narrative was the virus is unassailable, we have to stay in lockdown and be fearful. The second false narrative is take a vaccine, it’s safe and effective. We are now seeing a third false narrative. The third false narrative is: it’s not the vaccine causing these problems, it’s covid.
Don’t fall for the false narrative. The medical literature at this point in time is compelling. The Bradford-Hill criteria for causality have been fulfilled. The vaccines are causing this enormous wave of illness.

At the very end of his segment, right before calling for the covid vaccines to be pulled from the market, and after all that bad news, Dr. McCullough offered something hopeful. He said the studies are showing that somewhere between 4% and 7% of the jab batches account for almost all officially-recognized jab injuries. So, with regard to the recognized domains of injury, there’s a good chance that any particular person got a safe batch with no reported injuries at all (about a third) or even more likely, a batch with only very rare injuries (all the rest).

We are grateful to Dr. McCullough and all the selfless and heroic work he’s done over the last few years.

https://www.coffeeandcovid.com...ack&utm_medium=email

More and more doctors and hospitals are saying that Covid has essentially gotten to the point that it is nearly indistinguishable from allergies or a light cold, but the idiot drum beat to “vaccinate” goes on. Uptake is at all time lows, and I’m sure big pharma isn’t happy about it one bit. Only the leftist loons will be lining up for the jab it seems- everyone else seems to have decided they’re not playing the game anymore, though I’m sure a lot of virtue signalers will lie and claim to get it.

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/rcna105090

Sore throat, then congestion: Common Covid symptoms follow a pattern now, doctors say
Doctors who treat Covid describe the ways the illness has gotten milder and shifted over time to mostly affect the upper respiratory tract.

Doctors say they're finding it increasingly difficult to distinguish Covid from allergies or the common cold, even as hospitalizations tick up.

The illness' past hallmarks, such as a dry cough or the loss of sense of taste or smell, have become less common. Instead, doctors are observing milder disease, mostly concentrated in the upper respiratory tract.

"It isn’t the same typical symptoms that we were seeing before. It’s a lot of congestion, sometimes sneezing, usually a mild sore throat," said Dr. Erick Eiting, vice chair of operations for emergency medicine at Mount Sinai Downtown in New York City.

The sore throat usually arrives first, he said, then congestion.

The Zoe COVID Symptom Study, which collects data on self-reported symptoms in the U.K. through smartphone apps, has documented the same trend. Its findings suggest that a sore throat became more common after the omicron variant grew dominant in late 2021. Loss of smell, by contrast, became less widespread, and the rate of hospital admissions declined compared to summer and fall 2021.

Doctors now describe a clearer, more consistent pattern of symptoms.

"Just about everyone who I've seen has had really mild symptoms," Eiting said of his urgent care patients, adding, "The only way that we knew that it was Covid was because we happened to be testing them."

Though three doctors interviewed said Covid commonly begins with a sore throat these days, they gave differing descriptions of the severity.

Dr. Grace McComsey, vice dean for clinical and translational research at Case Western University, said some patients have described "a burning sensation like they never had, even with strep in the past."

"Then, as soon as the congestion happens, it seems like the throat gets better," she said.

Along with congestion, doctors said, some patients experience a headache, fatigue, muscle aches, fever, chills or post-nasal drip that may lead to a cough — though coughing isn't a primary symptom.

McComsey said fatigue and muscle aches usually last a couple of days, whereas congestion can sometimes last a few weeks.

She estimated that only around 10-20% of her Covid patients lose their sense of taste or smell now, compared to around 60-70% early in the pandemic.

Eiting said he's not seeing a lot of diarrhea lately, either — a more common symptom in the past.

For the most part, the doctors said, few patients require hospitalization — even those who show up at emergency rooms — and many recover without needing the antiviral pill Paxlovid or other treatment.

"Especially since July, when this recent mini-surge started, younger people that have upper respiratory symptoms — cough, runny nose, sore throat, fever and chills — 99% of the time they go home with supportive care," said Dr. Michael Daignault, an emergency physician at Providence Saint Joseph Medical Center in Burbank, California.

Dr. Dan Barouch, director of the Center for Virology and Vaccine Research at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, attributed the mild symptoms that doctors are seeing to immunity from vaccines and previous infections.

"Overall, the severity of Covid is much lower than it was a year ago and two years ago. That’s not because the variants are less robust. It’s because the immune responses are higher," Barouch said.

Other doctors think that omicron itself also changed the presentation of Covid symptoms, since some studies have shown that early versions of it weren’t as good as previous variants at infecting the lungs.

The most prevalent subvariant circulating now is EG.5, followed by a strain called FL.1.5.1. Together, those two appear to be driving an uptick in Covid infections, though scientists are also watching BA.2.86, a variant with a large number of mutations that looks significantly different from previous versions of omicron. Though cases of BA.2.86 are rising in the U.S., it isn’t among the top variants circulating.

Barouch said the new booster shots should be effective against those three strains and others.

The U.S. is recording around 19,000 Covid hospitalizations per week, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The weekly average rose around 80% from early August to the beginning of September.

Hospitalization rates are highest among people ages 75 and up, followed by babies under 6 months and adults ages 65 to 74. Most people hospitalized for Covid since January had not received a bivalent booster, according to the CDC.

Older people in particular may have waning immunity if they haven’t been infected or vaccinated recently, Daignault said.

"That’s why the priority should be to vaccinate that particular group of patients with the fall booster," he said.

Daignault said emergency rooms generally aren’t seeing the shortness of breath, low oxygen rates or viral pneumonia that led some patients to be put on oxygen tubes or ventilators in the past.

Instead, he said, the typical Covid patients hospitalized in Burbank are older and suffering dehydration, loss of appetite, weakness or fatigue.

What does long Covid look like now?

A study published this month found that long Covid rates declined once omicron became the dominant variant. Researchers don’t know if milder disease contributed to that trend, or if population immunity was largely responsible.

But McComsey — a principal investigator for the National Institutes of Health’s RECOVER Initiative, which studies long Covid — said she's still seeing new cases of long Covid. Rapid heart rate and exercise intolerance are among the most common lingering symptoms, she said.

Each re-infection brings a risk of long Covid, McComsey added, so she doesn't think people should ignore the current rise in infections.

"What we’re seeing in long Covid clinics is not just the older strains that continue to be symptomatic and not getting better — we’re adding to that number with the new strain as well," McComsey said. "That’s why I’m not taking this new wave any less seriously."

Last night on the tube I saw a commercial encouraging getting more vaccine boosters. And who was doing the advertising? Moderna.
Profits taking a hit, maybe?