Over 3 in 4 Americans Contracted COVID by End of 2022, a CDC Review of Blood Data Shows; ‘Quarantrans’: How the Pandemic Hatched a New Generation of Transgender People, and other C-Virus related stories

Over 3 in 4 Americans contracted COVID by end of 2022, a CDC review of blood data shows:

More than three in four Americans over the age of 16 had contracted COVID-19 by the end of 2022, according to estimates from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

New federal data from testing roughly 143,000 blood donors nationwide found that 77.5% of surveyed individuals had seroprevalence, or COVID-19 antibodies, from infection before the start of 2023. This number varies sharply from the number of reported COVID-19 cases, which stood at 30 cases for every 100 people at the end of 2022, per the CDC.

Seroprevalence grew significantly in 2022, with an estimated 48.8% of blood donors having infection-induced antibodies as of Feb. 15, 2022, per the CDC. That number increased to an estimated 58.7% by May and 70.2% by August, before eclipsing 75% by the end of the year.

Antibodies can appear in people who have had prior infection or vaccination, the CDC notes. The study estimates the country reached an overall seroprevalence rate of 96.7% − counting infections and vaccinations − by the end of 2022.

What demographics had the highest infection-induced seroprevalence?

By the end of 2022, men showed a slightly higher rate of infection than women, with a 3.6% difference in infection-induced seroprevalence. —>READ MORE HERE

‘Quarantrans’: How the pandemic hatched a new generation of transgender people:

Isis caught Covid-19 before most people had even heard the name. It was December 2019, and the young Indian medical student had been working in a respiratory medicine unit in Mangalore when a patient came in with a strange new virus.

This was one of the first cases in their state, and nobody yet knew how to combat the disease. So when Isis tested positive, they were put into total isolation for the next three months.

“I had to submit my temperature to the nurse about three times a day,” Isis tells The Independent. “I got meals delivered. I had to monitor my blood oxygen. I could read, play video games, and that’s it.”

With nothing else to do, Isis turned to the internet. They made a bunch of new online friends, many of whom were transgender or non-binary. Suddenly, they were forced to consider a question they’d been avoiding for their entire adult life: could they, too, be trans?

“That was when I realised that a lot of these people are exactly like me; they went through the same things that I did,” says Isis, who asked for their surname to be omitted because their family and colleagues don’t know they are non-binary. “Now my entire identity was in chaos. I didn’t know who I was anymore.”

Across the world, untold numbers of people were about to go through a similar process. They were doctors and teachers, students and software engineers, caregivers and the chronically ill; chefs, playwrights, archaeologists, and night shift grocery store managers. All were caught in a titanic collision between history and their own identity.

For Oliver, then a 35-year-old student in California, it came while he was stuck in Canada helping his sister look after her new baby, pushed into a maternal role that made his discomfort with womanhood inescapable and a forced sobriety that meant he could not numb it with alcohol. —>READ MORE HERE

Follow links below to relevant/related stories and resources:

Stimulus Update: As Many As 10 Million People Are Owed COVID Relief – Are You One?



Almost 1 in 4 people in the US hadn’t gotten COVID by the end of 2022: CDC



USA TODAY: Coronavirus Updates

WSJ: Coronavirus Live Updates

YAHOO NEWS: Coronavirus Live Updates

NEW YORK POST: Coronavirus The Latest

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