COVID(4)

NAME
covid - coronavirus disease caused by SARS-CoV-2

SYNOPSIS
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DESCRIPTION
The covid family of diseases, attached to humanity via a spike protein bus in the year 2019 as covid19, is a contagious respiratory and neurological disease caused by the coronavirus SARS-CoV-2.

covid is spread human-to-human mainly through small droplets and aerosols, especially in crowds, closed spaces, and close contact. Some approaches to mitigate transmission:

•   Good ventilation with fresh air, and high-efficiency particulate air filtration (HEPA), can mitigate accumulation of aerosols in indoor settings, for activities that can't be moved outdoors.

•   Widespread use of paper or cloth facial masks covering mouth and nose is an effective population-wide mitigation reducing dispersal of droplets and aerosols from carriers, many of whom are asymptomatic or presymptomatic.

•   Wearing European FFP2 masks, American N95 masks, or Chinese KN95 masks, if appropriately fitted to the face, reduces individual risk of contracting covid. (However, a mask with an output vent to facilitate exhaling should be worn only with another paper or cloth mask over it, to avoid spreading exhaled virus particles if the wearer is a carrier.)

Several vaccines have been developed, tested in large-scale randomized clinical trials, and approved by regulatory bodies to immunize populations against SARS-CoV-2:
•   Moderna (United States)
•   Pfizer-BioNTech (multinational)
•   Sputnik V (Russia)
•   Oxford-AstraZeneca (multinational)
•   Novavax (United Kingdom and South Africa)
•   BBIBP-CorV (multinational)
•   CoronaVac (Brazil)
•   Johnson & Johnson, a.k.a. Janssen (multinational)
•   Covaxin (India)
•   Convidecia (multinational)

The approved covid vaccines are some of the safest and most efficacious vaccines in history, with almost all of them preventing essentially 100% of severe cases of the disease and hospitalization, and preventing the vast majority of mild cases, according to randomized clinical trials.

SEE ALSO
United States CDC — Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Key Things to Know About COVID-19 Vaccines, March 13, 2021, https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/vaccines/keythingstoknow.html. United States CDC — Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Safety of COVID-19 Vaccines, March 25, 2021, https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/vaccines/safety/safety-of-vaccines.html. United States CDC — Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Possible Side Effects After Getting a COVID-19 Vaccine, March 16, 2021, https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/vaccines/expect/after.html. Zeynep Tufekci, 5 Pandemic Mistakes We Keep Repeating, February 26, 2021, The Atlantic, https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/02/how-public-health-messaging-backfired/618147/.

HISTORY
2020 was a sordid year.

AUTHORS
The covid man page was written by Taylor R Campbell <riastradh@NetBSD.org>, sourced from many thousands of hours of furiously doomscrolling epidemiology Twitter to pass the time during the pandemic.

CAVEATS
The covid vaccines may cause muscle pain, redness, swelling, tiredness, headache, chills, fever, and/or nausea. (Sure beats catching the plague, though!)

BUGS
covid is technically caused by a virus, not a bug.