Has anyone noticed anything about COVID recently?

Yes. Wastewater at a local peak in my area and I've heard of multiple people in my social group getting sick.

any sudden deluge of friends/family getting sick
yes, though they insist it's a cold/flu and refuse to get tested

Yeah, loads of my friends in different places and their friendship groups have had it recently. I've also had it. There's definitely a lot going around rn

There is a spike in COVID in the wastewater here in Houston. Luckily I WFH and most of my hobbies involve touching grass, so I believe I have either avoided it or been asymptomatic so far.

Seems to be a duo-demic around me, Covid19 and the flu. Most workplaces out here treat covid19 like a mild tummyache, with a catch that if you are positive you must stay away, so if you catch it and are positive you're penalized, since no such thing as sick days and x amount of days missed is an auto-termination. So, people lie about their test results/don't test and take a ton of OTC medicine to mask symptoms best they can, and go in.
Obviously everyone is starting to get sick out here (from strangers I see around town to people at work) and who knows with what, I haven't caught anything yet (knock on every surface) , but it took like 3 weeks for my mail-in covid tests to get here. Next to no one wears masks since its rural, not even doctors, probably since wearing a mask is the fastest way to piss off an angry unhinged chud and there's plenty of those out here (mask related shootings is one of this state's claims to fame and its still a thing). The state lags in tracking and has for the past year or so.

its become a pain in the cock to get a fucking shot. past years we just rolled into the public health office, now its fully privatised and fenced off so the health tyrants can get their bags.

Spouse is an RN and thinks she got covid at work a couple of weeks ago thanks to some unmasked pigs she was forced to spend a lot of time with. Many people around here seem sick but wastewater levels are still quite low.
Two weeks ago at my kids’ soccer game I overheard adults asking: “how are ya avoidin’ this terrible cold that’s goin’ around?” Hundreds of people were present and maybe five were masked (including my family). I’ve been avoiding people generally since the pandemic began but lately I’ve been forced back into society. It’s sometimes amazing to overhear people’s conversations. All of them are frequently discussing societal collapse without ever connecting the dots.
- COVID shouldn't really present as a cold though, no? Runny nose is not a symptom
  
  My impression is that covid can present as almost anything. For instance, a common symptom these days seems to be puking, which AFAIK was not a thing at the beginning of the pandemic.

Fuck. I was using biobot.io for wastewater monitoring. Apparently, that's no longer active as the contract expired.

As a fun bonus, Flu season should start kicking into the gear in the next weeks. Just gonna hermit mode, nasal spray, and n-95 for the rest of my days.

Haven’t been tracking it where I am in detail, but you definitely see a lot more people wearing masks (esp older folks), and the line for the vaccine in my cvs was longer than I’ve ever seen it (not that long, but they don’t have that many people working in the pharmacy).

I know a bunch of people with COVID right now and one of them was in the hospital last week. So I know at least it's still happening

any sudden deluge of friends/family getting sick
Yes, several people I know got COVID within the past week.

There was a spat of people getting sick but it's died down since. It will probably spike again after Thanksgiving.

Several of the undergrads in my lab have had covid recently, the grad students and staff have managed to avoid it though. One of my professors caught it from their kid who got it from school.
I have a box fan taped to a bunch of MERV13 air filters next to my desk to hopefully keep the amount of virus in the lab pretty low. I also use covixyl nasal spray and actually wear a mask in obvious situations like on the bus.
- How effective are the nasal sprays, how often do you reapply it, and how long does it last?
  
  Study I read said it reduces risk of infection by about 66%. Lasts 6 hours, I usually just do it before I go into work but I work strange hours, you’d probably want to reapply if you work a normal 8 hour day

we are at the tail end of a big surge, and will likely be in another one in about a month. pls wear respirators wherever you go

Wastewater seems to be trending up, but it has been hard to tell since they changed their charts to logaritmic and the testing method to something that is supposedly more sensitive. So it's no longer comparable to say last year.
But regardless of the minimizing efforts, there is an upward trend currently where I live.
Lots of people sick around me atm. But that seems to happen once a month now during the school year.

People just occasionally getting it has now been completely normalized. Nobody cares. I'm just at the point where I hope Biden and the others who perpetrated this suffer horribly.

Yes, I can tell I got it cause it invariably fucks with my hormones and makes me very horny, the flu doesn't do that
- Lmao why is being trans so weird

Recently? No. I have friends and family that work in medicine and teaching, and COVID never really went away. Nobody masks anymore though, so yea

Lotta people sick, lotta people talking about running in to a lot of sick people. Me? I don't give a shit anymore. I made a deal with Nurgle and in exchange for hosting his fetid diseases I am immune to pain and hunger forever more.