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Comment by dforrestwilson | Hacker News Reader

It amazes me that anyone is Ok with millions of people catching a brand new virus that we know very little about.

https://www.sciencealert.com/even-those-who-recover-from-cor...

Polio, but for lungs.

They’re not ok with it, it’s simply seem as the best option to control spread - almost everyone in the world will be exposed to this over the next few years. Seems fairly rational to me to attempt to control that exposure given the vast majority will experience v. mild symptoms and those who are at risk will be able to stay home and get urgent care as required if it works out.

Denial is not an effective response, nor is attempting to quarantine 60 million people indefinitely, or closing schools for indefinite periods (puts more pressure on hospitals as staff need to take time off or find childcare, kids not even confirmed as a vector here).

There are certainly different possible ways to delay and different timings for implementing different measures, it will be interesting to see which is most effective in the end. Let’s just hope that hospitals in most countries can cope with the strain.

> puts more pressure on hospitals as staff need to take time off or find childcare

Yes but you can use a trick: still allow children of medical staff in schools. That what is planned in France, for now.

Sure that sounds sensible. There will be many variations on responses to this, it’s too early to say which worked best.

I'm not really clear on how these post-infection lung issues differ from other illnesses. I've had cold/flu infections in the past where my symptoms otherwise resolved on the normal timescale but it took many weeks for my cough and lungs to entirely resolve.

For bad cases covid causes pretty bad pneumonia, resulting in scarring of the lungs and medium and long-term difficulties (e.g. reduced lung capacity, etc…). Some cases of flu have similar result, colds generally don't unless they degenerate into pneumonia.

Now you have me wondering if I've had undiagnosed pneumonia in the past...

Not a medical scientist at all, but I would assume any virus that is primarily respiratory to affect your lung function. I would bet the influenza does similar things. I don't know many people that return to their prior physiological strength after a bout with a serious virus.

Plus letting it spread to totality means many more chances for a mutation that makes it even worse or re-breaks immunity.

We already get infected by corona viruses all the time. We usually call them colds.

If you weren't worried in 2019 about letting the common cold circulate in case it may get even worse, you probably don't need to worry too much about this one either.

Viruses tend to have an incentive to not kill too many of their hosts -- because it limits how they can spread.

I'm aware they are the cause of some colds. Something that evolves from a deadly strain I would think has more chance of evolving into a more deadly one than something that is mild evolving into a more deadly strain than COVID19.

Maybe that isn't the case.

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