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Comment by mschuster91 | Hacker News Reader

Not to mention what's called "long covid" - basically even if you are an athlete, you risk lung damage to an extent even a life of chain smoking can't achieve, and there have been reports of coronavirus passing the blood-brain barrier and damaging the central nerve system.

Coronavirus has many, many, MANY ways of affecting a person for decades to come, and we're learning more about it every day.

Edit: since I'm getting downvoted, I assume this comes from people who want sources, so here they are:

- https://www.cbsnews.com/news/covid-lungs-scarring-smokers-lu...

- https://www.helmholtz.de/en/health/what-damage-is-potentiall...

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It's not yet clear that covid can result in lung damage more severe than a life of chain smoking, this kind of long term research hasn't been done yet.

Not really sure if either can cause more severe lung damage then they do. The worst case end scenarios of both are your lungs being so damaged that it kills you. Hard to make it worse than that.

Though one manages it in a few weeks while the other takes decades.

There are multiple reports of extremely damaged post-COVID lungs already, see my edit. Of course, the amount of these cases is low - but even if it turns out to be one in a million cases, I'd never gamble on these odds.

Is the answer to ignore anecdotes until long term data has been done? Sometimes science doesn't have the needed solution quickly enough to minimize damage. Being overly cautious in times of uncertainty has always been a human risk minimalization technique, might as well wield it, in moderation of course.

No, but it's similarly unwise to over-index on them.

Can you restate your point in non programmer jargon? The downside is chronic health problems, the upside is minimal. Theres not much unwise about waiting for more info and staying cautious.

>It's not yet clear that covid can result in lung damage more severe than a life of chain smoking

that seems like a very low bar to set

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