Hacker News Reader

Comment by jollybean | Hacker News Reader

? It's killed 800 000 people.

The 'privileged' comment is 'I got COVID it was just like a cold, I can do this every year ... so there's no more pandemic'.

Conflating their personal anecdote with the range of outcomes.

For now, we're still in a pandemic. Hopefully it will get better.

View on HN

Omicron didn’t kill 800 000 people. There’s also vastly more immunity (whether through vaccines or previous infections). Let’s wait and see but there’s hope it’s a different, milder disease.

(You are right of course. With the data we have now, we are quite certain that Omicron is much milder. Hopefully no lockdown is needed.)

But, personally, I would like to avoid getting Omicron, as long term effects are still unclear: does "long Omicron" exist, does it affect vaccinated, and if yes how common and severe is it. There are some recent news about long Covid: it could be micro-clots.

Unless you live as a hermit you are unlikely to avoid getting Omicron. A more rational approach would be to take steps that will maximize your odds of survival when you do get it.

https://www.medpagetoday.com/opinion/vinay-prasad/94646

Yes, like taking a vaccine. And also social distancing and avoiding others so that the peak of cases doesn't coincide with an overflow of Medical facilities resulting in your inability to get proper medical attention if needed.

There’s some evidence that most “long covid” symptoms (everything except loss of smell) in most people who claim to have it are not due to covid:

https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2787741

Specifically, reporting long covid symptoms correlates with thinking you had covid, and not as much with actually having had covid.

Of course this doesn’t mean there aren’t some real severe cases out there, but it’s probably not nearly as widespread as it seems.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com