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Comment by mzvkxlcvd | Hacker News Reader

better hide inside forever just to be sure

You do realize there is a happy middle ground between hiding inside forever and pretending COVID doesn't exist, right?

Yes, that middle ground is stopping all required COVID mitigations and let people live their lives as they did before. COVID is here to stay. Time to start treating it like every other endemic disease.

ps Pretty sure the comment you responded to was sarcasm.

We should require ventilation improvements in buildings. Small cost that makes life better for everyone that uses the building.

Should also try to push back against a culture of going to work and similar when blatantly symptomatic (I don't want a cold, I don't care if it is mild, I don't want it).

> ps Pretty sure the comment you responded to was sarcasm

I think it was more mockery than sarcasm. It’s a pretty common insult to make fun of people that wear masks, quarantine, etc. as being afraid or weak. It’s not a constructive or interesting viewpoint.

>To an epidemiologist, an endemic infection is one in which overall rates are static — not rising, not falling. More precisely, it means that the proportion of people who can get sick balances out the ‘basic reproduction number’ of the virus, the number of individuals that an infected individual would infect, assuming a population in which everyone could get sick. https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-00155-x

covid isn't endemic

Except it is not like every other endemic disease. It is very contagious, systemic (i.e. more than just a respiratory infection), has a propensity to cause serious long term effects, and immunity against it seems to wane.

People lead their lives under all sorts of necessary restrictions (e.g. seatbelts, motorbike helmets). Unfortunately these extra restrictions highlighted that uncomfortable and inevitable fact. Some people have been able to deal with this better than others.

I stopped caring about any of this over a year ago, and more people are joining me every day. Nobody is going in the opposite direction.

Normal people will win through sheer attrition.

Win what? More sickness? You will care very much if debilitating long Covid happens to you. It is easy to be carefree when things are going well.

I think he's right. People are giving up on covid mitigations a lot faster than people are dying of covid. Every day I see fewer people wearing masks than before, and death rates are trending in the opposite direction.

That is pretty much what we have done in the UK.

And enact laws so everybody else also is forced to stay home forever!

and ever and ever and ever! But if Covid had a CFR of 10%, disproportionately affecting children, then yes we'd be doing whatever it took to eliminate it.

The elderly, people with health conditions and their carers can’t take such liberties.

It’s a shame how easily we overlook and disregard swathes of people.

A lot of older people also have settled down, have bigger flats or houses and aren't so badly affected as young people. Having to do with kids a lot my experience has been, that the last two years have been brutal for those in puberty e.g. The people between 12 and 30 really have been, and you will find this to be statistically evaluated, hit the hardest in terms of mental health issues on average. So from their viewpoint it is imho a valid question to ask how much they sould be willing to hold back anymore and ignore the things that are important in the lives of the young.

These people have always been more vulnerable to diseases and less likely to survive them. COVID changes nothing.

Increasing mortality rates through additional threats certainly does change your life expectancy.

so do you think we should get rid of safety warnings on products and product recalls? I mean kids and elderly people are more vulnerable to them and according to your logic, these warnings and recalls will do nothing.

enjoy your long covid!

https://www.njspotlightnews.org/2022/03/living-with-covid-mo...

"Long Covid" is mainly just hypochondria. A lot less of it is real than the hype would have you believe. The media loves spooky stuff because it generates clicks.

Hypochondriacs are a thing: they are out there. Some of them have gotten Covid-19, and that of course turns into their new obsession.

to add to that, its pretty common for respiratory infections to take months to clear up. its not a covid specific thing

Hypochondriacs do exist in the world, but I think you're being very dismissive.

Lung scarring is certainly real and can take a long time (up to a year) to fully heal. This isn't imaginary: lung function and capacity can be quantified and measured.

The thing is, there are claims circulating that long Covid can develop weeks and months after a Covid infection, and even one that was mild or symptom-free.

I don't doubt that tissue damage from Covid isn't real; like people having loss of smell or heart trouble.

But there is considerable scaremongering around it which plays into the psychology of hypochondria.

A healthy dose of skepticism is needed here, and remembering where the burden of proof lies.

I'm afraid it is all too real. Reality keeps happening regardless of whether it is click inducing or not! We should try to get handle on how serious the problem is, and what may be done about it. More science is coming in now.

Some observed effects may be real, but the alleged association isn't real until proven.

Simply, too many people have had Covid to be able to squarely blame prior Covid infection for everything weird that's happening to everyone health-wise.

Maybe those people would have developed those symptoms anyway. A pandemic broke out and so, like millions of others, they got it, and now their inevitable predicament (those weird symptoms) get blamed on that, which may be wrong.

All sorts of people had all sorts of weird health issues; and now all sorts of people with weird health issues also have a Covid-19 history, because it's common to have one.

If Covid were a rare disease, it would be different. Say that only 100 people in the United States got Covid-19 in a particular year, and then 79 of them had weird symptoms months and months later. That would strongly indicate there is something there.

Look, we all have to die. From now on, whenever someone dies (spontaneously, not accidentally), do we blame it on Covid-19, if they ever had it?

A: Did you hear? Bob died last week. Heart attack. Just turned 69.

B: Yikes, I just remembered something: didn't he have Covid-19 back in 2021 when he was, what, ... 43?

A and B, in unison: OMG, long Covid!

B: Caught up with him.

A: Got him in the end, wow.

interesting, i hadn't heard that. could you tell my what research university in your ass you pulled that out from?

Commenting like this will get you banned here. It's not what HN is for, and it destroys what it is for.

If you'd please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules when posting, we'd appreciate it.

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