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Comment by mikewarot | Hacker News Reader

The public health system has been stood down, for political reasons.

The crisis isn't over... many of us suffered a fate worse than death, long covid. I'm one of a huge number of effectively disabled people yanked out of contributing to society in a fully productive manner. The estimates for how many of us there are vary wildly, but we're definitely a cost that hasn't been considered.

In the future, I suspect they'll look back and wonder how we missed the long term implications of this. The closest analogy of this disease is when the explorers from Europe brought a novel disease to the American continent. They weren't all wiped out in a year or two... it took decades. I fear we're in for a long term decrease in life expectancy as a result of the folly of setting the wrong goals in the initial response.

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What could have been done differently ? What should we do diffidently going forward ?

In the beginning, we could have made a far stronger effort at containment, with a goal of Covid zero. Going forward, we need to monitor for cases of Long Covid and other post-infection complications. We also need to implement a social support system for those affected.

Shifting our framing of healthcare from a source of profit, to a vital part of our national security, might not be a horrible idea either.

Other countries have tried (and are still trying) that with little success and a lot of collateral damage.

Disclaimer so I don't sound like a troll: I figure I had what appeared to be "long COVID". I got COVID in March 2020 and within 24 hours, went from very highly cardio fit to perma-tired with what felt like half the lung capacity[1] that, long story short, lasted almost a year and required a significant amount of self-rehabilitation[2] efforts on my part to fix. I seem to be doing mostly fine now.

Now...

I try not to get into discussions about COVID with people, because it's so fraught with politics and misinformation, but when I do it seems like most people I engage with on the topic of COVID claim they have long COVID. Hell, I try not to mention my own "long COVID" experience, but when I do, people are dubious about my claims.

So, how do you quantify those who are affected versus those who've just been inactive during the pandemic and are really out of shape?

  > Shifting our framing of healthcare from a source of profit, to a vital part of our national security, might not be a horrible idea either.

This. Yes. 1000%. Treat Climate Change as a national security problem, too. Because it is.

1. Fluid, apparently, because I kept coughing that up for the next 8 months or so. Eventually, it cleared.

2. Very gradual cardio starting with quarter mile walks, pathetically enough. Also, deep breathing and diaphragm exercises.

The US used to have an international pandemic monitoring and response team.

They helped China stop SARS 1, then Trump fired them all, and then SARS 2 (Covid) happened.

The team should be rebuilt. They helped stop other, non-coronavirus pandemics too.

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