6 ms·

And yet I don’t know a single person who has been infected yet. It’s crazy how skewed the infections are towards communities.

542458 6y ago
Absolutely. I also know nobody IRL who has had it (at least, nobody who has tested positive and admitted to it). That said, I know a few people online who have had it, one of whom has died - but I guess that’s the cross-community nature of things.
- ntsplnkv2 6y ago
  For most of the year this was true for me. but the last month, I am hearing of more and more getting infected. It's getting worse, anecdotally.
- ddingus 6y ago
  I have had it, and my family had it. Was rough as hell. Nobody died. I know two dead people, one more struggling in the hospital. (They have been there long enough it looks grim too.) I do not currently know anyone else that has it! The whole thing is weird. Some places seem like war zones, others tranquil, as if the whole thing is made up psyops. The shear between experiences is particularly acute when I speak with people from both extremes in the same day! People being confused is no real surprise now though it was earlier on.
symfoniq 6y ago
I'm seeing very different experiences even within my own community. I have family in the same town who don't know anyone that has died from COVID, or even had a serious case, while I personally know multiple people who have died from COVID complications. To say this difference shapes our perspectives is an understatement.
- yourapostasy 6y ago
  > To say this difference shapes our perspectives is an understatement. We should be expecting to experience this as members of a large, functionally diverse population (and within HN, a technically literate sub group) in a civilization that is blindly groping its way towards post-scarcity but the future is still Gibsonian unevenly distributed. In a less-powerful civilization, this would have been a much more disruptive pandemic. Many people are still navigating with sentience ("monkey brains") that are conditioned to expect physical calamity before taking significant action, instead of navigating with intelligence which takes abundantly more energy to engage. This is a real-time, mass experiment in operating trust and science at scale. See Peter Watts' Blindsight for more on this sentience/intelligence divide [1]. [1] https://www.rifters.com/real/Blindsight.htm#Notes https://www.rifters.com/real/Blindsight.htm#Notes
  - ddingus 6y ago
    That is a crazy deep book, just FYI.
baby 6y ago
Same for me, until the last 2 months, now I know like 10 people who got it (including my step mother and step sister), and one person who died from it (step aunt). 3 mentioned to me the loss of taste. (These were split between Paris, Switzerland, small village in France, and Bucharest.)
shibeouya 6y ago
Infections are highly localized. I live in NYC and know about 25 people who had covid, myself included, from pretty much every community.
beervirus 6y ago
Do you live in the middle of nowhere?
- ineedasername 6y ago
  Even if you live somewhere relatively well-populated, if you & most of your social sphere have been practicing solid social distancing from the very beginning it's very plausible. That was the case for me, until very recently, when my sister's child was infected. And that only happened after my sister relaxed her guard a bit and let her kid have a few visits with their friends.
  - beervirus 6y ago
    If you live in a city and work at an office with a decent number of people, chances are excellent you know somebody who’s had covid.
    - ineedasername 6y ago
      That depends on the nature of the business and how well it could transition its employees to WFH. Again, that's the environment I work in, and until recently my experience was mostly just "friend of a fried of a friend". I'm not downplaying this, I'm not saying it's not a real thing, or that my experience is universal or any other implication that this isn't a real and pressing crisis. I'm simply saying that for a variety of reasons, it's entirely possible to not be in the middle of nowhere and still not have COVID invade your usual social sphere, though such experiences will quickly become extremely rare at the current rate of infection.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
swayvil 6y ago
They may have been infected and not known it. It isn't the most impressive of plagues.
- aphextron 6y ago
  >It isn't the most impressive of plagues. It really is though. If it were more deadly like Ebola, people would be taking it far more seriously and it would burn itself out quicker. If it were less deadly, akin to the flu, we wouldn't have too many deaths regardless. It seems to sit right in the sweet spot of just deadly enough to cause mass casualties while being benign enough that a large portion of people don't take it seriously, and thus contribute to it's uncontrollable spread. This will easily end up killing more Americans than the 1918 flu by the end of next year.
  - swayvil 6y ago
    I seriously doubt that.
    - ska 6y ago
      At current rates that would happen 4 months from now; it's hard to see how that's not at least plausible.
      - pashamur 6y ago
        > At current rates that would happen 4 months from now; it's hard to see how that's not at least plausible. * Normalized by population though, you would be looking at today's equivalent of ~2.15 million deaths in the US from the 1918 flu.
        ska 6y ago
        Sure, but that wasn’t the claim.
  - rolph 6y ago
jordache 6y ago
what kind of demongraphic do you represent?
- talaketu 6y ago
  Sounds like one not from a community.
bookofjoe 6y ago
Me neither! I'm shocked that's the case.
ineedasername 6y ago
In the last few weeks it's invaded my social sphere. Before that, not so much. I suspect it's becoming a lot less of an abstract issue for many people right now.
hezag 6y ago
A possible explanation: > As the COVID-19 epidemic continues to ravage the American public, an unsurprising story emerges: Poor communities are hot spots for COVID transmission. The death rate from COVID-19 appears to be staggeringly high among African Americans compared to whites. The Washington Post reports, for example, that while 14% of the Michigan population is black, 40% of COVID-19 deaths are among blacks. > The link between poverty and infectious disease is well-documented. Influenza-related hospitalizations in low-income neighborhoods are nearly twice that of high-income neighborhoods. Pediatric hospitalizations from bacterial pneumonia are significantly higher in low-income neighborhoods compared to high-income neighborhoods. The same is largely true of tuberculosis in the U.S. where active transmission of TB is ongoing in poor neighborhoods – patterns that are not simply due to more people living in these areas. Reference: https://theconversation.com/covid-19-is-hitting-black-and-poor-communities-the-hardest-underscoring-fault-lines-in-access-and-care-for-those-on-margins-135615 https://theconversation.com/covid-19-is-hitting-black-and-po...

542458 6y ago

Absolutely. I also know nobody IRL who has had it (at least, nobody who has tested positive and admitted to it). That said, I know a few people online who have had it, one of whom has died - but I guess that’s the cross-community nature of things.

ntsplnkv2 6y ago
For most of the year this was true for me. but the last month, I am hearing of more and more getting infected. It's getting worse, anecdotally.
ddingus 6y ago
I have had it, and my family had it. Was rough as hell. Nobody died. I know two dead people, one more struggling in the hospital. (They have been there long enough it looks grim too.) I do not currently know anyone else that has it! The whole thing is weird. Some places seem like war zones, others tranquil, as if the whole thing is made up psyops. The shear between experiences is particularly acute when I speak with people from both extremes in the same day! People being confused is no real surprise now though it was earlier on.

symfoniq 6y ago

I'm seeing very different experiences even within my own community. I have family in the same town who don't know anyone that has died from COVID, or even had a serious case, while I personally know multiple people who have died from COVID complications. To say this difference shapes our perspectives is an understatement.

yourapostasy 6y ago
> To say this difference shapes our perspectives is an understatement. We should be expecting to experience this as members of a large, functionally diverse population (and within HN, a technically literate sub group) in a civilization that is blindly groping its way towards post-scarcity but the future is still Gibsonian unevenly distributed. In a less-powerful civilization, this would have been a much more disruptive pandemic. Many people are still navigating with sentience ("monkey brains") that are conditioned to expect physical calamity before taking significant action, instead of navigating with intelligence which takes abundantly more energy to engage. This is a real-time, mass experiment in operating trust and science at scale. See Peter Watts' Blindsight for more on this sentience/intelligence divide [1]. [1] https://www.rifters.com/real/Blindsight.htm#Notes https://www.rifters.com/real/Blindsight.htm#Notes
- ddingus 6y ago
  That is a crazy deep book, just FYI.

baby 6y ago

Same for me, until the last 2 months, now I know like 10 people who got it (including my step mother and step sister), and one person who died from it (step aunt). 3 mentioned to me the loss of taste. (These were split between Paris, Switzerland, small village in France, and Bucharest.)

shibeouya 6y ago

Infections are highly localized. I live in NYC and know about 25 people who had covid, myself included, from pretty much every community.

beervirus 6y ago

Do you live in the middle of nowhere?

ineedasername 6y ago
Even if you live somewhere relatively well-populated, if you & most of your social sphere have been practicing solid social distancing from the very beginning it's very plausible. That was the case for me, until very recently, when my sister's child was infected. And that only happened after my sister relaxed her guard a bit and let her kid have a few visits with their friends.
- beervirus 6y ago
  If you live in a city and work at an office with a decent number of people, chances are excellent you know somebody who’s had covid.
  - ineedasername 6y ago
    That depends on the nature of the business and how well it could transition its employees to WFH. Again, that's the environment I work in, and until recently my experience was mostly just "friend of a fried of a friend". I'm not downplaying this, I'm not saying it's not a real thing, or that my experience is universal or any other implication that this isn't a real and pressing crisis. I'm simply saying that for a variety of reasons, it's entirely possible to not be in the middle of nowhere and still not have COVID invade your usual social sphere, though such experiences will quickly become extremely rare at the current rate of infection.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

swayvil 6y ago

They may have been infected and not known it. It isn't the most impressive of plagues.

aphextron 6y ago
>It isn't the most impressive of plagues. It really is though. If it were more deadly like Ebola, people would be taking it far more seriously and it would burn itself out quicker. If it were less deadly, akin to the flu, we wouldn't have too many deaths regardless. It seems to sit right in the sweet spot of just deadly enough to cause mass casualties while being benign enough that a large portion of people don't take it seriously, and thus contribute to it's uncontrollable spread. This will easily end up killing more Americans than the 1918 flu by the end of next year.
- swayvil 6y ago
  I seriously doubt that.
  - ska 6y ago
    At current rates that would happen 4 months from now; it's hard to see how that's not at least plausible.
    - pashamur 6y ago
      > At current rates that would happen 4 months from now; it's hard to see how that's not at least plausible. * Normalized by population though, you would be looking at today's equivalent of ~2.15 million deaths in the US from the 1918 flu.
      - ska 6y ago
        Sure, but that wasn’t the claim.
- rolph 6y ago

jordache 6y ago

what kind of demongraphic do you represent?

talaketu 6y ago
Sounds like one not from a community.

bookofjoe 6y ago

Me neither! I'm shocked that's the case.

ineedasername 6y ago

In the last few weeks it's invaded my social sphere. Before that, not so much. I suspect it's becoming a lot less of an abstract issue for many people right now.

hezag 6y ago

A possible explanation: > As the COVID-19 epidemic continues to ravage the American public, an unsurprising story emerges: Poor communities are hot spots for COVID transmission. The death rate from COVID-19 appears to be staggeringly high among African Americans compared to whites. The Washington Post reports, for example, that while 14% of the Michigan population is black, 40% of COVID-19 deaths are among blacks. > The link between poverty and infectious disease is well-documented. Influenza-related hospitalizations in low-income neighborhoods are nearly twice that of high-income neighborhoods. Pediatric hospitalizations from bacterial pneumonia are significantly higher in low-income neighborhoods compared to high-income neighborhoods. The same is largely true of tuberculosis in the U.S. where active transmission of TB is ongoing in poor neighborhoods – patterns that are not simply due to more people living in these areas. Reference: https://theconversation.com/covid-19-is-hitting-black-and-poor-communities-the-hardest-underscoring-fault-lines-in-access-and-care-for-those-on-margins-135615 https://theconversation.com/covid-19-is-hitting-black-and-po...