3 ms·

I swear every day a new article comes out painting COVID as the new TB, AIDs, or Syphilis. Everyone I know who's had it (and is under 60) is fine and reports no

I swear every day a new article comes out painting COVID as the new TB, AIDs, or Syphilis. Everyone I know who's had it (and is under 60) is fine and reports no/very limited lingering issues. TB has killed 1.4 million+ for years now. Malaria has killed .4 million+ per year for years now. Diabetes has killed ~1 million+ for years now. You start to add up deaths from years and years of these preventable conditions and it puts 2-3M deaths from COVID into perspective. Can't make sensational headlines with things people already know I guess?

api 6y ago
> Everyone I know who's had it is fine and reports no/very limited lingering issues. "I know someone who survived a car crash with no injuries, so car crashes are not dangerous and we don't need seatbelts."
- rgifford 6y ago
  It's 10 - 100 years of the flu all at once. It's bad, puts strain on hospitals, and deserved closures and mask mandates to flatten the curve. There's a lot of media incentive and initiative to make it appear worse than it actually is though.
roughly 6y ago
We went through a full court press as a society to try to stop COVID and still wound up with 2.8M dead that we know of, including half a million in the US alone. I'm not sure how you look at that number in the midst of the efforts to stop it and come up with the idea that the virus was overblown.
- uoaei 6y ago
  > We went through a full court press as a society to try to stop COVID That's a very generous assessment considering there were so many deniers and so many people who refused to isolate themselves.
- rgifford 6y ago
  Diabetes kills 1.4M a year. Do we reorganize society to make people walk more? No, it kills slower and more spread out. I agree with the reaction. We needed to flatten the curve to protect hospitals and hospital workers. That is the only justifiable reason for the closures in my mind.
  - uoaei 6y ago
    Are you implying that diabetes is an extremely contagious, transmissible disease that only requires one infected person and poor air circulation to spread?
  - rgifford 6y ago
    Diabetes is highly preventable and we choose not to address it societally. We may not like what that says about us, but it says something. Especially when you compare our societal response to it with our societal response to COVID.

api 6y ago

> Everyone I know who's had it is fine and reports no/very limited lingering issues. "I know someone who survived a car crash with no injuries, so car crashes are not dangerous and we don't need seatbelts."

rgifford 6y ago
It's 10 - 100 years of the flu all at once. It's bad, puts strain on hospitals, and deserved closures and mask mandates to flatten the curve. There's a lot of media incentive and initiative to make it appear worse than it actually is though.

roughly 6y ago

We went through a full court press as a society to try to stop COVID and still wound up with 2.8M dead that we know of, including half a million in the US alone. I'm not sure how you look at that number in the midst of the efforts to stop it and come up with the idea that the virus was overblown.

uoaei 6y ago
> We went through a full court press as a society to try to stop COVID That's a very generous assessment considering there were so many deniers and so many people who refused to isolate themselves.
rgifford 6y ago
Diabetes kills 1.4M a year. Do we reorganize society to make people walk more? No, it kills slower and more spread out. I agree with the reaction. We needed to flatten the curve to protect hospitals and hospital workers. That is the only justifiable reason for the closures in my mind.
- uoaei 6y ago
  Are you implying that diabetes is an extremely contagious, transmissible disease that only requires one infected person and poor air circulation to spread?
- rgifford 6y ago
  Diabetes is highly preventable and we choose not to address it societally. We may not like what that says about us, but it says something. Especially when you compare our societal response to it with our societal response to COVID.