12 ms·

“ To sum it up, I'd put my breakthrough case of COVID-19 right up there with my worst bouts of flu.” Exactly. I see no reason why I’d take strong measures to a

by ummonk 5y ago

“ To sum it up, I'd put my breakthrough case of COVID-19 right up there with my worst bouts of flu.” Exactly. I see no reason why I’d take strong measures to avoid getting exposed to it (now that I and 90% of adults around me are fully vaccinated) when I never did the same for the flu. Somewhere along the way we seem to have lost sight of what constitutes a normal disease burden.

ceejayoz 5y ago
Perhaps we were too lackadaisical about flu. I've certainly enjoyed not getting the usual bouts of cold and flu my kids would bring home from school every winter. I hope at least one lesson we take from COVID is "people should be able to take sick days rather than coming to work/school sick".
- rejectedandsad 5y ago
  It’s perfectly fine for that to be ones risk tolerance and to take mitigation steps. It’s not to mandate them by government fiat.
  - ceejayoz 5y ago
    We've been quite comfortable with vaccine mandates for decades. My kids needed proof of MMR, DTaP, and several others to be able to attend school. Colleges have similar requirements. Hand washing is mandated "by government fiat" in many scenarios, as are quite a few other OHSA or public health scenarios - try working on a construction site without a hard hat, for example.
    - josephcsible 5y ago
      In 2019 or earlier, when have you had to show an ID and proof of vaccination to enter any building other than your own house? And for schools, didn't you used to have private schools or homeschooling as an option to avoid these kind of mandates? And hard hats aren't really comparable, since you can take them back off at the end of the workday.
      - ceejayoz 5y ago
        > In 2019 or earlier, when have you had to show an ID and proof of vaccination to enter any building other than your own house? I live in upstate New York - one of the more aggressive states for COVID measures - and have not yet had to do this, a year and a half into the pandemic. (I did, however, have to prove my vaccination status and present ID when I became a naturalized US citizen quite a few years ago. https://www.uscis.gov/policy-manual/volume-8-part-b-chapter-9 https://www.uscis.gov/policy-manual/volume-8-part-b-chapter-...) > And for schools, didn't you used to have private schools or homeschooling as an option to avoid these kind of mandates? These still exist.
        josephcsible 5y ago
        > These still exist. But they don't get you out of the mandates anymore. Adults who already finished school used to never have to tell anyone their vaccination status to participate in society.
        ceejayoz 5y ago
        Again, I literally had to prove my vaccination status to be allowed to stay in the US. In 2009… and I’ve yet to present my COVID card anywhere in upstate NY.
        pandaman 5y ago
        Non-citizens do not have the right of citizens, you might have known already, but one can be denied the green card and/or not allowed into the country for having a communicable disease like AIDS or TB. If I follow your logic, it's okay to have AIDS, TB, leprosy, etc. passports too?
        ceejayoz 5y ago
        > If I follow your logic, it's okay to have AIDS, TB, leprosy, etc. passports too? If they start spreading exponentially via aerosols, sure.
- GeorgeTirebiter 5y ago
  People can do that, stay home when sick. Then they just have fewer vacation days. At least, that's how it works for me. I suppose we could think of it as an incentive to remain healthy.
  - javagram 5y ago
    Sick time should be separate from vacation time for that reason. Otherwise, people have an incentive to come into work while sick so that they can use their paid time off for holidays and vacation when they aren’t ill. On the other hand, I guess there are some people who when given a separate bank of sick time feel it’s ok to use it as a 2nd pool of PTO. My workplace gives a separate set of sick time though and it’s always seemed a better way of handling things to me.
    - mbg721 5y ago
      For office workers, the whole remote experiment of the last year seems to be the equilibrium. You can still "come to work" even if you feel like death, you're just allowed to do it from home until you're not contagious.
  - nradov 5y ago
    That's quite a privileged perspective. Many low wage, non-union workers don't have that flexibility.
  - jopsen 5y ago
    > People can do that, stay home when sick. Then they just have fewer vacation days. I experienced that too, when I lived in the US. In Denmark I have separate sick leave. Staying home sick doesn't count as PTO. For more than a few days I'll need a note from the doctor. I think it's around 6 months before sick leave is grounds for termination. In any case, in the US people don't take sick days unless it's really bad. Obviously, this must cause more infections.
SavantIdiot 5y ago
> have lost sight of what constitutes a normal disease burden. I don't think so. This is only "mild flu" for vaccinated people. We still have kept sight that people who can't be vaxed can die, and people who ignorantly chose not to vax are killing people because they clog the ICUs and prevent people from getting non-covid life-saving care. So we haven't lost sight, people just choose not to see. You just can't teach some people to be unselfish and considerate.
- ummonk 5y ago
  The people who can’t be vaxxed have extremely low death rates. It’s possible RSV is actually a bigger danger to them than covid (and increases in youth suicides due to lockdowns appear to be higher than the number of lives saved from covid). As to ignorant people filling ICUs, that’s not a risk where I live in SF that has near universal vaccination and relatively low hospitalization rates. The UK and Denmark have demonstrated you can love on with life after high vaccination rates are achieved.
- IncRnd 5y ago
  > and people who ignorantly chose not to vax are killing people because they clog the ICUs and prevent people from getting non-covid life-saving care. Honest question - would you provide information for that please? The two articles I've seen on that were both completely retracted within a few days of publication. I know unvaxxed people, and I want to have all available information before conversing with them.
  - rdtwo 5y ago
    The hospitals are clogged because the basic in person care is crippled by covid prevention practices. So instead of going to your pcp to deal with an ear infection or bladder infection the only place you can go is hospital as now any time you have covid like symptoms you have to get a covid test to get access to care. Similarly you can’t get care if you have a slow growing cancer or need minor surgery. All these people are going to have negative outcomes
    - 5y ago
nkozyra 5y ago
> Exactly. I see no reason why I’d take strong measures to avoid getting exposed to it (now that I and 90% of adults around me are fully vaccinated) when I never did the same for the flu. Because it's up to 10x more deadly than influenza, particularly for vulnerable populations. https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/health/conditions-and-diseases/coronavirus/coronavirus-disease-2019-vs-the-flu https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/health/conditions-and-diseas...
- ummonk 5y ago
  The flu is equally if not more deadly in populations without preexisting immunity (e.g. isolated tribes). Once people acquire immunity (preferable through multiple doses of vaccination), it’s really not any different than the flu.
  - nkozyra 5y ago
    Do you live in an isolated tribe? Otherwise, I don't see how that's particularly relevant to your comment. In most populations, today, COVID is significantly more dangerous and deadly than influenza.
    - ummonk 5y ago
      I now have antibodies and memory cells against covid (because I’m fully vaccinated), so covid is not deadlier than the flu for me.
      - nkozyra 5y ago
        Yes, for you. The point I've been stressing is that it's (mask wearing, social distancing) not just about you. Because you don't live in an isolated tribe, some percentage of your population remains at risk of contracting covid and perpetuating its spread.
- javagram 5y ago
  Your link does not seem to support that Covid-19 is 10x more deadly than influenza in a vaccinated person, like the poster you are replying to. It’s 10x more deadly if you haven’t been vaccinated but the vaccines are showing 10-20x decrease in hospitalization and death, bringing the risk more into flu range.
nemo44x 5y ago
Somewhere along the line we went from “flatten the curve” to “no one can ever get sick again”. So we all took a vaccine that we were told prevents (edit - should say “protects” not “prevents”)us from getting sick but then we are told unvaccinated people can get vaccinated people sick. The logic doesn’t make any sense. The messaging has been really inconsistent throughout this to the point where you sort of start feeling like the experts don't really know what they’re talking about either.
- depingus 5y ago
  > were told prevents us from getting sick I never heard this. I belive many people jumped to this conclusion on their own. Because they associate vaccination with immunization.
  - Sevii 5y ago
    People believe this because most vaccines are sterilizing. If you get the measles vaccine you can't get measles again ever. The Covid and flu vaccines don't work that way.
    - javagram 5y ago
      Re: measles, this isn’t necessarily the case. Breakthrough infections have been known and discussed before.[0] The measles vaccine efficacy is estimated at 97% implying 3% chance of a breakthrough. However, Covid-19 vaccine efficacy against infection was originally 93-95% but has dropped to 60% or less against the Delta variant. A lot of discussion seems to ignore this. To get back to the 90% plus efficacy we’ll need the vaccine to be re-tuned against delta, which no one seems in a rush to do for some reason… [0] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31039835/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31039835/ “In an outbreak of measles in Gothenburg, Sweden, breakthrough infections (i.e. infections in individuals with a history of vaccination) were common. [. . .] Sixteen of 28 confirmed cases of measles in this outbreak were breakthrough infections.”
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ASinclair 5y ago
> Somewhere along the way we seem to have lost sight of what constitutes a normal disease burden. Alternatively this pandemic may have permanently shifted what we consider to be a normal disease burden. Maybe we shouldn't accept tens of thousands of Flu deaths every year if there are some relatively simple changes we can make to reduce them.
- spookthesunset 5y ago
  If simple means forcing everybody, including toddlers, to wear masks… I’ll hard pass.
jrochkind1 5y ago
You are conflating two things. This guy's illness was about the same as worst bout of flu -- that doesn't mean that's necessarily typical, but let's say it is. Currently, in most of the USA, your chances of getting covid are probably a LOT higher than that of getting the flu. Way more people are getting covid than getting a bad case of the flu. So it's not quite the same. If the chances of getting the flu were always this high, including the chances of really severe disease or death for some (say, those with organ transplants)... we probably would have been doing something different. But I agree with you we shoudln't have to, don't need to, and can't sustainably simply shut down life forever. I find the experts advice reassuring. IF you are vaccinated: > Even with delta, the goal is not to go back to a lockdown mindset, though, says Malani. "My hope is that people who are fully vaccinated should really feel like this risk is manageable." > "Feel good about spending time with your friends, or having a small dinner party, but make sure everyone is vaccinated," she says. For now I am wearing a mask at the store (not that big a deal), and avoiding large public unmasked gatherings. In part because I want to try to help get community transmission rates a lot lower so we can then do more. But I agree I'm not gonna do it forever.
Barrin92 5y ago
>Somewhere along the way we seem to have lost sight of what constitutes a normal disease burden. Having relatives in the healthcare sector and hearing stories during bad flu waves (2020 was not the first year in recent memory where people needed to be treated in makeshift tents[1]) we do indeed have lost sight of the disease burden, but probably not in the way you imagine. I was lucky to spent the first few months of the covid-19 pandemic in Japan, and I can tell you I did not see overrun hospitals at any point because people by and large take hygiene and avoiding the spread of infectious disease seriously. [1]https://time.com/5107984/hospitals-handling-burden-flu-patients/ https://time.com/5107984/hospitals-handling-burden-flu-patie...
- nradov 5y ago
  I am skeptical whether you have drawn the correct conclusion from your experience in Japan. There seems to be something else going on beyond just taking hygiene seriously. https://noahcarl.substack.com/p/why-have-there-been-so-few-covid https://noahcarl.substack.com/p/why-have-there-been-so-few-c...
  - darkerside 5y ago
    I think the article leaves a lot of space for the possibility that the Japanese have kept infections low because it is a low physical contact culture, and that there have been fewer deaths due to the lack of obesity.
    - nradov 5y ago
      Those are possible hypotheses but remain unproven.
    - deleted 5y ago
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  - ryan_lane 5y ago
    Early in the pandemic they also understood the issue of poor airflow and took that seriously. For example, on the trains (even in winter) they keep a number of the windows open to ensure airflow. Schools were required to keep the classroom windows open and breaks were required at set intervals to ensure people were moving in and out of the classrooms. Restaurants were requested to keep their windows and doors open. To be honest, I don't think hygiene is taken seriously here. Most people don't wash their hands after using the bathroom, especially at home. That said, they also don't shake hands, and they do use hand sanitizer and wipe their hands with towelettes before meals. I think what OP really means here is the universal mask usage, which is common during flu (and allergy) season, which definitely had an impact. Of course, Japanese people rarely take off work when they're sick. They're actively discouraged from doing so, as almost no companies offer sick leave. You're required to take your sick leave from your vacation time, and most companies offer less than 10 days of vacation time. I think the most impactful thing during covid is that the government actively pushed companies to allow work from home, which is a major shift in how people work here. I, for instance, have never gone into the office (I started during covid) and my company is allowing work from home as the default, forever. The government response as a whole is pretty comical, and they can't really be given much credit. They started a "travel around the country" program called GoTo Travel, which definitely resulted in covid being spread from Tokyo around the country, during one of their larger waves. Their vaccine roll out has been one blunder after another. Overall, I think the way the culture works here, and their past experiences with SARS, and their normal handling of the flu, is why the country hasn't been overrun, even though it's mostly stayed open the entire time.
CarelessExpert 5y ago
> now that I and 90% of adults around me are fully vaccinated I'm curious, where did that 90% figure come from? Around here, of the eligible population, about 1 of every 3 has no shot at all, one 1 out of 4 with just a single shot. If you look at the full population, including minors and other ineligible groups, the numbers are even worse. That means if I go to the grocery store, I'm absolutely gonna be in proximity to someone unvaccinated at some point along the way.
- sprafa 5y ago
  Assume he’s in a EU country/US state with high vaccination rate.
  - dehrmann 5y ago
    In Santa Clara county (Silicon Valley), 87.6% residents over 12 have has one dose, 82.4% are fully vaccinated. I have no idea if people eager for boosters are getting double counted.
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- Wowfunhappy 5y ago
  Minors aren't at serious risk, and 99% of the remaining unvaccinated population has made a conscious choice to live dangerously.
  - CarelessExpert 5y ago
    No, some large percentage of the remaining unvaccinated population have decided to put people like my immunocompromised mother-in-law at risk through their actions. I'm genuinely sick of this "I got mine jack" attitude toward vaccination. Getting vaccinated isn't just about you. Unfortunately we apparently have a good solid 20-30% of the population who care only about themselves. But, who should be surprised. This is just American radical individualism coming home to roost. And that's ignoring the fact that with Delta there's early indications that it's leading to an increase in the number of younger folks hospitalized or worse.
jlokier 5y ago
I don't know what policy around flu should be, but I'd like to share my data points about flu, for those who think flu is no big deal. The last two times I had flu (first age 36, then a few years later), I was unable to work for an entire month each time. For most of that time I struggled to get out of bed, and couldn't think much. I was too weak and tired, so I slept most of the time or did low energy activities, and relied on other people to bring me food. The first one meant I missed Christmas: My partner went to an all-day get together with our mutual friends, and I stayed home in bed, too ill to go. My other flu story would be, a good friend and former employer got flu one day when he was visiting his wife and children (he normally worked in another country to them). Few days into it, he lay down on a sofa and died. I don't know the rest of the story, but I miss him. I think my life would be different if he were still around. These experiences certainly gave me more respect for flu as a killer.
- istorical 5y ago
  The last two times you had flu with severity great enough to alert you that you had flu.
  - mdp2021 5y ago
    Those two experiences you want to avoid in the future, and which define you behaviour (modelled on the impact of the bullets you may get, not on the non-impact of the bullets you may miss).
  - nradov 5y ago
    About a third of influenza infections are asymptomatic. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/18230677/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/18230677/
- darkerside 5y ago
  > My partner went to an all-day get together with our mutual friends, and I stayed home in bed, too ill to go. So your partner did not quarantine? Avoid non-essential trips? Wear a mask? I don't think you'd disagree that our COVID precautions at _this_ point are incongruous with the past, but highlighting it for others reading.
senectus1 5y ago
in what country are yoy that 90% of the adults are fully vaccinated? Also, "Think of the children". those that can't get vaccinated but are now dying from the delta strain?
- disgruntledphd2 5y ago
  Ireland, almost. (I think we're at 92% with one dose, and 89% with two).
  - senectus1 5y ago
    thats astounding. well done you lot :-)
    - disgruntledphd2 5y ago
      It's not quite as good as it seems, because we have a lot of kids in Ireland, but it's still massively reassuring.
zumu 5y ago
> Exactly. I see no reason why I’d take strong measures to avoid getting exposed to it (now that I and 90% of adults around me are fully vaccinated) when I never did the same for the flu. It should really go without saying COVID-19 is much more transmissible than any recent version of the Flu. Comparisons of symptoms and severity in healthy adults has never been the sticking issue. I'm disheartened to see people on HN of all places thinking solely as an individuals and not about the management of health care resources at a population level. Health care resources are finite and viruses like COVID can still spread exponentially even with current vaccination rates. From the beginning, the goal has been to lower transmission, lower cases, and therefore lower the burden on the _world_ health care system to a tenable degree. Yes, there may be _more_ effective measures we can take at this point, such as ramping up vaccination, but at the end of the day, if you don't transmit the disease to others or end up in the hospital yourself, you are helping the cause. tldr; Whether or not it poses a risk to _you_ is besides the point, in so far as the risk of overburdening the health care system remains.
- spookthesunset 5y ago
  The healthcare system also had more than a year and a half to build capacity to deal with this stuff? Why should society be required to bail out hospitals by adhering to arbitrary restrictions on their life?
  - darkerside 5y ago
    I don't disagree with you, but your tone does smack of biting the hand that feeds.
    - spookthesunset 5y ago
      I mean all this “protect the hospital” crap is bailing them out. Might as well be honest about it. People should be pissed that hospitals didn’t build capacity… why they aren’t, beats me.
      - objectivetruth 5y ago
justin66 5y ago
> Exactly. Not quite. The worst bouts of flu are the ones that kill people. Some of the influenza A strains are no joke.
derbOac 5y ago
Most seasonal upper respiratory illnesses don't routinely cause loss of smell or taste, which should be a clue to something more nefarious potentially going on. If I were the author I'd worry about subtle frontal brain injury. For me, boosters and nasal vaccines can't come fast enough (nor can the ability to administer them to younger children). At some point I think this virus will become like the flu in terms of public health implications, but I don't think it's quite there yet.
- nradov 5y ago
  Loss of smell in COVID-19 isn't caused by frontal brain injury. https://hms.harvard.edu/news/how-covid-19-causes-loss-smell https://hms.harvard.edu/news/how-covid-19-causes-loss-smell The risk to younger children is minimal. https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-02423-8 https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-02423-8
  - derbOac 5y ago
    I think the jury's still out about frontal damage: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/scitranslmed.abf8396 https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/scitranslmed.abf8396 https://www.medpagetoday.com/opinion/second-opinions/94301 https://www.medpagetoday.com/opinion/second-opinions/94301 As for children, yes, the risk is much smaller than for adults, but it's a moving target due to viral evolution, and why not reduce it as much as possible?

by ummonk 5y ago

ceejayoz 5y ago

Perhaps we were too lackadaisical about flu. I've certainly enjoyed not getting the usual bouts of cold and flu my kids would bring home from school every winter. I hope at least one lesson we take from COVID is "people should be able to take sick days rather than coming to work/school sick".

rejectedandsad 5y ago
It’s perfectly fine for that to be ones risk tolerance and to take mitigation steps. It’s not to mandate them by government fiat.
- ceejayoz 5y ago
  We've been quite comfortable with vaccine mandates for decades. My kids needed proof of MMR, DTaP, and several others to be able to attend school. Colleges have similar requirements. Hand washing is mandated "by government fiat" in many scenarios, as are quite a few other OHSA or public health scenarios - try working on a construction site without a hard hat, for example.
  - josephcsible 5y ago
    In 2019 or earlier, when have you had to show an ID and proof of vaccination to enter any building other than your own house? And for schools, didn't you used to have private schools or homeschooling as an option to avoid these kind of mandates? And hard hats aren't really comparable, since you can take them back off at the end of the workday.
    - ceejayoz 5y ago
      > In 2019 or earlier, when have you had to show an ID and proof of vaccination to enter any building other than your own house? I live in upstate New York - one of the more aggressive states for COVID measures - and have not yet had to do this, a year and a half into the pandemic. (I did, however, have to prove my vaccination status and present ID when I became a naturalized US citizen quite a few years ago. https://www.uscis.gov/policy-manual/volume-8-part-b-chapter-9 https://www.uscis.gov/policy-manual/volume-8-part-b-chapter-...) > And for schools, didn't you used to have private schools or homeschooling as an option to avoid these kind of mandates? These still exist.
      - josephcsible 5y ago
        > These still exist. But they don't get you out of the mandates anymore. Adults who already finished school used to never have to tell anyone their vaccination status to participate in society.
        ceejayoz 5y ago
        Again, I literally had to prove my vaccination status to be allowed to stay in the US. In 2009… and I’ve yet to present my COVID card anywhere in upstate NY.
        pandaman 5y ago
        Non-citizens do not have the right of citizens, you might have known already, but one can be denied the green card and/or not allowed into the country for having a communicable disease like AIDS or TB. If I follow your logic, it's okay to have AIDS, TB, leprosy, etc. passports too?
        ceejayoz 5y ago
        > If I follow your logic, it's okay to have AIDS, TB, leprosy, etc. passports too? If they start spreading exponentially via aerosols, sure.
GeorgeTirebiter 5y ago
People can do that, stay home when sick. Then they just have fewer vacation days. At least, that's how it works for me. I suppose we could think of it as an incentive to remain healthy.
- javagram 5y ago
  Sick time should be separate from vacation time for that reason. Otherwise, people have an incentive to come into work while sick so that they can use their paid time off for holidays and vacation when they aren’t ill. On the other hand, I guess there are some people who when given a separate bank of sick time feel it’s ok to use it as a 2nd pool of PTO. My workplace gives a separate set of sick time though and it’s always seemed a better way of handling things to me.
  - mbg721 5y ago
    For office workers, the whole remote experiment of the last year seems to be the equilibrium. You can still "come to work" even if you feel like death, you're just allowed to do it from home until you're not contagious.
- nradov 5y ago
  That's quite a privileged perspective. Many low wage, non-union workers don't have that flexibility.
- jopsen 5y ago
  > People can do that, stay home when sick. Then they just have fewer vacation days. I experienced that too, when I lived in the US. In Denmark I have separate sick leave. Staying home sick doesn't count as PTO. For more than a few days I'll need a note from the doctor. I think it's around 6 months before sick leave is grounds for termination. In any case, in the US people don't take sick days unless it's really bad. Obviously, this must cause more infections.

SavantIdiot 5y ago

> have lost sight of what constitutes a normal disease burden. I don't think so. This is only "mild flu" for vaccinated people. We still have kept sight that people who can't be vaxed can die, and people who ignorantly chose not to vax are killing people because they clog the ICUs and prevent people from getting non-covid life-saving care. So we haven't lost sight, people just choose not to see. You just can't teach some people to be unselfish and considerate.

ummonk 5y ago
The people who can’t be vaxxed have extremely low death rates. It’s possible RSV is actually a bigger danger to them than covid (and increases in youth suicides due to lockdowns appear to be higher than the number of lives saved from covid). As to ignorant people filling ICUs, that’s not a risk where I live in SF that has near universal vaccination and relatively low hospitalization rates. The UK and Denmark have demonstrated you can love on with life after high vaccination rates are achieved.
IncRnd 5y ago
> and people who ignorantly chose not to vax are killing people because they clog the ICUs and prevent people from getting non-covid life-saving care. Honest question - would you provide information for that please? The two articles I've seen on that were both completely retracted within a few days of publication. I know unvaxxed people, and I want to have all available information before conversing with them.
- rdtwo 5y ago
  The hospitals are clogged because the basic in person care is crippled by covid prevention practices. So instead of going to your pcp to deal with an ear infection or bladder infection the only place you can go is hospital as now any time you have covid like symptoms you have to get a covid test to get access to care. Similarly you can’t get care if you have a slow growing cancer or need minor surgery. All these people are going to have negative outcomes
  - 5y ago

nkozyra 5y ago

> Exactly. I see no reason why I’d take strong measures to avoid getting exposed to it (now that I and 90% of adults around me are fully vaccinated) when I never did the same for the flu. Because it's up to 10x more deadly than influenza, particularly for vulnerable populations. https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/health/conditions-and-diseases/coronavirus/coronavirus-disease-2019-vs-the-flu https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/health/conditions-and-diseas...

ummonk 5y ago
The flu is equally if not more deadly in populations without preexisting immunity (e.g. isolated tribes). Once people acquire immunity (preferable through multiple doses of vaccination), it’s really not any different than the flu.
- nkozyra 5y ago
  Do you live in an isolated tribe? Otherwise, I don't see how that's particularly relevant to your comment. In most populations, today, COVID is significantly more dangerous and deadly than influenza.
  - ummonk 5y ago
    I now have antibodies and memory cells against covid (because I’m fully vaccinated), so covid is not deadlier than the flu for me.
    - nkozyra 5y ago
      Yes, for you. The point I've been stressing is that it's (mask wearing, social distancing) not just about you. Because you don't live in an isolated tribe, some percentage of your population remains at risk of contracting covid and perpetuating its spread.
javagram 5y ago
Your link does not seem to support that Covid-19 is 10x more deadly than influenza in a vaccinated person, like the poster you are replying to. It’s 10x more deadly if you haven’t been vaccinated but the vaccines are showing 10-20x decrease in hospitalization and death, bringing the risk more into flu range.

nemo44x 5y ago

Somewhere along the line we went from “flatten the curve” to “no one can ever get sick again”. So we all took a vaccine that we were told prevents (edit - should say “protects” not “prevents”)us from getting sick but then we are told unvaccinated people can get vaccinated people sick. The logic doesn’t make any sense. The messaging has been really inconsistent throughout this to the point where you sort of start feeling like the experts don't really know what they’re talking about either.

depingus 5y ago
> were told prevents us from getting sick I never heard this. I belive many people jumped to this conclusion on their own. Because they associate vaccination with immunization.
- Sevii 5y ago
  People believe this because most vaccines are sterilizing. If you get the measles vaccine you can't get measles again ever. The Covid and flu vaccines don't work that way.
  - javagram 5y ago
    Re: measles, this isn’t necessarily the case. Breakthrough infections have been known and discussed before.[0] The measles vaccine efficacy is estimated at 97% implying 3% chance of a breakthrough. However, Covid-19 vaccine efficacy against infection was originally 93-95% but has dropped to 60% or less against the Delta variant. A lot of discussion seems to ignore this. To get back to the 90% plus efficacy we’ll need the vaccine to be re-tuned against delta, which no one seems in a rush to do for some reason… [0] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31039835/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31039835/ “In an outbreak of measles in Gothenburg, Sweden, breakthrough infections (i.e. infections in individuals with a history of vaccination) were common. [. . .] Sixteen of 28 confirmed cases of measles in this outbreak were breakthrough infections.”
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ASinclair 5y ago

> Somewhere along the way we seem to have lost sight of what constitutes a normal disease burden. Alternatively this pandemic may have permanently shifted what we consider to be a normal disease burden. Maybe we shouldn't accept tens of thousands of Flu deaths every year if there are some relatively simple changes we can make to reduce them.

spookthesunset 5y ago
If simple means forcing everybody, including toddlers, to wear masks… I’ll hard pass.

jrochkind1 5y ago

You are conflating two things. This guy's illness was about the same as worst bout of flu -- that doesn't mean that's necessarily typical, but let's say it is. Currently, in most of the USA, your chances of getting covid are probably a LOT higher than that of getting the flu. Way more people are getting covid than getting a bad case of the flu. So it's not quite the same. If the chances of getting the flu were always this high, including the chances of really severe disease or death for some (say, those with organ transplants)... we probably would have been doing something different. But I agree with you we shoudln't have to, don't need to, and can't sustainably simply shut down life forever. I find the experts advice reassuring. IF you are vaccinated: > Even with delta, the goal is not to go back to a lockdown mindset, though, says Malani. "My hope is that people who are fully vaccinated should really feel like this risk is manageable." > "Feel good about spending time with your friends, or having a small dinner party, but make sure everyone is vaccinated," she says. For now I am wearing a mask at the store (not that big a deal), and avoiding large public unmasked gatherings. In part because I want to try to help get community transmission rates a lot lower so we can then do more. But I agree I'm not gonna do it forever.

Barrin92 5y ago

>Somewhere along the way we seem to have lost sight of what constitutes a normal disease burden. Having relatives in the healthcare sector and hearing stories during bad flu waves (2020 was not the first year in recent memory where people needed to be treated in makeshift tents[1]) we do indeed have lost sight of the disease burden, but probably not in the way you imagine. I was lucky to spent the first few months of the covid-19 pandemic in Japan, and I can tell you I did not see overrun hospitals at any point because people by and large take hygiene and avoiding the spread of infectious disease seriously. [1]https://time.com/5107984/hospitals-handling-burden-flu-patients/ https://time.com/5107984/hospitals-handling-burden-flu-patie...

nradov 5y ago
I am skeptical whether you have drawn the correct conclusion from your experience in Japan. There seems to be something else going on beyond just taking hygiene seriously. https://noahcarl.substack.com/p/why-have-there-been-so-few-covid https://noahcarl.substack.com/p/why-have-there-been-so-few-c...
- darkerside 5y ago
  I think the article leaves a lot of space for the possibility that the Japanese have kept infections low because it is a low physical contact culture, and that there have been fewer deaths due to the lack of obesity.
  - nradov 5y ago
    Those are possible hypotheses but remain unproven.
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- ryan_lane 5y ago
  Early in the pandemic they also understood the issue of poor airflow and took that seriously. For example, on the trains (even in winter) they keep a number of the windows open to ensure airflow. Schools were required to keep the classroom windows open and breaks were required at set intervals to ensure people were moving in and out of the classrooms. Restaurants were requested to keep their windows and doors open. To be honest, I don't think hygiene is taken seriously here. Most people don't wash their hands after using the bathroom, especially at home. That said, they also don't shake hands, and they do use hand sanitizer and wipe their hands with towelettes before meals. I think what OP really means here is the universal mask usage, which is common during flu (and allergy) season, which definitely had an impact. Of course, Japanese people rarely take off work when they're sick. They're actively discouraged from doing so, as almost no companies offer sick leave. You're required to take your sick leave from your vacation time, and most companies offer less than 10 days of vacation time. I think the most impactful thing during covid is that the government actively pushed companies to allow work from home, which is a major shift in how people work here. I, for instance, have never gone into the office (I started during covid) and my company is allowing work from home as the default, forever. The government response as a whole is pretty comical, and they can't really be given much credit. They started a "travel around the country" program called GoTo Travel, which definitely resulted in covid being spread from Tokyo around the country, during one of their larger waves. Their vaccine roll out has been one blunder after another. Overall, I think the way the culture works here, and their past experiences with SARS, and their normal handling of the flu, is why the country hasn't been overrun, even though it's mostly stayed open the entire time.

CarelessExpert 5y ago

> now that I and 90% of adults around me are fully vaccinated I'm curious, where did that 90% figure come from? Around here, of the eligible population, about 1 of every 3 has no shot at all, one 1 out of 4 with just a single shot. If you look at the full population, including minors and other ineligible groups, the numbers are even worse. That means if I go to the grocery store, I'm absolutely gonna be in proximity to someone unvaccinated at some point along the way.

sprafa 5y ago
Assume he’s in a EU country/US state with high vaccination rate.
- dehrmann 5y ago
  In Santa Clara county (Silicon Valley), 87.6% residents over 12 have has one dose, 82.4% are fully vaccinated. I have no idea if people eager for boosters are getting double counted.
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Wowfunhappy 5y ago
Minors aren't at serious risk, and 99% of the remaining unvaccinated population has made a conscious choice to live dangerously.
- CarelessExpert 5y ago
  No, some large percentage of the remaining unvaccinated population have decided to put people like my immunocompromised mother-in-law at risk through their actions. I'm genuinely sick of this "I got mine jack" attitude toward vaccination. Getting vaccinated isn't just about you. Unfortunately we apparently have a good solid 20-30% of the population who care only about themselves. But, who should be surprised. This is just American radical individualism coming home to roost. And that's ignoring the fact that with Delta there's early indications that it's leading to an increase in the number of younger folks hospitalized or worse.

jlokier 5y ago

I don't know what policy around flu should be, but I'd like to share my data points about flu, for those who think flu is no big deal. The last two times I had flu (first age 36, then a few years later), I was unable to work for an entire month each time. For most of that time I struggled to get out of bed, and couldn't think much. I was too weak and tired, so I slept most of the time or did low energy activities, and relied on other people to bring me food. The first one meant I missed Christmas: My partner went to an all-day get together with our mutual friends, and I stayed home in bed, too ill to go. My other flu story would be, a good friend and former employer got flu one day when he was visiting his wife and children (he normally worked in another country to them). Few days into it, he lay down on a sofa and died. I don't know the rest of the story, but I miss him. I think my life would be different if he were still around. These experiences certainly gave me more respect for flu as a killer.

istorical 5y ago
The last two times you had flu with severity great enough to alert you that you had flu.
- mdp2021 5y ago
  Those two experiences you want to avoid in the future, and which define you behaviour (modelled on the impact of the bullets you may get, not on the non-impact of the bullets you may miss).
- nradov 5y ago
  About a third of influenza infections are asymptomatic. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/18230677/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/18230677/
darkerside 5y ago
> My partner went to an all-day get together with our mutual friends, and I stayed home in bed, too ill to go. So your partner did not quarantine? Avoid non-essential trips? Wear a mask? I don't think you'd disagree that our COVID precautions at _this_ point are incongruous with the past, but highlighting it for others reading.

senectus1 5y ago

in what country are yoy that 90% of the adults are fully vaccinated? Also, "Think of the children". those that can't get vaccinated but are now dying from the delta strain?

disgruntledphd2 5y ago
Ireland, almost. (I think we're at 92% with one dose, and 89% with two).
- senectus1 5y ago
  thats astounding. well done you lot :-)
  - disgruntledphd2 5y ago
    It's not quite as good as it seems, because we have a lot of kids in Ireland, but it's still massively reassuring.

zumu 5y ago

> Exactly. I see no reason why I’d take strong measures to avoid getting exposed to it (now that I and 90% of adults around me are fully vaccinated) when I never did the same for the flu. It should really go without saying COVID-19 is much more transmissible than any recent version of the Flu. Comparisons of symptoms and severity in healthy adults has never been the sticking issue. I'm disheartened to see people on HN of all places thinking solely as an individuals and not about the management of health care resources at a population level. Health care resources are finite and viruses like COVID can still spread exponentially even with current vaccination rates. From the beginning, the goal has been to lower transmission, lower cases, and therefore lower the burden on the _world_ health care system to a tenable degree. Yes, there may be _more_ effective measures we can take at this point, such as ramping up vaccination, but at the end of the day, if you don't transmit the disease to others or end up in the hospital yourself, you are helping the cause. tldr; Whether or not it poses a risk to _you_ is besides the point, in so far as the risk of overburdening the health care system remains.

spookthesunset 5y ago
The healthcare system also had more than a year and a half to build capacity to deal with this stuff? Why should society be required to bail out hospitals by adhering to arbitrary restrictions on their life?
- darkerside 5y ago
  I don't disagree with you, but your tone does smack of biting the hand that feeds.
  - spookthesunset 5y ago
    I mean all this “protect the hospital” crap is bailing them out. Might as well be honest about it. People should be pissed that hospitals didn’t build capacity… why they aren’t, beats me.
    - objectivetruth 5y ago

justin66 5y ago

> Exactly. Not quite. The worst bouts of flu are the ones that kill people. Some of the influenza A strains are no joke.

derbOac 5y ago

Most seasonal upper respiratory illnesses don't routinely cause loss of smell or taste, which should be a clue to something more nefarious potentially going on. If I were the author I'd worry about subtle frontal brain injury. For me, boosters and nasal vaccines can't come fast enough (nor can the ability to administer them to younger children). At some point I think this virus will become like the flu in terms of public health implications, but I don't think it's quite there yet.

nradov 5y ago
Loss of smell in COVID-19 isn't caused by frontal brain injury. https://hms.harvard.edu/news/how-covid-19-causes-loss-smell https://hms.harvard.edu/news/how-covid-19-causes-loss-smell The risk to younger children is minimal. https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-02423-8 https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-02423-8
- derbOac 5y ago
  I think the jury's still out about frontal damage: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/scitranslmed.abf8396 https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/scitranslmed.abf8396 https://www.medpagetoday.com/opinion/second-opinions/94301 https://www.medpagetoday.com/opinion/second-opinions/94301 As for children, yes, the risk is much smaller than for adults, but it's a moving target due to viral evolution, and why not reduce it as much as possible?