7 ms·

It may well be less deadly, but it is far more contagious. Reinfection also seems to be not uncommon. We do not fully understand the long term effects of even a

It may well be less deadly, but it is far more contagious. Reinfection also seems to be not uncommon. We do not fully understand the long term effects of even a mild case, or indeed how repeated reinfection might compound any such effects, given that we might expect to catch it once or twice a year as opposed to once or twice in our lives for flu.

mzvkxlcvd 5y ago
better hide inside forever just to be sure
- discordance 5y ago
  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.
  - throwawayboise 5y ago
    These people have always been more vulnerable to diseases and less likely to survive them. COVID changes nothing.
    - terminatornet 5y ago
      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.
    - awb 5y ago
      Increasing mortality rates through additional threats certainly does change your life expectancy.
  - polypodiopsi 5y ago
    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.
- terminatornet 5y ago
  enjoy your long covid! https://www.njspotlightnews.org/2022/03/living-with-covid-more-children-susceptible-long-haulers-long-covid-lingering-symptoms/ https://www.njspotlightnews.org/2022/03/living-with-covid-mo...
  - kazinator 5y ago
    "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.
    - terminatornet 5y ago
      interesting, i hadn't heard that. could you tell my what research university in your ass you pulled that out from?
      - dang 5y ago
        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 https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules when posting, we'd appreciate it.
      - kazinator 5y ago
    - mzvkxlcvd 5y ago
      to add to that, its pretty common for respiratory infections to take months to clear up. its not a covid specific thing
    - Reason077 5y ago
      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.
- bryanlarsen 5y ago
  You do realize there is a happy middle ground between hiding inside forever and pretending COVID doesn't exist, right?
  - tastyfreeze 5y ago
    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.
    - tonyedgecombe 5y ago
      That is pretty much what we have done in the UK.
    - awb 5y ago
      > 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.
    - terminatornet 5y ago
      >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 https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-00155-x covid isn't endemic
    - maxerickson 5y ago
      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).
- naoqj 5y ago
  And enact laws so everybody else also is forced to stay home forever!
  - somewhereoutth 5y ago
    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.
RobertMiller 5y ago
The flu once mutated to be very deadly, and there's no particular reason it couldn't happen again. For all anybody really knows, the next super deadly flu strain might show up tomorrow. Are you going to spend your life terrified of this "what if" scenario too?
- awb 5y ago
  Preparing for the worst and mitigating risk != being terrified
  - WaitWaitWha 5y ago
    I thought this for a long long time too. I have come to realize I was wrong. If we humans always prepare for the worse, then indeed we will always be terrified. There is no way for us (I know for me) to decouple the nightmarish scenarios I ingested and prepared for, from my emotions. I want to be Spock [0], but I am not. I cannot be on the edge 24/7. I did that for decades (for work & life), it kills me and everyone around me. There is no way to enjoy this great world we live in. So, what do I do? I try to find a "good enough" preparedness for me personally, and my family. Where is that "good enough" for me? It is just a touch more than the average preparedness. I do not have a bomb shelter, but I do have a "breakdown box" in my vehicles; I do not have hidden caches of food, ammo, household needs, but I have a well stacked pantry; and, so on. [^0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spock https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spock
  - t-writescode 5y ago
    That depends on the level of preparation and the steps taken to mitigate risk. Further, sometimes those levels of preparation and mitigation are actually more harmful than the danger itself.
    - awb 5y ago
      That’s true. It’s a cost/benefit, risk/reward calculation that everyone needs to make.
Reason077 5y ago
> "once or twice in our lives for flu." I guess some people are more susceptible than others (or have more risk due to lifestyle factors), but only once or twice in a lifetime? I'd guess I've had a really bad flu at least once every 4-5 years or so on average in my lifetime, and moderate cases probably every 1-2 years. I had Covid twice as well, within a year (both times in 2020, before vaccines were available).
- maxerickson 5y ago
  I am not sure I've ever had the flu. Haven't had a severe viral illness in decades. Wouldn't want to say I remember well further back than that.
- bavell 5y ago
  I'm 30 and I've only had a bad flu once. I had to take a few days off work around 6-8 years ago.
- moistly 5y ago
  Were those actually tested to prove they are a flu virus? Because typically, people say they have the flu when in actual they have a really bad cold.
  - jbaber 5y ago
    I can't speak for this individual, but when kids are involved, it's normal to get tested and confirm, yes, you've gotten infected with influenza. A year pre-covid my whole family (kids first) got the flu. Viral test confirmed one kid got two strains in succession ("A" and "B"). Its sudden onset, sudden remission, total body exhaustion, lack of my traditional cold symptoms, etc. made it very obviously different from any cold I'd had. Previous to that, I thought "the flu" was some strong "the common cold". Or just a word for arbitrary viral infection (e.g. "stomach flu"). I understand "the flu" has an ambiguous meaning now in English, but I'll certainly recognize that kind of infection again.
slackfan 5y ago
"once or twice in our lives" flu is a seasonal illness, unless you're a complete shut in, you get it much more frequently than that, considering the modern diets and vitamin deficiencies.
- somewhereoutth 5y ago
  Except that is not true. We get the common cold quite often, but real flu very rarely. If you get the flu you know about it - it is much more severe than the common cold (which is why it kills people).
  - kodachrome64 5y ago
    I've heard "if you get the flu you know it" spread around the internet for years, but given what we know now about the wide range of severity in cases of covid can that really be said with any confidence? Are we certain there aren't people who get the flu and are asymptomatic, or who just end up with mild to moderate cold symptoms?
standardUser 5y ago
> "given that we might expect to catch it once or twice a year" There is absolutely no reason to expect that.
- awb 5y ago
  Over the last ~2 years some people caught COVID 2 or 3 times. That lines up with research saying natural antibodies might only last ~6 months. It’s at the upper end of what I might guess but it’s plausible for some portion of the population.
tptacek 5y ago
We don't fully understand the long-term effects of COVID, but there's not much we can realistically do about it (short of continuing the push to get everyone vaccinated). There is little evidence that NPIs are meaningfully effective at scale, at least when practiced in a way compatible with the normal functioning of society. I'm much more sympathetic to the death rate concerns (admittedly: Omicron makes it easy to have that kind of sympathy) than to the long-COVID stuff. Appeals to long-COVID all seem like an appeal to an application of the Precautionary Principle that, taken to any sort of logical conclusion, would shut down society. You can do shutdowns (and I supported them!) to manage an acute crisis, but you can't generally do them as a precaution.
- hollerith 5y ago
  Correct me if I am wrong, but I think "NPI" here means "non-pharmaceutical intervention". What a horrible acronym! Was it coined by the pharmaceutical industry? "To fight COVID, we have vaccines, antivirals, steroids, novel pharmaceutical approaches, and then we have a miscellaneous category of non-pharmaceutical interventions." You could've used "PPE" here. (personal protective equipment.)
  - pvg 5y ago
    It's a term of art that's been around for decades and it means something different than what "PPE" means.
- somewhereoutth 5y ago
  A full lockdown like we had at the beginning would halt even Omicron - it is not that much more contagious than the original. Unfortunately the narrative settled on it being 'mild' and 'super contagious', therefore there was not much we could do about it and it didn't matter anyway. There are practical and ideological reasons why a section of society would wish us to fail against Covid, but that is outside the scope of this discussion I feel. Measures such as customary mask wearing in public places, better ventilation, less tolerance of the 'walking sick' would certainly have an effect on the infection rate. If we are looking at a situation where health issues become more severe with each (re)infection, then this may be a reasonable approach to take.

mzvkxlcvd 5y ago

better hide inside forever just to be sure

discordance 5y ago
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.
- throwawayboise 5y ago
  These people have always been more vulnerable to diseases and less likely to survive them. COVID changes nothing.
  - terminatornet 5y ago
    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.
  - awb 5y ago
    Increasing mortality rates through additional threats certainly does change your life expectancy.
- polypodiopsi 5y ago
  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.
terminatornet 5y ago
enjoy your long covid! https://www.njspotlightnews.org/2022/03/living-with-covid-more-children-susceptible-long-haulers-long-covid-lingering-symptoms/ https://www.njspotlightnews.org/2022/03/living-with-covid-mo...
- kazinator 5y ago
  "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.
  - terminatornet 5y ago
    interesting, i hadn't heard that. could you tell my what research university in your ass you pulled that out from?
    - dang 5y ago
      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 https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules when posting, we'd appreciate it.
    - kazinator 5y ago
  - mzvkxlcvd 5y ago
    to add to that, its pretty common for respiratory infections to take months to clear up. its not a covid specific thing
  - Reason077 5y ago
    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.
bryanlarsen 5y ago
You do realize there is a happy middle ground between hiding inside forever and pretending COVID doesn't exist, right?
- tastyfreeze 5y ago
  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.
  - tonyedgecombe 5y ago
    That is pretty much what we have done in the UK.
  - awb 5y ago
    > 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.
  - terminatornet 5y ago
    >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 https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-00155-x covid isn't endemic
  - maxerickson 5y ago
    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).
naoqj 5y ago
And enact laws so everybody else also is forced to stay home forever!
- somewhereoutth 5y ago
  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.

RobertMiller 5y ago

The flu once mutated to be very deadly, and there's no particular reason it couldn't happen again. For all anybody really knows, the next super deadly flu strain might show up tomorrow. Are you going to spend your life terrified of this "what if" scenario too?

awb 5y ago
Preparing for the worst and mitigating risk != being terrified
- WaitWaitWha 5y ago
  I thought this for a long long time too. I have come to realize I was wrong. If we humans always prepare for the worse, then indeed we will always be terrified. There is no way for us (I know for me) to decouple the nightmarish scenarios I ingested and prepared for, from my emotions. I want to be Spock [0], but I am not. I cannot be on the edge 24/7. I did that for decades (for work & life), it kills me and everyone around me. There is no way to enjoy this great world we live in. So, what do I do? I try to find a "good enough" preparedness for me personally, and my family. Where is that "good enough" for me? It is just a touch more than the average preparedness. I do not have a bomb shelter, but I do have a "breakdown box" in my vehicles; I do not have hidden caches of food, ammo, household needs, but I have a well stacked pantry; and, so on. [^0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spock https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spock
- t-writescode 5y ago
  That depends on the level of preparation and the steps taken to mitigate risk. Further, sometimes those levels of preparation and mitigation are actually more harmful than the danger itself.
  - awb 5y ago
    That’s true. It’s a cost/benefit, risk/reward calculation that everyone needs to make.

Reason077 5y ago

> "once or twice in our lives for flu." I guess some people are more susceptible than others (or have more risk due to lifestyle factors), but only once or twice in a lifetime? I'd guess I've had a really bad flu at least once every 4-5 years or so on average in my lifetime, and moderate cases probably every 1-2 years. I had Covid twice as well, within a year (both times in 2020, before vaccines were available).

maxerickson 5y ago
I am not sure I've ever had the flu. Haven't had a severe viral illness in decades. Wouldn't want to say I remember well further back than that.
bavell 5y ago
I'm 30 and I've only had a bad flu once. I had to take a few days off work around 6-8 years ago.
moistly 5y ago
Were those actually tested to prove they are a flu virus? Because typically, people say they have the flu when in actual they have a really bad cold.
- jbaber 5y ago
  I can't speak for this individual, but when kids are involved, it's normal to get tested and confirm, yes, you've gotten infected with influenza. A year pre-covid my whole family (kids first) got the flu. Viral test confirmed one kid got two strains in succession ("A" and "B"). Its sudden onset, sudden remission, total body exhaustion, lack of my traditional cold symptoms, etc. made it very obviously different from any cold I'd had. Previous to that, I thought "the flu" was some strong "the common cold". Or just a word for arbitrary viral infection (e.g. "stomach flu"). I understand "the flu" has an ambiguous meaning now in English, but I'll certainly recognize that kind of infection again.

slackfan 5y ago

"once or twice in our lives" flu is a seasonal illness, unless you're a complete shut in, you get it much more frequently than that, considering the modern diets and vitamin deficiencies.

somewhereoutth 5y ago
Except that is not true. We get the common cold quite often, but real flu very rarely. If you get the flu you know about it - it is much more severe than the common cold (which is why it kills people).
- kodachrome64 5y ago
  I've heard "if you get the flu you know it" spread around the internet for years, but given what we know now about the wide range of severity in cases of covid can that really be said with any confidence? Are we certain there aren't people who get the flu and are asymptomatic, or who just end up with mild to moderate cold symptoms?

standardUser 5y ago

> "given that we might expect to catch it once or twice a year" There is absolutely no reason to expect that.

awb 5y ago
Over the last ~2 years some people caught COVID 2 or 3 times. That lines up with research saying natural antibodies might only last ~6 months. It’s at the upper end of what I might guess but it’s plausible for some portion of the population.

tptacek 5y ago

We don't fully understand the long-term effects of COVID, but there's not much we can realistically do about it (short of continuing the push to get everyone vaccinated). There is little evidence that NPIs are meaningfully effective at scale, at least when practiced in a way compatible with the normal functioning of society. I'm much more sympathetic to the death rate concerns (admittedly: Omicron makes it easy to have that kind of sympathy) than to the long-COVID stuff. Appeals to long-COVID all seem like an appeal to an application of the Precautionary Principle that, taken to any sort of logical conclusion, would shut down society. You can do shutdowns (and I supported them!) to manage an acute crisis, but you can't generally do them as a precaution.

hollerith 5y ago
Correct me if I am wrong, but I think "NPI" here means "non-pharmaceutical intervention". What a horrible acronym! Was it coined by the pharmaceutical industry? "To fight COVID, we have vaccines, antivirals, steroids, novel pharmaceutical approaches, and then we have a miscellaneous category of non-pharmaceutical interventions." You could've used "PPE" here. (personal protective equipment.)
- pvg 5y ago
  It's a term of art that's been around for decades and it means something different than what "PPE" means.
somewhereoutth 5y ago
A full lockdown like we had at the beginning would halt even Omicron - it is not that much more contagious than the original. Unfortunately the narrative settled on it being 'mild' and 'super contagious', therefore there was not much we could do about it and it didn't matter anyway. There are practical and ideological reasons why a section of society would wish us to fail against Covid, but that is outside the scope of this discussion I feel. Measures such as customary mask wearing in public places, better ventilation, less tolerance of the 'walking sick' would certainly have an effect on the infection rate. If we are looking at a situation where health issues become more severe with each (re)infection, then this may be a reasonable approach to take.