4 ms·

There is more to life than a myopic focus on avoiding one specific illness. I’ve got a million other problems in my life to worry about. Catching Covid isn’t an

There is more to life than a myopic focus on avoiding one specific illness. I’ve got a million other problems in my life to worry about. Catching Covid isn’t anywhere near the top of that list. This applies to society as a whole as well. The damage caused by our incredibly myopic focus on Covid is far, far greater than the damage actually caused by the virus itself.

KerrAvon 4y ago
- howinteresting 4y ago
  Long flu and long pneumonia are definitely a thing.
- anon_coward_ghk 4y ago
  I am a resident doctor and based on my reading and general gestalt most healthy people aren't likely to get "long covid". Also confounding, a significant portion of long covid seems to be a mental health diagnosis (as evidenced by https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2022/09/depression-anxiety-may-escalate-chances-of-long-covid-says-study/ https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2022/09/depression-an...). People who are anxious / depressed are reporting they have "long covid". This same group is more likely to report physical disabily for other reasons eg non-specific back pain.
ipaddr 4y ago
Wear a mask and stop getting other viral illnesses. We should have been doing this before covid.
- jeffbee 4y ago
  I haven't even had a cold in years. Masks are brilliant. I even prefer to wear one now while bicycling, even though there is no health reason to wear one outdoors, just because it keeps my nose warm.
diag 4y ago
The things we do to avoid covid also help with avoiding other respiratory infections as well, all of which are pretty terrible to get in case anybody forgot about them. But saying that covid isn't causing damage is itself highly myopic.
haswell 4y ago
> The damage caused by our incredibly myopic focus on Covid is far, far greater than the damage actually caused by the virus itself. This seems much easier to say if you haven't been impacted by a serious case. I have friends who were similarly unconcerned, and who felt very differently after a month long battle with COVID, and as they continue to struggle with the after effects. So yes, there's more to life than a myopic focus on avoiding one specific illness, but the actual impact of that statement and a closer look at the actual risk tradeoffs makes things a bit less obvious, and I'm not convinced that most of the behavior people are exhibiting is myopic. > The damage caused by our incredibly myopic focus on Covid is far, far greater than the damage actually caused by the virus itself This is a statement that needs quite a bit of evidence to back it up. I think it's safe to say that no one knew what the 2nd and 3rd order effects of trying to avoid COVID itself would be, and those effects are indeed significant. But neither can we say that we should have gone back and let the first rounds overwhelm and collapse hospital systems, the impact of which is something we can't even begin to understand right now.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
gernb 4y ago
On the one side we have 20 million people dead. What's the counter factual of how many people would be dead if we'd been less myopic https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/excess-deaths-cumulative-economist-single-entity?country=~OWID_WRL https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/excess-deaths-cumulative-...

KerrAvon 4y ago

howinteresting 4y ago
Long flu and long pneumonia are definitely a thing.
anon_coward_ghk 4y ago
I am a resident doctor and based on my reading and general gestalt most healthy people aren't likely to get "long covid". Also confounding, a significant portion of long covid seems to be a mental health diagnosis (as evidenced by https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2022/09/depression-anxiety-may-escalate-chances-of-long-covid-says-study/ https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2022/09/depression-an...). People who are anxious / depressed are reporting they have "long covid". This same group is more likely to report physical disabily for other reasons eg non-specific back pain.

ipaddr 4y ago

Wear a mask and stop getting other viral illnesses. We should have been doing this before covid.

jeffbee 4y ago
I haven't even had a cold in years. Masks are brilliant. I even prefer to wear one now while bicycling, even though there is no health reason to wear one outdoors, just because it keeps my nose warm.

diag 4y ago

The things we do to avoid covid also help with avoiding other respiratory infections as well, all of which are pretty terrible to get in case anybody forgot about them. But saying that covid isn't causing damage is itself highly myopic.

haswell 4y ago

> The damage caused by our incredibly myopic focus on Covid is far, far greater than the damage actually caused by the virus itself. This seems much easier to say if you haven't been impacted by a serious case. I have friends who were similarly unconcerned, and who felt very differently after a month long battle with COVID, and as they continue to struggle with the after effects. So yes, there's more to life than a myopic focus on avoiding one specific illness, but the actual impact of that statement and a closer look at the actual risk tradeoffs makes things a bit less obvious, and I'm not convinced that most of the behavior people are exhibiting is myopic. > The damage caused by our incredibly myopic focus on Covid is far, far greater than the damage actually caused by the virus itself This is a statement that needs quite a bit of evidence to back it up. I think it's safe to say that no one knew what the 2nd and 3rd order effects of trying to avoid COVID itself would be, and those effects are indeed significant. But neither can we say that we should have gone back and let the first rounds overwhelm and collapse hospital systems, the impact of which is something we can't even begin to understand right now.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

gernb 4y ago

On the one side we have 20 million people dead. What's the counter factual of how many people would be dead if we'd been less myopic https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/excess-deaths-cumulative-economist-single-entity?country=~OWID_WRL https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/excess-deaths-cumulative-...