3 ms·

I know of people who still won't go to church because of all of the above and are, for all intents and purposes, still deathly afraid to leave their homes. Rega

I know of people who still won't go to church because of all of the above and are, for all intents and purposes, still deathly afraid to leave their homes. Regardless of what some might say in argument against your point(s), I absolutely do think that part of the public health emergency was the abject panic that ensued following COVID. I stopped exercising caution earlier on in the pandemic, because in my estimation my relatively good health, age, and literature that was available (D3 being an important predictor of outcomes) meant that I was unlikely to have a poor outcome. I did eventually get COVID in Dec 2021, but aside from a total loss of smell for 12 days and a dry cough it was little more than an annoyance. I isolated, as appropriate, for a week or so (never had a fever) and went about my business. Yet, nearly two months later, I remembered telling someone that I had had COVID, they recoiled and backed away as if I were still infectious. Fear is a strong emotion. Part of it is that the general public doesn't understand viruses. We can't see them. That's a problem, because it's an unseen enemy with (at the time) unknown outcomes—especially with rapidly changing information. I don't think the media helped either, because they relish in bad news. My mother was very nearly hospitalized last year, though. Not from COVID but from RSV. I suspect over-sanitization reduced our baseline immunity to your typical run-of-the-mill pathogens, but I'm neither a doctor nor a biologist so that's little more than a guess. I have some friends who are nurses who suggested the theory, and they may be right.

marcosdumay 3y ago
To be fair, not going to church was about the most impactful thing somebody could to if going to church was a normal activity. And this is probably still saving those people some cases of flu and influenza. This has to be weighted against the benefit, but in a time of free-spread and lots of people dying, closing churches was a very good policy.
- hn976827 3y ago
  In hindsight, much more important than closing schools.
JPKab 3y ago
Both you and I had similar experiences. My wife was hospitalized for unknown bacterial infection what the doctors assumed was caused by masks. I contracted covid in February 2021, before my age group was eligible for vaccine. Like you I had recognized relatively early on that my level of physical fitness and nutrition likely made it low risk for me. Like you I had minimal symptoms except for a total loss of sense of smell. And also like you I encountered a completely irrational response when I would tell people months later I caught it. This included people who should have been educated enough to know better. The really fun part was then having people pretend like the fact I had caught covid and recovered from it didn't translate into immunity. This despite the fact that only months earlier they had been asking people who had recover from covid to come in and donate plasma to help treat vulnerable patients. And also despite the fact that there had already been studies including millions of data points from Israel and Qatar that showed natural immunity to be robust. Like most things with covid, the null hypothesis was inverted. Instead of assuming that like the vast majority of viruses, natural immunity was a thing, they inverted it to assuming that natural immunity was not a thing until proven otherwise. Living in Boulder, one of my favorite things was noticing how the same exact people who refuse to eat genetically modified vegetables for produce of any kind elevated a genetic products efficacy above the organic immunity provided by the human body fighting off the actual virus. No matter your position on natural immunity from covid, I think we can all agree that a person refusing to eat genetically modified produce having this opinion is irrational and inconsistent. I think I eventually concluded that the vast majority of the public are mathematically and statistically illiterate, and therefore are incapable of understanding science despite claiming that they "follow the science". In case anyone thinks I'm only picking on one side, I also have a half-brother who is obese and in his fifties who refused to get the vaccine when he obviously should have. He ended up catching the virus and being bedridden for over a week at his house, and then hid this from the family until his wife told us.
- FrustratedMonky 3y ago
  There is a lot of opinions now, and you seem to be conflating a lot of groups of people ad-hoc just as they are of you. It is true that you can re-catch Covid, so the people claiming Natural immunity as some cure-all for the situation are wrong. What if we didn't lock down, and let it spread naturally, then the entire population like your brother would be sick at the same time, thus overwhelming the system and more people dying.
blub 3y ago
> I suspect over-sanitization reduced our baseline immunity to your typical run-of-the-mill pathogens This is an old wives’ tale, we’re swimming in pathogens at any moment of our lives. Our immune system is always working.

marcosdumay 3y ago

To be fair, not going to church was about the most impactful thing somebody could to if going to church was a normal activity. And this is probably still saving those people some cases of flu and influenza. This has to be weighted against the benefit, but in a time of free-spread and lots of people dying, closing churches was a very good policy.

hn976827 3y ago
In hindsight, much more important than closing schools.

JPKab 3y ago

Both you and I had similar experiences. My wife was hospitalized for unknown bacterial infection what the doctors assumed was caused by masks. I contracted covid in February 2021, before my age group was eligible for vaccine. Like you I had recognized relatively early on that my level of physical fitness and nutrition likely made it low risk for me. Like you I had minimal symptoms except for a total loss of sense of smell. And also like you I encountered a completely irrational response when I would tell people months later I caught it. This included people who should have been educated enough to know better. The really fun part was then having people pretend like the fact I had caught covid and recovered from it didn't translate into immunity. This despite the fact that only months earlier they had been asking people who had recover from covid to come in and donate plasma to help treat vulnerable patients. And also despite the fact that there had already been studies including millions of data points from Israel and Qatar that showed natural immunity to be robust. Like most things with covid, the null hypothesis was inverted. Instead of assuming that like the vast majority of viruses, natural immunity was a thing, they inverted it to assuming that natural immunity was not a thing until proven otherwise. Living in Boulder, one of my favorite things was noticing how the same exact people who refuse to eat genetically modified vegetables for produce of any kind elevated a genetic products efficacy above the organic immunity provided by the human body fighting off the actual virus. No matter your position on natural immunity from covid, I think we can all agree that a person refusing to eat genetically modified produce having this opinion is irrational and inconsistent. I think I eventually concluded that the vast majority of the public are mathematically and statistically illiterate, and therefore are incapable of understanding science despite claiming that they "follow the science". In case anyone thinks I'm only picking on one side, I also have a half-brother who is obese and in his fifties who refused to get the vaccine when he obviously should have. He ended up catching the virus and being bedridden for over a week at his house, and then hid this from the family until his wife told us.

FrustratedMonky 3y ago
There is a lot of opinions now, and you seem to be conflating a lot of groups of people ad-hoc just as they are of you. It is true that you can re-catch Covid, so the people claiming Natural immunity as some cure-all for the situation are wrong. What if we didn't lock down, and let it spread naturally, then the entire population like your brother would be sick at the same time, thus overwhelming the system and more people dying.

blub 3y ago

> I suspect over-sanitization reduced our baseline immunity to your typical run-of-the-mill pathogens This is an old wives’ tale, we’re swimming in pathogens at any moment of our lives. Our immune system is always working.