Me too. Flu is annoying to me but nothing I'd have even really considered a major health threat in general. Covid changed my mind with respect to respiratory

Me too. Flu is annoying to me but nothing I'd have even really considered a major health threat in general. Covid changed my mind with respect to respiratory disease. When I finally contracted Covid (I was vaccinated + boosted in alignment with then current CDC guidelines), I ran the range of all the major symptoms like high fever, loss of smell, tachycardia, drop in O2 saturation, etc. Most of the symptoms persisted for several days before I began to recover and the tachycardia and O2 levels bothered me the most. I was actively monitoring my O2 levels and had they dropped much lower I would have gone to the ER as a precautionary measure. Even after the initial recovery, it took almost two more weeks for me to recover my sense of smell. For me, Covid is no joke and it is absolutely insane to me how basic health precautions like wearing a mask to reduce transmission, isolating, etc have become politicized.