Comment by spaced-out | Hacker News Reader

Comment by spaced-out | Hacker News Reader

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Dying is not the only risk from Coronavirus. There are many people who survived but will never fully recover (link below). Many SARS victims were left with long term damage to their lungs, bones, or nervous system, and we're already seeing evidence the same may be true for Coronavirus.

https://www.usatoday.com/in-depth/news/nation/2020/05/29/cor...

The US military initially barred any coronavirus survivor from enlisting, for life, regardless of how long ago or their current health. That's something they never considered doing for the flu. They've since walked back on that, and I can't help but wonder if it's because they realized it would exclude too much of their potential recruitment pool.

You're talking about this US military policy like it wasn't just another panicked reaction at the height of the crisis.

The vast vast vast majority of young people with coronavirus don't have any of those long-term side-effects. Most of them don't get more than the sniffles, if any symptoms at all.

If you've looked at the anecdotes about how readily the virus spreads, you'll realize that avoiding people until a vaccine is ready is ridiculous. The public health plan, all along, has been for most people to get the virus, but at a slower rate ("flatten the curve"). Being this deathly scared of the virus for that long just isn't a feasible plan.

As long as the long term effects aren't even well understood because a) there has not even been a long term of a post-pandemic world yet, there's not even been a mid-term and b) research is in full swing, there will be any number of medical results and outcomes that may or may not happen to a particular group of subjects. Unless you're OK with being conciously part of a given subject group and/or want to be the first that gets it in this grand experiment, taking less risk still means taking less risk and/or delaying disease and possibly changing negative outcomes into positive ones.

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