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Comment by throwaway0a5e | Hacker News Reader

Deleted.

That person is describing their chronic condition that has nothing to do with COVID. How would you blame that on the COVID quarantine procedures?

I didn't blame their condition on Covid but that doesn't matter at this point.

They described the mental hardships that come along with a chronic condition. Is it possible that quarantine is worsening those hardships? Sure. But when you claim that COVID related hardships are due exclusively to quarantine you are basically invalidating their experience by saying that a chronic condition alone wouldn't cause these issues.

Your comment would have been totally fine as a top level comment. It is a believable theory that quarantine is worsening mental illness. Your problem was the context in which your comment existed and the way you were effectively dismissing OPs experience out of hand.

My point was Chronic conditions / isolation. can cause/worsen mental illness. Covid or otherwise Personally I’ve had the best year in a long time, because I found the right treatments. Only one month before things locked down.

I don't disagree with your point. I simply got the impression from throwaway0a5e's comment that they were saying that these issues weren't worsened by quarantine but they originated from quarantine.

>They described the mental hardships that come along with a chronic condition. It it possible that quarantine is worsening those hardships? Sure. But when you claim that COVID related hardships are due exclusively to quarantine you are basically invalidating their experience by saying that a chronic condition alone wouldn't cause these issues.

I didn't claim that but I don't think that matters to you. All I said was that it's hard to tease out the difference between covid caused hardships and covid treament caused hardships. Cancer doesn't make your hair fall out on its own.

>Your comment would have been totally fine as a top level comment. It is a believable theory that quarantine is worsening mental illness. Your problem was the context in which your comment existed and the way you were effectively dismissing OPs experience out of hand.

I didn't dismiss his hardships. I didn't even dispute them. Stop putting words in my mouth. I only pointed out that (similar symptoms in other people who have had covid) might be caused by how we're treating it (quarantining people and so on) not the disease itself.

There is no point in continuing this conversation. You deleted your comment so it is both no longer relevant and can't be referred back to for further critique. Although the fact you deleted it after already posting it from a throwaway account would seemingly show that it was a comment that you weren't willing to stand behind.

This account is how old and has how many comments? Maybe it's not a throwaway anymore. Clearly I stand behind my comment enough to still be discussing it here.

You didn't stand behind your original comment or you wouldn't have deleted it. You are only standing behind what you claim your comment said. However now no one can actually judge whether those are the same or not.

Either way, the end result is that both of us look like idiots continuing to argue over this. That is why it is pointless to continue.

I've seen this exact thing happen with a facebook acquaintance. She already posted a lot about every problem she has on social media even before she got Covid, but with covid it was another beast. She tested positive before she got symptoms but before the symptoms even really began she was reading anything and everything in full blown hypochrondia-mode and getting more and more depressed and anxious about it (from what I could surmise from the editorializing she added to every covid related article or study she shared). Within one week of testing positive she was deep into the articles about chronic issues, so it was well before quarantining period was even over. It was pretty wild to observe and she's still posting stuff these days. It's hard to distinguish what is legitimate and what's for attention. While there may be legitimate issues, I can't help but think that it would be hard to separate legitimate issues from psychosomatic ones brought about by the way she dealt with it (and how it has become part of her facebook identity). She may be an extreme case, but I could totally see the same happening with other people to a lesser degree.

Oh it can be both. She could have a chronic issue, and be an attention seeker.

Hypochondria is a major problem. Part of me finding out what was wrong to make a list of every symptom, every condition that a subset of symptoms, keep track of every test and what conditions it eliminated as possibilities. The sets of possibilities are enormous. At every step you get called a hypochondriac.

I didn’t directly find it, but when I showed table of symptoms, and what medications had been tried and failed and what tests had been run a doctor realized it was a rare autoimmune condition.

It’s such an odd thing to be given a terrible diagnosis. But feel immense relief that it’s not “in your head”

From support group, this is Apparently a common reaction.

Yeah, totally agree it can be both, but of all the people I know that have had it, she's the only one exhibiting both hypochondria and posting comments suggestive of anxiety/depression. Certainly anecdotal, but enough to merit further investigation.

> separate legitimate issues from psychosomatic ones

I know what you are trying to say, but phrasing it like this is harmful. Psychosomatic issues are absolutely legitimate. Knowing it's psychosomatic means there may be other avenues of addressing it than if it wasn't, but calling the issues "not legitimate" is very problematic, akin to telling someone with depression "just think happy thoughts".

Yeah, that was poor word choice. I guess I was going for issues actually caused by the disease and not issues that are self inflicted or inflicted by society's response to the disease.

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