Comment by JSavageOne | Hacker News Reader

Comment by JSavageOne | Hacker News Reader

> 13.3% of influenza patients also have the same spectrum of diagnoses

I recently got and recovered from COVID-19. By far the worst part about having COVID-19 for me was the psychological toll and anxiety of having a virus that the governments and media make out to be as if it's as deadly as the bubonic plague, when in reality at least anecdotally for me and my friends who've gotten it, none of us experienced more than mild sickness, and all of us recovered within a week or two.

When I first got COVID19, I remember telling my girlfriend, and her breaking down in tears, having told me horror stories of young healthy people who died from COVID. I mentioned "hey at least I'll have the antibodies / T Cells", and she responded that there have been cases of people getting reinfected, which may be true - but is certainly not the norm. You're just more likely to see these horror stories being paraded around the news than the vast majority of patients who only experience mild symptoms and recover with no lingering symptoms.

I don't mean to dismiss the suffering of those who've fallen seriously ill and died from COVID as that is obviously tragic, but at least in my experience, none of my 20+ friends I've spoken to (mostly in their 20s / 30s) who got COVID got more than mild sickness, and all recovered after a week or two.

Were we all lucky? Maybe. But my point is, there seems to be an enormous discrepancy between how the governments and media are portraying this disease, and the reality of this disease. Dishonest alarmist journalism like this that tries to paint a narrative of a deadly disease without putting numbers in proper context, calling "anxiety" a mental illness during a pandemic, not properly controlling for the general context of the fact that we're in a global pandemic with government lockdowns, travel bans, and people out of work is a serious problem that only exacerbates the general anxiety and depression of the public.

Of course people should know about the horror stories too, but we're really not getting a balanced perspective here, which is a huge problem and has serious mental consequences.

I got the virus too and I agree with you 100%. My symptoms were just fever in the first day then I lost all my sense of smell (which is still recovering), but what scared me the most was the psychological effects I had to deal with.

I tried to get myself busy, did my workouts everyday, worked from home, that helped a lot. But was mostly at night when I was doing nothing that bad thoughts would try to take control. Some days I would think that I was having difficult to breath, start to get dizzy, but it was all in my mind. I then would calm down, take some deep breaths and watch all the "symptoms" disappear.

I blame that on the apocalyptic coverage the media gave to this disease, every day on every channel, if you tuned in, all you would see were patients in respirators, people dying and mass graves.

Now what I try to do is be very optimistic when talking to people about the disease. I say to them that although it can be a dangerous disease, the majority of those infected will recover without trouble and that I was one of them, so they can have a good case to remember against all the bad news they already have heard. It may help them when they had to deal with it too, as sadly I think everyone will have at some point.

Both of these things are true:

1. Covid-19 is pretty mild for most people that get it.

2. Covid-19 is very harmful and potentially fatal for some subset of people that get it.

As you noted, what annoys me about the media is that they are only focused on truth #2, and ignore truth #1 entirely.

Why would they focus on that? We do not even know if it is true, although it does seem to be. I think that media should focus on is the truth #1.5, which is that lots of people end up having long term weird complications, medically not serious, but significantly lowering QOL, such as permuted sense of smell when your favorite food smells like a wet rag , and you coffee like gasoline. Or hair loss, like it happened to Alyssa Milano.

> I think that media should focus on is the truth #1.5, which is that lots of people end up having long term weird complications

I disagree with the phrasing "lots of". Anecdotally, none of the 20 or so people I know who've gotten COVID and lost their taste/smell didn't recover their taste/smell within 2-7 days. The percentage of people who don't recover taste/smell seem to be an extremely tiny minority. Using the term "lots of" implies it is commonplace and is extremely disingenuous unless you have some data to justify that level of frequency.

The very fact you heard about it already means it is not that rare. I hear/read about it many forums, I personally know someone who suffers mild case of long Covid. It is extremely disingenuous arrogantly paint everyone as morons, who really cannot assess the level of danger around us. People like you, most probably young and healthy, have no skin in the game, no appropriate education, who most probably indeed will have no consequences, are trying to tell everyone to be not afraid about the consequences, confirmed by publications in medical magazines. I mean are serious?

> having a virus that the governments and media make out to be as if it's as deadly as the bubonic plague

I don't understand. The media isn't doing this. The US government is definitely not doing this (not sure where you are). And you were probably exaggerating when you said bubonic plague, but the death rate is like 10-15% for that. The media is definitely not saying that it's even close to that at a population level.

If you actually listen to the media, they all say that all of the precautions are mostly for those in vulnerable populations. In fact, the entire reason we wear masks is because covid is so mild in healthy people that you might not know when you get it, and then you'll spread it.

I do not know, it was known form pretty early that before roughly 35 y.o. it is probably not extremely dangerous, but still can worsen your health in long-term.

> but still can worsen your health in long-term.

Grave statements like this with little supporting data that are accepted as gospel are exactly what I'm talking about. The reality is that there is no substantial evidence to suggest that this virus has serious long-term implications for the majority of people who get infected.

Could there still be long-term consequences we don't know about? Sure, but until there's data demonstrating such, it's incredibly disingenuous to state this as commonplace or fact just because a tiny minority of outliers experienced them.

It's almost like people are exaggerating the truth to rationalize the drastic lockdown measures being undertaken.

First of all, the main, if not the only reason for lockdowns is extremely short-term need to curb the infection spread, to stop the hospitals from being overflown. It is still interesting that after a year of pandemic, lots of people do not realize this. Second, you are not a medical scientist, are you? 1% of people who got infected suffer from grave consequences. Even if only 1% survivors will have long-term problems with health, this is already burden of 2 000 000 sick people just in United States. Now, SARS-1 (which is closely related to SARS-2) is known to cause serious side effects. This thing is less severe, obviously than SARS-1, but no one really did any large scale follow-up. I get it you hate lockdowns, you want life "as normal", but at least you need be honest about, not trying to paint everyone as stupid coward simpletons, to justify your inner motivations.

Seems you had no or almost no contacts with it in the age ranges it affects worst.

I'm aware of that. Doesn't change the extreme narrative the government and media are peddling.

That's not what I've gotten out of govt and media reporting.

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