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Comment by ianai | Hacker News Reader

Edit-leaving discussion

Please don't delete-edit your posts like that. It leaves the thread incoherent and isn't fair to the reader or to the commenters who replied.

Nearly half of our genome is thought to have had a viral origin. It's a bit of a simplification to say that we "don't need to experience" any illness. We would not be what we are today without it.

Natural selection relies on large swathes of prior human populations dying without having offspring. That doesn't mean that going forward this continuing to happen is desirable.

We do not need to experience a comet strike, although it is a significant component of what made us what we are today.

> your body won’t ever be the same after it - no matter how seemingly innocuous

Aside from antibodies, (citation needed).

You are failing to take into account the hygiene hypothesis: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2841828/. There is evidence that a lack of exposure to germs is a cause of autoimmune and allergic diseases. While this may-or-may-not be true of exposure to COVID amongst healthy young people, blanket statements like "It’s a disease. It’s not something your body needs to experience" could use a little more nuance.

I've lived my life to the fullest extent possible over the last year, seeing friends on a regular basis, going to bars/restaurants whenever they've been open and even traveling by plane.

I caught COVID recently, and my symptoms were incredibly mild. I like to think that keeping my immune system healthy and exposed to all of the stuff it would normally see played a role in that.

You are part of the 85% who have mild symptoms. Don’t think it’s anything more than statistics, the vast majority of people who get covid either are asymptomatic or get mild symptoms.

It's completely unscientific, which is why I said "I like to think." Not making any larger claim than a personal anecdote and thought.

I am extremely anti-lockdown, however it's worth noting that a mild case of COVID does not have mild symptoms in absolute terms. It's not like a mild cold for example. It's mild relative to moderate or severe cases, which involve breathing problems and hospitalization.

And the worst part is that you may spread it to somebody (or several somebodies) who winds up with severe illness.

You can shelter at home until you have gotten over it, and then you have immunity as well.

You can only shelter when you know you have it which comes after a period of being contagious and unaware.

"research suggests that people who are infected with SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, are at their most contagious in the 24 to 48 hours before they experience symptoms." [1]

[1] https://medical.mit.edu/covid-19-updates/2020/10/exposed-to-...

Alternatively, the elderly can shelter at home until they're vaccinated. Hardly seems sensible for the world to be put on hold for a year for an illness that only a small subset of the world population are highly vulberable to.

The World Bank estimates 150 million will be pushed into extreme poverty due to COVID-related lockdowns:

https://www.worldbank.org/en/news/press-release/2020/10/07/c...

Education has also been severely disrupted:

https://www.unicef.org/press-releases/children-cannot-afford...

Yes, except elderly need care. And we didn't have the vaccine available until not that long ago.

Your suggestion that you can safely just quarantine and not be a risk to others is flat out wrong because you are at your most contagious 24-48 hours before you have symptoms.

Also you may not have immunity after you sheltered and recovered.

I'll agree with you that the response was pretty terrible though.

My point is quarantining the healthy majority for over a year, when they are not vulnerable, was not a proportionate response to the pandemic.

The links I provided give some indication of the poverty and educational disruption this causes, but unfortunately it's hard for people to admit that mass-quarantines were and continue to be wrong, because this issue has been politicized.

Maybe you're right, and quarantine after contraction of illness was not a fully effective method of transmission control, but just the elderly isolating, instead of every one, was, and is a much more proportionate and sensible way to deal with a pandemic that only the elderly are highly vulnerable to.

> only the elderly are highly vulnerable to.

This seems to be a big part of your reasoning but I don't think this is true. Yes, risk does skew there. But there are large numbers of non-elderly people who have been severely affected.

No, I know several people who got covid. They described the flu as being worse than covid. Mild mean mild.

Hospitalization by definition is considered severe.

Being less severe than the flu is not my definition of mild. A flu is a pretty bad illness.

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