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Comment by trainsplanes | Hacker News Reader

> because the CDC says on their website that the flu is more dangerous than covid for young people.

Depends what you're defining as young people. Under 5 as in those quotes, maybe virtually no risk. But I know otherwise healthy people in their 20s who got sick over a year ago. Their sense of smell and taste is still completely fried with no sign of recovery.

Maybe that can happen with a bad flu sometimes, but it seems way more common with covid. It seems like there's some nerve damage resulting from the virus that we don't yet fully understand.

The vaccine seemed like a safer gamble than potentially forever losing my ability to taste, or worse.

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> Their sense of smell and taste is still completely fried with no sign of recovery.

This is exceptionally rare. The vast majority of people who develop anosmia regain their smell and taste. And yes, it does happen with other viruses.

> Maybe that can happen with a bad flu sometimes, but it seems way more common with covid.

The danger here is the distance between what it "seems" like, and what it actually is. If you're basing your judgment on media reports, you have to understand that you're not getting a balanced picture. The news media dwells on the most exceptional examples, and neglects the (many more) examples of people who have no serious side effects at all.

> It seems like there's some nerve damage resulting from the virus that we don't yet fully understand.

The current best evidence is that the loss of smell is not nerve damage, but infection of the epithelial cells surrounding the nerves in the nose.

I'm basing my experience on people I know who got infected. So are many other people who got vaccinated.

People who are screaming about the vaccine being a bigger risk than the virus are the ones being fed info by outrageous media reporting.

> I'm basing my experience on people I know who got infected. So are many other people who got vaccinated.

At this point, I know -- quite literally -- well over a dozen people who have had it. Varying ages. None had anything more than a mild illness. Nobody had lingering symptoms of any consequence (maybe a cough).

Either your sample is statistically skewed, my sample is statistically skewed, or....there is some creative remembering happening here.

> People who are screaming about the vaccine being a bigger risk than the virus are the ones being fed info by outrageous media reporting.

I am not going to defend every person saying this, but there are certain age groups in which this is absolutely true. The EU is not recommending vaccination of children for exactly this reason.

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