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Comment by nradov | Hacker News Reader

Regardless of whether the virus is airborne or not, there is no need to require N95 masks everywhere or prohibit public gatherings. All exposure control interventions are ultimately futile. They can perhaps slow the spread down slightly to reduce impact on the healthcare system but we'll all eventually be exposed no matter what we do. Fortunately the vaccines are very effective at preventing deaths.

https://www.businessinsider.com/delta-variant-made-herd-immu...

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Why are people so obsessed with death count? We still don't understand the long term effects of this virus. You don't know the "Long Covid" count for example. And there is very little evidence that vaccines are effective at preventing that.

Death count is relatively objective. There is some fudge factor for whether somebody died “from” COVID vs “with” COVID but other than that it’s cut and dry.

That is a big advantage over comparing case numbers, which depend heavily on testing, or long COVID which there’s not even a hard definition of.

The lack of a definition for long Covid doesn't mean it's not happening. It just means we don't have good studies of it.

I don't mean to imply that long COVID isn't happening. Just offering a reason why death counts get most of the attention when we try to assess whether a vaccine/treatment/policy measure is effective.

A study to prove/disprove long term COVID issues seems awfully difficult or impossible, especially for minor, objective things (fatigue, taste, “brain fog”, etc).

Are we relying on patients to self-report whether they had COVID, what they long term effects they noticed? If so, it seems like we’re testing mass hysteria as much as actual effects.

I was likely infected and noticed the taste/smell issue. Since I’ve recovered, so has my taste/smell but it was not an immediate recovery and I have no idea if I “lost” some amount of scent sensitivity.

It is probably the same as pre-COVID, but if I heard others were reporting this issue it would be very easy to convince myself that I did lose sensitivity and report that.

Deaths can be counted with reasonable accuracy (although there are some edge cases where the primary cause of death is unclear). Whereas "long COVID" is just a vague term for a random collection of non-specific symptoms which seem to occur more commonly in recovered patients than in the general population. The science in this area is very preliminary and mostly low quality as studies have relied mainly on subjective patient reports rather than objective test results. For example, one recent widely cited study listed anxiety as a common "long COVID" symptom even though they didn't describe a plausible causative mechanism.

https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6...

In general any serious viral infection can potentially cause post-viral syndrome. That's not a valid reason for keeping pandemic control restrictions or mandates in place indefinitely. At some point we have to accept the risk and move on.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1710789/

Because it's death and it's easy to understand over long covid.

And at the economic and government level, there exists a calculus for determining the "value" of a citizen to determine whether to address a situation.

There's a good Planet Money episode on this. [1]

"They say a human life is worth about $10 million."

It's a pretty messed up thing to try and determine, the dollar value of a person's life, but if you have to make tough policy decisions then it's a tool.

[1] https://www.npr.org/2020/04/15/835571843/episode-991-lives-v...

"slow the spread down slightly to reduce impact on the healthcare system" is pretty important during these big waves. Banning outdoor gatherings is probably overkill though, I believe the worst places still have maskless indoor activities.

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