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Comment by adriand | Hacker News Reader

I think I'd like a version of the famous "cloud-to-butt" browser plugin that changes Omicron/COVID/etc. to "common cold". Then headlines like, "The Omicron variant will spread quickly through the U.S., experts say — the threat it poses is less certain." will read, "The common cold will spread quickly through the U.S., experts say — the threat it poses is less certain."

Then a) I won't feel as stressed out, and b) I won't read the article, since it sounds ridiculous.

This plugin would only make sense for people who are vaccinated of course, since for those people, like myself, COVID has been defanged. Isn't it time for those of us who have had two doses, or even three (I have yet another one scheduled a week from now...), to stop worrying and start enjoying life the way it is meant to be lived?

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> Isn't it time for those of us who have had two doses, or even three (I have yet another one scheduled a week from now...), to stop worrying and start enjoying life the way it is meant to be lived?

Yes, and I would add, time to stop worrying so much about what other people are doing. People are getting really worked up about how so-and-so hasn't been vaccinated or so-and-so doesn't wear a mask properly. It's one more newly promoted category upon which we can focus our vehement, irrational tribalism.

Yeah it's brought the moral busybodies out of the woodwork like nothing else, I'd bet a fair amount that the people snitching on their neighbours for breaking lockdown rules or harassing strangers in public about masks would be exactly the same people siding with things like witchcraft trials or McCarthyism in ages past. Some people identify very strongly with the established norms of the day and will be aggressively conformist towards them because that's who they are, regardless of how much merit those norms actually have.

One social impact of the pandemic is that nobody can mind their own damn business any more, and the reason is because we decided basically overnight in March 2020 that catching an airborne virus now has a moral dimension it never had before. You catch a cold, you catch the flu, you catch norovirus, it's just something shitty that happens to you by chance rather than being anyone's fault. When it comes to other diseases people do attach moral judgements; someone gives you HIV or clamydia or syphilis so it automatically has to be someone else's fault that you got sick. Because of the way society has come to see COVID, that disease has been put in the latter category rather than the former which is incorrect in my opinion.

Society will never heal from the wounds of this pandemic until COVID is just something shitty you happen to catch rather than something someone gave to you because of a moral failure.

Relevant Brass Eye clip - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f3xUjw2BCYE

> it's just something shitty that happens to you

So you ask for people to accept some hardships in life, but somehow make a big deal with putting mask on your face from time to time?

Where did I say that? It's literally this ridiculous jumping down people's throat the second they mention anything slightly negative about 'COVID culture' that I'm criticising.

> regardless of how much merit those norms actually have

Isn't that the whole point? Persecuting a neighbour as a witch has no merit. Limiting contact with your neighbour as a pandemic restriction does.

> One social impact of the pandemic is that nobody can mind their own damn business any more

If "mind their own damn business" means "go about daily life as if there weren't a global pandemic" then yes, this is indeed an expected impact of public health crises.

You can't catch something without someone else spreading it. Please wear a mask to lower the chance of covid infections and help out the society you live in.

I literally only brought up masks in the context of people harassing strangers in public about them, from the responses I'm getting here you'd think I'd posted some sort of anti-mask polemic. It's not masks I was criticising, I'm criticising the kind of profoundly obnoxious person who goes up to strangers in public to shriek at them about masks and then acts like a victim when they (quite reasonably) are told to mind their own business. It's never acceptable to harrass people in public like that regardless of how scared you are of COVID in my opinion.

Do people really struggle to understand why acting like that particularly unpleasant brand of judgemental Puritan evangelist might put people off from their message? It's like any discussion around COVID has to come packaged with buckets of tedious moralising or it automatically gets dismissed as conspiratorial.

> might put people off from their message?

your posts here that begin with a comparison to supporting witch trials are certainly a fine example of how to put people off a message!

No, I don't support people behaving like that. Doesn't change my response about spreading.

I would just like my (young) children to not have to wear masks at school - that’s really hard on them and they have been doing so for 2 years now. How does that make sense - especially if they are vaccinated?

It doesn't make sense. It makes people (except kids, who have no voice) feel better, and is the "safe" political choice for leaders in various areas.

> This plugin would only make sense for people who are vaccinated of course, since for those people, like myself, COVID has been defanged. Isn't it time for those of us who have had two doses, or even three (I have yet another one scheduled a week from now...), to stop worrying and start enjoying life the way it is meant to be lived?

I want to tell my short story with COVID so far, as a double vaccinated individual (last dose 2021-08-18) who took all the precautions and got infected due to an irresponsible person (older than me, didn't get vaccinated simply due to their own laziness and lack of empathy towards others).

I tested positive a couple Tuesdays ago (2021-12-04) on an antigen test, I took the test after waking up with a runny nose.

I didn't experience much of the physical symptoms, no cough, barely had fevers (one instance it broke through 38.3C, otherwise hovering on the lows 37C), no fatigue.

Instead I've been experiencing quite a few cognitive issues, I lost my smell and taste last Thursday, so about a week ago, and since then I've noticed that my thoughts aren't on the same level as before.

It started when I was playing chess with my girlfriend a week ago, I noticed that I simply couldn't string thoughts together, they became "loose" and it was hard to get continuation. I'd start thinking about a strategy and would experience a "brain fart" where it didn't make sense what I was thinking about, then I couldn't figure where my pieces could move and my thought would start spiraling. It is really, really strange.

When I tried reading books I felt similarly to what some of my friends with ADD/ADHD described how their thoughts wander away. I simply couldn't focus enough to finish a paragraph without having to re-read parts of it. Sometimes it would take me 4-5 times reading the same sentence to finally settle it. I don't understand or know the mechanism behind this but it's happening.

I've been also experiencing bouts of anxiety, physically, I do struggle a little with anxiety but never happened this way. I learned to cope through the last week and noticed these bouts come in waves so I just endure the few seconds or minutes while it's happening.

Today was my first day back at work, as a SWE my job is basically to mentally juggle multiple things and considerations about them to find a solution or a way forward. I simply cannot do that at the moment, I still feel these waves of brain fog creeping up where I simply can't make sense of something that was said or shown. I've been trying to pair program but it's been mostly pointless as sometimes I can't finish my train of thought, or remember why I started one.

I believe the same way as you, that my double vaccinated status would protect me from the worst case and it's definitely protected me from the worst (as well as my girlfriend, also vaccinated and who endured the whole quarantine/isolation period with me and never got infected). I didn't feel shortness of breath or other dangerous symptoms but I feel a tight chest and sometimes a burning sensation. Still, it's not all fine and dandy, I cried multiple times from panic attacks (some induced by my psyche, some from COVID); the brain fog is lingering and making me question how and when will I ever get back to "normal", if it stays for long it will impact my job and expectations on me.

Bottom line is: yes, we are protected from the worst, it is still something I don't want to go through again, it's still something I would have avoided as much and for as long as possible because medical research is still in its infancy about long-term side-effects. I have no idea if I will experience issues with clotting later in life (brain aneurysms are one of my worst nightmares), the symptoms on my chest are pretty weird and uncomfortable.

I'm a pretty healthy individual, low 30s, always commute by bike (averaging around 4000 km/year on a bike for the past 6 years), gym-goer and with mostly healthy eating habits (not crazy, still stuff my face with sweets, ice cream, etc. but overall healthy compared to the general population).

Just adding my report because I believe I was misguided in believing this would be a much easier time than it was due to the vaccines.

Vaccines work, they save lives and protect our healthcare system. It is still a fucking nasty bug causing a really strange disease that we know very little about.

You got pretty bad covid (on average worse than unvaccinated for you age) in spite of getting vaccinated and still think the problem lies in not enough vaccinations? At least your anecdote would lead an unbiased person to question how effective really was the vaccine for you.

> You got pretty bad covid [...] your anecdote would lead an unbiased person to question how effective really was the vaccine for you

If it was this bad with the vaccine, imagine how much worse off he would have surely been without it. He likely suffered the viral equivalent of seatbelt-shaped bruises on his body after a car crash that would have otherwise killed him.

> still think the problem lies in not enough vaccinations

Where does OP say that?

The rarity of death in less than 30 year old without comorbidity would be like someone his age falling down the stairs and randomly breaking their neck. To compare this to an unseatbelted car crash is super disingenuous.

He's blaming his sickness on the unvaccinated guy he got it from with no hint of irony that he got it despite being vaccinated and potentially spreading it as well.

> He's blaming his sickness on the unvaccinated guy he got it from with no hint of irony that he got it despite being vaccinated and potentially spreading it as well.

Yes, because all the data shows that infection between vaccinated -> vaccinated is lowered, there is no irony in there. Also because the person in question didn't isolate the moment they felt sick, they continuously wandered around the house and I forced them to isolate after they showed up in front of me, coughing and announcing they "felt sick". So fuck off.

I caught it at home, I stayed home, the person lives in the same house, and so I didn't infect anyone else.

You have a pretty annoying and uncivil attitude, not sure what triggers you about the vaccine talk but you have an axe to grind and you are piling on my anecdote to push whatever view you have without backing it up, I will stop engaging because I surely don't see any point in trying to hold civility towards you.

Have a good weekend, hope you find better ways to spend your energy.

I don't think I got pretty bad COVID, I know at least two people who died from COVID back in my home country (Brazil), one around 50 years old, another one was 35.

I didn't have any cough or shortness of breath, there was nothing in the sense of "pretty bad COVID", this was a very mild infection. Even more when I compare to the person who infected me, 4 years older than me and still coughing their brains out after 2 weeks with it, including blood in their cough for a couple days.

So I'm not sure where you are drawing this conclusion from... The vaccine was effective, I didn't infect my girlfriend whom I shared rooms, bed and so on, and I attribute that to both me and her being vaccinated, hers was a month later than mine so I believe she has a higher antibodies count going on.

I really, really don't understand what point you are trying to make out of my anecdote, nothing in there draws to your conclusion.

EDIT: I believe you have an axe to grind, don't come soapboxing over my anecdote with your own made-up conclusions about what I said. It's dishonest and crummy.

FYI, it's normal for people living together to not infect each other even without vaccines. SAR has only ever been in the range of 10%-20% ish. Also vaccines haven't managed to alter that.[1] When my girlfriend got COVID (pre-vaccines) she was unable to infect me despite that we were quarantined together for 10 days in close contact, made no effect to reduce contact and she was even cooking for me whilst coughing over the food.

[1] "In the UK it was described that secondary attack rates among household contacts exposed to fully vaccinated index cases was similar to household contacts exposed to unvaccinated index cases (25% for vaccinated vs 23% for unvaccinated)"

https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanepe/article/PIIS2666-7...

That quote is slightly misleading. It only looks at the SAR of vaccinated index cases. That makes sense because the letter is about the epidemiological relevance of vaccinated people, but it's incorrect to say vaccines had no effect on SAR: The study those figures were taken from also states that "The SAR in household contacts exposed to the delta variant was 25% (95% CI 18–33) for fully vaccinated individuals compared with 38% (24–53) in unvaccinated individuals."

A study based on data from Singapore found a similar effect[1].

[1]: https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanwpc/article/PIIS2666-6...

Princess Diamond ship, way back in early 2020, had similar pattern of some people in same cabin with infected person not getting sick themselves.

Vaccines aren't 100% effective. They are still necessary.

What a weird argument you are building, suggesting the vaccine wasn't good for him because he got bad covid and didn't die.

On the contrary, I find it odd that a case where vaccine did not prevent serious illness (neurological symptoms) is presented as a positive for the vaccine.

If you really find this odd then you are either being dishonest and intentionally spreading FUD or dense. I chose to believe you are not stupid. Unfortunately it means you are not yet in a place where you can reassess your beliefs and any rational arguments or facts will only strengthen those beliefs by the sheer need for the psyche to secure itself.

Its one thing to dismiss it as anecdotal, its another thing to present the anecdote as the opposite of a rational conclusion.

Exactly, and that's why we know vaccines work, because we looked at the overall picture and not at anecdotal data points.

johnchristopher says "Vaccines aren't 100% effective. They are still necessary."

Why are vaccines necessary?

A cure would be just fine; some drug that stopped covid immediately would be very nice.

For example most forms of malaria _had_ a cure with the discovery of quinine. Newer drugs have taken quinine's place. It's a race between the organism and man in any case, whether cure or vaccine.

> Why are vaccines necessary?

Because we don't have a cure ?

> A cure would be just fine; some drug that stopped covid immediately would be very nice.

> For example most forms of malaria _had_ a cure with the discovery of quinine. Newer drugs have taken quinine's place. It's a race between the organism and man in any case, whether cure or vaccine.

So we don't need vaccines because cures - which we don't have so far - are better. Okay.

johnchristopher says:>"So we don't need vaccines because cures - which we don't have so far - are better."<

I didn't say that.

What I'm saying is that we should research treatments (non-vaccine cures) as well as vaccines.

After all, of our current medical solutions that do work for various ailments, what percentage are vaccines and what percentage are treatments found by experiment or accident (like quinine for malaria)?

Thing is vaccines protect from one kind of worse: landing in the ICU, most of the time.

Long covid, another kind of worse, as in if 10% of the infected population gets it then we'll have a massive generational disability problem, is facing even more denial from people.

I am guessing this person isn't arguing that vaccines don't help, just that covid can still be dangerous even when vaccinated.

See this person's submissions history and his comments.

Mine? Because I'd be very surprised to see any comment in my history where I opposed the vaccine for any reason, much the opposite I've been always supportive of them and taken quite a bit of flack from vaccine deniers.

Sorry, my bad. I misinterpreted TT-392's comment and thought he was referring to another person's comment and being too charitable with this person's intentions. I didn't realize he was referring to you.

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