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Comment by bratwurst3000 | Hacker News Reader

Just giving my 2 cents. Got boosted 3 weeks ago. Now I have covid. Everything is fine, feels like the least ill i ever was from anything. But I wanted to state that omnicron is a beast. I did wear a ffp2 mask with nearly every social contact and if we didnt wear mask we would test ourself. I am sure I got it from the streets from people passing by. That said I am in the french alps and it was vacation time here.

And until now it was rare to know someone who has covid …. Now it feels like people who dont have it are getting rare

I hope so much this is the entrypoint for an endemic situation

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I'll give my two cents then. People are probably not gonna like it here but I think alternative perspective is important.

I got vaccinated in June 2021 and haven't been following any restrictions or rules for the last ~10mo. No masks (unless forced or asked), haven't limited human contact, haven't stopped seeing Grandma, etc. I have traveled extensively in the past four months, including to two foreign countries. I nominally live in the epicenter of the new outbreak in NYC which accounts for the lion's share of cases as of this writing (unless something drastically changed in the past day).

I have not gotten COVID-19. [0] If I did, it was a very mild case that gave no symptoms.

I was in contact with people who had COVID-19 on Christmas and New Year's Eve (both tested positive after the fact, they did not know prior). I got tested December 23rd for a flight, results were negative. I got tested yesterday, results were negative. I feel great though I had a bad cold on the ~27th which I think was from traveling and not COVID specific given I tested negative twice.

[0]: I had a very bad, vaguely defined flu back in January 2020 that knocked me out for a week that may have been an early COVID-19 case. But everybody says this and then their antibody tests show up negative. I haven't gotten antibody tests to confirm and given that I'm vaccinated it's likely they'd show up positive for that anyway.

> People are probably not gonna like it here but I think alternative perspective is important.

Thanks, I hate it. :-)

Anecdata is the worst*, as generally only self-identified outliers feel compelled to share. So then there’s more outlying noise than there should be, and normals get confused.

Still useful in the sense of serving to illustrate probability curves mean tails exist, so a bunch of people must be outliers, oh look here’s one.

But where it goes wrong is when someone looks at 1000 viewpoints on whatever, identifies the 2 who think it’s aliens, and creates a “both sides” narrative. Or self-identifies: hey y’all, I’m a walking survivor bias!

For policy, “alternative perspective” of an outlier is worth exactly 2 cents, but must be stacked up against the 80 cents of the bell curve. In other words, yes, the case must exist, but is not illustrative of what a normal distribution participant can expect or how they should behave.

* Anecdata is also the best. Edge cases matter for bounding problem spaces, contingency or mitigation planning, or maybe even important for novel discovery. For instance, while it shouldn’t determine majority behavior, why one individual might seem immune to COVID could be very worth a quick check to see if worth looking into. If it’s not tail luck, if it’s immunity, that could reveal an undiscovered mechanism helpful to the normal distribution.

For anyone wondering: FFP2 is equivalent to an N95.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FFP_standards#FFP2_mask

Similar story - boosted mid Nov. Travelled over Christmas. Have been wearing K95 masks as properly as I can as often as I can when out in public. No real symptoms to speak of, but took a PCR just to be sure. Bing! Positive.

Not sure from where I got it, but the contagiousness of Omicron is impressive.

Your anecdote makes me wonder if the Omicron variant is largely spreading through aerosols and eyes. See (commentary from May 2021): https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanmic/article/PIIS2666-5....

> Now I have covid. Everything is fine, feels like the least ill i ever was from anything. But I wanted to state that omnicron is a beast.

So you’re the least ill you’ve ever been from anything but it’s also “a beast”?

The beast part was more for how contagious it is. As a malady it is fine with me but I am still having an eye on long covid…hoping for the best.

> The beast part was more for how contagious it is.

A beast compared to what? Common colds in previous years? Previous influenza strains?

> As a malady it is fine with me but I am still having an eye on long covid…hoping for the best.

You got 3 shots, wear a mask (it sounds like outside), lord knows what else. And you’re still worried about long term side effects from a cold? Can you quantify your risk of serious side effects from this illness?

????? Long covid and post covid syndrom are a known thing. The vaccines dont reduce the risk of those two as good as the the other factors …. And wtf a cold… dude stop trolling its covid.

And fucking wearing mask doesnt have anything to do with long covid… Are you straight out of telegram or what ???

> ????? Long covid and post covid syndrom are a known thing.

Okay let’s see your evidence of long term side effects and syndromes caused by Omicron. The variant was discovered Dec 20. Whatever you’re claiming is based on previous variants which are not in circulation.

> The vaccines dont reduce the risk of those two as good as the the other factors ….

Okay, how much do the shots reduce your risk of “long COVID”? Looking for quantifiable results from research, not your opinion.

> And wtf a cold… dude stop trolling its covid.

Uh literally quoting “the science”:

> Well over 200 virus strains are implicated in causing the common cold, with rhinoviruses, coronaviruses, adenoviruses and enteroviruses being the most common.[

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_cold

> And fucking wearing mask doesnt have anything to do with long covid…

Not my point, if you read more carefully. Can you quantify your risk of long term complications from a mild infection? How’s that compare to risk of car accident, sports injuries, cancer?

> Are you straight out of telegram or what ???

Is this supposed to be some kind of ad hominem attack? Yawn. I can’t pretend to care about your opinion of me. If you’re going to respond please focus on answering my questions.

Dude first learn reading. How do you get from „ i have an eye on long covid … wishing for the best“ to „ i am fucking stating everything you seem to interprete into my one sentence“ And omnicron was detected november

If you are reading between the lines… congrats there is blank space. Btw aint you afraid that some cold could mix with hiv and go viral via telegram and sudenly you have covidaids?

And a cold aint covid … covid is the malady geniuos. Different strais of viruses. Are you for real ? I talked with many of you and can never figure out if you rly cant understand( apparantly you can read and write ..congrats first step to be a human) or if you are just trolling ?

And if this is a cold pleaaaasee get it :)

> Okay, how much do the shots reduce your risk of “long COVID”? Looking for quantifiable results from research, not your opinion

Use google… its not my job to do it for you

> Not my point, if you read more carefully. Can you quantify your risk of long term complications from a mild infection? How’s that compare to risk of car accident, sports injuries, cancer?

I read carefully and it was your point. And again usw google . Not my job

> Is this supposed to be some kind of ad hominem attack? Yawn. I can’t pretend to care about your opinion of me. If you’re going to respond please focus on answering my questions.

Yes it is. People like you aint indivuals. You are all the same bunch with exact the same opinion and the same way of misunderstanding things. Dude you are totaly transparent

> Well over 200 virus strains are implicated in causing the common cold, with rhinoviruses, coronaviruses, adenoviruses and enteroviruses being the most common.[

Nice you can usw gooogle … do it again

> People like you aint indivuals. You are all the same bunch with exact the same opinion and the same way of misunderstanding things. Dude you are totaly transparent

What's transparent is that nothing you've said is based on facts or rationality, it's just regurgitated hysterical opinion. And since you've been nothing but a childish and frankly rude idiot I'm not going to engage with you any further. Hope your little cold gets better soon.

Why are you hoping for Covid to become endemic?

Honestly I hope that one day it is gone for good but until then an endemic situation would be somehow better than a pandemic one. I didnt say that clearly and hoping for a, also, bad situation is not the best thing to whish for but after 2 years of pandemic I am whishing for something less bad….

At this point that is the best case. COVID zero is a pipe dream, there are just too many vaccine refusers and too many people refusing to do anything to avoid spreading the virus. If COVID follows the typical evolutionary pattern of viruses and becomes less dangerous, we can get back to normal life -- the question is how long that will take.

> typical evolutionary pattern of viruses and becomes less dangerous

Wishful thinking (that I hope comes true). Ebola got more lethal, not less.

Ebola is not endemic to humans. It is not lethal to the bat species in which it is endemic.

I'm not sure what basis you have for assuming it will evolve to be less dangerous, Since it still leaves most of its host alive I can't think of a mechanism that would prevent it from staying equally deadly, except of course that most of the population will have some degree of immunity.

This pandemic will inevitably end, after which Covid-19 may stay endemic, but Covid-19 becoming endemic and the pandemic ending aren't really the same thing and frankly aren't really causally related so to me it seems weird to express hope for the endemic to begin rather than the pandemic to end.

Anyway, we'll need to ride out this last wave first. I'd say hopefully last, but we may end up hoping it wasn't. Regardless let's hope it at least burns itself out in the process as opposed to smouldering for ever.

It is still more dangerous than the other endemic coronaviruses that cause the common cold. In general the selection pressure on viruses (and other parasites) is to be less disruptive to the lives of their hosts -- not just being less deadly, but also not incapacitating hosts for extended periods of time. How long it takes for a virus to become endemic-without-ill-effects can vary widely, but the hope here is that COVID19 will do so quickly, becoming "just another common cold" within another year or two.

It's not an absolute but it is a strong tendency which seems evident with omicron.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muller's_ratchet

Noteworthy exception in virology is Marek's Disease: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marek's_disease

It's more of an acceptance of reality than a hope, I think.

yes exactly … the worst part about growing up….

Maybe it's time to start taking the wear 2 masks advice seriously.

As I understand it, wearing two masks was only recommended for those wearing surgical or cloth. If your wear an N95 or equivalent you only need the one.

Better to go with N100 mask or heavy duty respirator if you truly wanted to ramp up protection. https://www.grainger.com/product/6AD97?ef_id=Cj0KCQiAw9qOBhC...

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