I legitimately cannot stand this flu meme any more. I'll quote Charles Stross:
"Remember, this isn't a simple pneumonia bug. It's a virus that attacks the RAAS/ACE2 system, in particular all the epithelial tissues, and any other cells that express ACE2 receptors on their surfaces. It can mess with your kidneys. It can mess with fat cells, changing their response to insulin. It apparently shows up in brain tissue. Viral RNA can be found in all of these cells many months after recovery from the acute infection: it may have long-term sequelae, like Shingles, which only show up years to decades later. We do know long COVID effects up to 15% of people who are diagnosed with an infection, and can last months to years. We know that immunity is short-lived, and people can get repeat infections (currently mostly by new strains, but reinfection with an old strain is not impossible)."
The ace2 system that covid-19 attacks plays a vital role in the regulation of the cardiovascular system, and this has been known since 2020.
After real Covid (alpha, pre-vaccination times, a mild case), I was getting back to normal for some six months. Heart palpitations never seen before, muscle twitches never seen before. A cardiology checkup revealed a lot of extrasystoles.
All those problems went away after half a year or so. I now got something that looked like a weak cold and might have been Omicron. No strange effects at all, just a running nose.
SARS killed fifteen percent of people who got it. Was that due to treatment, since the flu doesn't do that?
What does the CDC say?
https://www.cdc.gov/flu/symptoms/flu-vs-covid19.htm
Similarities: Both COVID-19 and flu can result in complications, including:
Pneumonia
Respiratory failure
Acute respiratory distress syndrome (fluid in the lungs)
Sepsis (a life-threatening illness caused by the body’s extreme response to an infection)
Cardiac injury (for example, heart attacks and stroke)
Multiple-organ failure (respiratory failure, kidney failure, shock)
Worsening of chronic medical conditions (involving the lungs, heart, or nervous system or diabetes)
Inflammation of the heart, brain, or muscle tissues
Secondary infections (bacterial or fungal infections that can occur in people who have already been infected with flu or COVID-19)
No, the vaccine, being made from the virus, can give some side effects. Usually, these are the same but lesser side effects as the virus it self. This applies in this case too:
From [0] and [1]:
> There would be around 107 additional cases of thrombocytopenia—a form of rare blood clotting—and 66 cases of venous blood clots for every 10 million having their first AstraZeneca shot, according to the data, versus around 934 and 12,614 extra cases respectively for the same number of people after a Covid-19 infection.
191 times more likely to get venous blood clots from covid than from (in this study) Pfizer.
[0] https://www.forbes.com/sites/roberthart/2021/08/27/covid-inf...
And a lot of respiratory viruses (both flu and other influenza-like viruses) do cause major effects on the human body sometimes. E.g. when I got hit with the flu in 2009 (might have been H1N1), it took me months my lungs to get back to normal.
As to treatment, most people who get Covid don't receive any treatment.
It's also not surprising that it results in the virus travelling through the entire body
That suggestion is also implicitly dismissing all the people who had lingering effects long after COVID and long before vaccines.