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Comment by timr | Hacker News Reader

I've had it and everyone I know has had it (now in the dozens), including a number of elderly people. Everyone is fine. I recovered in a week, and out of literally dozens of people, I've not met anyone who took longer than that.

I'm sorry about your dad, but let's not exaggerate based on personal anecdotes. The stories that get upvoted are the ones that scare people.

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The ones that upvoted are the ones that people relate to? i.e. they've had the same experience.

People aren't just upvoting covid porn.

A lot of people are, in fact, amplifying things that scare them (or things that trigger emotions). All I've done here is share an equivalent, balancing anecdote.

The dude just told us he’s lost his dad, and your second paragraph was “let’s not exaggerate”.

Your original comment - sharing your own anecdote - would’ve been better without the second paragraph.

Yes. The fact that someone's father died is tragic. It still doesn't give them carte blanche to exaggerate or emphasize scary anecdotes at the expense of boring ones.

so your pov is more valid than anyone else's? interesting.

Nope. My story is just as useless as every other anecdote when it comes to evaluating the truth of something like this.

The point is to provide a neutral voice in contrast to the fearful one.

"I lost my dad" doesn't warrant an immediate "well, I didn't". You don't have to void someone's experience just because you think it'll scare some folks.

I lost two friends to COVID. That weighs on me a hell of a lot more than the knowledge that I didn't lose others. It's going to influence every discussion on this forever. Because they died.

> "I lost my dad" doesn't warrant an immediate "well, I didn't"

Yea it does when it's used as a rhetorical blunt object to bash dissent in every conversation when people speak about the egregious & fruitless authoritarianism that capitalized on the exaggerated risks of covid. There is a very specific risk profile and treating everyone who's at very low risk as though they're on the opposite end of the spectrum is simply misinformed.

There are people who are vulnerable to covid, that has always been the case, but they are a very small minority of people. And insofar as pretty much every heavy-handed intervention failed to protect those people, and also inflicted a massive fruitless cost on society (that oddly enough puts the vulnerable at even more risk because of the resulting societal dysfunction and disorder), yea you better believe people should be pushing back on using the dead as a thought-terminating cliche. It's a way to scapegoat the rest of society for not obsessively masking (as though this ever helped adequately, the evidence is still weak and in real-life most people either don't use the right mask or use the mask incorrectly) or taking a vaccine that doesn't even prevent transmission.

No, it doesn't. I'm sorry that every discussion for you about covid is about the covid response which you dislike but sometimes people are just human. Have some empathy.

Nobody was bashing dissent. The original poster spoke about why THEY take covid precautions, with the anecdote that their wife hasn't recovered, they have a friend with long covid, and they lost their father.

You then willingly entered the thread with "I'm sorry about your dad, but let's not exaggerate based on personal anecdotes." Who accuses someone of exaggerating a death?

Stop making this about your anticovid cause... you received a negative reaction because you were being highly insensitive.

What makes their anecdote "emphasis" or "exaggeration", while yours is jut sharing?

If your anecdote is "boring" or a more normal representation, why share?

It seems like you want to fight to downplay the effects of covid, which is fine, but your approach is totally off.

> If your anecdote is "boring" or a more normal representation, why share?

Because if we don't, the only people who will share will be the ones with scary stories.

But indeed...why share any anecdote at all? They're pointless, except when used (as they usually are) to trigger emotions.

I'm saying that there's a tendency for people to amplify the emotional stories, and ignore the boring ones.

How were they exaggerating or emphasizing them? Looks pretty matter of fact to me.

Don't minimize based on it either.

Providing balance is not "minimizing". Sharing an emotional/fearful anecdote does not lay claim to truth.

You're doing exactly the same thing classichasclass is, but in the opposite direction - and "minimize" seems like a fair antonym of "exaggerate".

Well, yes. Exactly. That's my point. I'm sharing the boring story that doesn't get headlines.

I don't object to you sharing your boring story. I do find it hypocritical to say, "let's not exaggerate based on personal anecdotes" while doing the same thing.

Person 1: "the world is coming to an end!"

Person 2: "well, hold on now. Things still seem okay to me."

Person 1: "why are you minimizing it?!?"

I'm not saying that OP isn't telling the truth. I'm not even saying that their story is less representative than mine. I'm just saying that my boring story also exists, and we shouldn't fixate on (i.e. "emphasize") the emotional stories because they're emotional.

That's a very disingenuous example that bears little relation to classichasclass's original post. They said they know people who have suffered significantly because of COVID and for that reason they are still cautious. You immediately responded "let's not exaggerate". How have they exaggerated?

Then you say "It still doesn't give them carte blanche to exaggerate or emphasize scary anecdotes at the expense of boring ones." In what way is the post made by classichasclass at the expense of other anecdotes? It makes absolutely no sense.

If someone has a relative die from a shark attack and doesn't swim in the ocean anymore, that's their choice, it's even understandable.

But as I see it, relative to nowadays, the analogy would be that people are arguing that no one should ever allowed to swim in the ocean or should be wearing a life vest 24/7, even on ground.

I have no idea if OP is exaggerating, or even telling the truth. The point is that anecdotes are worthless. Giving anecdotes any level of serious consideration is inherently exaggeration of a niche position.

This subthread is now filled with comments taking an anecdote from a complete stranger -- someone they don't know and whose story they cannot possibly verify -- and attempting to shame/attack/villainize anyone who presents an alternative to that narrative. One anecdote is good, but the other one is bad. Why?

It's just another form of argumentum ad misericordiam (appeal to pity): if you discount the emotional narrative, you must be a heartless person, unworthy of serious consideration.

no one is trying to attack you because of an alternative narrative. if you left out the “let’s not exaggerate” part it would be an anecdote of perfectly equal value, because both are anecdotes by internet strangers as you say. people are attacking you because you were highly insensitive in carrying the conversation to a point where in addition to talking about your own experience, you assumed the other person was trying to tilt the convo to their favor by using emotions, and you are trying to devalue their personal experience. we are humans after all and we are not doing science here, you can show some sympathy for a tragedy and make your point at the same time, they are not mutually exclusive.

> you assumed the other person was trying to tilt the convo to their favor by using emotions, and you are trying to devalue their personal experience.

You assume the OP was telling the truth, and therefore, we should all defer to the emotional anecdote.

What if they're not? How would you know?

The only difference between us is that I don't make that assumption. Giving undue credence to anecdotes is a form of exaggeration.

Almost nobody wears seatbelts in India and 99.9999% of them do not get into accidents or die when they do.

What’s exactly your point unless you’re trying to say that your anecdote is better than theirs? Have you considered that it may just be your survivor bias talking and just maybe you are just plan lucky?

I’ve lost family members covid! Have friends who did too.

My anecdote is not better than another anecdote. That's the point. Anecdotes are worthless, but you're here arguing about mine, because mine is boring, and you don't think that's appropriate.

That's a problem.

For whatever it's worth, though...the fact that dozens of people I know have had it and are fine isn't "luck".

What kind of anecdotes do you expect in a thread about an article related to long term effects of Covid?

Its like expecting 4chan comments on HN.

Article references a study saying 50% of people haven't fully recovered after a few months. Whats the exaggeration? Still hundreds of people dying a day from covid in the US which is 4X higher than the flu for comparison.

Well, for starters...perhaps we should discuss the results and limitations of the study, and not just exchange anecdotes.

> Everyone is fine. I recovered in a week, and out of literally dozens of people, I've not met anyone who took longer than that.

Calling bullshit.

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-01589-z

Anybody who lost their sense of taste or smell took months to recover that. Loss of smell or taste is almost 50% for Covid prior to Omicron. Even with Omicron, it's about 20%.

> Anybody who lost their sense of taste or smell took months to recover that. Loss of smell or taste is almost 50% for Covid prior to Omicron. Even with Omicron, it's about 20%.

And yet, in more anecdata, everyone I know who had taste issues recovered them in much less than a month with no long-term impacts.

My mom got her taste back in about 2 weeks.

I lost my sense of smell and taste which was really upsetting, but got it back in about 11 days. No lingering issues either.

I’ve recovered my sense of sense and test within a week after the first onset of symptoms.

Just throwing on the pile of anecdotes, almost everybody I know has had Covid at least once and I can only think of a couple that lost any sense of taste or smell beyond the few days they were sick. I do know one guy though who says he still can't smell many things. Not sure if it's from Covid or not since he was vaccinated. Then again, now we know Pfizer never bothered to test if the vaccine actually stopped transmission, so who knows. [1]

I guess the point is anecdotes are worthless.

[1] https://www.news.com.au/technology/science/human-body/pfizer...

I lost the sense of smell only the first time I had Covid. What’s curious to me is that that symptom has occurred in me several times before caused by influenza or similar, long before Covid, although not as prolonged (slowly recovering after Covid in about a month). I may be an outlier but I’ve never seen or heard anyone else mention this.

What's crazier is that if you run in circles of the unvaccinated, you almost think it's all in everyone's head. I mentioned earlier I work in a company where almost no one got vaccinated. We're somewhat customer facing, but did wear masks when the state required it.

Almost no one has gotten covid of any of my friends/coworkers. I've been casual as can be, never touching a hand wash squirter, going out in SF outdoor and indoor dining if they didn't check, and haven't been sick since 2018 or early 2019. Before that, I was actually one of those sickness manchilds that honestly twice a year would almost be unable to function for an entire week.

I'm about starting to think people can will themselves into not getting sick, and maybe will themselves into it.

My friends don't believe in it, and I and others haven't sniffled in 2 years.

Downvote away for personal experiences Im sure.

It varies. Here, it seems everybody knows somebody that died from it in the early days. Omicron seems to be a lot easier on people than the earlier versions were.

Could be. Until omicron I basically never heard of anyone in my decently large social circle even getting covid.

I used to joke that if you offered me $100k to go get covid, I wouldn't really know how to go get it.

> Before that, I was actually one of those sickness manchilds that honestly twice a year would almost be unable to function for an entire week.

That makes sense. All the COVID prevention steps everyone took would prevent other diseases as well.

> I've been casual as can be, never touching a hand wash squirter, going out in SF outdoor and indoor dining if they didn't check,

I don't know why people are proud about not washing their hands. That was gross pre-Covid too.

> Almost no one has gotten covid of any of my friends/coworkers

Alternatively, you and your friends are fairly young, caught it, were somewhat asymptomatic, and spread it to everyone you met. After all, you don't seem to have tested at all.

I washed my hands after the restroom. I said I never touched one of the (alcohol) squirter bottles or machines that were everywhere during covid.

Other note, I have many older coworkers. I'm not really in tech, although I have a decent Saas outside of work.

Feynman speaking of the Challenger disaster in this interview seems apropos:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4kpDg7MjHps&t=3m10s

That's a clever response, but sometimes you have to tell your mom she's a neurotic worrier, that you live at the end of a quiet lonely road, and live your life.

Not all roads are the same. And IMO the incidence and severity of covid has been drastically exaggerated.

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