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Comment by pugio | Hacker News Reader

My family and I have been supremely careful Mar 2020. I read a lot of the research and preprints and am concerned about long term system impacts of repeat infections. Despite huge numbers of precautions, we all finally caught it about ten days ago. Still positive, still coughing, still tired.

We can lower risk, but it seems that no level of caution is truly enough, given that others don't care. I'm really not sure what to do – we don't want to keep getting it, but we really want some sense of social life back. My wife and I keep wondering / looking if there's anywhere in the world where people by and large take this infection seriously. I suspect it will come down to small communities, rather than states or countries.

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> My wife and I keep wondering / looking if there's anywhere in the world where people by and large take this infection seriously

China? Seriously though, you might better to look for places where you can interact with others mainly outdoors. e.g. we often socialise at the beach, outdoor seating at restaurants/cafes.

Unfortunately strong outdoor transmission is documented for Omicron.

38+ people infected by a runner in a park in China, of ~256 he passed that were identified.

https://twitter.com/rdmorris/status/1596978503429525504?s=20...

I’m not sure how divergent evolution of strains is, but there’s enough travel that we probably can’t rule out the threat from a strain that exists anywhere near an active airport.

Boosters are extremely effective to stop the spread. A large percentage of those with at least 2 boosters experience no symptoms when exposed. However it is still important to continue to mask to protect yourself and others as boosters may not stop transmission, even if you never experience symptoms. Again, for most people covid will exhibit mild to no symptoms. It's our most vulnerable who are at risk from the unmasked and unvaccinated. So please, get your boosters and wear a mask.

You've got to be kidding. People aren't going to wear masks. The virus is never going away so we just have to live with it regardless of the risks. I'm certainly not going to spend the rest of my life wearing a mask in public.

Why do you think it is still important to continue to mask? What days is there to back that statement up?

It would be interested to see what % of those with at least 2 boosters experience no symptoms.

My wife and I have a very similar situation and concern with you. One thing I'm sure is that we can't recall much from 2020-2021. It all seems like a black out to us where we went through extreme isolation.

And because of that I actually got some other health problem, related to the inactivities during isolation.

I think in the end we just need to think in terms of harm reduction. Mental health, as well as other health issues besides contracting COVID are also important. If we reduce the risk in one area too much, we increase the harm in other areas.

One thing that we need to be careful is not to swing to another extreme. Some would start giving up on mask. But to me having masks on us make me feel safer to go out which makes me goes out more. But we have teared down some extreme level of precaution that makes us very tired of getting outside (to be specific a small quarantine zone which is time consuming and troublesome.)

> I'm really not sure what to do – we don't want to keep getting it, but we really want some sense of social life back.

Why bother doing anything different? Are you at specific risk or is this just general fear of some catastrophic outcome? Were you equally fearful of the common flu prior to covid?

> My wife and I keep wondering / looking if there's anywhere in the world where people by and large take this infection seriously.

Considering the overwhelming evidence that it's not statistically an issue for the vast majority of otherwise healthy people, and even more so if you factor in vaccination, what does it mean to "take this infection seriously"? Do you expect the world to wear N95 masks 24/7 and stop hugging each other just to assuage your personal fears?

> Considering the overwhelming evidence that it's not statistically an issue for the vast majority of otherwise healthy people

Don't be an overdebunker. We have no long term knowledge because covid hasn't existed over the long term. Its love of eating brains and what seems like an ability to stick around in the nervous system indefinitely for some people like herpes or chicken pox are worrying. Especially for people who seem to keep getting repeat infections.

> We have no long term knowledge because covid hasn't existed over the long term.

The flip side of that coin is we have no knowledge that it has catastrophic long term damage. And even it if does we have a critical mass of people infected to justify research to solve it.

> Its love of eating brains and what seems like an ability to stick around in the nervous system indefinitely for some people like herpes or chicken pox are worrying.

Sure but worrying to the point of living as a recluse for years to come? For an otherwise healthy person that’s frankly absurd.

Ok but if it turns out to be fine, being overly careful means you didn't get to be as social as you otherwise would be. An inconvenience, sure, a degradation of your quality of life, yes, but nothing too major.

If it does turn out to have long term consequences, you could be losing years of your life, and making the years towards the end have a much lower standard of living.

I'd much prefer to isolate more than normal now when I'm healthy and have that turn out to have been unnecessary than to not, and end up forced to isolate due to poor health limiting my ability to live my life. For the record, I'm not a recluse or anything, but I'm not going to concerts or things like that, and am still wearing a mask.

>We have no long term knowledge because covid hasn't existed over the long term.

and neither have the vaccines

Since you trust the long-term safety of the vaccines 100%, I guess it's reasonable to trust long-term predictions of the effects of covid 100% for you then.

Early in the pandemic, covid was much worse than the common flu.

Part of the reason covid was so confusing is that the outcomes are extremely variable. Even among the earliest infections, many people were completely asymptomatic. Also, some young, healthy people end up dying from it. It's hard for a lot of people to understand that kind of risk.

I've tested possible on 2 occasions now, pre- and post-vax, and can confidently say I'm much more concerned about flu than covid (for me).

Outcomes are extremely variable for most illnesses.

For the old. For the not-old, it was a lot like the common flu, and for the very young, it was much milder. For nursing home residents (the old who are pretty bad off) it was like a coin-flip death sentence.

For the not old, the death and morbidity rates were still higher than the common flu. Only for young children was it less bad than the flu.

Would male fertility impacts worry you?

https://twitter.com/yaneerbaryam/status/1596922071786741760

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