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Comment by seydor | Hacker News Reader

The studies tell the opposite. A large study in US veterans found increased risk in 2 and 3 times reinfected, including death

https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/...

> Reinfected patients had a more than doubled risk of death and a more than tripled risk of hospitalization compared with those who were infected with COVID just once. They also had elevated risks for problems with lungs, heart, blood, kidneys, diabetes, mental health, bones and muscles, and neurological disorders

> priced into most peoples’ view of COVID

I 'm curious who this view is formed. Is it hearsay? Because there's probably no empirical data supporting that view

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From article:

> Experts not involved with the study said the VA population does not reflect the general population.

> Patients at VA health facilities are generally older, sicker people and often men, a group that would typically have more than normal health complications, said John Moore, a professor of microbiology and immunology at Weill Cornell Medical College in New York.

The VA is almost nothing but old sick people, the demographic most susceptible to serious COVID. Fortunately, most of the population isn't old sick people. The study you reference isn't relevant to conversations about the general population.

The view that risk from subsequent infections is negligible is informed by the fact that vast numbers of people have had subsequent infections, including most of the people they know. Personal experience around this is widely discussed socially, so there is a broad consensus that their personal experience was normal and not an outlier. I live in progressive urban enclaves, so if these people are all misinformed then your cause is lost.

Constantly misrepresenting the science around COVID and fear-mongering over things that are manifestly not the case discredits the people that promote that, which runs the very real risk of causing people to dismiss the real risks of COVID. We already went down this road with climate change, where chronic gross misrepresentation of the science in popular media caused people to dismiss the actual and serious risks associated with climate change.

Disasturbation may be fun but it is a terrible way to convince the broader population that a category of risk needs to be taken seriously.

things cant be 'manifestly not the case' without evidence

https://www.bmj.com/content/363/bmj.k5094

> Parachute use to prevent death and major trauma when jumping from aircraft: randomized controlled trial

> Conclusions Parachute use did not reduce death or major traumatic injury when jumping from aircraft in the first randomized evaluation of this intervention. However, the trial was only able to enroll participants on small stationary aircraft on the ground, suggesting cautious extrapolation to high altitude jumps. When beliefs regarding the effectiveness of an intervention exist in the community, randomized trials might selectively enroll individuals with a lower perceived likelihood of benefit, thus diminishing the applicability of the results to clinical practice.

> The VA is almost nothing but old sick people, the demographic most susceptible to serious COVID.

On the other hand, that someone served in the military means they were healthy enough to get in. Those with serious defects never get to the VA.

Also, pediatric long COVID is real and not rare.[1]

[1] https://www.cnn.com/2023/01/14/health/long-covid-children/in...

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