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Comment by NikolaNovak | Hacker News Reader

I get your perspective, but everybody has their own risk assessment and comfort, and yours is no more necessarily right than his :).

Some people still wear masks, some people still take booster shots, some people people still wash their hands, some people sneeze into elbows, some people stay inside, etc. Others may not do some or any of those things.

"Accept new risk" and "this is the new normal" is as validly executed by him as by yourself. (Also, honestly, wearing a mask in public may not be as life changing/limiting as it seems. I know people who haven't stopped complaining about seatbelts for 3 decades now, but it's a habit that doesn't bother me :).

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Also. I think it's rational for myself to wear a mask because getting COVID was one of the worst experiences of my life. It's like if I burned my hand on a stove and someone tried to convince me burning your hand on the stove is normal so no need to take precautions.

I suspect there's a lot of individual variation too.

COVID for me was exceptionally mild with the only annoyance being the total lost of smell for ~12 days. Otherwise, the dry cough wasn't any worse than the one I get when my allergies are in full force. Some people are just going to get worse cases and others won't. That's going to impact personal risk assessment.

My mother had an even milder case of COVID than I did (no cough), but RSV almost sent her to the hospital this past Thanksgiving. For all the fixation on COVID we tend to forget that there are other virus that can be lethal to certain demographics (e.g. advancing age).

It was bad for me too. But I assume that the next infection won't be nearly as bad, because of built up immune response, several vaccine injections, and current variants being much milder than the initial one.

Unfortunately that doesn't seem to be the case

> Compared with those infected once, patients who were reinfected showed that they were more prone to complications in various organ systems and more likely to be diagnosed with long COVID than those infected only once. These findings were consistent regardless of vaccination status.

> For those who had COVID-19 two times or more, the data appeared to show a:

> Two times increased risk of death > Three times increased risk of hospitalization > Two times increased risk of long COVID and chronic fatigue > Three times increased risk of heart issues and blood clotting disorders

https://www.nebraskamed.com/COVID/do-repeat-covid-infections...

> I get your perspective, but everybody has their own risk assessment and comfort

Yeah I get that, but with him it seems very out of character. He likes to ski and is a general aviation pilot; these aren't low risk activities. I hope he comes to term with the new normal soon because he's still young and spending the rest of his life paranoid behind a mask would be truly sad.

But again, the risk stats and perspectives and acceptance may differ. You may need to work on yourself to develop empathy for your and his personal choices and stop thinking of him as "sad", more than work on him and try to "help" him :-). The word "paranoid" seems out of place as well - the risk is actual and demonstrable.

For example, skiing is fun. Flying airplanes is fun. And general aviation is quite safe for those who take it seriously. So while there's risk, there's also a reward. And that risk / reward ratio may be what they choose to personally accept.

There's no reward for getting covid! There's no fun in it! And many people either don't want to get it at all (given the risk of either bad immediate symptoms or long term impact), or had bad experience and don't want to recur, or don't want to contribute to chain and infect others yet.

Heck... I'm persuading myself to start wearing mask again (the only reason I stopped is that I work from home, but have a 2yo in daycare and 4yo in kindergarten which massively outweighs any risk I bring into house).

(I do want to ask though - are they wearing like n95 or surgical mask... Or as you mentioned in original post a full painting-sryle respirator with two big round filters etc? That, I'll agree, is a significant comittment if they don't have significant personal risk factors)

In my experience, a half-face respirator is more comfortable than a FFP2 (European standard similar to N95) or surgical mask. They have soft silicone seals, and bigger filters and exhalation valves that minimize breathing resistance. If you want to reduce your chances of getting COVID-19 it seems the obvious choice.

I like to woodwork and walk.

Spending 3 weeks in bed with COVID before the vaccines existed made me super risk adverse to people and especially people coughing. You have no concept of how long a week in bed is, let alone 3 of them. The long nights in pain. The long days just wishing you could get through the enormous headache to rest and sleep. The powerless feeling that you can't even sit up enough to do anything you have previously enjoyed. Heck, I still remember my son bringing in my copy of Cyberpunk that just came out and I didn't even have the energy to turn on my laptop on my lap to install it. Even when I got COVID again 2 years later and it was just a couple days in bed, I get super pissed off when people belittle it and the people who try to stay away from it.

Just last Saturday night, I was out shopping and some lady was walking around with a "smoker's cough". I tried to stay away and not go back into places she had been. When I got in line to check out and got stalled in front from a lady with a huge cartload and the cougher got behind me and started hacking her brains out, I just abandoned my cart and left.

I am not spending that many days of my life being sick again like that if I can ever help it. So when I say that YOU NEED TO REPRIORITIZE YOUR EMPATHY. Take that to mean that if this wasn't on a forum that I need to talk nice-nice, I would not be talking nice-nice.

For him, the reward of those activities possibly justifies the risk in his mind.

I sometimes also mask in public, because it bothers me approximately zero.

> He likes to ski and is a general aviation pilot; these aren't low risk activities.

So? These are situations where he is kinda in control no? Out in public, how much control does he have about people, with or without symptoms, going to the same shop?

if I was in his shoes and I'd probably be worried about getting long covid and that stopping me from skiing or piloting.

The symptoms of long covid can be pretty debilitating and a lot of people just don't get better.

> For some people, Long COVID can last weeks, months, or years after COVID-19 illness and can sometimes result in disability.

https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/long-term-effects/...

https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/coronavirus/i...

> He likes to ski and is a general aviation pilot; these aren't low risk activities.

So… spending micromorts on worthwhile activities, rather than on queueing at the supermarket? Sounds pretty consistent to me.

Literally micro-optimizing your risks? Yeah, that sounds totally normal dude. Make sure to wear a helmet everywhere you go just in case a tree branch bonks you on the head or something.

TIL about micomorts :). That is fascinating!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Micromort

I mask in close indoor situations. I am not paranoid. Why do you think he is paranoid?

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