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Comment by _heimdall | Hacker News Reader

So doctors ended up treating this like the common cold after all?

That's honestly very frustrating to me personally. So much was spent to push the argument that Covid shouldn't be viewed as a common cold because its so much worse for you. That was part of the justification for closing business and schools, limiting travel, and preventing families from visiting sick or elderly relatives in hospitals and nursing homes. Now its all back to normal and Covid is just another cold worthy of rest, hydration, and ibuprofen for a fever.

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Sorry to say, but I don't understand why you don't understand something so simple (probably I am rude).

In the last three years there have been many strains of Covid. Of each one we didn't know if it would be more contageous and if it would make more people sick ( and dead). It turned out most strains of Covid did turn out to become more contageous, and thus the then dominant strain. They also, mostly or even all, made people less severe sick and caused less deaths.

If you get Covid today, it is not like getting Covid in June 2020. Strains are heading towards the other coronaviruses, you mostly get the common cold. That common cold can still be ugly, but not many people will have to go to the hospital for it or die from it.

There isn't a clear way to compare infectivity or severity of disease when the virus is a novel pathogen versus one that we have lived with for three years now. I'm not sure why we would expect that absolute risk of severe disease or death would be the same whether you've been previously infected or not.

Its absolutely possible, and even makes sense evolutionarily, that the virus would trend towards higher infectivity and lower mortality over time. I don't disagree with that at all, and ironically I recall that also being an idea that was considered dangerous and wrong early on.

My argument remains though, if the virus in 2020 couldn't be compared to the common cold and it was effectively blasphemous to do so it seems crazy to me that this would be accepted practice now. The sheer amount of both genetic and symptomatic differences required to make a deadly virus turn into a cold virus should warrant classifying it as a different virus and disease entirely.

Endorsed by Martha Stewart! 'This flu season, ask your doctor if covid is right for you.' The copy has shifted to 'this endorsement is not intended to replace a conversation with a health professional.'

haven’t seen this take in a while

over summer I met a woman that had just come out of her prepper bunker

all she could talk about was her discontent with big pharma and guided plans from billionaires, although not a fan of vaccines she was a fan of the personal responsibility approach of staying away from all of us enlightened and possibly infected (or vaccinated) rubes, that’s always a choice! too bad she was running out of money 3 years later and had to get a job. I met her at her job and asked her out successfully, our date was the same day where I learned this is all she reads about on the internet

it was so funny, didnt expect to see that in 2023

Hah, yeah that's an interesting one for sure. Sounds effectively like the plot of a Brendan Fraser, just replace Covid with nuclear fallout.

Can't say that I consider myself a prepper, and definitely not to the extent of having a bomb shelter stocked with years of rations. I can see the view I raised here being more common in the prepped space, though to me it feels more like a rational retrospective (I'm biased obviously).

So much effort was put into making it clear that Covid wasn't similar to a common cold, to the point of labeling such a comparison and the person making it as dangerous.

If that really is how medical specialists treat it now, it seems worthwhile for us (or at least those who made such claims) to revisit how they got it that wrong. Maybe it comes down to simply learning more since then, which is totally reasonable but also something that could have been expected and led to a more reasoned and less certain message earlier on.

It doesn't come down to 'simply learning'. There's an inherent bias towards extreme risk aversion, conservatism and NIH syndrome in the expert groups that the UK government consulted. I'd love to think that such a smart group of talented individuals could self-correct, but I don't think many have yet seen their error. Three years is already too long to wait.

I wouldn't expect many political or medical leaders to own the over reaction or simply fear they may very well have felt. I seriously hope they've learned something though, I really don't want to see us thrown through another run of lockdowns, closures, and in some places forced vaccinations because leaders didn't learn to keep a level head and understand the risks before claiming to be certain of what is happening and will happen in the future.

Speaking from experience it was just the crazy leaking out into the real world. The top guys have been fighting over which way the sky is falling for 40 years. I was pretty surprised others didn’t pick up on it.

That's an interesting take for sure, and much more simple than all the conspiracy theories that were flying around.

If the sky is always falling, you overreact no matter what.

My point is that I just find it fascinating to still care.

There will never be a resolution to that treatment in 2020 and 2021. How is that a part of anyone’s identity, still?

I like irony too, we can all see the irony. But it was only interesting irony in 2021, not two years later

I guess it just comes down to how serious one thinks actions taken during 2020 and 2021 were.

Its definitely not a topic I think about often, but when it comes up I'm reminded of the mass hysteria we watched play out and the governmental overreach that sets dangerous precedents for future pandemics or public health concerns.

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