A lot of anecdotal stories I see from young people who have gotten it talk about it being the worst illness in their life and feeling close to needing hospital care. I think I'll pass. There is more than live/die in the end, such as maintaining quality of life.
The numbers are absolutely clear: if you’re under the age of 50, you are overwhelmingly likely to have nothing more than a minor illness. Over 30% of infections are estimated to be asymptomatic. In New York, over 90% of hospitalizations (in addition to being heavily skewed to the elderly) involved one or more comorbidities. Nearly 90% had two or more.
This really shouldn't be downvoted. It's factually accurate that the vast majority of people who get this who are young and healthy do not experience even noteworthy symptoms. Stories of it being the worst illness people have ever experienced are likely to be cherrypicked, especially because most people who had the unremarkable symptoms won't even know it.
Acknowledging that most cases are minor and not that bad doesn't mean you have to run down the entire path of doubting the virus' threat.
If you're young and healthy, it may make complete sense to get the virus is a controlled manner with low viral load. I'd likely sign up to do this. Immunity is not proven, but its highly probable at least for a while. It would be nice to not constantly question whether or not I'm asymptomatically infectious and a threat to those around me.
infection passports are problematic because these incentives crop up for people who are actually at notable risk but either need the economic livelihood or just don't believe the facts around the virus
Does it though? Chicken pox parties are still common. With literally millions of people in risk of dying and the apparent years until we’ll get to a vaccine, is it really that crazy to just spend two months intentionally infecting all low risk people to build up herd immunity?
I know it’s unconventional but this is not a normal situation. If it was done in an orderly and controlled fashion, possibly even incorporating vaccine testing, this had the greatest odds of actually fixing the problem as a whole.
It's not a cake walk illness for many that get it. The things I read seem to assume that you're completely fine if you aren't on death's door. But many of the first hand accounts from people that got it (and didn't go to the hospital) is the you absolutely do not want it.
I'm going to err on the side of not getting it if given a choice.
Sure, and I think everyone's on the same page that you should be free to do that. The question is how the rest of us can best get back to a (mostly) normal life.
Just to be really clear, you're free to do what you want. And I don't care what you do.
What I don't feel is correct is to institute policy based on things that the CDC says are not effective enough to determine policy. Or to support intentional infection based on not understanding the illness well enough. The reason I don't support that is not because I care about what the people forcing infection do to themselves, but what they do to the people that need to support them (hospitals, going out when ill and infecting others who didn't sign up for that, etc).
That makes sense to me. I certainly agree that we shouldn't institute ineffective policy that won't accomplish our goals, and I share the CDC's skepticism of immunity passports.
I'm not convinced that it would actually help that? What % of the population needs it to gain herd immunity? Will older people chip in to contribute or only younger people? What risk is there to younger people in general? We already know there are long lasting effects possible and deaths are still possible.
The percentage needed for herd immunity is waaaaay less than the low risk population. And using intentional exposure combined with vaccine testing will bring us to a successful vaccine much faster.
This isn’t about perfection. Millions of people will die. We need an answer now. Not in years.
I know. I probably should have said “were” as they are much less common now due to the vaccine. The point was that they were safer than not getting it later in life before we had a vaccine. My mistake in wording that.
This is a false narrative about serious issues with young people designed with the good intention to convince younger people to take precautions and not infect those at higher risk. It’s not actually a real problem outside of extreme outliers.
To the extent Europe has avoided American-style mass layoffs, it's been through direct and indirect government funding of continued employment. Businesses and employees are being kept warm — they're in the cache.
In the US, this is anathema to the ruling party, so even trillion-dollar nominal relief legislation is structured to channel money with little oversight primarily to corporations, and erect preferential barriers to relief reaching states, local governments, and citizens' pockets.
There is more concern in the US ruling party over the "moral hazard" of a fast-food worker in a big city on the edge of poverty receiving unemployment that exceeds their $8 per hour salary, than there is over shell companies thrown together in a week receiving $55M no-bid contracts to resell PPE seized by the federal government from the states [1].
[1] See Blue Flame Medical, Oren-Pines, Panthera, et al.
While it’s tempting, from a safety perspective, to implement something like this I think a system of “haves” and “have nots” based entirely on medical records is a recipe for disaster in the long-term. I would rather wear a mask and socially distance so that everyone is equal and equally inconvenienced.
>The world really needs to stop self harming itself in order to protect a few boomers with power.
While I would not phrase it so harshly, I understand the point. But looking further down the road: I worry that if we encounter a virus that truly does threaten the entire population, that we'll end up in a permanent, North Korea-like state. The precedent has been set for this by the Covid-19 experience.
The world really needs to stop self harming itself in order to protect a few boomers with power.
It's very clear that the vast majority of people under 50 are not at risk of dying from covid19 in developed countries with adequate healthcare.