[throwaway6977]

Hey I just wanna say that I'm really glad that you personally haven't had to go through the hell of cardiovascular/heart damage from this, but you also shouldn't use your anecdote to undermine others' extreme sickness. You are ignorant to experiences not your own.

[mnw21cam]

I was quadruple-vaccinated due to being on immunosuppressants, and yet when I finally caught the virus (ironically at a medical science conference) it resulted in a stay at hospital, and now 18 months later I still have rapid heartbeat and heavy breathing after walking up a single flight of stairs, and real trouble concentrating on my work.

For the vast majority of people, yes Covid is on the level of a cold. However for some of us, it's f*** scary. I knew in advance that if I caught it, then it would likely be bad. It's a scary proposition watching the political decisions and individual decisions being made and seeing that the country has basically decided that my life should be written off in favour of a little bit of crowd-pleasing and avoiding mild inconvenience. I have now had 7 vaccines, yet I still have no confidence that I would survive a second infection. That's a level of dread that is unhealthy having hanging over you all the time.

I was teaching at a course a while back, and I saw that the professor in charge of the department running it (who wasn't actually providing any of the teaching and didn't really need to be there) was sniffling all the way through the whole thing, and then a couple of days later I was contacted by an organiser saying that a whole load of people who attended had caught Covid. I could not believe the stupidity from someone who is actually very intelligent. It's an example of very mild inconvenience to just stay at home if you're unwell, because you have no idea if there's someone vulnerable that you're going to infect and potentially kill. I have seen multiple people in the last couple of months visibly unwell, admitting that their other half tested positive for Covid a few days ago, but not believing that they had it themselves and still going out and meeting up with people. That level of wilful ignorance is (in my mind) atrocious in this day and age.

I'm extremely lucky to have a job where I can work from home almost 100% of the time. I can't see this changing in the next couple of years at least. Partly because people believe that "In 2023, COVID is a bad cold/flu".

[drewrv]

> In 2023, COVID is a bad cold/flu.

Bad flus are deadly.

> With the flu, we know that people are no longer contagious once symptoms are gone

Famously, Covid is different in that it can be spread asymptomatically.