[throwaway8581]

Yes. By contrast, for example, diabetics have a 30 times higher risk of needing amputations than the general population, 30000% percent higher.

Getting a flu is a risk that most people don't take any precautions for. Meanwhile we are severely restricting freedoms for everyone in part because of fear mongering about "long term effects" of covid. The vast majority of people would not see a 1.5 times higher risk than the flu as a serious risk.

[gremlinsinc]

20x more people died from covid WITH masks/lockdowns than during a normal flu season WITHOUT precautions.

masks/lockdowns have been so effective that there's hardly ANY flu this season because the flu is a LOT less contagious.

Had there been no lockdown, how much life would've been lost? 10x that? Would 6 million lives matter more to you than 600k that should've lived?

I had covid 13 months ago. I have all the symptoms of chronic fatigue syndrome and fibromyalgia and anxiety/depression which I had before but I've never had daily mid-day panic attacks where I can't breath and feel like the world is crashing down around me - til this year.

I've worked from home for 6 years, I'm a stay-home kind of person on non-pandemic years, only major difference is now I wear a mask which I can still breathe in, by the way.

I've had the flu countless times in my life, never have I had after-effects that lasted 13 fucking months. Go to /r/covidlonghaulers and try to convince them it's all "just a flu" many of which were at one point anti-maskers, and "my freedumb" enthusiasts and have changed their tune.

[throwaway8581]

The demographic overlap of Covid longhaulers with people who have other largely psychosomatic fake diseases like long-Lyme disease and fibromyalgia is telling. It’s also the same demographic of which 1/4 take anti-anxiety medicine: young white women. These are sick people, but not from Covid.

Which is not to say that some people are not seriously, permanently injured by the flu or covid. But the concerns about "long covid" are out of proportion to the likely reality.

It is also deceptive to talk about the higher overall death count vs. a normal flu season. There was much less pre-existing immunity to covid than the flu, so many more people were infected. I think a more useful question is the difference in outcomes for people who are infected with one vs. the other. People do not feel safe during flu season because they are not so likely to catch the flu. They feel safe because, unless they are sick or frail, the flu is not so concerning even if they do catch it.

[jquery]

I’m an adult male who had severe negative lasting psychological changes (panic disorder, GAD, depression) after a bout with pneumonia and I can assure you my symptoms aren’t “fake”. Nor was it due to the fear of having pneumonia, as the psychological symptoms started before before my physical symptoms appeared.

You sound like an ignorant person who’s been lucky enough to avoid some of the meaner curveballs life can throw at a person. I believe the covid long-haulers. It took me years to recover my mental health to “almost baseline” and I will probably be on SSRIs the rest of my life.

[necovek]

> 20x more people died from covid WITH masks/lockdowns than during a normal flu season WITHOUT precautions.

Against flu, the most vulnerable are regularly vaccinated, usually in early October every year, ahead of the "flu season" (at least here). I wouldn't call that "WITHOUT precautions".

Precautions (mask-wearing, lockdowns) against COVID apply to everyone because we still don't know for certain WHO the most vulnerable are (and even with flu, we get that wrong sometimes).

I am not saying COVID is not worse, because we know it is (even if we don't know by how much), but more importantly, we don't know for who is it terrible which is the most important thing.

I can understand you are sensitive to anyone appearing to discount COVID because you are the one of those who had it terrible, but extremism from both sides can only stop us from learning the actual truth about how COVID spreads and what effects it has: GP made a factual comment based on the actual study data, and gave their opinion on how that's not terrible since COVID is worse than flu too. There was no discounting of COVID there, just an attempt to understand it!