[runako]

> if you wouldn't be scared of dying from the flu, its unreasonable to be afraid of COVID.

I'm actually more worried that (as in the fall), my city will have to convert our convention center to a field hospital because the local ICUs are full. And then I'm worried that I (or someone I care about) will experience one of the normal things that send people to hospitals, only there won't be capacity to see them in a timely fashion.

And honestly I'm damn sick of the necessary curbs that keep this thing from killing even more people. (It's possible to prefer society arrange itself in such a fashion that we try not to make it actively hostile to the vulnerable.)

This isn't hyperbole, it was 5 months ago. My governor is GOP and doesn't consider Covid to be real. Yet he still authorized giant field hospitals. He still won't open the governor's mansion for tours, in spite of saying all restrictions are lifted (he's not an idiot, he just plays one on TV. Nobody is really stupid enough to want unvaccinated people coming through their house all day.) He has never done any of this for the flu.

Consider yourself fortunate that this did not happen in your area. But don't pretend it didn't happen or is just the media.

And then the main thrust of what I said is this. Nobody knows what a Covid infection today will mean in 20 years. It obviously has neurological impact in some patients. Does that carry long-term import? Nobody knows. Easier to not get it, since vaccines are available and free.

[vokep]

You're sure those are ICUs full of people in critical condition due to COVID? How many went to the hospital the instant they got COVID despite lack of critical symptoms?

I don't think you're trying to be hyperbolic, I think you've been fed accurate information clothed in fear so as to lead to a bad-faith worst case interpretation of that data.

The most intelligent people I know who have the most experience in the medical field, have always suggested, and still do with the COVID vaccine, to wait a minimum of 5 years before expecting safety in something like that.

To be clear, to the response "be glad it isn't in your area", it is, I've had people directly claim to me a local hospital is overrun with patients. A friend had to goto the same hospital for unrelated reasons. Parking lot was nearly empty, calm and boring inside. Someone is lying, my friend doesn't have a trackrecord of lying, quite the opposite. The news media on the other hand, I can't say the same.

[detaro]

Hospitals here have difficulties finding space for traffic accident victims, they don't just let anyone with COVID book a space in the ICU, and never have. Seriously, be glad it isn't so bad in your area and stop trivializing it.

[runako]

> You're sure those are ICUs full of people in critical condition due to COVID?

You got me, I didn't triage each patient at all the hospitals in a major metro area. You're probably right that everyone came in at the same time for muscle cramps and sprains. The hospitals pretended to give them Covid tests but really just said they all tested positive because that's how unethical medical practitioners are these days. Further, the hospital administrators lied about census numbers in a coordinated fashion so that the census numbers would match predictions from infection data weeks prior. Then, the Covid-denying governor decided to open massive field hospitals because he thought that projecting the image of being overrun with a plague was a good strategy to help Senators from his party win reelection.

You're probably right, Occam was completely wrong.

[detaro]

> To be clear, to the response "be glad it isn't in your area", it is, I've had people directly claim to me a local hospital is overrun with patients.

This is based on first hand reports by people working in those hospitals.