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by triactual 1650 days ago
While anecdotal data isn’t very useful, it is good to remember that people actually do get this disease. It seems like it’s always at arms length in online discussions; that someone else will get it surely, probably due to some implied moral failing, but not OP. Thanks for sharing and I hope you get better soon.
2 comments
13years 1650 days ago
> good to remember that people actually do get this disease.

Why does it continue to be significantly important to call this out when the trajectory places Omicron and possible future variants within the realms of cold/flu ?

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triactual 1650 days ago
To remember that normal people from our own social circles get infected and usually survive just fine. Rather than pretending that every infection is an overweight, anti-vaxxer, etc. who dies immediately after destroying the local medical facilities. I think both sides of the severity discussion would benefit from keeping the human consequences in mind, whether they are more or less severe than imagined.
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13years 1650 days ago
Agreed, yet at some point society has to be productive again. Living in constant anxiety will ultimately be more destructive than the disease everyone fears if it has not already.
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triactual 1650 days ago
I actually completely agree. COVID is endemic so now we’re just prolonging the inevitable getting-on-with-it and the only question is how much damage we do pretending otherwise.
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Izkata 1649 days ago
> and possible future variants within the realms of cold/flu ?

Delta was already "within the realms of" the flu. Omicron so far appears to have shot past that and is on its way to a cold.

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throwaway_2009 1650 days ago
I'm not sure it's really considered a moral failing here in the UK, everyone gets it unless they're barricaded inside.

The official Government stats claim that over 15% have had a confirmed positive test at this point[1], I'd be surprised if the reality weren't over half.

Half of my friendship group currently have it (no idea whether it's Omicron or not, but, well, probably).

[1] https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk 11.2M positive tests/67M population makes 16.7%

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