[spookthesunset]

There is more to life than a myopic focus on avoiding one specific illness. I’ve got a million other problems in my life to worry about. Catching Covid isn’t anywhere near the top of that list.

This applies to society as a whole as well. The damage caused by our incredibly myopic focus on Covid is far, far greater than the damage actually caused by the virus itself.

[haswell]

> The damage caused by our incredibly myopic focus on Covid is far, far greater than the damage actually caused by the virus itself.

This seems much easier to say if you haven't been impacted by a serious case. I have friends who were similarly unconcerned, and who felt very differently after a month long battle with COVID, and as they continue to struggle with the after effects.

So yes, there's more to life than a myopic focus on avoiding one specific illness, but the actual impact of that statement and a closer look at the actual risk tradeoffs makes things a bit less obvious, and I'm not convinced that most of the behavior people are exhibiting is myopic.

> The damage caused by our incredibly myopic focus on Covid is far, far greater than the damage actually caused by the virus itself

This is a statement that needs quite a bit of evidence to back it up. I think it's safe to say that no one knew what the 2nd and 3rd order effects of trying to avoid COVID itself would be, and those effects are indeed significant. But neither can we say that we should have gone back and let the first rounds overwhelm and collapse hospital systems, the impact of which is something we can't even begin to understand right now.

[diag]

The things we do to avoid covid also help with avoiding other respiratory infections as well, all of which are pretty terrible to get in case anybody forgot about them.

But saying that covid isn't causing damage is itself highly myopic.

[ipaddr]

Wear a mask and stop getting other viral illnesses. We should have been doing this before covid.

[jeffbee]

I haven't even had a cold in years. Masks are brilliant. I even prefer to wear one now while bicycling, even though there is no health reason to wear one outdoors, just because it keeps my nose warm.

[gernb]

On the one side we have 20 million people dead. What's the counter factual of how many people would be dead if we'd been less myopic

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/excess-deaths-cumulative-...