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I think the cumulative effects of catching COVID repeatedly are going to be a lot worse than what all the people who casually dismiss it as no big deal seem to think. Already there’s an overall life expectancy reduction by 1-3 years, so I’ll continue wearing my N95. It does bug me that I’ll inevitably have to deal with people who are maskless and think wearing an N95 is going overboard and they don’t even realize that this mask protects them more against COVID than it protects me.
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What’s your prospect on the future then. As the current vaccines evidently can not stop the virus, do you think we should keep wearing masks and limit social interactions indefinitely?
This may be a viable option for some, but I certainly do not want to live the rest of my life like this. I actually think a lot of people would consider such a life barely, if at all, worth living.
life expectancy reduction by 1-3 years
Umm, what do you mean? Has there been a study that shows a drop of life expectancy by 1-3 years for people with long COVID compared to those without, I’d like to see this study.
What’s your prospect on the future then. As the current vaccines evidently can not stop the virus, do you think we should keep wearing masks and limit social interactions indefinitely?
For masks, yes. For social interactions, I think we should make a meaningful attempt to shift towards social interactions that are based outdoors or at least in spaced out areas instead of cramped up, poorly ventilated areas.
Personally, I’m more than willing to wear a mask when I go grocery shopping, to the doctor’s office, or to pretty much any business if it means potentially preventing an immunocompromised or otherwise vulnerable person from getting COVID. It’s a very small sacrifice to make.
Umm, what do you mean? Has there been a study that shows a drop of life expectancy by 1-3 years for people with long COVID compared to those without, I’d like to see this study.
Have you looked? Because a quick Google search yields a number of studies that discuss the effects of COVID in relation to life expectancy. If you’d like to see these studies, what has stopped you from looking for them?
From the (peer reviewed) article above… US life expectancy decreased 2.27 years for men and 1.61 years for women.
I see you’re the same guy that’s posted loads of COVID misunderstands on Lemmy in the past, so I’m just going to leave my comment at that. The last time I asked what your educational background was, you misinterpreted my simple question about your credentials as a personal attack and said that you have “studied physics and now study mathematics”. I’ve studied physics and mathematics too-- that doesn’t make me a physicist nor a mathematician, it just means I’ve simply studied both subjects. If someone asked me if I had an educational background in microbiology and I responded by saying "I’ve studied microbiology", that’s a very misleading answer.
So I’ll rephrase the question-- do you have any degrees in fields pertaining to science or medicine? I ask not to insult you, I ask because if you had a background in science or medicine you would most likely know how to find peer-reviewed scientific literature that discussed the impact of COVID-19 on life expectancy.
Your problem is that you immediately assumed in the past that I was personally attacking you and that misperception lead you to completely miss the fundamental points I was trying to get you to understand. I admittedly have a bad habit of responding to discussions like this in a way that rubs people the wrong way so I assure you it has nothing to do with you and everything to do with my less than stellar communications skills with people, particularly those I disagree with.
I also asked about your educational background because you have a tendency to put a lot of weight into the opinion of "some" experts, seemingly not understanding the importance of of what most experts support. This is a very common thing that people outside of science/medicine are mislead into believing is a legitimate means of pushing a scientific argument that is usually taught to science majors in their first year of college/university. Again, I know I probably sound like I’m being a snide dick and I may very sound like that, but I assure you it’s just the unfortunate way that I tend to communicate in these types of discussions-- nothing to do with you in specific.
If you said to a doctor "I think COVID-19 isn’t that serious anymore and we should drop the mandates", and the doctor asked you "are you a doctor? are you a nurse? do you have any background in medicine or science?", can you see why any of those questions are quite relevant to the discussion as it pertains to credentials that have an impact on how likely it is that you know what you’re talking about? That is the point I’m trying to make when I ask about your educational background.
I’m not an accountant and although I’ve studied accounting in university, the various qualifications that accountants have in their field exist for a reason. So for me to tell people who’ve majored in accounting my unqualified, unsubstantiated opinions on why they’re wrong about [accounting topic], would be as fundamentally flawed as what you appear to be doing with COVID. Credentials matter.
The study you linked does not even mention long covid, it merely analyzes all cause mortality and can’t even link SARS-CoV-2 directly to increased mortality. Not to mention that in some countries life expectancy increased despite the pandemic.
Nevertheless, the decomposition analysis of the life expectancy losses in these four countries reveals particularly large contributions to the reduction of life expectancy from increases in mortality at ages younger than 65 years in the US. However, our analyses were not able to identify whether these excess deaths were directly caused by SARS-CoV-2 or were related to other causes of deaths.
In contrast, a gain in life expectancy was observed in New Zealand (0.66, 0.41 to 0.89) and Taiwan (0.35, 0.14 to 0.54); no evidence was found of a change in life expectancy in South Korea (0.11, −0.09 to 0.30), Norway (0.07, −0.03 to 0.17), or Denmark (−0.09, −0.24 to 0.06) (fig 3).
You implied that catching COVID several times is the cause of this. That’s why I asked what you meant regarding the drop in life expectancy.
If you’d like to see these studies, what has stopped you from looking for them?
Finding studies like the one you linked is not a problem, but that’s not what I have been asking about.
So I ask again: Is there any actual evidence for long covid or repeatedly catching covid to considerably reduce life expectancy? These are the studies I can not find.
Regarding my education, if you are concerned about me having studied maths and physics for just a month and then decided to drop out: I can assure you this is not the case, I have finished my thesis for physics and am writing the one for mathematics at the moment.
If you said to a doctor “I think COVID-19 isn’t that serious anymore and we should drop the mandates”, and the doctor asked you “are you a doctor? are you a nurse? do you have any background in medicine or science?”, can you see why any of those questions are quite relevant to the discussion as it pertains to credentials that have an impact on how likely it is that you know what you’re talking about? That is the point I’m trying to make when I ask about your educational background.
That depends on context. If I am a politician and do not want to discuss the details, of course I will ask experts and leave it at that. But as a politician I also need to be careful what I ask and who I ask. For example if I (as politician) ask a doctor: I’d like to free the population of the cold, what do I do? I might get a response like: Well, you could wear masks all year and do self isolation apart from things absolutely necessary to survive. This is obviously the wrong question to ask. Another important questions would be: How are those mandates going to affect the economic or the quality of life of the population? Now a doctor is the wrong person to ask.
If on the other hand, the discussion is meant to go into detail, what matters is facts and connecting them logically. I am more likely to miss something as I am not a domain expert, but this does not mean I should be banned from discussions and it also does not mean I am automatically wrong because I do not agree with what you call “most experts”.
Looking at the facts yourself is in my opinion especially important as all science around the pandemic has been politicized and there is a lot of outside pressure. It would definitely not be the first time that science has been misrepresented to push a certain political or economical agenda.
Omicron hit the UK relatively early and they have lifted most mandates about a month ago. You can have a look at the effect on cases, the healthcare system as well as deaths here: https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/details/healthcare
Actually the number of infections did not increase (I have to admit that I am not sure how much they have been testing) and there were much less hospitalizations as well as deaths despite much higher infections numbers with Omicron.
From the article you posted…
The NHS Confederation said the move would inevitably place renewed pressure on hospitals, while the British Medical Association said the changes planned were “not guided by the data”.
Politicians lifting public health mandates doesn’t mean their decision was guided by scientific data. Assuming you read that article, what is your opinion of the above excerpt?
Looking at the data you provided, my take is…
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availability of testing has considerably decrease as mandates are lifted, and medical experts/research scientists have warned throughout these 2 years that COVID infection numbers are severely under-counted because not everyone who gets COVID can get tested for it
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you’re completely ignoring the points in time when COVID infection rates were considerably lower than the current point in time
Why do you just happen to use mandates being lifted as evidence that COVID should be taken less seriously, and completely ignore the healthcare experts calling out the policy changes as "not guided by the data"? This is precisely why I brought up qualifications the last time we had this discussion and it’s unfortunate that instead of understanding my point about why credentials matter, you misinterpreted what I said and assumed I had asked you about your educational background for no reason other than to personally insult you.
Assuming you read that article, what is your opinion of the above excerpt?
The NHS Confederation acted overly cautious and obviously was wrong. The British healthcare system did not crumble under Omicron despite mandates being lifted. I am aware that the article is filled with warnings claiming Johnson is lifting mandates far too soon. And I am also convinced that this move was mostly politically motivated. But this does not mean that we can not look at the results of this decision. And these are clearly not as bad as many including the NHS Confederation predicted.
you’re completely ignoring the points in time when COVID infection rates were considerably lower than the current point in time
Yes, because the ratio of infections to hospitalizations has changed dramatically. What I look at is the pressure on the healthcare system. If healthcare can handle all patients just fine, I do not see a problem with lifting mandates. But clearly you disagree, is the reason for that indeed that you fear COVID still does a lot of damage even if you do not get hospitalized?
Why do you just happen to use mandates being lifted as evidence that COVID should be taken less seriously
What are you talking about, I did not even mention the severity of COVID in this thread?
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Really bad takes here.
Why? Do you think we can actually prevent a significant amount of people from catching COVID-19 in the first place by keeping very strict mandates? Or do you also fear that repeatedly catching COVID-19 might do serious damage to your body?
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