People have been criminally prosecuted for deliberately infecting people with HIV. Why not for this? Oh, wait. it's a mix of homophobia and COVID denialism, isn't it?
Fun fact: I caught Covid March of 2024. My company ended the Covid protocols and I had to come to work. The insurance would not cover the Paxlovid, so no anti vitals for me. After two days, I developed Bells Palsy and the left side of my face became paralyzed. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Yay!
No. I was told that it would "self correct" or not. Most of the paralysis is gone but some remains. My left eye doesn't close when I sleep, for instance.
I worked with a man who'd had it, and his did self-correct. I had never heard of it before then. The Mayo Clinic site has a lot of information. I hope your eye "decides" that it can close during sleep soon!
in case you’re not sealioning. it is an incurable condition that for me results in exhaustion from just making breakfast in the morning, let alone responsibilities for the rest of the day.
I don't know where in Europe you're at but here in Germany so many teachers and kindergarden/childcare persons are out sick that childcare is a game of roulette every day and it has been that way for weeks now.
My son caught it the last week of kindergarden and we've been sick all summer holidays.
When I was 23 I got the flu. I spent a week abed, shivering, even though I was in the Caribbean and it was a perfect 75-80 F winter in Puerto Rico. When I caught COVID last November, I almost had to be hospitalized. I had sleep face down, with my forehead on an ottoman, because I couldn't swallow.
If I swallowed my own spit, it hurt so bad that it would wake me up. I had to drool into a bowl beneath my face. I didn't sleep for 3 days, and I forced myself to drink broth for food, in spite of the pain. My fever got bad by the end of the first week, but mercifully it went down but lingered weeks
Jesus, when was the last time you had the flu? Like, not the "flu," but actual influenza? Because thanks to flu shots and hygiene, I haven't had it in about 20 years. Influenza kills people. A child in my son's 1st grade class died from the flu. Influenza is not something to be flippant about.
I got so sick with swine flu during *that* pandemic that I probably should've been in hospital for dehydration and fever. I had one of those film thermometers that only goes up to 40°C and was hitting that in seconds.
Secondary infections for most of a year after.
I was a fit and healthy 18yo
A couple years before COVID, one of the kids in my son's kindergarten class lost their apparently healthy and fit father to influenza over the Christmas break. Just gone. We've never taken influenza lightly and never will. People don't get it as often as most people get COVID, but it still kills.
Hi, I'm in Europe and got long covid from an asymptomatic case and am now likely disabled for life. The long covid clinics here have waiting lists.
So.... maybe don't be so ignorant.
a) yes it is and always has been, b) the flu kills hundreds of thousands of europeans each year, c) pretty sure we collectively decided against social darwinism after that one teensy oopsie almost a hundred years ago, did you not get the memo?
Well, I don't know about Europe but in the UK the last time I had it it was *much* worse than the flu, which is bad enough. Most confuse a heavy cold with the flu. This is wildly inaccurate.
Here in the UK, I had a very mild case of covid in terms of immediate symptoms but have been left with long covid that causes daily pain ranging from light to unbearable and has severely limited my daily life.
The flu is also not a minor inconvenience — it kills tens of thousands of people each year and a person can easily miss a week of work from it, which many can’t afford. But it’s also seasonal, which covid definitely isn’t. So I don’t get the comparison but it also doesn’t help your case.
Another European here, some may find it a minor inconvenience but for others it is a death sentence and I have several friends - not old, not unhealthy - with long Covid.
That’s the thing, it’s like Russian roulette. You might be back to full health after a week like my partner, you might be like me and have lingering debilitating symptoms more than 2.5 years later, you might even die.
I caught covid a month ago. Even with a full series of 5 vaccines, it still knocked me flat for 3 days, almost ambulatory for the next 5 days, congested and coughing until a few days ago.
Do not “minor inconvenience” me.
Do you think it’s ok to give people the flu? Honestly, this post is about not getting people sick. That used to be a common courtesy even if it was just a cold.
That's because it isn't, even here in Europe. There are people who value their perceived normalcy over the general health. Unfortunately they're making the rules here.
For me it was less than a punch, but the thing is it's not just me. My son got it and he was miserable and missed daycare. He gave it to my wife and I who then had to deal with it. We didn't see his grandparents to keep them from getting it. Given the choice I'd take a punch to spare everyone it.
Covid took out most of the hearing in my left ear. It's a permanent hearing loss. But I do know lots of people who have had covid more than once and recovered without any lingering issues.
I was lucky to have *mostly* nuisance symptoms to the point where I thought it was a reaction to my flu shot, but then the body aches kicked in, and that dang "fog." You just don't know what it's going to do to the average person.
I hate the fog because I only notice it when I really need to focus. I'll get a phone call and just have trouble talking to people and not realize it was going to happen till I say "Hello... this is... me"
I was in one street fight (took some punches, and a friend ended up with a broken nose) and have tested positive twice. I recovered from the fight much faster.
I feel like the face punching rules have gotten a bit lax in the past few years, so maybe we can just do the face punching thing for a bit until people self-isolate to avoid chronic black eye syndrome.
Was on a plane from the UK recently & I was one of the few people masking. That didn't surprise me, alas, but the fact that a few people were clearly sick & coughing the entire flight & not at all trying to mitigate the spread of whatever they had (cough into your elbow--nope!), did feel aggressive.
And, in a shocking twist, multiple legislatures are considering outlawing masks. Not only is it ok to spread a disease with a high variance in outcomes but protecting oneself is becoming illegal 🙃
It’s really not fine. I consider giving people Covid repeatedly even after knowing how dangerous it is a form of assault because Covid attacks entire organ systems including the immune system and neural networks.
I'm a month into post-Covid symptoms (not officially "long Covid" until 3 months, but it's fitting all the symptoms). I would very much have preferred to be punched in the face instead.
I read a post the other day about a lady who was at the DMV and a guy sneezed behind her and then he was like "oh sorry, I have COVID" and I audibly gasped reading that, it's horrifying how normalized it has become to infect others
that's because fists exist, which we know because they are big enough to see, while microbes cannot exist, because they are too small to see, this is science now
Things have gone off the rails everywhere; anti-vax, anti-max: we want to make you sick; anti-abortion, anti-trans: we want to control your body and what you do with it. Anti-trans, anti-women: we want to see your genitals and decide the limits of your gender and, when we aren’t satisfied, bully you
I've thought for a while, just how different would people feel about spreading covid if they saw all of its downstream damage immediately like shrapnel flying from their bodies. Just a 1-1 translation of severity, but immediate and visible. How would they recoil then?
It's maddening how people seem to have convinced themselves covid doesn't exist. Someone very clearly sick at work told me "there must be something going around haha". Someone else thought their fever, cough, headache, sore throat & fatigue were due to the smoky air. I feel like I'm losing my mind.
I think it's less about sanity and more about selfishness. If it's not covid then I don't have to do anything to protect myself or others, or feel bad about the harm I may cause others. Ultimately that's why people get upset when we mask, it's a reminder of their selfishness.
I agree. It's just that sometimes, I find myself wondering if I'm the crazy one when there are so few other maskers out there. It's lonely being an outlier.
Both are totally unacceptable. I will never forgive my sister in law who came to stay before her brother went into hospital for a big operation and who refused my request to wear a mask on the train !
Celebrated even. How brave you were for coming in to work while sick, or running that race while symptomatic and testing positive surrounded by people who didn’t consent to be exposed.
It's as if you had a punching machine that only punched at random and you slammed the button repeatedly as you walked past people. It's okay, because it's not your fault, it's the machine's
Because we know who punches us in the face. It's much harder to know who gave us covid (or any other airbourne diseace). At least I have no idea who gave me covid. 😩
The remnants of a prescience medieval mindset. If you can’t see it, it’s not a real threat or if it is a threat, it’s a supernatural and out of our hands.
I have a new friend who is a doctor, who, when I told her the top 2 scariest post viral sequelae, shut down the conversation saying how she’s got PTSD from the last 4 years. Coincidentally, I have PTSD which triggered hyper-vigilance which keeps me informed & hopefully safe(er).
Exactly. I have a clotting disorder & have a DVT, plus thanks to my now former boss I caught covid. I’d rather not catch covid again and have another dvt or possibly a stroke next time. She and others like her don’t care that their actions directly lead to life or death consequences for others.
Someone I'm close to had their second DVT after suspected covid. Although I think in their case it may have been more that the covid exacerbated their ADHD, so they missed a week of warfarin without quite realising. Probably both.
The argument against punching people in the face isn't "you could just wear a motorcycle helmet everywhere if you don't want to get punched in the face".
And yet you can still get long COVID or worse even when boosted. It reduces the chance, but not to zero or even close enough to zero to be comfortable. Direct experience with this...
The new booster variant isn't available until next month. I've been fully vaxxed and boosted, almost never leave the house, and I just tested positive for COVID. I already have lung damage from my first bout of COVID in 2020, so getting it again is suboptimal.
And the new update is about two variants behind the one currently infecting people, because the powers that be are so damned insistent on shoehorning covid into the inappropriate flu models
Vaccine just prevents severe disease/hospitalization/death, not transmission, and not necessarily infection. And our infection rates are higher than 2020 numbers.
i truly can't get over this. the casualty of potentially killing or disabling people because of inaction. these same folks of course won't be gracious even at the thought of government aid for those suffering from the virus they spread.
Given the shade I've been thrown for wearing a mask* while traveling, I think the situation might be a little more complex than this statement implies. *Everyone* is in denial about Covid.
*Lucky them I dgaf, because it turned out I actually did and do have it.
And when you say "Hey, it's possible you gave me COVID because of XYZ", rather than saying "oh, sorry if that was the case", they now say "how DARE you imply I was in any way contagious! 🤬"
Didn't they just sentence a guy to 30 years in prison for intentionally spreading HIV? But it's OK for the anti-vax/anti-mask nuts to spread Covid? The mental gymnastics people go through to justify their craziness is mind boggling.
It's a matter of scale, too. Millions died from COVID-19, and more are still dying or suffering from long COVID. Surviving it can hide what the virus has done & is doing to your brain, heart, blood vessels, lungs, and other organs.
there was also that bugfuck woman with... was it typhoid fever? ... who was literally evading arrest and infecting people for months if not years - just like the original typhoid mary.
YES! We flew home from London a few weeks ago and the couple sitting behind us coughed and hacked the whole 9 hours across the Atlantic. Not a mask in sight. We came down with COVID within 48 hours of arriving home. I am still furious.
Yah. I flew the other day and this family elsewhere on the plane were clearly VERY sick. A stable flight and every single kid was throwing up the entire flight.
That is the big lesson - we had become way too comfortable flying without masks. Asked the flight attendants and there were none available. Will not leave home again without proper masks.
The thing of it is that up to 30% of COVID transmission is asymptomatic or presymptomatic. So if you're indoors with other people, you could be that couple giving everyone COVID at any time. It's not as simple as just taking precautions when someone is visibly sick. Though visibly sick = extra rage.
And there's the evidence of significantly more up and down regulation of immune system genes happening simultaneously, when asymptomatic. We can't rely on the old 'I feel ill' signs to know we're possibly infectious!
Visibly sick removes any plausible deniability, for sure. If you're not following the news about this, you truly might be ignorant of how common asymptomatic transmission is. If you can't stop coughing, YOU KNOW.
It was an absolutely fair question. After I became symptomatic but before I tested I had to run errands and because I didn’t know if it was the flu or COVID I strapped on an N95 just in case. It really takes so little to do what is needed to not pass this on to someone else.
Hey, so you're using this response to undermine a claim that is true: there is little social reproach for eschewing measures to protect others from SARSCOV2 transmission.
Yes. Point taken. Now remove the hyperbole. People are quite lackadaisical about spreading SARSCOV2, which has caused 26,000 deaths in the US since January 2024, results in long COVID in ~3% infected. The seriousness of the disease is not matched by the response to it.
Hmm. You can die of Covid but you can also die from a single punch. Then again, punching one person doesn’t usually cause harm to dozens of others. Katie 1:0 internet man.
For my wife and I, it’s early 2021 forever. We’re both vaccinated and always update whenever they’re released, and we wear masks when we have to interact with other people at the grocery store or wherever. we don’t do restaurants and have just a couple people we interact with at our house.
honestly I feel this way about airborne/aerosol illness generally. sick people used to come up to me in the signing line because they “just had to meet me.” I’m on tour! I need my voice! Anyhow guess who doesn’t do the signing line any more
saddest thing is how long we all lived without embracing the utility of masks, since ofc ppl can be infectious without knowing they're sick. i remember touring with meltbanana in the 90s who all wore masks, how ridiculous in retrospect it feels to have not learned /then/😬
It really isn't and never has just been a covid problem. It's an airborne virus problem! It's hard to believe how normal it was to just get colds and flus several times a year and to take no precautions to protect other people's wellbeing
That second half kinda proves it isn’t even an airborne virus problem. It’s a “not understanding that your actions can have repercussions that only hurt others” problem.
It's a little bit of both if you ask me, but yeah definitely. Airborne viruses are one of the many things we should probably attempt to be considerate about
Yep it’s a place where the historical analogy to HIV totally breaks down. There, infection carried (still carries) a ton of stigma, to the point of criminalization. That’s completely absent for Covid.
And so, four years and counting, me and the damaged heart and lungs I got as a blameless child with cancer get to remain isolated in the loneliest suburb I could find in a house I can hardly leave.
But y'all enjoy Applebee's & keep posting about how it's not 2020 anymore.
Comments
Hopefully it will be overturned by judicial review, but it says something that some legislators feel it necessary to spread the coronavirus.
Objectively pro-Covid.
COVID was by far the worse experience.
i’ll tell you which has been more disruptive to my life overall.
https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/chronic-fatigue-syndrome/symptoms-causes/syc-20360490
My son caught it the last week of kindergarden and we've been sick all summer holidays.
Secondary infections for most of a year after.
I was a fit and healthy 18yo
Way to stay on brand, dipshit.
So.... maybe don't be so ignorant.
The Flu killed almost as many people in 2023 as COVID did.
There is a very, very valid reason why it is so critical to get the flu vaccine every single year.
Because you are all over the place and if you are gonna try and troll folks you gotta keep us entertained. You are failing pretty miserably.
Do not “minor inconvenience” me.
(Not that I'm bitter...)
just what?! WHAT?!
Try running around with a blindfold on, flailing your arms around wildly. Maybe people are cool with that
Fear me. I'm unchained.
U.S. imperialism finds it hard to blame China for someone randomly "punching someone in the face"
Also "punching someone in the face" doesn't kill older people sooner who are a "drain on society"
https://www.wsws.org/en/topics/event/coronavirus
*Lucky them I dgaf, because it turned out I actually did and do have it.
It's not a punch in the face that did this to him.
I was so thankful I had my n95 on.
(Might not have helped in your situation, I get that. But I don’t fly anyway—never have, probably never will. Certainly not while there’s a pandemic.)
That claim is extremely trivially dispatched.
Influenza seasonally kills up to 51,000/year.
Any discussion has to start with the fact that COVID severity is now in the range of seasonal influenza. And the public is acting accordingly.
But y'all enjoy Applebee's & keep posting about how it's not 2020 anymore.