Yes, recovery is not binary. Even if you recover fully you've expended some percent of your finite lifetime capacity to heal your organs. It may well have taken years off your life. That's true for other illnesses to. The flu doesn't just cost you a week of productivity.

I think I'll try to get back into running again.

This feels like fear talking. As more data comes in, we are seeing more people with no affects. Not just mild, but nigh non existent.

It is agreed that something gives people severe cases. Severe includes death and recovered with damage. We don't seem to have data letting you know who or what would land there.

we have absolutely no clue regarding the long-term impacts of exposure to this virus for asymptomatic people or otherwise.

we cannot gamble with our future so carelessly on the basis of preliminary data. here is a vignette to explain why.

once someone is infected with HIV, most people experience flu-like symptoms for a week or two which then resolve either with or without treatment. in some people, the virus is cleared so effectively after the initial infection that they will test negative for HIV. then, over the span of months and years, their immune system is silently and entirely asymptomatically destroyed, leaving them none the wiser until they progress to AIDS and get extremely sick.

COVID hasn't given us any indication of similar activity. but we know so very little that we can't take the risk, especially not with millions and millions of people. i will also note that we are unlikely to rule out these kinds of hypothetical risks anytime soon. so caution is our only defense against disaster.

> hasn't given us any indication of similar activity. but we know so very little that we can't take the risk

There's little reason to believe it's significantly different to any other Coronavirus. Speculating that's it's suddenly going to be aids++ is pointless scaremongering.

The main* reason it was a "big deal" was the lack of common immunity thus leading to potentially rapid spread. Deaths in the vulnerable from the side effects of this kind of thing are perfectly normal and perfectly well understood and there is very little treatment

I don't think necessarily aids++, but speculating about long term effects is not pointless, or unreasonable.

https://www.thestar.com/life/health_wellness/2010/09/02/sars...

As with any viral pneumonia

Any novel viral pneumonia.

A garden snake and a cobra are both snakes. Belonging to the same category says nothing about the potency of their bite. We have no idea what kind of snake this is yet.

We have a pretty good idea

> COVID hasn't given us any indication of similar activity. but we know so very little that we can't take the risk

We take that risk with other viruses and bacteria literally all the time. If hypothetical but unlikely risks become thejustification for destroying people's livelihoods and the world ecomony, we're all dead anyway.

as a former immunologist, i can assure you that with common viruses and bacteria, we have years and years of knowledge about how they perform, thereby making the risks of exposure calculable.

it is this body of knowledge which allows our society to normally function even during a typical flu season. we understand the upper and lower boundaries of the consequences, and we can make an informed judgment about what we should do to navigate the environment accordingly.

the idea of throwing open the gates to allow everyone to get infected is a dangerous fantasy. at best, it's taking a leap of faith with other people's health without knowing whether there is a long way down or not.

I didn't realize this thread was about throwing open the gates. That said, I think there is an argument for more directed isolation measures for at risk groups. Fearing that there may be other unknowns doesn't seem to allow for any progress.

"isolation measures for at risk groups" sound so easy. First, isolate the obese. Hmm, 30% in America so 98M. Next isolate diabetics. Roughly 35M. After this, isolate those with heart disease and hypertension. 30% in the US, 98M. Old people? 32M. Naturally there's some overlapping in these groups. We'll be generous and say that 98M is the lower bound.

How on earth are you going to isolate 30% of the population?

This is making a lot of assumptions on what the at risk crowd is.

Now, I confess I am also making assumptions there. Data would be nice.

My assumptions are we could have saved a sizeable portion by tighter lockdowns on nursing homes. I also suspect we could have done things pre-infection to strengthen lungs of people with pre-existing lung conditions.

More pointedly, I think all of the havoc we have caused by closing schools is likely not amounting to a lot of saved lives. As a risk group, children are basically not at risk of severe cases.

Now, I hasten to add that no policy should be set by some random internet poster. I am hoping we are collecting data and running simulations to give us better data for the future.

If you have compromised lung functionality, there's not much you can do to strengthen it against COVID.

Children aren't at risk, and that's not why schools were closed.

Your posts don't seem to be made in good faith. Either that or you are demonstrating a lack of information on par with Trump.

Depends what the compromise is. And a lot of my view depends on if I had it. I can't get tested, as that isn't offered here. I definitely had something that made walking pneumonia seem like a cake walk. And whatever I had, it was barely a fever on my kids and wife. That said, I am glad I had my inhaler and access to steroids. Without those, I'm confident I would be much worse off today. (Indeed, my emergency inhaler was empty. Had to call in an emergency refill and was basically bed confined waiting on that.)

Closing schools was pitched at the time with a wide net, granted. Such that I could just be misremembering some of it. As a way of protecting the older workers in there, though, it feels weak. As more evidence comes out that it was wide spread by the time the schools closed, it also feels too late for that aim. (Again, this largely depends on if me and my family had it. If so, it had passed through all of us before closures happened.)

Not sure why you think I am bad faith posting. I am posting mainly from my phone, so I suspect some of my parts are bad quality. But if you think I am twisting your point in bad faith, I do not intend that.

> we cannot gamble with our future so carelessly on the basis of preliminary data. here is a vignette to explain why.

Yes we can, and will. We’re gambling with every choice we make about how to respond to this, and anyone claiming that their plan is 100% “based on science” is full of shit. For example, every country enforcing a lockdown is gambling that it won’t lead to civil war.

I disagree, see my sister comment.

Even without data on lingering deficiencies, we can speculate with confidence that it carries a cost.

Speculation is fine. But we need data to back it. Right now, we don't. Could hypothesize that many being found with damage surviving, had damage going in. Would neatly explain why it hit them so hard.

I'm not speculating about the long term effects of covid19. I'm saying all sickness carries a cost as currently understood according to our theories of cellular senescence. You've missed my point entirely.

And you are missing mine. Agreed there could be long term things. Yes, we should study that and watch for it.

If that is the extent of your point, then my response is "yes, and?"

Your framing, though, begs the question that mild cases have long term damage. We have zero evidence of that. Literally none.

You're still missing my point.

I'm saying all sickness comes with a long term cost. It gives you a shove toward the grave. Covid19 falls into that category, regardless of how much or little we know about it.

Now you could argue that sickness and aging don't work that way. I don't think you'd be right, but you can make that argument.

Your argument about the long term effects of covid19 is not relevant to the point I made.

Your point feels vacuous, then. Yes, getting sick can have long term impact. Do you have evidence that that is relevant to our current scenario? More so than it would be for any other sickness that is running rampant?

But you shouldnt do that. Just like when we believe the death rate was 3% it seems we can't be confident in anything we've been told.

Do non-severe cases cause lung damage too? Is the lung damage heal able?

That is the point of my question. There has been no evidence of damage in non severe cases. Indeed, we are having to get complicated testing to find out many people had it at all.

How about this article [1] (translation at reddit [2]) about german divers who had "mild cases" (no hospitalization, recovered at home) and were found to have suffered permanent lung damage, so severe that they can't dive anymore.

[1] https://www.rainews.it/tgr/tagesschau/articoli/2020/04/tag-C...

[2] https://www.reddit.com/r/Coronavirus/comments/g3rv7h/permame...

My ability to navigate Reddit is embarrassing. Never found the comment with the translation. Saw some of the discussion, though.

Sounds like a promising lead to go down. I think my other criticisms are still unaddressed. Scarring damage is tough to place in age. Is plausible that they had some pre existing damage already.

Funny to see the comments talk if walking pneumonia. I had that a decade ago. Was cake compared to whatever hit me early March.

I think the fact that they used to dive but now can't kind of places most of the damage as recent.

My link should be a direct link to the comment. The bottom of the comment is hidden by default, but half of it is visible (and you can unhide the rest using the big blue button). I hate the new reddit design.

I agree it is a strong signal. That said, I suspect there is a lot more to it.

I confess false confidence in CT scans from stories such as back pains paints me a skeptic here. :(

While this is anecdotal, it indicates that people with no symptoms can have lung damage (pneumonia), but not necessarily long-term damage:

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/20/opinion/coronavirus-testi...

Having pneumonia is not having no symptoms. That would be on the low end of severe in the case category. Right?

There have been a number of reports of folks who were diagnosed with otherwise asymptomatic COVID when they had a CT for an unrelated reason that showed their lungs with GGO. And in some cases they have shown no signs of recovery even weeks later.

A link would be awesome. And we would still need to ascertain that they did not have this damage before getting covid. :(. CT scans have a troubled history of seeing damage that preexisted. (See back pains)

Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

But there is evidence in all of the asymptomatic people getting tested and not having any affects worth making it into a report.

Could they have hidden damage that we can't detect? Plausible. But that is true of many activities. And illnesses.

> Could they have hidden damage that we can't detect? Plausible. But that is true of many activities. And illnesses

The difference is that we know plenty about those illnesses and activities. This is a novel virus and we are just speculating.

We simply don't know the long term effects of this virus, even in recovered cases.

Until we know this virus well enough to make such statements, we should play it safe.

I for one am not willing to risk a lung because you think it's fear mongering

How could we even tell? Biopsy? Lol no thanks.

Presumably you could find some evidence. X-ray? Just listening to lungs?

Wouldnt that mean quartine would never work because it make sense that those younger people going outside would make those 60 olds sick regardless of the quarantine.

The SK/Taiwan/Chinese/Singapore approach to quarantine has been to isolate people away from their families if they're thought to be sick (i.e., in a hotel or military barracks). That's how you make quarantine actually work.

That seems like a much cheaper solution.

Aside from china who were welding people regardless of there sick status and had millions of faulty tests.

Everyone else on that list has lower death numbers and a economy not going into the toilet.

But that's going to happen anyway because people will catch it until we hit herd immunity. Unless a vaccine comes out before we get there, which seems pretty iffy at this point.

I do think we can plan for the isolation of that population for a couple of months if we have some strong leadership. Unfortunately that seems to be lacking right now.

>But that's going to happen anyway because people will catch it until we hit herd immunity

It's about managing the hospitalization rate so that the medical system doesn't get overwhelmed.

I was responding to the contents of the parent comment. I agree with you (see a separate branch of the comment tree), but that's not part of what the parent comment was talking about.