Long covid. I'm 28, fit and healthy, and I had covid that wasn't bad enough to require hospital treatment, but left with me with fatigue, shortness of breath and heart arrythmias that are only just improving 12 months later and are still not back to full fitness.

I am 42, fairly fit and healthy too, and I still suffer from minor heart arrhythmia and an occasional fatigue 6 months after contracting a mild case of covid.

Several folks at my gym have said similar. They’re still at 80% capacity after 6+ months of contracting COVID, and are in their 20s and 30s. Sorry this is happening to you…

Thanks for your kindness. I am slowly coming back. Let us hope that none of those aftereffects are permanent.

Being a part of a chain of transmission that kills someone, when you could have instead been the person who broke the chain and saved a life?

Are you advocating for full population vaccination of all contagious diseases with mortality rates (that have vaccines) or is there something special about COVID?

I'm introducing into your narrative a notion of morality in addition to your narrative (and the siblings narrative) of whether covid vaccination is in your self-interest.

It’s not purely self interest. If you note, my comment says my “or worse” outcome is that I steal hospital care from _someone else_ in a zero-sum game. I’m asking what is special about _this_ virus beyond being a “hospital killer.”

I don’t believe COVID has a monopoly on your narrative (chain of transmission leading to death). I’m asking if I should be special casing COVID, or treating it like any other virus.

On a per-vaccine basis, you could consider the advice of doctors and health professionals, plus the moral implications you're comfortable with, and balance those against self-interest.

You've asked "what am I missing?" and from your narrative I'm asking if you're missing the morality.

This is where I’m at too. I think we are on the same page, but saying it out loud to give you a chance to correct me.

I live in a community that hasn’t taken COVID seriously. Any chain of transmission I carry on would likely be “fungible” in my mind - If it wasn’t me, it would be someone else.

Strong anti-quarantine, anti-mask, anti-short-time-to-market-vaccine.

But mixed in are a lot of _strong_ pro-vaccine folks who collectively have offset the need for masks to keep the hospitals from falling over. They’ve carried the torch of public good in my mind. They’ve offset the primary risk of this pandemic.

I’m on the fence and it feels like my decision isn’t consequential beyond personal risk and daily interactions (friends/family). If I transmit, I feel like it would be in a hurd where transmission was likely anyways and I was a randomly selected path vs an amplifier.

I wore a mask to offset risk of transmission to keep hospitals online. But injecting myself with a novel vaccine… I feel like I’m better off rolling the dice on contracting COVID and re-rolling to get side effects, vs rolling the dice once for the vaccine.

My choice has been reduced to a personal choice. It’s the same choice I make when I travel for the holidays. Example: I get the flu vaccine when I go see elderly or young family members. But right now I don’t feel it’s a moral imperative for COVID where, if I pass on a vaccine, I’m a horrible person who doesn’t care about my fellow man.

Does that make sense or am I off base?