> I remember the start when folks wiped down delivered groceries. Even isolated them for a few days.

I still isolate groceries for at least 6 hours, delivered or not. Still clean my hands or wear a glove when I touch something outside.

I haven't got sick since Covid appeared. I used to have pretty severe nasal allergies (or so doctors told me) at least once a month, I haven't had one episode since early 2020. This is a life-changer for me.

Same thing for the usual minor health issues such as cold, cough, sore throat. All gone.

So I keep my Covid routine, probably even if Covid goes away, it's not that much of an effort and the results have been spectacular.

I can assume that if you are taking those measures, you also avoid crowds of any sort. Which probably does a lot of the heavy lifting for you.

For me, I also saw that we had fewer sicknesses when the kids were all home schooled. Not shocking, we got a ton of bugs when they started school back. Not sure how sustainable it is to have such isolated lives, though. :(

> I can assume that if you are taking those measures, you also avoid crowds of any sort.

Correct. Being a software developer helps immensely.

I do absolutely nothing, including not wearing a mask in an area that demands I wear one. Nor have I gotten any sort of shot.

The only thing I do is that I wash my hands every time I return from public, as I always have been. I haven't gotten sick either.

I have had the flu twice. The first was in college and then second was when my kids were in pre-school/elementary school.

I think you mean "I have had flu-related symptoms twice". Given that influenza is a virus with a huge number of variations, and almost nobody is ever tested for infection with any of them, there's every chance that you've had many more influenza infections, but no symptoms.

Nope these were confirmed cases.

Yes, I understand that the times you had symptoms, the infection was confirmed to be flu.

What wasn't tested (or detected) were the times when you were asymptommatic but still infected with one the many influenza variants.

English is a little problematic when it comes to describing infectious disease. In all cases, there is the disease agent (e.g. an influenza virus) and there are the disease symptoms (e.g. "flu"). But we tend to say "I had the flu" without it being clear if we mean "the disease agent was present" or "i had the symptoms".

Following your logic I should have had residual immunity to keep most of the variants in check. The first time I had the flu in college it was brutal and I was out of commission. The second time diagosed I got tamiflu after the flu test and it was mild. I also knew I was sick. Anything in between was unnoticed and I have had a flu shot since they first came on the market.

Not necessarily. The immunity fades with time, so it is possible that you could be infected again. The residual immunity might be strong enough to prevent symptoms however. Each such exposure can boost your immunity. Nevertheless, influenza virus has many mutations and sometimes can cause breakthrough disease even in vaccinated.

Many influenza infections are asymptomatic. Unless you've been getting tested every week, it's entirely possible that you have had the flu more than twice.

The precautions required to guarantee zero exposure to an airborne virus are incredibly more substantial than most of us will ever be able to carry out in ordinary life (think biohazard labs).

So yes, almost all of us are going to be exposed to SARS-COV-2 at some point. Slowdowns are doubleplus good because the biggest risk from the disease is related to its impact on public health care systems rather than serious illness or death at the individual level. Masks slow down transmission, vaccination reduces chance of required hospitalization.

Zero is ideal, but a reasonable reduction is acceptable if we can pile together a number of different mitigations to get the effective transmission rate below 1.

This angle feels like giving up on all of the covid deaths. And is somewhat at odds with all cause mortality being attributed to undiagnosed covid.

I am open to the argument. Just feels to be begging a lot of other questions.

I don't feel as if I'm arguing for "giving up on all the covid deaths". On the contrary in fact:

(1) likelihood of death decreases with the passing of time, because of improved treatment (and maybe testing also). So to minimize death, you want your exposure to be delayed as long as possible.

(2) there is reasonably convincing evidence that exposure level is significant in determining severity post-infection. Therefore you want to live within a community and with habits that keep you away from high exposure as much as possible.

So, the same strategies that slowdown exposure also help to reduce deaths

I guess you skirted closer to the flatten the curve argument than I was comfortable with. Seems that, in retro, it caused folks to take precautions to try and keep hospitals clear, and ultimately threw a lot of nursing homes under the bus.

That said, your first point is a good one. If made difficult by how many later waves in most places have similar death peaks to earlier ones.

I still think we are far away from really having evidence on any good strategy, sadly. All of the places that had it under control seem to have lost said control.

Which, ultimately, is a good enough argument for me, to not just give up on things that have any chance of helping. Sucks, as I am clearly open to the arguments that deniers use. Which... I'm not trying to further that angle, either.

Preventing exposure is impossible over the long term. Fortunately the vaccines and other treatments can prevent most deaths.

https://www.medpagetoday.com/opinion/vinay-prasad/94646

Highly improbable, but not impossible, particularly for beings with finite lifespans over the long term. Herd immunity is reached at HIT=1-1/R0, at which point the infection rate will slow, and some of the remaining uninfected and unvaccinated individuals will have avoided exposure, as the chain of transmission to them will be broken. Back at the start of COVID-19, that would have been a sizable percentage of the world, though now (due to the higher R0 for delta) it is a much smaller percentage of the population who can escape exposure in this way alone.

And note that R0 can be changed by altering some environmental factors in the formula above.