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A comment on Google delays mandatory return to office beyond Jan. 10. Parent comment

Re:Google delays mandatory return to office beyond Jan. 10 by nradov on Friday December 03, 2021 @04:05PM (#29435455)
I honestly do not see the difference in health risk. Reinfections are rare but will be more common over time, just as with any other coronaviruses (or most upper respiratory viruses in general). Fortunately the vaccines and other treatments are pretty effective, and the natural immunity from surviving an infection typically reduces the symptom severity for subsequent reinfections.

The evidence indicates that another coronavirus HCoV-OC43 probably caused the 1889-90 pandemic and killed millions of people worldwide. The same virus is still endemic. It doesn't kill many people today because most of us get infected as youths and then retain some level of immunity which protects us later in life.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7252012/

There's more to life than avoiding disease. I'm not going to put my life on hold and hide.

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Re:Google delays mandatory return to office beyond Jan. 10 by thebean11 on Friday December 03, 2021 @04:23PM (#29435712)
I'm not saying you should..I'm completely back to my pre covid behaviors and only wear a mask when I have to. That being said, I think a lot of your post is basically just conjecture; the claim that exposure to covid past the first infection or vaccination does not increase risk needs a little bit more evidence, and I don't blame people who are coming to the opposite conclusion.
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Re:Google delays mandatory return to office beyond Jan. 10 by nradov on Friday December 03, 2021 @06:59PM (#29437182)
Biologically speaking SARS-CoV-2 is just one more coronavirus and isn't particularly special or unusual. We already know that prior infection with other coronaviruses such as HCoV-OC43 provides pretty good protection against symptomatic reinfection with the same coronavirus as long as the patient is otherwise healthy. If anyone claims that SARS-CoV-2 is somehow different then the burden of proof is on them; extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.

As for vaccines, we obviously can't have any data on long term effectiveness. But short term effectiveness against severe symptoms is pretty good, and periodic boosters are available to those who want them.

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