Congratulations. You haven't had a bad cold or flu before. It's not uncommon for the flu to knock someone out for a good week. Or for a cold to leave a lingering cough for weeks.

> It's not uncommon for the flu to knock someone out for a good week.

This is why it has a vaccine. That prevents it, prevent seriousness of symptoms, and deaths. (yet a large percent of the population doesn't get it, and so 50k us citizens die each year)

I have gotten a flu vaccine every year since I was 18. The worst flu I ever had was in January 2020. (I was tested and positive for influenza)

Fever for 4 days, horrible coughing, vomiting, barely able to get out of bed. Flu vaccines certainly provide some cross-immunity when the vax isn't matched to the strain, but not too much. That's what my doctor told me when I complained to her (when she told me I had tested positive for flu) that I'd gotten the annual flu vaccine the preceding October. Depending on the strain vs the vaccine for that year and how big of a mismatch it is, it can really whip your ass despite the vaccine. That being said, the flu shot is a good idea for anyone, and crucial for seniors.

You are the gatekeeper on feeling sick, now?

We've been under threat of lockdown, under lockdown, or under restrictions for ~2 years now.

It's understandable that some are very concerned after or about getting sick but many of us, for our own sanity and psychological health, need to move on.

And the front line critical infrastructure are out doing their jobs. Change your career and get outside!

> We've been under threat of lockdown, under lockdown, or under restrictions for ~2 years now.

> It's understandable that some are very concerned after or about getting sick but many of us, for our own sanity and psychological health, need to move on.

WWII lasted longer, and IIRC the US was under a restrictive civilian rationing regime that whole time.

I understand that people can get annoyed with various measures required for the public good, but that's not good reason to "move on" from whatever challenge that motivates them.

Caught a bad flu in late 2018. Lingered for two months. Cough so bad, I dislocated a rib. Had X-rays taken, and everything. Took about a year for the the rib to stop slipping whenever I exerted myself. In the end, it was a period of discomfort that set me back a spell, but which I ultimately got over. Probably wouldn't try to shut down society over it, or use it as proof that people should fear the flu. Just that sometimes you get sicker than usual.

i had a similarly bad flu bout winter 2017-18. the worst of it literally had me at the edge of death one night. would have stopped breathing had i not willfully forced myself to, through all the congestion and soreness (also had a rib issue like you). the flu is no joke, and yet i also wouldn’t try to shut down the world, let alone my city, for the flu.

No, but he's fundamentally right. The symptoms described are no worse than a moderate flu.

People forget that it knocks so many people down at once in a short time, and with quarantine rules in force. It is more contagious than flu/cold. Imagine what would happen every year in winter if this becomes the new normal.

Imagine what would happen if we go in lock down every year. And keep making kids learn remote. And keep letting governments gain more authority without the reasonable discussion

Pointless post. We could ask the same of you.

It’s terrible to feel terrible, but getting over the worst part of Covid in 3 days is an enormous improvement from how unvaccinated people fared in the initial waves. Even for people not hospitalized, they dealt with pneumonia and shortness of breath for weeks. I think we can celebrate the progress we are making in reducing the average severity of this disease and there are more tools coming soon with Pfizer’s new pill and newer multivalent vaccines.

Your comment makes it out like everyone with Covid had pnuemonia and shortness of breath for weeks, when really it was a small minority.

According to the CDC, 30% to 40% of symptomatic people get shortness of breath, which is a significant share. That is a signal that the infection has reached the lower respiratory system.

https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/hcp/non-us-setting...

Had I reported to the CDC (I didn't), I would have reported that I woke up in the middle of the night unable to take a deep breath, went nearly immediately back to sleep, and was free of all symptoms the next day. This would have counted toward the total (had I reported), and such counting needs a wider perspective before such things as say, creating lockdown policies based on these figures.

According to https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-59895598, over 500,000 people in the UK are still suffering health issues a year after catching Covid, and nearly 900,000 are still suffering after 12 weeks. The UK population is around 70 million, so that's around 1% of the entire population. If you take into the fact that many people in the UK have managed to not catch it at all yet, or exclude children who suffer far less (if at all), then the percentage would be higher.

I don't think 1% is "a small minority".

The problem with a statistic like that is that it is pretty much devoid of almost all data that would make it truly meaningful and valuable. That stat tells us nothing of their health pre-Covid, and I’d bet a very large portion of that number were already dealing with health issues (which we already know significantly increases severe Covid). The meaningful number is how many formerly healthy people are battling Covid caused health issues a year later. My guess is that it is a pretty small number, likely small enough that it would be considered even by you to be a “small minority”.

Previous health condition status is part of the dataset, so you don't need to guess. If you want to take that into account, then use the data to make your point.

Thanks for the tip! I’ll let the dataset speak for itself:

“7. Health/disability status is self-reported by study participants rather than clinically diagnosed. From February 2021 study participants were asked to exclude any symptoms related to COVID-19 when reporting their health/disability status. However, in practice it may be difficult for some participants to separate long COVID symptoms from unrelated exacerbation of pre-existing conditions, so these results should be treated with caution. “

Yeah absolutely, I count ourselves reasonably lucky that we only caught the disease after vaccinations.

I have absolutely non-zero desire to go through this every year, unlike my parent commenter though.

Would I be of a similar opinion as parent if I had a similarly asymptomatic-to-mild case? I don't know for sure, but I would hope not, because I wouldn't want to draw conclusions or base policy from just my anecdotal experience.

Other replies to me appear needlessly partisan jibes: I neither said nor implied anything about continued lockdowns and any such inference is pure projection.

Your parent commenter wasn't saying that they have a desire to get this every year, just that if the worst case outcome is getting what they had every year, they would find that an acceptable trade-off for getting society back to normal.

> I have absolutely non-zero desire to go through this every year, unlike my parent commenter though.

Many people get sick every year or every other year. Their illness is like you described: 2-3 days of being "knocked out" and about a week to fully recover.

It's not that I "desire" to go through that every year or two, it's just life. I expect that's why people responded incredulously to your post: for them, getting sick occasionally is normal.

to add on — before i had kids i rarely got sick. at one point i went maybe seven or eight years. now, every couple months. and at least one a year that puts me down a few days or more. And those aren’t even the flu, typically. There are many kinds of colds that can knock you out.

Each is likely an endemic version of something that was far more serious and deadly historically. Now it’s a minor or major annoyanace that is part of normal life. i bet eradicating covid would fall into the same bucket S eradicating any of the others. Something to aspire towards, but until then something to simply accept as normal and move on with our lives.

By saying “I don’t want to experience this every year” without any caveats, there is an implication we should do something to prevent it. Especially given the broader context of the pandemic thus far. Surely you can see how many readers might feel that implication.

That sounds like a fairly typical cold, maybe edging to "bad" in my experience. I'm double vaxxed plus a booster about 1 month ago, and currently have Omicron. I have roughly the same experience as you, although less on the coughing, which is odd because I usually get a lot more coughing with colds.

> That sounds like a fairly typical cold

No, it doesn't. I've never felt "wiped out" from a typical cold.

I regularly feel "wiped out" from a typical cold, often for 4+ days in a row.

This whole thread is full of anecdotes from people implicitly claiming that their experience applies to everyone, when in reality everyone's going to have different experiences with everything from colds to covid. Unfortunately, the latter has a much higher prevalence of seriously-worse side-effects (long-haul, ageusia, anosmia, death, etc) compared to the former.

My 15 yo son got Covid about three weeks ago, symptoms matched what the parent poster described, including feeling "wiped out". Oh wait, no he didn't. Testing all came back negative. Diagnosis from his pediatrician: common cold.

Ah, yeah, you're right. It was probably just the cold that myself, my son, and my wife got after being exposed to someone that had symptomatic, PCR tested Covid. I'm sure it was just a coincidence that we then all three tested positive for covid.

Wow…You definitely missed the entire point of that comment.

Did I? If I did ... sigh. But I'm not convinced! But I also wouldn't be surprised :)

technothrasher wasn't doubting that you had COVID, but rather making the point that the common cold and COVID now have the same symptoms and severity, and that getting a test is now the only way to tell which one you have.

Whoosh

I'm not convinced it wooshed! But I also wouldn't be surprised :)

Joint pain and being mentally "out" (not being able to hold complex structures in my mind = unable to code) are two hallmarks of common colds for me and why I always take ~2 days off work when I have one - I'd just get frustrated trying. Sore throat is another one.

Omicron now is no different. Ended up taking 3 days off work and am now back to normal capacity.

FWIW: To me, it sounded like an atypical cold or a typical flu. I've been "wiped out" by colds before, though rarely, and I'm always "wiped out" by flus, though I catch them a lot less often than once a year.

This is one of the most privileged takes I've ever read. OH GOOD HEAVENS. You were sick for a whole 2-3 days. Best lockdown the country to avoid what most people experience 1+ times per year.

? It's killed 800 000 people.

The 'privileged' comment is 'I got COVID it was just like a cold, I can do this every year ... so there's no more pandemic'.

Conflating their personal anecdote with the range of outcomes.

For now, we're still in a pandemic. Hopefully it will get better.

Omicron didn’t kill 800 000 people. There’s also vastly more immunity (whether through vaccines or previous infections). Let’s wait and see but there’s hope it’s a different, milder disease.

(You are right of course. With the data we have now, we are quite certain that Omicron is much milder. Hopefully no lockdown is needed.)

But, personally, I would like to avoid getting Omicron, as long term effects are still unclear: does "long Omicron" exist, does it affect vaccinated, and if yes how common and severe is it. There are some recent news about long Covid: it could be micro-clots.

There’s some evidence that most “long covid” symptoms (everything except loss of smell) in most people who claim to have it are not due to covid:

https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2787741

Specifically, reporting long covid symptoms correlates with thinking you had covid, and not as much with actually having had covid.

Of course this doesn’t mean there aren’t some real severe cases out there, but it’s probably not nearly as widespread as it seems.

Unless you live as a hermit you are unlikely to avoid getting Omicron. A more rational approach would be to take steps that will maximize your odds of survival when you do get it.

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

Yes, like taking a vaccine. And also social distancing and avoiding others so that the peak of cases doesn't coincide with an overflow of Medical facilities resulting in your inability to get proper medical attention if needed.

> Aren't anecdotes fun?

Anecdotes was precisely the reason why I posted it. See whom I'm replying to.

so the answer is to stay locked down and screw over small businesses and tons of workers every winter because a subset of people have harsher symptoms?

Every policy has tradeoffs. We could save around 20,000 lives per year (in the US) with a simple policy change: just cap all speed limits at 45 mph.

I think it's a fair critique that some lockdown measures go too far (particularly those with low efficacy, or "safety theater"), but it's more helpful to take about specifics, rather than "lockdowns good" or "lockdowns bad".

At some point (and maybe it's now?), we'll need to shift our thinking from "pandemic" to "endemic". COVID is going to be with us from now on, and will start to look more like flu season (viruses tend to evolve to be less deadly over time). And I don't say that to trivialize it; COVID has given me much greater awareness of the impact of the seasonal flu on the elderly and the immuno-compromised.

I agree, that is my point is exactly. At a certain point, we need to learn to live with it. Majority of us on HN are in an extremely privileged position where we can WFH and infact for a lot of us, pandemic led to more savings. But that is not the case for an average person out there. There are families out there have been ruined financially for life because their business had to shut down. Kids very much might have life long repercussions from the school shut down. At a certain we have to take all this into account before just initiating a province wide lockdown every winter (which is what is happening in the country I live in, Canada).

I am curious how you know it was Omicron. Was it sequenced and they told you that?