when almost everyone has already had the disease and was able to observe what it did to them -- which is the state we're at -- it's pretty hard to say that everyone needs to protect themselves.

I know what COVID will do to me, because I had it already. He's not right. I was vaccinated, and the vaccine didn't work (it didn't prevent me from getting ill, get out of here with the 'better outcomes' bullshit, I'm healthy and COVID was still a flu-like illness for me, and I'm convinced the vaccine I was promised was 'safe and effective' did little or nothing) and masks didn't matter.

It's like asking why we don't go around with masks on 24/7/365 to protect ourselves from the flu. Well, I've had the flu, and it's unpleasant, but it isn't worth the many downsides of proper N95 masking, and anything less than proper N95 masking is pointless.

Most of the people I see wearing masks in public now are wearing completely ineffective cloth masks and a large number of them STILL wear them under their noses. These people are not thinking critically or looking at data. They're still just trapped in the media fear cycle from 2020.

I would argue you now know what COVID did to you that one time. You do not know what COVID will do to you.

yeah there have been studies showing repeat infection having an increasingly deleterious effect on your immune system. we don't know the long term harms associated with it.

I don't think anybody has answered the question "is every COVID infection an individual gets going to give the same level of response"? IE, will you get COVID and then get better, but later get COVID and end up with Long COVID symptoms? Is it random every time you are infected?

At least 3 big studies looking at this, one of them on 150k people so very robust numbers. Subsequent infections do increasing damage and each infection increases your chance of developing Long Covid and not recovering. People with existing new symptoms after a Covid infection also get worse very often.

Rather than building immunity we are accruing damage and the evidence underpinning it from the VA study and the more recent ones is massive.

Well, if that's true, it would be really bad (in a simple model it means basically everybody gets infected repeatedly and gets more and more damage and then most of the population has long covid). I am not hearing much concern this from my larger medical community.

Large numbers in a study is good, but if the study design isn't right, then large numbers won't make up for that. It's absurdly hard to really conclude reliably.

For example, from: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/17/well/live/covid-reinfecti... """For many people who get Covid multiple times, subsequent infections will be as mild as or milder than their first, emerging data shows, likely because of partial immunity from previous infections, vaccination and the fact that the latest circulating variants generally cause less severe symptoms.""" which is much more consistent with my understanding of COVID repeat infections.

If you have a link to the VA study I will look at it.

The VA study in Nature - https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-022-02051-3

"The Covid vaccine didn't have any effect onbthe severity of my infection" is the most utterly idiotic take if have read given the mountains of evidence that it massively reduces the severity of the infection

> I was vaccinated, and the vaccine didn't work (it didn't prevent me from getting ill, get out of here with the 'better outcomes' bullshit

How do you know it wouldn't have been worse without vaccination?

> I was vaccinated, and the vaccine didn't work

Thank goodness you got the vaccine! If your body hadn't been primed and ready to take on the real infection, imagine how much worse your body would have responded, and how much poorly you would have felt.

The existence of the human race says he is wrong..

Medieval Peasant 1: "I think we should stop dumping raw sewage near our water supply. It is probably making us all sick."

Medieval Peasant 2: "If it was making us all sick, how come only half of my children have died before the age of five?"

Don't forget to take your 10th injection and make sure to always have a dirty piece of paper in your pocket!

Right about what? That there is risk in taking off the mask? Of course he's right about that. Right about taking off the mask being suicidal, like playing russian roulette? He obviously isn't right about that.