Yeah, it's "long Covid" and permanent organ damage / permanent disability that have me worried. IMO, focusing only on the death rate is a bad metric, and bad metrics provide incomplete data, leading to bad personal decisions. My 2c.

Edit: I may not be first in line, but I will be lining up when the time comes.

That's my take, too. At age 51 I should still have some good years left; I have no wish to spend them crippled with heart & lung damage and a cognitive fog from Cov-2!

Yep, long-term effects are a concern. People in Asia anticipated them because of past experiences with respiratory epidemics. As a consequence, they are more willing to resort to tough measures to combat such diseases.

I know people who got COVID-19 and now have to live with the neurological or cardiologic damages. They aren't exactly "crippled," but the conditions are serious enough that I really wouldn't want them. One person now has trouble keeping up with her usual workload, and I don't know how this is going to affect her employment down the road. Another person used to be an amateur athlete. Now she can't exercise or be an athlete anymore.

So all those college football players who got tested positive? Some of them will have to say goodbye to football.

That's the most exasperating thing about the pandemic for me. The deniers, for lack of another word, have a multilayered approach to ignoring reality. Simply calling it "fake news" is the first layer. Downplaying the percentage of fatalities is the next. But aside from the pure fantasy element of making up your own facts, the reality is you don't have to die to be greatly affected. You might just suffer permanent heart damage (or as Bingley points out, damage that lasts long enough to change your life). It appears to cause something akin to mild dementia in some people, of unknown duration. Lastly is the financial toll. My trip to the ER for Bell's Palsy was $4k, and I'm waiting to see how much insurance covers. I shudder to think how an uninsured person would deal with a two week stay in the ICU!

Saying goodbye to football may be a health benefit for those affected....

I think many of those that you term "deniers" are actually "questioners". It is healthy to question what you are being told, especially since most of what we are being told is coming from the News Media. I can't think of a group that has less credibility than these guys right now.

I *do* question the death rate that has been reported. I *do* question the people who are questioning the death rate. I *do* question the reported "allergic reactions" reported in the two Brits who took the vaccine recently. I *do* question how well masks work (although I wear one - because I do not know the answer to my question). I *do* question everything a politician says about the virus (I believe many of them have self-serving motivations far removed from our well being).

There is nothing wrong with being wary, even skeptical in some cases. Is the death rate as high as reported? I am skeptical. Is the vaccine safe? I am wary. Do masks work? I am skeptical. Do lockdowns imposed by politicians work? That one is a hard "no" from me.

I see nothing wrong, and everything right, about questioning the information we are getting. Up until we are assured that what we are hearing has been verified (not just claimed) as true, questioning it is the correct path to take IMHO. Blindly believing everything you have thrown at you might allow you to escape the "denier" label, but the correct label for people like this is probably not a nice thing to say in this forum. Personally, I will be questioning the vaccine right up until the second it is injected into my arm. And probably for a while after too.

Oh well, I guess it's a self correcting issue. Darwin will win out in the end. And if you think the media is the least credible institution out there you must not be aware of our government!

C'mon folks, this thing has so heavily politicized that we can hardly touch the topic at all. And yet it's vitally important that we do, as best we can. That requires cutting each other a bit of slack, to move the conversation forward in a thoughtful way.

I think it may even be a majority.


That may depend on the way it is counted. I was surprised to learn that in Germany people who had one positive test result in the past are counted in the death rate regardless of the current state. That would increase the death rate.


I´ll second that too. The numbers support this.


That would be the scientific approach. Questioning the vaccine is called for too. It is admitted that it is not known how well and for how long it will protect. Long term effects cannot be known as the vaccine is not available long enough. Questioners are important to keep this topic in view. For many people questioners are inconvenient.

Once you go outside of areas in which you have a high level of professional expertise, you don't really know how to ask questions or assess answers. When you don't have a disciplinary way of understanding things, you are not truly capable of critical thinking. Your mind no longer has discipline. In that situation, when given a range of possible answers, rather than the right one, you tend to choose the one that confirms your (undisciplined) perspectives or biases. At that point, it's easy to congratulate yourself for not being sheep, when all you have done is surrender to the tyranny of your own mind.

It is indeed truly difficult to be mindful of how little one knows.