In the bizarre (often insane, actually) reading of Covid-19 statistics in the facebook newsfeed, very few people are aware of the incredibly meaningful difference between something you survive with relatively few if any sequelae (that word means meaningful consequences over time) and something like Covid-19 which has »complex, unknown, and possibly lethal sequelae.
The flu, colds, and other similar illnesses, have, relative to Covid-19, modest numbers and forms of sequelae.
Infection by the novel coronavirus (often) involves serious and as yet poorly enumerated »arrays of health consequences.
To understand statistics, you have to be able to understand consequences… and ‘well, they survived it’ doesn’t qualify as an understanding. Not in this situation.
The fact that people lived through an illness is deceptively soothing, but the fact that many of those who survive will suffer continuing health issues, some of them serious, probably throughout their lifetimes, needs to be factored into any evaluation of »any statistics… especially those claiming that ‘just letting people get sick’ is the intelligent option.
And this is far more true and important in an environment where you have agents who will benefit from both increasing the death count and increasing the number of people suffering from or permanently incapacitated by sequelae.
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