Mild Cases
I started reading a newsletter, only got a paragraph or two into it, and already started saying, “YES! To all of this!”
“I’ve been frustrated by some of the dismissiveness on social media, people saying you shouldn’t worry about it if you’re vaccinated, because ‘we’ll all get it at some point, it will be mild, and you’ll be fine.’ That might be true for people who are otherwise healthy and vaccinated. But it is not necessarily true for many other at risk populations.”
First of all, I still don’t want to get COVID, even if it doesn’t land me in the hospital. If my choices are sick or healthy, I would choose healthy. Every. Single. Time.
Friends who have gotten mild cases have seemed miserable — happy that they’re not in the hospital but still achy and exhausted and frustrated that they can’t smell or taste anything. And then there are the emotional side effects: missing events, missing work, or worrying that they got another person ill. I am happy to get creative so I can keep living life but not put myself or other people at risk if it means also not getting sick.
And then there is everything else Nisha says: What about our shared humanity? Caring whether or not other people are in the hospital? Caring about whether medical staff is overworked from overflowing hospitals or whether hospitals are unable to treat other people because they’re so busy dealing with COVID?
I care.
4 comments
Yes. Very disappointed by White House messaging. And, uh, haven’t these people heard of long Covid? It’s still unclear how well if at all vaccines protect against that. I’m so so tired of the vaxxed people who are done with the pandemic so they think they are justified taking risks, bc they are vaxxed. I think at this point those people piss me off more than those who refuse to get vaccinated. It ain’t over!
Yes! I’m so so tired of it.
My kid is high risk, and I’m getting push back about Christmas and not feeling comfortable because “we’re all vaccinated now” and “even if we do get it, it will be mild”. Well, we don’t know that, but we really don’t know that for him!
I’m just TIRED of being invisible. Of virtual school. Of missing out on everything because no one else is willing to miss anything. Of my kids knowing that people – their friends, family, town – put “face freedom” (eyeroll) above their health.
So thank you for caring.
I can’t even imagine how hard this is for people who are high-risk or have high-risk family members. . . folks who are immunocompromised, or too young to get the vaccine, etc. We have friends two streets over with a medically fragile child, and they have had to miss out on so much.
I have heard a few folks express the opinion that at this point, they have no sympathy for anyone who has chosen not to get vaccinated and gets sick. That viewpoint does not take these vulnerable community members, or our healthcare providers, into account.
P.S. I had Covid a year ago this month. I had a “mild” case and was fortunate not to develop any lingering symptoms. It’s still not an experience I’d be eager to repeat.
Yes! This infuriates me both because I have a couple of family members who are high-risk, the youngest of whom is 13 years old and very precious to us all. I probably do too, as I’m no longer young! It’s so unthinking and selfish.
I thought about that this morning too – I heard that two more people had died in NZ of COVID over the last couple of days (that’s a lot for us), and it sounded so routine, but is so desperately sad for the families and friends and communities. Any loss is a loss for all of us.