Why Covid is good actually

[liv]

So we're living through a pandemic, so not surprisingly this sometimes affects my plans. Every time I happen to mention taking any sort of precaution, noting that the price of LFTs has gone up or that the clement weather made eating outside pleasant, a bunch of anons comment to tell me that actually I should be catching Covid more.

Does this happen to other people, and you're just quicker to screen / delete such comments? Or have I picked up several followers who are really invested in me personally getting Covid? It's very evident that people who post from established identities generally agree with me that Covid is bad. Of course, there are plenty of good reasons for being anonymous, anything from can't be bothered to create / log in to a DW account to being on a state level hitlist. And quite possibly people choose to comment anonymously on this topic because they don't want to face opprobrium from me and my friends who think infectious disease is a bad thing. But if I have no idea who you are, what your expertise is, what your relationship is to me, it's harder for me to take your arguments seriously.

I'm going to restate the anon commenting rule I have: if you want to comment anonymously, that's completely fine, but please sign your comment with some kind of identifying name even if it's just "anon1" or a single initial or another throwaway ident. That means I can at least tell which comments come from the same versus different people! I don't want to put anyone at risk, but totally unsigned comments make conversation a bit of a pain. I haven't been super strict about deleting them because I know people forget. But here's your reminder: anon comments need some kind of signature.

ETA People are ignoring this rule, so I've turned on anon comment screening. If you make an anon comment I will unscreen it only if it is signed in some way – nonsense idents are fine but there has to be something.

Anyway, I'm making a thread here where people can put those kinds of comments if you're so moved (either anon or identified, up to you). If you really want to persuade me I should be catching Covid and transmitting it to others, this is the place for your arguments. I note that calling me a scaredy-cat wasn't effective at making me do stupid things when I was eleven, so it's certainly not going to work now. If you want me to increase my exposure to Covid, you need to make a case for why it's actually good. I agree it probably won't kill me on a scale of weeks, but "not immediately deadly" doesn't make this infectious illness desirable.

Going forward, this post is the only place I will accept pro-Covid persuasion. Comments along those lines on any other posts will be deleted and copied to this thread.

Comments

[siderea]

For the record, while I get plenty of anon comments, nobody – anon or otherwise – has ever tried that particular line of argument with me.

FWIW, I would not model the behavior as "really invested in me personally getting Covid". It would be some form of you personally being perceived to be a really worthwhile person to have that argument with. I feel pretty confident that people of such inclinations correctly surmise that starting that with me wouldn't be very satisfactory for them, for any of the goals they might have for such a discussion.

[liv]

I have just asked for anon commenters to add some kind of signature so I can keep track of how many different people are in the discussion. It doesn't have to be a DW account or anything that actually links to your permanent or offline identity, but I expect this to be a largely anonymous discussion and I would really appreciate the courtesy of adding an initial, number or nonsense word to your comments.

[shreena]

I think you have framed this in a slightly odd way.

I doubt anyone wants to persuade you to catch covid.

But I don't know very many people at all other than you who are still taking precautions like eating outside. I am not sure I know anyone else but I may be forgetting someone.

I guess I would see it as a judgement call - the downside of precautions Vs the risk of covid. Having had covid and fully recovered, I would much rather take the risk of catching it again rather than take precautions. It doesn't seem like a finely balanced call either to me.

But I really don't care enough about this to argue about it or to try to persuade you, it's entirely up to you what you do.

[rosefox]

I no longer make unlocked posts and hadn't previously considered that a benefit of that might be avoiding such nonsense. I'm so sorry people are dumping that on you.

[liv]

Fascinating data point, thank you! You have a much wider reach than I do both in numbers and in range of backgrounds and opinions, so it's very useful to know that nobody is trying to talk you into getting Covid. It might well be that some anons' goals are more to have an argument than to actually persuade me.

[liv]

That makes a lot of sense and I don't want to persuade you either. I would rather take precautions than catch Covid again, so I am indeed taking precautions, but that's a matter of personal preference. But surely we'd both rather live in a world where we don't have to either take precautions or catch Covid, right? If eating venues were properly ventilated, both of us could do all the activities enabled by eating indoors, and neither of us would have to put up with catching Covid. Why is having to make that trade-off desirable, even if it's obvious to you that the risk of Covid is worth the benefit?

[pseudomonas]

I'm still taking those precautions. (I have health issues that mean catching covid might be a worse idea than it would be for the average person)

[shreena]

I totally understand it with people with health issues.

[liv]

Thanks for your support! I'm really trying to figure out why it is that people are so insistent on this topic, but even if I don't get answers, at least I am corralling the repeated dumping into this space.

For me, locked only is the wrong solution, though I'm delighted that it's working so well for you and flattered that I have permission to read some of your filters. I really like having a blog that's basically public, and available to read by people who don't want to make the investment of creating an account and establishing a stable identity and remembering to log in every time. I want to meet new people and interact with people for whom DW isn't their main internet home. I could in fact get 90% of the benefit by posting mostly public but banning anon comments, and I might move to that if anons get sufficiently annoying to outweigh the value I get from interesting perspectives from folk who are not really DW people.

[shreena]

This may be a people with kids Vs people without thing but ventilating restaurants would not allow me to do all the socialising I want.

For example, today Arjun had a playdate he thoroughly enjoyed with a nursery friend. He would not have enjoyed eating with him in a ventilated restaurant, he wanted to play trains in our house.

I also to be honest do not think, now, post vaccinations and better treatment that the additional burden of regulation on businesses would be worth it - restaurants are people's businesses and many are going under as it is and we cannot afford public money on this at the moment either

[lnr]

FWIW I don't get many pro-covid (or post-covid, if that's how they'd prefer to think of it) people commenting at me, but I don't post much here anyway, and even less of it about what precautions I'm still taking.

There's no point in me restricting playdates with Matthew's best friend, as they spend lots of time together at school, and are already exposed to each other more regularly. I now no longer only dine outdoors, but if it's an option I still prefer it. However I still mask for short indoor trips like shops. I take a CO2 monitor in other indoor spaces to judge whether to mask continuously or not.

It's definitely a balance now but I take the risks I *have* to take (Matthew being at school) and I take some risks which are higher reward for me (eating out sometimes - eg my work Christmas lunch) but avoid spending risk on boring things like shopping and train journeys or work meetings where they can be done online. Thankfully in person my colleagues are happy to mask and ventilate when I go beep :)

Because if I catch it I *am* more vulnerable than some, but also because having it would be really really inconvenient even if I'm not acutely or chronically ill as a result (and I know several people who are now chronically ill!) - and if I incidentally also reduce my chance of getting the flu that's just a bonus.

[liv]

Right, my absolute first priority would be safe schools, not restaurants. I agree that the initial upgrades needed to school buildings would cost money. But such investment would be economically beneficial because it would end the situation where schools are a constant reservoir of infection, because that has a knock-on effect on businesses, because the adults who come into contact with schoolchildren become sick. Businesses are going under partly because Covid infection rates are so perpetually high due to having no public health measures in place. That has both direct effects on businesses as they and their supply chains are under-staffed, and indirect, because lots of people are sick all the time so not patronizing the businesses.

If we knew that children could go to school (or nursery or other education settings) without getting infected, they would miss less education, and their carers would miss less work for a start, but a minor benefit would be that I'd feel much safer having a child over for a playdate in my home.

When I said ventilated eating venues, I didn't necessarily mean restaurants, I meant places where people eat. For example right now one of my biggest risks is eating my lunch at work. It's necessary for me to eat lunch (and really I'd like to be able to have tea-breaks and snacks and drinks), but I'm not protected at all; this is a health and safety issue for me but more importantly for lots of employees who have far less choice than I do. Restaurants should be ventilated but only in as far as they're workplaces; I can choose not to eat in a restaurant, but the staff probably don't have much choice not to work in the restaurant. There's already a legal duty to ensure the safety of your staff and that should IMO extend to reasonable precautions against airborne disease.

[shreena]

I really profoundly disagree that what you suggest would be in any way economically beneficial in overall terms. You're suggesting an enormous capital investment at a time when half the public sector is on strike over wages and fewer sick days just wouldn't go anywhere close to making that investment pay.

There's a reason why no mainstream politicians are arguing for this

[liv]

Interesting you don't get people nagging you to just go out and get Covid. I think you're at least as cautious as me but perhaps as you say you don't talk about it as much.

I think doing your own CO₂ monitoring is great! But really I think all public indoor spaces should be reporting their CO₂ levels, it shouldn't be up to individuals with beeping devices. The other thing is, I don't monitor when I can't do anything about the readings; if I've already committed to taking a train, I'm not going to get off the train and be stranded in the middle of my journey because levels rise. If I'm in a venue where visitors have no control over the ventilation, having a device go beep won't help me. In most such places I mask all the time anyway; possibly my life would be improved by paying attention when CO₂ levels are low and removing my mask in those situations.

As I mentioned to shreena I think it's a real failure of public health that children and adults who are in close contact with them are so highly exposed. If we can't protect children in education we barely even have a society. As you say, school isn't (realistically) avoidable, so there's no point blocking playdates at home.

I am similar to you; I am balancing risk and reward as much as I can. (I don't like work Christmas lunches much so I skipped mine.) The problem is though that lots of people have far less choice about risk than you and I do, not that some people who do have a choice prefer to accept the risks of Covid. Like I am allowed to work mostly from home, but lots of people don't have that privilege, often because their job actually can't be done from home.

And yeah, getting ill is really inconvenient. Even if you don't believe in Long Covid and other post-Covid illness and disability, just Covid on its own is really horrible!

[liv]

OK, that makes sense, and thank you for explaining your position clearly. You would personally rather risk Covid than take precautions, and on a national level you would rather we accept the economic hit from widespread sickness and disability, than invest in public health. That's a reasonable opinion although I disagree. If I personally take such precautions as I can in the absence of public health measures, that doesn't much affect you, so as you said at the beginning you're not among the people trying to persuade me to take more risks. I appreciate your analysis.

[toothycat]

Honestly, I think if someone insists on using your space as a soapbox while refusing to give you the courtesy of abiding by even the tiniest of requests, it's prefectly fine to ban them no matter how eloquent they might appear.

[lnr]

Ah the reason I monitor on the train (erm, on one journey so far admittedly) is that if it drops *low* enough I can take my mask off for the whole of a cup of coffee, if it's middling I can remove it briefly for a sip and replace, but if it's awful I just don't get a coffee. IYSWIM.

I was really really surprised at a work networking event at the Judge Business School in November to find CO2 remained in the green zone throughout both the talks *and* the mingling so I could actually eat and drink and feel almost normal. (Being a tech event I had someone ask me curiously what the device I kept peering at was, and we demonstrated by breathing directly into it that it does actually react to changing CO2 levels). Of course CO2 is only a proxy for lots of people breathing, and if there's good HEPA filtering you could have higher CO2 levels and still be safe - but if you don't *tell* people about the filtering how do they know if it's safe or not?

And yeah, it totally sucks that it's all on individual responsibility, and that this effectively means the more vulnerable you are the more you're locked out from society. I *was* pleased when I asked Matthew to learn they still have a CO2 monitor in class and increase ventilation if it goes amber or red! They have a CO2 monitor monitor :)

[lnr]

One intermediate solution might be *screening* anons, rather than blocking them. You can also log IPs of anons, which might give you some idea of repeat offenders.

[lnr]

Heh, sorry, I notice you've already screened the one above! But you can set it to screen them all initially too.

[siderea]

Or to persuade your readers. You allow people to debate you in public in a way that I don't, thereby giving them a platform to present their case to your readers. If someone wanted to use my journal as a platform for promoting, e.g. the Great Barrington Declaration, to my readers, they'd have to convince me in private, first, before I would allow them to do so.

P.S. You would not believe how much nonsense the doctrine of "You can tell me anything you feel the need to – by using my abundant direct message channels to do so, but my public space is highly moderated" cuts right off at the knees.

[cosmolinguist]

I'm also talking about eating outdoors in December and not traveling to see my family and stuff, and no one has commented telling me to get covid (or telling me off for "not going back to normal" or however else they'd frame it). Just a data point. I don't have a big reach, but it hasn't even happened once.

[lilacsigil]

I've had this in real life (I'm still taking precautions and I work in my public-facing job with a mask on) but not on DW. People have told me I should "just get it over with".

[redbird]

I know quite a few people who are still taking those precautions. Some of those have relevant health issues ourselves, some live with people in that first group (and there's at least one risk=averse person who doesn't fit into either of those group.

I don't like these limitations either -- I just counted on my fingers how many people I have socialized with indoors since 2020, and I don't like living in a world where that's part of the price of, I hope, keeping myself alive and avoiding further disability.

It may never be "post vaccinations" for me or other immune-compromised people. I'm crossing my fingers that if I do get sick, Paxlovid will help: I have had three full doses of the mRNA vaccines and two booster doses. After the first four vaccine doses, my doctor ordered another blood test, which showed that I still wasn't making any covid antibodies.

[adrian_turtle]

Are they arguing that you should stop taking precautions? Or that you should get Covid and die already? (Analogous to "Go get run over, just stop standing on the corner by traffic light in my way.")

ETA: Or is the argument that getting Covid is a good thing, safer and healthier than vaccination? I've heard this occasionally.

[ambyr]

I do not experience this, and while it’s true almost everything I post on the Internet is locked (I’ll be honest, I don’t even like commenting on public posts), it’s also true that I am taking substantially more precautions than you are and have many people on my flist who don’t share my level of risk aversion. However, I don’t know that my level of caution is all that obvious from my posts; I blog about what I’m doing, not about all the things I’m not doing, you know?