Thoughts on COVID fear, 12/22
Trying to rationalize the irrational?
when it became clear that the public health response to Covid involved denying ourselves things we wanted and enjoyed, including non-negotiably important things like in-person schooling and face-to-face human contact, they (subconsciously) saw an opening: if denial of human pleasures is virtuous, I can be more virtuous than my peers. If caution is noble, overcaution must be even nobler.
. . .For some people, it seems, being more freaked out about Covid is quite like an I Voted sticker or a BlackLivesMatter sign in their window. It’s another way to let everyone know that they have the greatest wealth of all, the wealth of superior character, of greater moral standing.
I would describe myself as COVID-cautious at the moment, but I don’t think of it as competition to show virtue. I just notice that in the worst weeks of the past two years, the number of people that I personally knew with COVID never exceeded more than one per week, and the number was typically zero. Now all of a sudden, I know a dozen. They are not in the hospital, and they probably are not going to die, but they don’t seem particularly happy.
If you are not on the East Coast, you may not know what I’m talking about. Yet. But things are absolutely crazy here.
How should I react? I could take the view that I will inevitably get sick. I have my three shots, and I could just go out and do things until the virus strikes, counting on the vaccine to keep me from having a severe case.
But that does not feel right to me. I think I should keep playing the game of trying to choose carefully where I want to take risks (visiting family) and where I don’t (going to in-person dance sessions).
Even if one is going to get the virus sooner or later, there are advantages to having it be later. The main advantage is that your chances of getting a helpful treatment increase. Although it is fair to be angry with the FDA for not having approved Paxlovid already, it is also true that the drug will be scarce for a while, until production can be ramped up.
Because I am retired, it is not so hard for me to make a choice to hide from strangers as much as possible. I certainly am not going to lord it over people who have less choice or who make their choices based on different considerations.
For an informed analysis, as always, turn to the Zvi. At one point, he reminds us that our friends at the FDA were against getting booster shots.
It will *always* be better to delay getting Covid because a treatment may always be right around the corner. But you sacrifice so much living while you wait. You need to be looking at the cost of another day lost to fear vs the benefit that another day will bring in treatment options. There’s no way that advocates for trying to delay infection at this point.
You’ve lost nearly 2 years of your life and it hasn’t brought the treatment you feel comfortable with. You’ve lost nearly 1 year vaccinated and even that didn’t make you comfortable getting it. You’re recently boosted (maximum antibody levels->maximum protection against severe disease) and still not comfortable getting Covid. At this point, every day you try to avoid getting Covid is only making you 1 day older, giving you 1 day lower antibody levels and costing you 1 day of normal, fear-free life. And it’s still not going to keep you from getting Covid.
"I just notice that in the worst weeks of the past two years, the number of people that I personally knew with COVID never exceeded more than one per week, and the number was typically zero. Now all of a sudden, I know a dozen. ... If you are not on the East Coast, you may not know what I’m talking about. Yet. But things are absolutely crazy here."
Same with me (also EC), except "one per month", but now, yes, about a dozen, including multiple teenagers, which I hadn't seen before in any of the previous 'waves'. Many more "I am positive" in the social media stream, and more "case alerts" at workplaces and schools. About half the positive folks I know well say they have no symptoms at all and were surprised by the positive result, and the others have mild symptoms that vary a lot: this one has stomach issues, that one headaches, another one fever and cough.
I can't exclude the possibility that people are just a lot more likely to self-test now, especially when encouraged to do so after some potential exposure, but I think the increase in numbers is real.
On the other hand, "with this new variant, even with vaccine boosters, there's little we can do to stop everybody from getting a mild case in a wave that will probably burn itself out quick" may be just the kind of lucky 'exogeneous shock' we need for a reset of social psychology to allow people to suddenly accept endemic seasonality of what is now a tolerably mild virus for which we also now have effective treatments like the antiviral drugs about to be approved by the FDA any day now ... maybe ... we hope.