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PaperclipPerfector  3d ago (text post)   14162 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of May 19, 2025

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Anecdotal but am I one of the few who was almost completely unaffected by COVID? I literally knew no one on a first name basis who died. My 90 y/o grandma went on a 8 hour road trip with my positive aunt and was never symptomatic. My hunch is COVID deaths tended to cluster amongst certain groups. My white, Evangelical, smoking and drinking are sins circle faired very well.

Similarly with the great opioid crisis I've never known anyone who has OD'd.

I have not had covid as far as I know. I did get antibody tests early on which were all negative. My wife had it twice and i slept in the same room with her. No issues.

I also know no one that died from COVID, other than a coworker who's very old mother allegedly died from it. This person is known for his tall tales so I cant know for certain.

I find this to be a reasonable heuristic for how much I should worry about something. I know many people who passed from cancer. Many from heart attacks. More than one from getting hit by a car when cycling. I reckon most people have a similar experience.

Its impossible for me to believe that 1.2 million people died from covid in 3-4 years and reconcile that with my experience.

It's a good point that "I don't know anyone who died of covid" is not the only part of their personal experience that people will use to form an opinion on its severity -- virtually everyone has had or been exposed to covid by now, and if their experience was that the disease itself was no big deal, it's hard to reconcile that with a large death toll.

Like -- I don't personally know anyone who's died of prostate cancer, but I do know lots of people who've died of other kinds of cancer, so I'm prepared to believe that prostate cancer is a serious problem. If my doctor had said to me five years ago "hey, you've got prostate cancer -- this is a big deal, you might die" and I just... ignored it and it went away with minimal symptoms, I'd be less inclined to think that prostate cancer is a serious thing.

Biggest impact from COVID on me was a positive one, my job became 100% remote and I was able to wear pajamas for weeks at a time.

My white, Evangelical, smoking and drinking are sins circle faired very well.

I think this part should be hyphenated, as otherwise it becomes a garden-path sentence.

My white, tradcath, smoking and drinking are what you do, Covid measures are the mark of the beast circles did very well.

Face it- the virus just doesn’t affect people who don’t give a shit.

I did have an uncle whose annual hospital stay was due to Covid. But, like, his annual hospital stay.

My grandpa (late 80s with COPD) died from covid. The superintendant of my workplace got it and died after being publically anti-lockdown. My older cousin and her husband (both obese, and he smokes heavily) got it, but survived, though she was hospitalized.

My parents got it (after being vaccinated). Got weird neurological things a couple weeks later that got blamed on covid, including my stepmom blacking out while driving (and only avoiding swerving into traffic because my dad's cousin was in the passenger seat and grabbed the wheel in time).

I'm fortunate enough that nobody in my extended family outright died of COVID, but it put a family member in the ICU and others were severely sick. It absolutely wasn't a normal year by those standards.

A med student, who happens to be my brother's best friend and also my pupil, lost his dad to a fungal infection following an ICU admission after COVID. On a more extended basis, I certainly saw plenty of people die in the ICU I was responsible for during the worst of the pandemic.

My grandfather died of COVID in his mid 80s but he had had 4 heart attacks, a quadruple bypass surgery and was almost as round as he was tall… it was a miracle he lived that long to begin with….

No.

The closest person I can come up with who died of Covid was a coworker's (middle aged, obese) mother who I'd never met. Otherwise, I knew people who got it, and one who was hospitalized with it (twice, but he was on a "hospitalized every six months" schedule as it was before), but no one dead or seriously injured. As far as I know I never caught it (I took the initial two course vaccine but that's it, didn't make efforts to avoid it, lived with the guy who was twice hospitalized, etc.), and if Covid was indistinguishable from a bad hangover/routine flu-like illness that goes away after a day for a ~30 year old alcoholic (The bars being shut down really was annoying.) with a past history of smoking, that's on it.

I personally knew well 2 people who died of it who really shouldn't have had any obvious comorbidmities. I have a massive social network though - the number of people I know who died of it are far lower than the official stats would suggest.

I also didn't know anyone that died. My octogenarian grandparents got it and were fine.

Opioids on the other hand... well, I was from a poor rural town. A couple old friends that I have very fond memories of apparently got hooked on something and died, although the specifics are murky.

I don't know anyone who died of covid: my mother (in her 50s) got it and was hospitalized, but recovered. My grandmother (in her 90s) got it and didn't even end up in the hospital.

I don't know anyone who died of covid but I did know one guy who dropped dead of a stroke shortly after getting the vaccine.

I know exactly one person who "died of COVID". He was a morbidly obese, diabetic cancer survivor in his 70s with emphysema and COPD who had to regularly undergo dialysis to stay alive. When he passed away, it was shortly after going to the ER for chest pain.

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