[conspire] deaths from COVID

[Nick Moffitt]

On 11Sep2020 07:21am (-0400), Rich Kulawiec wrote:
> On Wed, Sep 09, 2020 at 06:49:25AM +0000, paulz at ieee.org wrote:
> > Someone wrote to me that COVID-19 is much over hyped.
> 
> It's not.  *It's not just the death toll.*   COVID-19 attacks bodies
> in many ways and some of those ways result in damage that will take
> years to heal -- if it ever heals.  In other words, in addition to the
> 200K who are already dead, there are a lot of people who are going
> to have chronic health problems that may not kill them right away,
> but will take years off their lives.  How many is "a lot"?   Unknown.
> How many years?  Unknown.   But it's disengenuous as hell for those
> downplaying COVID-19's impact on health to just point at 200K deaths
> and ignore everything else it's doing.

I had a rough fever and gastric distress in February.  It was odd, as I normally don't get seasonal flu.  I attribute this to regularly-scheduled flu jabs and a regimen of regular commuter cycling in all weathers.

But hey, something hit me, and I got over it in a few days, and then a couple weeks later it was clear that COVID-19 was spreading across Europe now.

A FOAF just told a group of us that she had exactly the same situation, also in West London, but now—surprise!—she has COVID-induced glaucoma!

When a disease is described as "novel" that really does mean all guesses are plausible in terms of how it will affect our immune systems and our organs.  You may get over a mild cold and fever, and find all of a sudden that you're facing renal failure seemingly out of nowhere!  This is not something you muck about with.