Are you concerned about long covid at all? That's the thing about this virus that really concerns me, especially since I've read reports even people with asymptomatic infections can get it.
On a personal level I have concerns in that respect, but am forced to adjust to an ever increasing extent because of the way wider society and the rest of my family have started moving on. I'm still rather keen not to be exposed to the virus but I also consider that neither of my parents who are in their 70s have had it yet either. My brother who has type 1 diabetes has had it twice this year and didnt seem to suffer anything other than mild short-term consequences. His son, my 10 year old nephew, has developed several long term health conditions during this pandemic, type 1 diabetes and asthma. I do not exclude the possibility that there is a link between the pandemic and the triggering of those conditions, and I was alert to those sorts of possibilities before they happened in this case. (eg he likely inherited a genetic susceptibility to type 1 diabetes which then just required a trigger such as a particular type of infection), but I was powerless to alter the chain of events so I had no choice but to come to terms with this side of life. Having spent most of my life quite aware of such things, especially via my borther developing type 1 diabetes as an adolescent, I had plenty of time to come to terms with these aspects of life long before this pandemic even arrived.
I had a sort of 'long glandular fever' when I was 21 but the consequences were quite narrow compared to what some people experience with long covid. I was never quite the same again, but I cannot claim that it completely ruined my health.
More broadly on the societal and global level I remain consistently unimpressed with the extent to which these other potential consequences of the virus were ignored at every opportunity. I only 'gave up' on things like zero covid because it was so clear that most countries were not going to bother with that or anything that leaned to any extent towards erring on the side of caution. And there are limits to how craxy I am prepared to drive myself having arguments that I wont win. I expect a permanently changed public health picture as a result of these failings, both in terms of long covid but also the other increased risks to health which are now being noticed. For example several people drew attention recently to an FT article about that, and it was sadly no surprise at all to me (
archive.ph as mentioned in posts such as
Long Covid and
General Coronavirus (COVID-19) chat ). It is too early for me to say whether such things will eventually lead the court of public opinion to judge that a terrible mistake was made on that front, with everyone looking back with much regret, or whether disinterested shrugging will continue to dominate. In the meantime I will occasionally rant at how easily people conclude that Chinas ongoing 'zero covid' approach is batshit, as if our own extreme opposite approach is entirely sane and proportionate (eg witness me droning on at length in the world pandemic thread the other week).
Ultimately people make judgements about where the sense of balance should be, about what they consider to be proportionate and appropriate. Even in the acute phase of the pandemic there were plenty of distorted, ignorant opinions about that, and so its no surprise that once people decided we were getting beyond that phase of the pandemic, other aspects of life and death end up in the driving seat.
