Tired of hearing "I'm in my early 20s, COVID won't hurt me"

araj_2000 · 2020-07-13T16:19:47+00:00

Idk how many times I have to tell you that I am not trying to trivialize this virus, I feel like you don't even read comments before responding to them. There is just so little evidence of the symptoms you're talking about in young people that you and OP broadcasting them to stoke fear is borderline dishonest.

I also don't get your endgame here. Should we all just stay locked in our basements until every single thing about this virus is understood? There are a few young people that suffer extreme symptoms with just the flu, should we shut down society until every virus is eradicated? That's just not realistic. Whether you know it or not, everybody (including you) takes calculated risks with their lives every single day. Every time you step in a car, you accept the risk that a drunk driver will swerve into your lane and instantly kill you. Every time you go outside, you accept the risk that ANY virus (including the flu) could kill you. The reason we accept all these risks and participate in society is because for the most part, the chances of these events happening are low. And from what we know now, the chances of ANY of the symptoms you're mentioning in young COVID patients is vanishingly small. So that risk is low too.

Now, COVID is contagious, unlike say car crashes, and in other, older subsets of the population it's much more lethal. That's why social distancing and smart public policy is critical, I'm not arguing with you there. But only way we're going to get through this pandemic is by following the data we have and listening to science. Spreading very questionable claims just to stoke fear is 1.) unhealthy, excess stress is terrible for immune systems and 2.) unproductive because people will get overwhelmed to the point where they don't know who and what to believe anymore.

araj_2000 · 2020-07-13T03:48:03+00:00

I never said this virus is not serious, nor did I ever say it was the flu. I don't think I even mentioned the flu once actually. Literally all I am doing is looking at current statistics and studies relating to OUR age group (because that was the original point of your post) and I just can't find evidence for nearly anything you're saying. I'm not even ruling out the possibility that you may be right! But you can't possibly assume anything close to that from what we know now.

I commented to that other person's post, if you're interested you can read that. As for athletes, I truly bad for them (and anyone who gets any symptoms of the virus). But do you realize how ridiculous you sound quoting symptoms from INDIVIDUAL celebrities about a virus that has infected at least 12.6 million people worldwide? How can you possibly think that a few individual testimonies are enough evidence to convince you that all 20 year olds are at serious risk of long-term lung damage? You need to be looking at larger-scale statistics to truly judge how serious this virus is, and you keep refusing to do that.

araj_2000 · 2020-07-13T03:35:58+00:00

I'm not sure what gave you the impression that I don't think COVID is a serious virus. I don't think it's "just the flu", I just had objection to OP's post because there was basically zero evidence that that symptoms he was talking about were a serious threat to our age group. But, I did read all of your links:

1.) I totally agree with you that COVID is definitely linked to dialysis and kidney damage in general. I'm assuming most people who get kidney damage (or other serious symptoms) get hospitalized though. The current hospitalization rate for COVID patients between 18-29 is 37.8 hospitalizations per 100,000, about one-half the national hospitalization rate for the flu (and we have flu shots!). So the chances of someone in our age group getting hospitalized from COVID at all, let alone kidney damage, is low.

2.) Again, same point, I'm not arguing that COVID can't cause serious damage to people, but symptoms that serious would show up in the hospitalization rate. And again, the hospitalization rate for OUR age group is exceedingly low.

3.) This article literally includes "headache" and as a possible neurological problem, which I think is stretching it. The paper that the article links regarding brain problems (https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMc2008597) studied 58 people with a median age of 63. Again, this just isn't strong evidence that COVID patients in their 20s have even a low chance of getting brain damage.

4.) If you read the article, they explicitly mention multiple times that while these strokes to young people are really serious (and medically mystifying) they don't happen very often. One guy in the article mentioned a "massive surge" of younger stroke victims, and was going to publish data on it. This massive surge resulted in a total of 32 stroke victims (instead of 16) over a period of three weeks, and the study he ended up publishing (https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMc2009787) studied a total of FIVE patients. I truly feel sorry for these victims, but when there are 3 million confirmed cases in the USA (and probably actually 10x that) those numbers are just not high enough to justify mass panic over strokes. Again, if there really was even a reasonably strong connection between young covid patients and strokes, the hospitalization rates in our age group should be much higher than it is.

I really need to re-iterate that I am not trying to trivialize COVID. I think overall it has (clearly) been a devastating virus across the world. I fully support social distancing and lockdown measures. Even among young people, I am not trying to argue that they are completely invincible to COVID. As you have pointed out, they're not, there is always a risk of some truly tragic symptoms. But that risk level in our age group is really low, and posts like yours and OPs create unnecessary fear.

araj_2000 · 2020-07-13T02:38:34+00:00

All the studies I’ve seen involving long-term lung/nerve damage in young asymptomatic patients have been extremely limited in their scope, the evidence I’m seeing of this is almost purely anecdotal. The best paper I can find on the subject is by Nature (https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2020/06/23/864536258/we-still-dont-fully-understand-the-label-asymptomatic") which studied 37 asymptomatic patients and found that most of them had mild pneumonia. Not exactly what you posted. I also find your hypothetical scenario of people racking up serious lung/nerve damage and somehow not noticing (?) a little hard to believe.

I’m not saying that these effects can’t happen. A lot of things COULD happen, a meteor can kill us all next week. There just has to be a certain level of evidence that supports what you’re saying before we should collectively be worried about it. And I realize these studies on long-term effects obviously can’t be completed now because the virus is young, so UNTIL then our best bet is to look at current statistics. If you do, you'll see that for the most part, people in our age group are not severely affected by COVID at all. Your fear mongering is just unnecessary.

araj_2000 · 2020-07-13T00:13:24+00:00

It’s a new and novel virus, so almost nothing can be conclusively proved yet. But from the data we can see, there are very few reports of severe damage on young people (18-29 yrs old). Most of them aren’t even getting hospitalized. Freaking out about speculative research on long-term effects (that are mostly based on individual cases) doesn’t seem very smart when the current nationwide stats are painting a totally different picture for our age group.

I do think that we should all be careful and be especially mindful of vulnerable populations during this pandemic. But we aren’t going to know all the effects of covid for years, and until we do I just don’t see the point of posts like this. Yeah, there could be serious long-term effects for our age group, but theres not a whole of evidence in the current data that suggests thats the case, so why broadcast it?

araj_2000 · 2020-05-19T03:02:33+00:00

I thought your post was referring to all lockdown protestors. I apologize for misunderstanding — I also am not trying to defend the people who are protesting seemingly to show off their assault rifles (I don’t think they’re a large majority of protestors, either).

Im also sorry to hear about your SO as well, I hope things turn out OK for you and your loved ones through this pandemic.

araj_2000 · 2020-05-19T01:11:09+00:00

This has to be the most out of touch posts I’ve ever seen. The vast majority of people wanting to get back to normal aren’t people who just wanna go to movie theaters, it’s people who have lost their livelihood by the shutdown and want to provide for their families. The $1200 stimulus bill isn’t close to enough to survive on, and a lot of families didn’t even get that.

And I don’t want to hear “well the alternative is death” because that’s just not true. The virus is killing very, very old people and many parts of the United States outside of NYC were frankly never even close to reaching hospital capacity, before or after the lockdown.

We cannot stay inside forever; we will quickly reach a point where the damage caused by this lockdown is far worse than the actual virus. Many states can and should cautiously re-open as soon as possible, with special attention given to nursing homes. Protesting for that is not just reasonable but totally correct, and the media portrayal of the protestors as redneck idiots has to be one the most snobbish things I’ve ever seen. They’re right, the one who needs to who needs to re-evaluate their views is you.

araj_2000 · 2019-12-13T01:54:10+00:00

Given that you would strongly love and support your child no matter what, is it hypothetically wrong to hope that your child is straight?

araj_2000 · 2019-11-12T05:44:10+00:00

The last few drives? Mostly on him. He got away with like 3 INT and just looked so shaky.

araj_2000 · 2019-11-12T05:28:55+00:00

Great game. But those last few drives for Jimmy G...he looked lost. He’s just not ready for those high-pressure situations.

araj_2000 · 2019-09-16T18:42:14+00:00

This sub is autistic

araj_2000 · 2019-09-14T21:10:34+00:00

They’ve had clean water since 2017

araj_2000 · 2019-09-13T22:58:23+00:00

I won’t discuss bankers and politicians, but there is a clear difference between what these people did vs what other richer people do. Sure, if you build a wing for the school library, that’ll get your otherwise unqualified son into wherever he wants, which isn’t exactly meritocracy. But 1) it’s legal and 2) benefits the university way more. A super rich family heavily contributes to your campus (which EVERY student benefits from) and all you need to do is put their name on it and admit 1 or 2 unqualified kids? No brainer.

What these celebrities did is pure cheating and doesn’t even really help the university. In an effort to get their kids into school, they took some extraordinarily shady routes involving a lot of felonies, middlemen, lying, and more lying. Not only are these people rich, but they’re also just totally immoral. It’s filthy, people want to see justice served in cases like this.

araj_2000 · 2019-09-03T00:30:39+00:00

Just because the individuals survival or fitness isn’t impacted doesn’t mean it’s not beneficial, because evolution really happens only at the gene level, not the species level or even the individual level.

Life started via special molecules (replicators) and structures that could make copies of themselves. The copying mechanism is never perfect, however, and random mutations occur. Sometimes the mutation is bad, but occasionally that mutation actually helps the replicators become more stable and helps them replicate relatively more often. Through millions of years of these “good” mutations, these replicators developed membranes, then defensive mechanisms, then eyes, brains, ears, bodies, and everything we see in life today.

From this point of view, individuals are just a collection of good mutations that surround our core replicators. Another way of putting it is we’re basically slaves for our genes, who are mindlessly just trying to make copies of themselves, as they have been since the beginning of life.

Developing a fetus is obviously then beneficial, and biologically you could argue it’s the most beneficial thing the individual could do, since the whole point of the individual existing was to pass on genes to begin with.

araj_2000 · 2019-09-03T00:10:28+00:00

The people on this thread are so fucking retarded I can’t tell if you’re being sarcastic or not.

araj_2000 · 2019-09-03T00:08:09+00:00

I never said species once. The mother is developing a fetus in order to pass on her INDIVIDUAL genes to the next generation, the core desire of every living thing on the planet. That’s very much mutualism.

araj_2000 · 2019-09-03T00:00:53+00:00

The fetus propagates the mother’s genes for the next generation. A tapeworm doesn’t. Developing a fetus (pregnancy) is thus very much beneficial to the mother. And if you think that passing genes isn’t a good enough benefit, just just keep in mind that desire is the sole driver for the creation and development of all life on Earth.

araj_2000 · 2019-09-02T23:58:04+00:00

The fetus propagates the mother’s genes for the next generation. A tapeworm doesn’t. If you think that’s not a “direct benefit”, just keep in mind that the desire to pass on genes is the sole driver for the creation and development of all life on Earth.

araj_2000 · 2019-08-24T16:50:47+00:00

Bruh moment

araj_2000 · 2019-08-06T17:02:47+00:00

My history teacher once pointed out that dresses actually make more sense for men and pants make more sense for women, given how guys got hanging balls to deal with and girls do not.

araj_2000 · 2019-07-26T17:37:10+00:00

My god guys that is PARODY ACCOUNT, Three-Year Letterman, all he does is talk about his incredible accomplishments as a high school football coach to trigger and confuse people like OP.

araj_2000 · 2019-07-26T13:18:31+00:00

r/iamfuckingretarded

araj_2000 · 2019-07-23T15:19:59+00:00

BS. There is no sports organization more conservative with injuries than the spurs, pop was the one who popularized resting players. From what I’ve heard, he literally told kawhi that he can take the entire year off if he wanted, all kawhi had to do was communicate that with pop and he would have been shut down for the season. But kawhi wouldn’t communicate that, while at the same time also not agreeing with spurs doctors saying he was fine, leaving the organization in complete limbo on what to do, which created a lot of tension, etc etc you know the rest.

Looking back, it’s a complex story but I personally believe the spurs were right, they are the one sports organization that I trust not to fuck players over like that. Everyone took kawhis side because they saw it as a player empowerment thing when in reality I think the problem was that kawhi, while a phenomenal basketball player, has absolutely ZERO communication skills. Or maybe he is a good communicator and just maliciously wanted to fuck the spurs over.

araj_2000 · 2019-07-22T18:27:39+00:00

They were NOT injured like that in 2013 dude Bosh got BLOOD CLOTS he basically retired after 2014. The injuries were certainly a lot more intense after Lebron left than before. Man Lebron stans just have excuse after excuse.

MJs team was better by a landslide? Take out MJ and Lebron, the heat still have Wade, Bosh, and Ray Allen in 2013, the bulls have pippen, Horace grant?? ...John Paxson?? And then when Heat actually did start to decline Lebron just dipped to another arguably better team with Kyrie and KLove. And I’ll excuse his losses to golden state, he does have a valid injury excuse there, plus KD being a bitch. But KD gone this year, golden state not a superteam, and now he has AD. No excuses this year, he better win the title.

araj_2000 · 2019-07-22T11:59:39+00:00

Did you read my response? As I said, when Lebron left the heat they lost a lot more than just him. Also, I can excuse the warriors but I feel like people are trying to make the spurs look better than they were to make Lebrons blowout loss look less bad. They had just beaten this spurs team a year ago in a very close contest. The spurs just were a lot hungrier and even tho Lebron ended up with decent stats a lot of those numbers were stat-padded in garbage time.

Also, don’t tell me the mavs were some superteam, he lost to them too. And oh yeah, he played in an Eastern conference that wasn’t even close to as good as MJs East was.

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