I hate that COVID has become normal. I know it was destined to become normal the moment it spread outside of China, but I hate that it has. It wouldn’t bother me if it was just COVID - it’d suck but it wouldn’t be a big deal. However, the fact that COVID can be so destructive, even in mild cases, is what concerns me. The fact that someone can have a mild case of COVID but have the symptoms stick around for months, years, or even permanently, makes me wonder if COVID is going to be the next lead (alongside microplastics). The more you get it, the higher the chance it’ll fuck you up, and if everyone gets COVID >10 times over their life, that’s a pretty big chance to permanently fuck up your brain and body; and the damage is going to add up every time you get it.
I know that >10 cases seems like a lot for one person, but considering the vaccines don’t have a 100% prevention rate and that vaccinated people can still get long-covid, I don’t think it’d be far off for people who were under 20yrs old during the lockdown. I’ve had COVID 23 times (one was unconfirmed but felt like COVID) so far despite the fact that I still don’t go out much, I’ve been trying to keep up with vaccines and I’ve been trying to stay masked (though I’ve gotten kinda lax on the latter). That means I have an average of about 0.50.75 times a year since COVID first happened despite trying to avoid it. Someone who doesn’t bother trying to avoid it might have a significantly higher rate.
Is COVID gonna be the new dementia? It sounds like we’re making some pretty big strides in figuring out dementia so I’m honestly betting that it won’t really be a thing in another 20yrs (or we’ll discover that it’s basically impossible to prevent without another 100yrs of biotech); is COVID gonna take over as the primary cause of abnormal mental and/or physical decline?