this post was submitted on 08 Apr 2025
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One of the stupidest ways to try and downplay it. It was like the flu. The flu is no joke, keeps many people bedridden for days, and kills. And getting vaccinated for the year's flu strain with minimize those effects. Yeah, it was a lot like the flu, and some people are medically ignorant.
Realistically it was worse because of things we're still learning about. But for the time it was a dumb analogy by people who obviously never had the flu.
The flu is a familiar disease, and young people with strong immune systems rarely die from it or experience long-term health consequences from having had it. So it's not scary to most people, because they've never lived through a flu outbreak as bas as the spanish flu, and because they don't know anyone for whom getting the flu would be a death sentence.
But Covid was a worse pandemic because when it infects, it can be completely benign or completely suffocating, and there's very little way of knowing which will happen to you. And if you do get it, there's a much higher chance it leaves serious scars that you'll carry for the rest of your life.
People need to treat bad things as bad and be willing to set aside familiarity and comfort for the safety and well-being of others. Instead they downplay how bad something they don't understand is going to be, because they want others to believe the same and not change their behavior, because their own comfort is more important than protecting the people who will be hurt the most