@gemelliz You might want to look into the infection fatality rate for the black death versus COVID, particularly following COVID vaccination and boost.

The black death killed about a third of the people in Europe. COVID-19 has killed a bit less than 0.3% of the people in the US, and most of those were unvaccinated.

COVID-19 is a terrible disease and a pandemic. It is not the plague.

@gerdcastan @gemelliz I don't want to get COVID so I do mask in most public settings, but I'm fully vaccinated and boosted, which greatly reduces the risk of long COVID.

Again, COVID is bad but we needn't pretend that with current vaccines and therapeutics it's bubonic plague or AIDS.

@gerdcastan @gemelliz Nope. There is a strong dose-response relationship for vaccination and boost and the protective effect of vaccination + boost against long COVID — once you’ve hd acut COVID — is closer to 3X.

Additionally, vaccination and boost substantially decrease odds of getting acute COVID in the first place, meaning that overall protection against long COVID is substantially better than 3x.