However to me, COVID is a different beast to what viruses we had before.
That's a myth; it's not fundamentally different. What makes it "different" is that it was a novel virus in a naive population.
When European settlers colonised places that didn't have previous exposure to what are now commonly circulating viruses, the effects were similar.
I went from a perfectly healthy "normal" 20something chap to someone horribly unwell and unable to work for a year and a half after I caught COVID in 2020. It was the worst experience of my life, and three years on (to the month) I'm still dealing with the effects. Thankfully I'm able to work again, and despite what some say, everyone I know who is dealing with long COVID *wants* to work and be able to be productive. Feeling useless is awful.
If you'd been exposed to Sars-CoV-2 alongside the other commonly circulating respiratory viruses from a young age, then this would have been avoided; similarly vaccination would have also trained your immune system to fight this virus off.
You've been unlucky though as most people who had no prior exposure to Sars-CoV-2 or the vaccine were not anywhere near as badly affected, but with everyone now having immunity through a combination of (in most cases) vaccination and (surely by now in all cases) natural exposure, there isn't going to be anyone left whose immune system is completely naive to this virus.
I choose to wear a FFP3 (filtering) mask so as to reduce, not eliminate, the amount of the COVID virus I take in should I encounter it again in the wild.
You won't realistically be able to wear it all the time when in the presence of other humans, so you are going to be re-exposed to Sars-Cov-2, as it is inevitable.
I know plenty of others who have had an awful time with it on the second run in....
Who are these people and how do you know plenty of them, given your experience is very rare.
, and I feel like I've been given a second chance at life having recovered, and I don't wish to blow it just yet. My time will eventually come, and I'll deal with the consequences when it happens. But in the mean time I'll do small practical things like wear a FFP3 mask when on trains or indoors.
If it makes you feel better to stand out, then that is your choice, but you cannot avoid the inevitable fact that we are all going to be regularly re-exposed to Sars-CoV-2, which is very much the 5th endemic human Coronavirus, alongside the four longstanding pre-existing ones. There is no getting away from it.
Oh boy, IndySage are sabre rattling again...
Scientists have called for people to start wearing face masks again amid a worrying Covid-19 variant 'mutation'.
www.thetelegraphandargus.co.uk
They just don't want to give up on mask compulsion, it has literally become a cult for IndySage and it's rapidly shrinking fan base.
Two words to them. The second one is off....
Trisha Greenhalgh is clearly mentally ill; any sane journalist should not be quoting her.
Her irrational fears have been proven wrong many times, and yet she just can't stop craving attention. She is utterly bonkers.