Why get it intentionally? Surely you should just “stop caring about it” and then you might get it, but you also might not, and that’s the best of all possible worlds.
“Just not caring” means you might catch it during the peak of a fourth wave, which (a) increases the risk that you won’t be able to get hospital care if required, and (b) may increase the risk you get a higher viral load. (Though it’s confusing to me that the higher viral loads of the new strain have reportedly not been accompanied by worse symptoms.)
“Just not caring” also has the disadvantage that you may spread COVID-19 to others before you realize you’re sick. If there were instead a maximally safe and ethical way to catch it at a known time and place, then you could immediately lock down hard after catching it.
Of course, some of the above advantages go away if your way of catching COVID-19 involves getting a higher-than-typical viral load. So I also don’t see a good way to do it, especially compared to the relatively trivial alternatives. (“I know, I’ll try the crazy munchkiny solution of… just sitting at home for a few months until I get my vaccine booster.”)
I tried a hard lockdown in March-June with no friends, no restaurants, no travel, limited shopping, and it certainly was not a “trivial” loss. Our lifestyle and our sanity matters. I could feasibly lock down for a month or two, but I have no faith in my ability to accurately assess when that month would matter.
Where I’m coming out here is that it is not going to be feasible for most people to either lock down hard or intentionally get COVID. It’s not a comfortable conclusion, because we as humans like to pretend we are in control, but aside from the extreme I-will-never-leave-my-apartment outliers, who are never going to be more than a small minority of the population, we are not in control of whether or when we get Covid.
Why get it intentionally? Surely you should just “stop caring about it” and then you might get it, but you also might not, and that’s the best of all possible worlds.
“Just not caring” means you might catch it during the peak of a fourth wave, which (a) increases the risk that you won’t be able to get hospital care if required, and (b) may increase the risk you get a higher viral load. (Though it’s confusing to me that the higher viral loads of the new strain have reportedly not been accompanied by worse symptoms.)
“Just not caring” also has the disadvantage that you may spread COVID-19 to others before you realize you’re sick. If there were instead a maximally safe and ethical way to catch it at a known time and place, then you could immediately lock down hard after catching it.
Of course, some of the above advantages go away if your way of catching COVID-19 involves getting a higher-than-typical viral load. So I also don’t see a good way to do it, especially compared to the relatively trivial alternatives. (“I know, I’ll try the crazy munchkiny solution of… just sitting at home for a few months until I get my vaccine booster.”)
I tried a hard lockdown in March-June with no friends, no restaurants, no travel, limited shopping, and it certainly was not a “trivial” loss. Our lifestyle and our sanity matters. I could feasibly lock down for a month or two, but I have no faith in my ability to accurately assess when that month would matter.
Where I’m coming out here is that it is not going to be feasible for most people to either lock down hard or intentionally get COVID. It’s not a comfortable conclusion, because we as humans like to pretend we are in control, but aside from the extreme I-will-never-leave-my-apartment outliers, who are never going to be more than a small minority of the population, we are not in control of whether or when we get Covid.
Yeah, I should have said “relatively simple” or “relatively straightforward” instead of “relatively trivial”.
great points, thanks.