[COVID-19/Death talk] Nothing serious happened. I'm just musing over some life experiences.

But the thought kind of occurred to me that a lot of people out there who are dismissing this thing as "just a flu" or "a bad cold" have probably never been in a situation where a so-called minor sickness put their life in danger.

But I have.

When I was about 19 or 20 one of my wisdom teeth impacted and became infected. That infection grew onto an abscess that completely sidelined me with pain and a tremendous fever.

Now when I say this was a bad fever I mean I was hallucinating. To this day a decade and a half later I have memories of sitting in a basement and having a conversation with an aunt who did not come to visit me. I remember a conversation that never happened. It was that bad a fever.

When I finally got it checked out almost a week later it was dealt with by antibiotics. But I do remember being told that if I'd ignored it much longer it could actually have killed me.

Either from the fever or from the infection crossing the relatively short distance to my brain.

That's really the whole story there. But it's still the story of the time a toothache nearly killed me.

that sounds fuckin unpleasant

So I'm wondering if I just have a different definition in my head of "severe" when it comes to sickness. I'm not quite as ready to just write something off because I spent a week writing off my sore tooth and then found out I almost died from it.

DSTXC : it was super unpleasant. My first day deciding to stay home from my job at the time started when I doubled over and threw up in the middle of the street on my way to the bus stop.

And then I couldn't even close my mouth because it had swollen up so much.

That certainly squares with a lot of the experiences I’ve seen

Yeah. I know a lot of them have some kind of thing or another like a heart issue or a blood pressure issue but I feel like that's a different experience than waking up Monday morning in good health, starting a new job to "I almost died" by Friday.

granted my experience is almost exclusively Americans and a lot of the people I’ve seen be dismissive are people who have never had trouble going to the doctor. That they’re all well off and have always had health insurance etc

To them the idea of a healthcare system that could fail is a complete impossibility, because it has never failed for them

That could still apply here in Canada. We never really have to worry about getting care so the idea that facilities could get to overwhelmed that we can't get could be kind of alien to people.

(I mean my mother-in-law who has probably COVID exposure tried to break into the nursing home to see her mother who has emphysema today. The idea that she could literally kill her mother does not appear to have impinged on her mind at all)

*Probable

Holy hell

So yeah I think you’re onto something about people who have never had Serious I Nearly Died health issues

It's a thought to chew on if nothing else.

I've also been wondering if that one aunt I have who's insisting on not taking things seriously would be doing it if my grandfather were still alive today.

Or if she'd be locking herself in her home right now.

Convincing Boomer Parents to Take the Coronavirus Se...

Interesting perspective

That is an interesting take. The comparison to the Cold War at the end especially. Because, honestly, there's really no precautions to take in the event of a nuclear bomb unless you happen to have a bomb shelter.