Quote:
Originally Posted by haertig
If you have a compromised immune system, EVERYTHING is highly contagious. Even things that do not affect the general population at all.
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Immunocompromise/immunosuppression is not one universal identical thing - it varies in both quality/type and quantity/degree. And yes, I'm well on board (as an immunosuppressed person who doesn't have a completely absent immune system) with the whole population taking a few basic steps to reduce the risk to more medically vulnerable people. Steps that will also reduce their own, lesser but not nonexistent risk. Those basic steps are things like keeping your germs to yourself when you're experiencing symptoms of an infectious disease (i.e. staying the hell home), getting all scheduled vaccinations unless you have a genuine medical reason not to, and using basic hygiene.
I get that some people are violently against doing anything at all that might protect others, preferring instead to take the "every person for themself" side of things. I just don't agree with them.
COVID-19 is a special case right now, as unlike most other diseases it is currently circulating absolutely rampantly in some populations. I'm not worried about, say, measles right now, partly because I'm fully vaccinated (while this may be sub-effective it's unlikely to be completely ineffective); and partly because so much of the population is vaccinated that it's not really a reasonable everyday concern where I live - we're above the herd immunity threshold. (And because we have good public health and contact tracing here that those cases that are imported are generally tracked down fairly quickly). But if I were in certain parts of the world, COVID would be a major everyday concern. COVID is a special case right now and just hand-waving about how anything could kill you so why focus on COVID is really not a great argument. The USA specifically is not gonna get to herd immunity any time soon. (Neither is Australia, with our bungled vaccine rollout, but our quarantine and contact tracing is close to top notch, which is great.)
Bear in mind, as an aside, that you don't actually need to be immunosuppressed or immunocompromised to die of COVID, or a staph infection, or a enteroviral encephalitis, or influenza, or etc. You just have to be unlucky.