> It seems clear at this point that Covid (the latest variants in the wild, at any rate) does not cause "often debilitating effects"
Depending on the study, you have up to 45% of people experiencing covid symptoms (aka Long Covid) almost four months past infection, and around 10% that experience symptoms 18 months past infection [1].
The amount of people so massively impacted by Long Covid that they can't work any more or have to significantly reduce their labor hours is so large that it's been theorized to be a significant contributor to current labor shortages [2]. So yes, it does classify as "often" IMHO.
> and so any mitigation must have its costs, which are very high for any easily-transmissible respiratory illness, weighed against its benefits, which are pretty low.
Just the 2023/24 covid+rsv+influenza wave is suspected to have cost the German economy alone 36 billion euros in lost income and sick day payments [3].
We need pathogen mitigation concepts, the sooner the better.
[1] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-023-43661-w
[2] https://www.brookings.edu/articles/is-long-covid-worsening-t...
[3] https://www.deutschlandfunk.de/ifw-grippewelle-koennte-die-d...
