@ me next time, bruh, @OldTimer.
Masks didn’t suddenly stop the flu after over a century of not stopping viruses. Flu essentially disappeared* worldwide in March 2020, before widespread masking in the US/Europe, and also in countries that never really masked much, like Sweden. The data strongly suggest viral interference.
*Not completely, of course, since complete eradication of any virus is basically a pipe dream (attn: zero-covid nut-cases)
Less movement, fewer interactions with people who might notice you are in distress. Another message board I lurk on, the founder who lived alone collapsed at his home from diabetes(and/or COVID) and it wasn’t until someone on the board noted he hadn’t heard from the guy in a few days that someone managed to contact the police and do a wellness check. He spent a month on a vent and died. Now this particular guy didn’t get out a lot so it could have happened absent COVID, but there are probably a lot more people who in other years, someone would have gone to check on them sooner and caught them before it was too late, but this time didn’t because they weren’t seeing them every day anyway. I myself live alone and it’s occurred to me if I keeled over, it could be up to a week before someone got worried enough to come to my house.
Good point. Len Meyers would have died years earlier if his bridge partner hadn’t stopped by and found him unconscious.
I’m married now, but lived alone for many years. I like to think that if nothing else… someone might notice if I didn’t do any work for a week.
Now if I had bad timing and keeled over right after quitting time on the day before a long weekend where I didn’t have anything particular planned then it could’ve been a while longer. If I was taking vacation days then I probably had something planned where someone would notice.