People should not take medical advice from economists. If you have a cough, you should seek medical advice from a healthcare provider, and if you test positive for covid at home, you should be asking your doctor if you could be treated with Paxlovid, and getting a professional evaluation to determine if your symptoms are indicative of a need for further care, determined by your doctor based on your health situation. Paxlovid is recommended for everyone with a risk condition, and everyone over 65 definitely falls into that category, and technically everyone over 50. I say this because Dean Baker tweeted out that people should have copays to dissuade people from seeking medical care for coughs. When pressed on this, he said he took a home test when he had covid, and hand waved it away as if nobody else needs to go to the doctor for covid. As if the hospitals overflowing and the morgue trucks never happened. As if he’s unaware of the people dying in America of covid every week, including nursing home WORKERS. People still die of covid and nothing has changed about the dangers of getting infected, only the politics changed, where liberals have been swung to the right on public health, and that people are being told to accept the deaths and the risks. Young healthy energetic people, like Physics Girl, have gotten profound Long Covid conditions. Many people have risk conditions they don’t even know about yet – that’s why they call diabetes and high blood pressure “silent killers” after all. So nobody really knows for sure how serious it could be. Also, if you have any cough that hasn’t been diagnosed to determine the cause, you should be seeking medical advice to diagnose it. Ignoring a cough can lead to failing to get timely treatment for serious conditions like thyroid cancer or lung cancer, or untreated GERD which puts you at risk for cancer.
chloe kaczenski humbert