Even my educated and previously cautious friends have given up and go around maskless despite serious preexisting conditions. I wince every time I get texted a photo of a maskless friend in a crowded restaurant or concert, then hear that someone’s tested positive again. For people who understand what COVID is and take that path, is it fatalism? Is it caving to the pressure of “back to normal”? I don’t know, but I have screwed up lungs already and have managed to avoid COVID infection so far, and I’d like to keep it that way even if I’m doing it alone.
Thanks for this very good ‘reader-friendly’ essay....unfortunately people choose to believe the ‘misinformation’. We are all lemings heading collectively for the cliff. Unless science can find a way to stop this virus and to stop its ‘Long Covid’ impacts I fear the future of humanity. Thanks for this! I wish SARS-CoV-2 was a cold but know it is not...I hate this virus!!
What I have noticed over the past week is that far fewer people are rolling their eyes when viewing the N95 mask fitted to my face. The occasional query is not confrontational but a lament about having to start wearing one again.
My wife is on the staff of our 400 bed local hospital which is filled with COVID patients.
Our governments should be providing respirators with proper fitting instruction at the least. That that does not happen speaks volumes.
The sooner the sad fact that this virus is going to keep mutating and stay present in our lives for the duration, the better off we will be.
Excellent piece, very easy to understand. This is exactly what government doesn’t want us to know. I’m not sure which is worse -- the nearly complete lack of data or the dumbfounded looks we get on a rare day when we go somewhere. Mind boggling!
There also seems to be way too many articles being written on how important it is to have a social life! Honestly, I’d love to do that but not if it’s going to kill me. Which is what these policies seem designed to do.☹️
My first bout with Covid gave me a year of severe gastrointestinal problems. It rendered my GI tract pretty much unable to operate. I had severe acid damage from esophagus to the duodenum. I also ended up with high blood pressure. Did not have that or any stomach issues prior to Covid infection.
And most recently my 81 year old mom was in the hospital for a blood infection. Zero hospital staff wore masks of any kind. My mom caught Covid in the hospital but none of the staff even noticed. Part of why she felt so bad was she had Covid! She got diagnosed because I got sick and tested positive. My 85 year old dad also caught it from her. The timeline shows she got it at the hospital and my dad and I got it from her. She is now housebound due to pulmonary edema and edema in her legs. She has fluid around the heart as well. She had heart issues beforehand so it’s amazing this hasn’t killed her. It may yet do so. She had been fully active before that hospital stay.
“Another implication, according to a neuroscientist studying covid, is ‘a generation of babies being born with long covid.’ ” this is terrifying, and I’m glad I’m old. I’m afraid of what the world is going to look like when everyone has brain damage.
Currently, there are people, even on Substack, attempting to pin excess deaths on cytotoxins remaining in the mRNA vaccines from a very complicated manufacturing process. Seems the Ace2 receptor link is missing in their narratives because they jump straight to blaming cytotoxins as the excess death cause with mounds and heaps of “scientific data” while alleging a “coverup” by the manufacturers. Thanks again for your narrative.
This makes many things make so much more sense! However, I'm puzzled because I thought there were well-known long-term non-respiratory effects of some respiratory diseases. For example, I have heard (apparently it is up for debate?) that Spanish Flu later caused sleeping sickness and then (even later) Parkinson's.
I have also seen research that says that getting a flu shot cuts your risk of a major cardiac event (e.g. heart attack, stroke, heart failure) in the next year by 50%.
Great article. I'm curious how vaccines affect the ability for the virus to change its envelope code? Are we past the point of reaching R_0<1? Does a sustained low vaccine rate increase the likelihood of a virus evolving to bypass or neuter vaccines?
Even my educated and previously cautious friends have given up and go around maskless despite serious preexisting conditions. I wince every time I get texted a photo of a maskless friend in a crowded restaurant or concert, then hear that someone’s tested positive again. For people who understand what COVID is and take that path, is it fatalism? Is it caving to the pressure of “back to normal”? I don’t know, but I have screwed up lungs already and have managed to avoid COVID infection so far, and I’d like to keep it that way even if I’m doing it alone.
Thanks for this very good ‘reader-friendly’ essay....unfortunately people choose to believe the ‘misinformation’. We are all lemings heading collectively for the cliff. Unless science can find a way to stop this virus and to stop its ‘Long Covid’ impacts I fear the future of humanity. Thanks for this! I wish SARS-CoV-2 was a cold but know it is not...I hate this virus!!
What I have noticed over the past week is that far fewer people are rolling their eyes when viewing the N95 mask fitted to my face. The occasional query is not confrontational but a lament about having to start wearing one again.
My wife is on the staff of our 400 bed local hospital which is filled with COVID patients.
Our governments should be providing respirators with proper fitting instruction at the least. That that does not happen speaks volumes.
The sooner the sad fact that this virus is going to keep mutating and stay present in our lives for the duration, the better off we will be.
Precaution is mandatory, not optional.
Excellent piece, very easy to understand. This is exactly what government doesn’t want us to know. I’m not sure which is worse -- the nearly complete lack of data or the dumbfounded looks we get on a rare day when we go somewhere. Mind boggling!
There also seems to be way too many articles being written on how important it is to have a social life! Honestly, I’d love to do that but not if it’s going to kill me. Which is what these policies seem designed to do.☹️
My first bout with Covid gave me a year of severe gastrointestinal problems. It rendered my GI tract pretty much unable to operate. I had severe acid damage from esophagus to the duodenum. I also ended up with high blood pressure. Did not have that or any stomach issues prior to Covid infection.
And most recently my 81 year old mom was in the hospital for a blood infection. Zero hospital staff wore masks of any kind. My mom caught Covid in the hospital but none of the staff even noticed. Part of why she felt so bad was she had Covid! She got diagnosed because I got sick and tested positive. My 85 year old dad also caught it from her. The timeline shows she got it at the hospital and my dad and I got it from her. She is now housebound due to pulmonary edema and edema in her legs. She has fluid around the heart as well. She had heart issues beforehand so it’s amazing this hasn’t killed her. It may yet do so. She had been fully active before that hospital stay.
So no, Covid is not a cold.
“Another implication, according to a neuroscientist studying covid, is ‘a generation of babies being born with long covid.’ ” this is terrifying, and I’m glad I’m old. I’m afraid of what the world is going to look like when everyone has brain damage.
Wow! Thanks.
Currently, there are people, even on Substack, attempting to pin excess deaths on cytotoxins remaining in the mRNA vaccines from a very complicated manufacturing process. Seems the Ace2 receptor link is missing in their narratives because they jump straight to blaming cytotoxins as the excess death cause with mounds and heaps of “scientific data” while alleging a “coverup” by the manufacturers. Thanks again for your narrative.
I said all of this in May 2020 and everyone laughed lol
let's just go extinct already.
:head-exploding-emoji:
This makes many things make so much more sense! However, I'm puzzled because I thought there were well-known long-term non-respiratory effects of some respiratory diseases. For example, I have heard (apparently it is up for debate?) that Spanish Flu later caused sleeping sickness and then (even later) Parkinson's.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Encephalitis_lethargica
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4684089/
I have also seen research that says that getting a flu shot cuts your risk of a major cardiac event (e.g. heart attack, stroke, heart failure) in the next year by 50%.
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/1758749
Finally, this paper says that HCoV-OC43 and HCoV-HKU1 use sialic acid as their entry receptors, and sialic acid apparently is on ALL cells:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7653219/
Can you please educate me?
Went to the CDC homepage and was surprised to see that covid is NOT listed as an 'airborne' spreading disease but rather as a 'direct contact'
Great article. I'm curious how vaccines affect the ability for the virus to change its envelope code? Are we past the point of reaching R_0<1? Does a sustained low vaccine rate increase the likelihood of a virus evolving to bypass or neuter vaccines?