It's a Virus that's Here to Stay

 Why don't we notice all the people getting sick or being disable or dying from Covid?

A couple years ago, I wrote about being harassed for wearing a mask on my bike by some dude in his truck, and a couple people mentioned that they couldn't believe that happened because it never happened to them. I pointed out that they were both men, white, able-bodied, and typically drove places so weren't even out walking or cycling down the street where someone might yell at them. But it can definitely be hard to understand an experience if it's outside your frame of reference. 

That's why we need to understand stats and trust the science. 

It's never enough to look around at our own life and say, "This is what I'm seeing, so this is likely how it is for people everywhere," because, apart from the unlikely possibility that our friend group is representative of the population, we're almost certainly missing things.  

Lots of people are seeing absolutely no effects of Covid. It might seem like it makes perfect sense to them that if they don't see the effect of Covid that there are no effects. How could there be?? For many people, it feels like it really is just a cold that's been overblown by the paranoid Covid-cautious. And for some people, they make it very clear that they are SO DONE with this (perceived) over-cautiousness!! "Get over it already. Nobody I know has had any longterm effects from this. It's all in your head, and you should keep your mental illness to yourself!!" 

One problem is that we keep physical illness to ourselves. Many people are walking wounded from this, but won't talk about it unless asked directly by someone who seems on board with precautions for a few reasons. There's a risk that talking about it will incite anger in others who insist it ended ages ago or a flurry of questions about vax status to prove that's the real culprit. 

A good 75% of people have concealed carrying an infection in order to go to work, or travel, or party, and many hide that they're just getting by in order to carry on being part of things instead of ending up in the "reject" pile to watch friends and family drift away. Admitting struggling with daily life can be like being a wounded gazelle on the Serengeti. Will you get that promotion if they find out you can concentrate anymore, or you've got brutal headaches, or that you can't come for a drink because you go straight to bed as soon as work ends?? How soon will people stop inviting you to things? 

Or people think other just don't want to hear about it. 

When I had cancer, I couldn't believe how many people reached out who also had or were currently dealing with cancer. People often don't announce what they're going through just to be polite. Like Covid, sometime's there nothing to see in people who are out and about. You can never tell what people are going through. Covid is the third leading cause of death, but still a quarter of the rate of cancer deaths. 

Covid is the third leading cause of death in Canada and in the US. People are still dying from it. If you try to stay fit to avoid heart disease, and you don't smoke to avoid cancer, then you might want to mask to avoid Covid. You still have a greater chance of dying from Covid than a car accident, so if you still wear a seatbelt just in case, you might want to mask just in case. 

It's fascinating how people do a different type of risk assessment around Covid, and I think it's largely that we'd rather exercise, avoid smoking, and wear a seatbelt than wear a mask that impacts the kinds of socializing we're accustomed to with lots of eating and drinking. 

We should all know by now that Covid is not like a cold, which is respiratory. Covid's vascular. It can show up in the lungs, but it's not a lung condition in the same way measles shows up on the skin but isn't a skin disease. Covid travels in the bloodstream to hibernate in the body, able to return later to do serious damage to the brain, pancreas, liver, and lungs. It also depletes T-cells (like HIV), which then makes it harder to fight off other diseases. A recent paper found that fragments of the virus reassemble in to "zombie" complexes and induce a major, sustained immune response. Papers like this keep coming out as we find out more and more about the virus, but some still think it's no worse than a cold because the acute phase doesn't feel much different. 

The brain stuff is what does it for me! In Sweden, over a third of people 16-29 have moderate or severe memory and concentration issues. That's not a third of people with Covid or with Long Covid, but a third of all people 16-29. That's about the average rate in Oklahoma as well. 

So why don't we see tons of sick and disabled people everywhere we go? We do, if you start to pay attention to it.

We might be seeing that brain issue in the increase in car accidents and other workplace accidents.  

We definitely see it in the "mysterious teacher shortages" around the world.

We see lots of performers cancelling or on stage visibly ill. Performers can't cancel over and over when they're sick so often, and if they do cancel, they have to insist they don't have Covid for insurance reasons. I used to spend all my money on concerts; I've seen tons of people play, and none cancelled or played while visibly ill. It's not just my imagination that this is common now.

We see them in the increase in disability in the labour force:

The income range of people in our vicinity makes a big difference. The difference in rates of illness per income has a lot to do with the number of places people have to be surrounded by others unmasked - like in the service industry and on public transport. Popping into a store for something and not bothering to put on an N95 puts the employees at risk. 

The other thing that makes Long Covid a bigger part of the lives people in minimum wage jobs is the lack of sick days. The best advice we've got for Covid treatment is to rest, and then once you feel better, rest for at least another few days. Tons of people work during their illness and have no ability to recover properly especially since guidelines have reduced how long people should stay home with Covid to five days despite knowing full well it's contagious for at least 10-14. 

 GangstHannah also pointed out:

"It's Black History month, so it's a good time to remind selfish white people to mask up. Black people have been disproportionately affected by Covid, same goes for other groups like AIAN, Hispanics and NHOPI. Just take a look at this graph. Let's protect each other."

Don't accidentally flip that around and think that because you're white and wealthy, that you're safer so you shouldn't have to take precautions. Even the really wealthy still take precautions; they just hide them. They know it's risky to ever appear vulnerable to the public. Their stock would drop!! But they have UV lights, HEPA filters and tons of testing going on behind the scenes, and they send their kids to private schools where the air is cleaned. 

Even more baffling though, is that lots of people who are definitely seeing effects of Covid, still can't bring themselves to act. Michael Hicks writes,

"Wife related some convos she had at the biz event this weekend with some folks there:

Convo 1:  

Woman: “Why are you wearing a mask?”
Wife: “Because of COVID.”
Woman: “YOU HAVE COVID?”
Wife: “No, I’m masking to avoid getting it again.” 

Woman wasn’t masking.

Convo 2: Another woman said her son had DIED from (note: not 'with,' but 'from') COVID. She wasn’t masking.

Convo 3: Older woman was there with her adult daughter, who was on oxygen. Daughter’s lungs had been damaged by COVID, thus the oxygen. Mother had also had it and it had been pretty brutal (not mild, apparently!). Neither was masking.

Convo 4: Another woman had a mask ON HER DESK. Wife asked her about it. Woman said she wore it in places like airports and the like, but 'just didn’t feel like it' at the biz venue (hotel ballroom setting with several dozen people, sitting six or so to a table). 

And I had an unexpected COVID discussion in the campground laundry room with a lady who said she’d had it twice. She asked, 'Are you masking because of the increased COVID numbers?' I told her I’ve masking indoors (unless under far-UVC protection) since early 2020. I know there are countless discussions like this others have had, but it still BLOWS MY MIND. So many folks are AWARE of the danger, but simply choose to ignore it. It just makes my head explode."

So it doesn't look like seeing the stats or even seeing it live, in person, will do anything to change the very necessary behaviours that need to change to stop the spread. Even if chances for the white and wealthy are low, each time it spreads, it increases the opportunity for mutation, and each new variant can make it even sneakier at hiding in our system, untouchable by any meds.

I'm not sure what will be enough evidence that a virus that seriously affects 10% of the population through death or disability and hangs in the air when we exhale and is mainly transmitted from people who seem perfectly healthy might be something we try to stop dead in its tracks. 

Some who are noticing the changing around them will still argue, despite all evidence to the contrary, that people are getting sick because they were vaccinated. If they weren't vaccinated, then it's because they picked up vaccine particles from someone they were physically close to who was vaccinated. And if not that, of course, it could be because of the lockdowns. It blows me away how much mileage people can wring out of the three months we worked from home back in 2020. That's become the reason for just about all our social ills. Funny how that works.

"Have you noticed that pretty much every single health condition that is mysterious and baffling right now is actually a repercussion of Covid infection. . . . I have four friends who obviously have Long Covid. One with shingles. Another with rapid onset vascular dementia. Another with heart failure leading to brain damage. Another with a heart attack. Two more with strokes. None think it is Covid. It is carnage. . . . Nobody wants to acknowledge that because then they'd have no one to blame but themselves for not taking the most basic precautions to avoid it. . . . Listening to a podcast today, and a host said that there's so much autoimmune crap going on now because of stress of everyday life"

There's a saying or quote that I can't find about the left caring about how other people are affected by things, and the right only caring once it affects them directly. Let me know if you know what I'm referring to because it's been bugging me! But I'm finding the hatred or dismissing of the Covid-cautious spans all parties. 

Arghavan Salles, MD said, 

"The level of delusion required to believe that millions of people dying, millions of people leaving the workforce due to new disabilities, and absences from repeated infections don't affect staffing is hard for me to fathom."

And comments there:

"As someone with HR responsibilities over the last few years, I saw the impact of repeated infections firsthand - watching the same employees before and after a few omicron infections is shocking. The service sector is toast fairly soon. . . . The other day someone was wondering why everything is so understaffed, and I flat out said, 'Well, you do realize that over a million people have died in the US, and people in public-facing jobs were the most at risk.' That was somehow shocking to them. . . . It also speaks to the disregard we have as a society for individual workers. The idea that everyone is expendable and easily replaceable. That there's such a thing as unskilled labour."

I just keep trying to really understand it all. I mean, during the AIDS crises, we all got more careful about using condoms and asking a lot more questions about our partner's past even if we didn't know anyone who was affected. That also helped to reduce the rate of other STIs. I'm old enough to remember a time when people got tested just in case, no matter how unlikely, once they were ready to settle down with someone so they could stop wearing condoms. And during SARS#1, we avoided Toronto and Vancouver until declared safe. But for SARS#2, we're cool with just letting ourselves get it despite the serious long term damage that can creep up months after a very mild acute infection. That's so bizarre to me.

The World Health Network, also in January, posted a paper full of citations to explore. They explain that Covid leads to multisystem and organ damage, and each infections - even if mild - "contributes to long-term symptoms and health risks. . . . Covid-19 continues to be among the most commonly identified causes of death in spite of limited surveillance." It's a level 3 biosafety pathogen, like the bubonic plague. The flu is a level 2. The effect on the body is comparable to Hepatitis C and HIV/AIDS. 

And Maria Van Kerkhove of the WHO said in an interview out today,

"The virus is rampant. We're still in a pandemic. There's a lot of complacency at the individual level, and more concerning to me is that at the government level. . . . The misinformation and disinformation that's out there is hampering the ability to mount an effective response. . . . Using masks for respiratory pathogens that transmit through the air is a no-brainer. . . . The worry is complacency. . . . Please don't drop the ball. The virus is here. It's evolving. It's killing. it's causing post-Covid conditions. And we don't know the long-term effects. It's a virus that is here to stay."

It's not nearly as deadly as the measles, but wearing a mask helps to avoid that too! It is significantly more disabling than polio was at its peak. I think the difference is we don't see images of kids in iron lungs or walking with crutches; we just see might notice that they're no longer at work, or they're not doing their job as well as they used to.

We can take a moonshot to change all this, but we can't do it with just 10% of the population working towards ending this. We really need pretty much everyone involve. We can just ignore the vehemently anti-mask (unless you live in Ottawa right now). Even without that small but loud group, we could take out this virus and measles and tuberculosis and other airborne diseases. 

Are N95s that annoying? 

I'll end this ridiculously long rant with Gregory Travis:

"Remember when we spent an entire year protecting children from getting diseases and the pediatric death rate fell to the floor? I do. Remember when we just gave up after a little while because it was hard? I do."