The Cult of Covid

I've been posting threads from health care professionals on here to save them as we watch whether or not Twitter will self-destruct. This one is from someone anon, @1goodtern who posts lots of fantastic info, but I have no idea what they do for a living. (ETA - they're a priest), The stats they share aren't too dissimilar from Canada's, and the post resonates crucially with my own experiences as someone screaming into the void about the very simple steps we could be taking to prevent the spread of a fatal virus. This could have been something I wrote if I were able to write this well! 

It's been a strange day today and a hard one. Time for a re-evaluation and update on where I stand with covid mitigations and why. I'm not up-to-date on international data and differing levels of protections anymore, so I'll be talking about the UK, but the principles should apply worldwide.

First, today, and a few observations:

Today I was at an event with 200 people, as part of my job, something I couldn't avoid. I was the only one in a mask FFP3, and today I wore my stoggles [sic] too. There were zero mitigations in place. Also zero sympathy, zero understanding, lots of strange looks, some aggression, lots of coughing, lots of people looking unwell. 

That is Britain as normal now. Very few people in public view masks, very few people in public view care. Few test, few stay at home when ill. So if you're reading this and you're still masking and taking precautions, yes, there are tens of thousands of us, w=but we're spread out thin, and we are the vanishing minority. Most people are doing nothing to stop catching Covid. And they are doing less to stop spreading it. That's reflected in the statistics.

This year there will have been enough infections to infect everyone in the UK at least once. It's obviously hard to pin down exactly how many. Overall, since the start of the pandemic, we've had about enough infections to infect everyone twice, but obviously some people are not catching it, and some are catching it more than twice. In total, since the start, we've had nearly 900,000 acute covid hospitalisations here. That's 1 in 76 of the population hospitalised so far during the initial stage of the infection. 

This rate isn't dropping. Admissions averaged 1,000 a day in October. This year we've already had 351,000 admissions, with November and December still to come. Probably about 1 in every 150-200 infections causes a hospitalisation here. We don't have any data on how many people have needed hospitalisation for ongoing problems caused by Covid. There are plenty of people developing pneumonia after Covid who aren't included in covid admissions. Strokes, heart attacks, kidney and liver failure: not included. So far this year, 58,000 people have died within two months of a covid infection. By the end of this year, that will have been 70,000 or more, and the trend is not slowing. Winter has barely started. 

This may seem to be the norm that everyone has decided to live with, but the vast majority of people here do't know about the numbers of people in hospital or infected or dying, and they don't want to know. Most of the people that I know don't even want to be reminded that Covid exists.  In fact, they do not want people around that remind them that covid exists. I know that some of the people I have worked with pre-pandemic will no longer work with me now because I'm still wearing a mask. My concern is, to them, a painful reminder. 

The other huge data point is Long Covid. Since the definition varies, the number of sufferers varies, but however it's counted, it's into the hundreds of thousands at least, but some definitions register millions here. Of my circle of relatively close contacts of 300 or so working age adults, I know for certain of 4 people who are no longer able to work because of Long Covid. That's 1 in 75 or so. There could be more that I don't know about. That number is a very rough statistic, but since Boris Johnson decided to let this virus rip, 370,000 people in the UK have completely left employment due to ill health - that's about 1 in 85 of the 32 million workforce. About another 10,000 people left employment due to death. 

There are fewer infections, admissions, deaths, and new disabilities than there would be if there were this many infections and no vaccines, but there is such a vast number of infections, that numbers are still astonishingly high. And tragically, the vaccines are not stopping people developing Long Covid - which suggests to some that the vaccines are not enough on their own to stop the worst harm that Covid can do over the long term. 

So that's the rough position. 

Then today, when I got back from this afternoon's event, I popped onto facebook to check up on a friend's daily Long Covid health updates, and I saw a longstanding friend had made a post about how a "small cult-like group" are still spreading fear about Covid. And it made me ask the question: Am I a member of a cult-like group spreading fear about Covid?

I've just shared the data. It breaks down to a million infections each week this year. It breaks down to about a 1,000 deaths a week. It breaks down to covid disabling hundreds of thousands of people. And we still don't know the long term effects yet!

But the signs aren't good so far.

More and more and more research data from established scientists comes out every day. Covid can cause brain inflammation in mild cases. Covid can persist in your organs. Covid can cause tissue damage. Covid can cause your body's defence systems to attack...your body. Covid can cause your blood to clot small in the extremities and organs and tissues, or clot big in your heart or lung or brain. And vaccines DO NOT prevent that damage. The immunity that your body has developed at cost during previous dangerous infections DOES NOT prevent that damage. It seems that you can catch Covid endlessly. And it seems that the damage you acquire is cumulative. Which should be obvious. Catching it again isn't going to take away prior damage, is it? And the lie that it's inevitable to catch Covid is a lie. 

There are simple mitigations, like clean air: filters, masking, testing, and isolation, that can reduce the spread of Covid dramatically. Even if you're not able to completely avoid catching it ,you can avoid catching it repeatedly in swift and endless succession. So, wait a second...am I in a cult for wanting to avoid a virus that is causing all this harm and is avoidable? If you're concerned about Covid and are taking precautions to stop its spread, are you in a cult? 

What are the signs of a cult anyway? Let me tell you. Submission. Exclusivity. Persecution complex. Control. Isolation. Love bombing. Indoctrination. Special knowledge. Exclusive salvation. Group think, Cognitive dissonance. Shunning. Appearance standards. Control of what is truth. Control of information. 

I've got to be honest; almost all of those apply to the denialists and the minimisers, not the people concerned about Covid. Let me take you through them:

• Submission - there has to be complete unquestioned trust in the minimisation of Covid.
• Exclusivity - theirs is the only way - no masks, no filters, no testing, no isolation, just infection, infection, infection.
• Control - the cult of covid demands that everyone be infected repeatedly. 
• Isolation - they're not isolating their own members, but they're forcing the isolation of the vulnerable.
• Love bombing - the repeated insistence on "the urgency of normal" and "seeing those smiles," embracing the people who abandon precautions, and the exclusion of those who don't. 
• Special knowledge - that comes from the leaders with no scientific basis: herd immunity / immunity debt/ the danger of lockdowns / adenoviruses.
• Indoctrination - the minimisation and denial has been drilled and drilled and drilled into the members through the media.
• Salvation - "kids need unmitigated schools," "the only way to save the economy is to reopen without mitigations" - the path to salvation lies only through embrace of the teachings.
• Group think - the group relies on the "truth" handed down by its leaders. If you confront a member with genuine data, it is like talking to a genuine brain-washed cult member.
• Cognitive dissonance - there is a massive gap between the reality a thousand deaths a week  and the illusion covid is over! Astonishing levels of avoidance and denial. 
• Shunning - well, calling people who are cautious "a cult," "fearmongers," "bedwetters," forcing them to stay home to avoid the unsafe practices of society...that seems like shunning to me.
• Appearance standards - no masks.

I'm going to add another bit to special knowledge... How many times have you heard the cult leaders prophesy the end of the pandemic? How many times have you heard them claim that they alone have the answers?

There is a cult, but the majority of the country are in it. 

You can deprogram people from cults, but it's far more likely that the cult will just explode, leaving damaged and hurt and psychologically manipulated people in every direction. 

The signs that you're not in a cult are that you're free to ask any questions, that you're open with information, that you're well informed that you are allowed to think independently, that you can criticise people in authority. 

So I'm pretty sure I know who the cult is. 

And I'm going to keep on taking precautions and providing them for others. Because Covid sickens. Because Covid kills. Because Covid disables. Don't catch Covid. And don't spread Covid.

Constant spread of Covid is creating constant terror for vulnerable people aware of the genuine danger they are facing. This cult that's ignoring covid, ignoring facts, ignoring reality... They're also ignoring the threat to the vulnerable, either pretending the threat doesn't exist, or judging the vulnerable as unworthy of protection. And that is classic cult behaviour. The cult says: the pandemic is over. Reality says: it's not. 

Absolutely. Keep wearing a well-fitting N95 whenever you're in a public place because we're in the middle of a pandemic. Get out of that death cult as fast as you can. It might mean leaving some people you love behind, and that's brutal. But if you leave, they might follow soon enough to save their own lives.