Permitting Preventable Suffering in Children

Recent studies still show that Covid is serious, particularly in children, and that masks and filtering the air in schools can dramatically reduce the spread.

Katherine Wu, in The Atlantic asks, 

"Why are we still flu-ifying Covid? The diseases are nowhere near the same. . . . In 2023, Covid hospitalized more than 900,000 Americans and killed 75,000; the worst flu season of the past decade hospitalized 200,000 fewer people and resulted in 23,000 fewer deaths. A recent CDC survey reported that more than 5% of American adults are currently experiencing Long Covid, which cannot be fully prevented by vaccination or treatment, and for which there is no cure. Plus, scientists simply understand much less about the coronavirus than flu viruses. Its patterns of spread, its evolution, and the durability of our immunity against it all may continue to change. . . . And yet, the CDC and White House continue to fold Covid in with other long-standing seasonal respiratory infections . . . show[ing] how bent America has been on treating Covid as a run-of-the-mill disease--making it impossible to manage the illness whose devastation has defined the 2020s. . . . The less people test, the less they'll be diagnosed--and the less they'll benefit from antivirals such as Paxlovid."

Covid Info for Therapists

Many people are seeking out therapists to help them with the mental health issues that are a result of Long Covid.

Some of their experiences have been horrific. I've written about my own experience with a mildly annoying therapist who wanted to treat my "germophobia" with some CBT and a 5G repeller! The gaslighting is bad enough when you're trying to get help for dealing with administrators that turn a blind eye to the ongoing pandemic, but it's so much worse when you're seriously ill with a virus people still try to deny. The AIDS protests and ME/CFS activists have paved the way for Long Covid sufferers, but it's still frustrating that we have to do it all again! You'd think we could learn from the past 40 years. 

And little is worse when you're sick than being told that it's all in your head. 

Luckily, two burgeoning Marriage and Family Therapists, Olivia Belnap and Erin Batali, created a lovely and informative slide deck designed for therapists to help understand clients with Long Covid, and it could be shared with any prospective therapist to ensure they're on the same page before you start therapy. Beyond that, it would be useful for anyone in healthcare to scroll through to make sure they understand the seriousness of this. Or anyone really. 

Changing Perceptions of Autism

I compiled some posts from here into a summary of recent studies on Autism at 3 Quarks Daily, but the word count limit there forced me to cut this bit on the history of our understanding of autism:

1908 - "The term ‘autistic’ was used to classify schizophrenic patients who were “severely withdrawn,” setting a trend to diagnose ASD as 'childhood schizophrenia' until the 1940s.
1924 - Grunya Sukhareva published reports on children she described as having “schizoid psychopathy.” Despite the name, her theory is very similar to how autism is described today.
1938 - Hans Asperger received funding from the Nazi party to research children to determine which are more worthy of life. He noticed that some children were very cognitively advanced despite isolating socially, which he named Asperger's Syndrome.

Two Steps Forward...

 It's amazing to get so far in our scientific advances, only to have it tossed aside by misinformation. 

A Daily Mail article explained the conclusion of a study that,

"They confirmed that the shots made by Pfizer, Moderna, and AstraZeneca are linked to significantly higher risk of five medical conditions - including a nerve-wasting condition that leaves people struggling to walk or think."

And anti-vaxxers are spreading the news far and wide.  

Infection Control Measures Work

A Lancet study found that there's little Covid transmission in schools WHEN infection control measures were in place. 

Since we stopped all mitigation efforts, hospitalizations for Covid in Ontario have increased year-round. We don't need lockdowns for Covid, but we do still need N95s until we can clean the air. 

From CP24:

"The review found that masking, vaccinations and test-to-stay policies were the best methods to reduce Covid-19's spread in schools and daycares. The effectiveness of strategies like mandatory quarantining, cohorting, and hybrid learning is uncertain and may have made 'little to no difference in transmission.'"

Climate Misery and Hope

 Despair limits future actions, but knowledge is power. We must know and act in order to stave off despair.

A depressing thread followed by an uplifting video today:

Writer Matthew Todd wrote, 

"Sooner or later we're going to have to face the reality that conservatism and capitalism are killing us. It's not a debate. It's a fact. It's literally happening right now in front of our eyes. If you can't see it, you either don't understand it, or you are intentionally lying to yourself. It seems that we would rather all die than face this terrible inconvenient truth." 

That provoked environmentalist Stephen Barlow to respond at length:

"We're in a dire climate and ecological emergency, which is going to lead to the collapse of our civilization unless we urgently change direction, and hardly anyone realizes the seriousness. It is now being framed by those committed to business as usual (BaU), as if climate activists are overreacting, catastrophizing. No, the situation is far worse and far more dire than most could imagine, as Peter Kalmus has been trying to point out. We find ourselves in a dire situation. Yet only a small proportion of people really understand how dire the situation really is, and most are in some level of denial. How, do you discuss this situation, when most people, to some degree, are in some form of active denial?

Still Not a Cold

 Some find the term "airborne AIDS" offensive, but we can't deny the similarities. 

After writing here every day since August 1st, I actually got distracted enough trying to barrel through my (likely) final tedious course. So this is a save-worthy thread entirely from HIV+ Long Covid advocate Daniel Brittain Dugger:

There was a golden opportunity for the West to exit the pandemic with the immune competence and cognition of its citizens preserved. Unfortunately, there was more concern about the suffering of individuals forty years ago than the suffering of millions today. There is little question but that we do find ourselves in the very same position as we were in during the 80s.

1. With both viruses, there is immune system dysregulation, including depletion of the CD4 compartment.
2. Both viruses are persistent, known since December of 2021 with the work of Dr. Daniel Chertow.
3. With both viruses, there is an aversion to the use of non-pharmaceutical interventions, such masks and condoms.
4. With both viruses, vaccines are not protective.
5. With both viruses, there is forward transmission, evidenced by the fact monoclonals have been wiped out.

Climate Projections and Anticipatory Grief

Media aren't free to report on it honestly, and politicians won't act on it. How can we possibly remain optimistic?

Matthew Todd wrote about the possibility that the Gulf Stream could collapse in the next few years based on an study in Science Advances:

"The day has come when the Daily Mail is reporting climate change more accurately (on one story) than the BBC who have not even reported this story, despite it being real, and being the number one lead story on CNN on Friday. The BBC seems absolutely unwilling to tell its viewers the full magnitude of the threat we face - because of a mixture of political interference and a lack of editorial interest and understanding. For the still stupid: This is how the richest people on Earth conned you. Facts: NASA, Oxford, Met Office, Margaret Thatcher, and Stephen Hawking. Then the oil PR campaign against the facts. Same story from The Guardian." 

It looks like our reality has finally hit a high enough level of clickbait outrageousness to be carried by tabloids, but now it's too far gone for mainstream news.

The Motivating Annoyance of Willful Ignorance

I've been thinking about my old students today as I read the news. 

I taught about the Israeli occupation in Palestine for a good 20 years, under the media bias and propaganda curriculum section of my course. I had been reading about genocidal types of activity since my professor told us about East Timor back in the 80s and introduced us to Chomsky. At the time it woke something in me, an outrage that a whole group of people were attacked and killed without anybody I knew, outside of class, ever having even heard of their country. Dumbfounded at the mechanisms that enables a genocide to happen without it hitting the news, I started reading everything by Chomsky, then Timothy Snyder and Chris Hedges, and Naomi Klein when the US invaded Iraq, and Linda McQuaig on privatization, all informed by prior reading of Hannah Arendt on bureaucracy being led by nobody.  

Your Brain on Covid

 Long Covid is causing brain injuries, getting into bone marrow, and many hospitals still don't use N95s.

A study in the European Archives of Psychiatry and Clinical Neuroscience last week compared the neuropsychiatric symptoms of 51 people with Covid-19 15 months post acute infection to 74 non-Covid controls. They found differences in gray matter volume (neurons) specifically in areas controlling language, and decreased neural activity and inflammation in many brain regions indicating cognitive impairment. Lots of prior studies found similar results here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here. And I wrote about studies last April, Aug., Sept., Oct, and last month. 

The part that worries me in some of these studies is that some subjects report no subjective sense of cognitive decline, while an MRI shows otherwise. So, glass half full, they don't notice a problem, but, obviously, glass half empty, THEY DON'T NOTICE A PROBLEM. This is a danger to all of us on the road (and sidewalks) and in many professions where quick thinking is vital.

Another study published this month calls Covid-19's impact on the brain, 

"a silent epidemic within the pandemic. . . . patients displayed elevated levels of certain biomarkers consistent with brain injury and reduced brain volume. . . . findings provide concrete evidence of brain damage in Covid-19 patients."

On Normal and Nihilism

We like to think we've returned to normal, but Covid and climate change will become more and more of a challenge to ignore.

Biorisk consultant Conor Browne responded to a post about "this universally adopted phenomenon of people never mentioning the Covid word is really mind-blowing," with this comment: 

"And also tells you exactly that Covid has not been normalised. Quite the opposite, in fact - if Covid truly had been normalised, the word would, by definition, not be taboo. Not mentioning the word tells me how much the disease is still considered exceptional. . . . No-one would think twice about saying, 'I had the flu a month ago,' but they're much less likely to say the same about Covid. Why? Because flu is normalised and Covid is not."

I think that's such a good point! It's so not normal that we can't even raise it as a possibility when we know people suddenly struggling to do tasks that used to be easy, or suddenly unable to get out of bed, or suddenly dying of heart attacks at a young age, which are all ascribed to some mystery, that can't possibly be figured out. It's similar to how not normal AIDS was that nobody talked about it for years until activists forced it into public awareness.

What Makes It Worth the Risk?

 We're burning the candle from both ends. Is the light worth it? 

We take lots of risks in life. On a grand scale, everything we do involves some risk, especially in our world so polluted with plastics. Just eating and drinking has more risk. So we run the numbers in our head of whether or not an activity is worth the risk. Loosely tied in with this is the risk to our time if we, for instance, go back to school, hate the program, and get nowhere with it. We want something for our efforts. We might need to watch a few people jump off a cliff into water to decide it's worth the risk, or to do a backflip off the garage. The joy it might bring (or the esteem from friends) is worth the potential for harm. But when risk it dramatically and easily reduced by simple precautions, then it feels like the risk isn't because of joy but because of a refusal to be told what to do. Like teenagers who flout seatbelt laws. They're in that new freedom from parental control and don't want any boundaries. But then they have a near miss and realize it's actually not a big deal to wear one. Or, something I've seen, they get a girlfriend who becomes like a replacement mom reminding them to stop taking stupid risks because you've got kids depending on you, fer fucks sake! 

We generally want to live the longest life possible, as healthy as possible right??, not just for ourselves but for the people who love us or need us, but many are taking risks that don't appear to be worth anything. 

Multifaceted Long Covid is Like the Lernaean Hydra

A huge complication of Covid is that it affects so many different parts of the body. We can't kill it, but we can prevent it from getting in.  

On Wednesday, the journal Pediatrics put out an overview of Long Covid in kids, aka PASC (Post-acute Sequelae of SARS-CoV-2). Here's the gist of it in plain English with a mix of quotations and paraphrasing:

"Symptoms and conditions may reflect persistent symptoms from acute infection (eg, cough, headaches, fatigue, and loss of taste and smell), new symptoms like dizziness, or exacerbation of underlying conditions."

Children may also develop completely new conditions like POTS (heart rate out of control), ME/CFS (profound, perpetual exhaustion), autoimmune conditions (immune system attacks healthy cells), MIS (body parts become inflamed including internal organs), and type 1 diabetes. "These conditions may follow mild or even asymptomatic infection." Symptoms of difficulties in concentration, inability to stay awake, and depressed mood are "commonly triggered after physical and/or cognitive activities, which is referred to as postexertional malaise (PEM). . . . Common concurrent symptoms include musculoskeletal pain, cognitive difficulties, and persistent headaches."  

Mask Up for Measles!!

The WHO put out this reminder about measles, which is hitting Europe and the UK hard and starting to be seen more in Canada too:

I re-did it to bring more attention to the pandemic we're currently swimming in:

And a few people commented things along the lines of measles being a real disease, or a virus to worry about because it's actually deadly. Measles is somewhere around 4-9 times more contagious than Covid, spreading faster and further. It also can be stopped by wearing an N95. The public health notifications are explaining aerosol transmission, which is identical to Covid. Measles incubates for about 1½ to 2 weeks, and people are contagious for four days before getting a rash. Kinda like Covid is contagious before you have any symptoms. Maybe this will remind us how asymptomatic transmission works. It's great to stay home when you're sick, but it's really, really not enough to avoid spreading either of these viruses. If you're like me and couldn't live with yourself if you realized you gave someone a disease that destroyed their life, then wear an N95 in public places.

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. 

Dr. Duncan's Interview on Long Covid

Dr. Rae Duncan, a consultant cardiologist, explained concerns with Long Covid:

The interview is just 13 minutes, but here's the gist of it below, just a little cleaned up and without the interviewer's questions.

Something is Very Broken

There's a resignation and disillusionment hitting some Covid-cautious, with some pulling away from larger society, feeling gaslit by it all:

"Other than my job, I have zero desire to interact in public anymore. It's not just the risk of another potentially devastating infection; it's how the curtain has been pulled back exposing a selfish society where so many only care about the injustices that directly affect them."

More comments from that thread mashed together:

"I have no idea what I'd talk about with people who only care about things that directly affect them. We're all connected. . . . The idea that 'greed is good' has infected even those who traditionally have taken jobs to protect others. Public discussions about this are important. . . . The irony is that the injustices are and will impact them; they just don't know, or want to know. . . . I really don't know how we come back from this on a societal level. I cannot look at people the same way ever again. Hell, I can't even look at some extended family the same way again. . . . It appears that most folks are libertarian."

"Reminds me of how you can overwater an orchid, and it'll still look healthy as the roots rot away, and all of a sudden the plant that looked really fine a few days prior wilts and dies rather quick. Our society in normal times was rotten underneath that illusion of ritziness."

Seize the Moment!

Until we redefine prosperity, consumption will continue to drive us down a destructive path (from Joe Tegerdine).

People are going to fly to vacation spots to sit in the sun to get a tan, a bit annoyed when all the smoke blocks the sun and they have to move hotels again because of encroaching fires. This is our current level of obliviousness. And there are some who might read that and think, "That's not me because I hate sitting in the sun," as if it's somehow better to fly somewhere to go to museums or to get drunk next to Dylan Thomas's bar stool or visit Graceland or Jim Morrison's grave, 

We'll kill our children's future to take a selfie with a tombstone. 

It's Covid-Conscious Community Appreciation Day!!

"Until the rest of the world gets a clue, you're not alone - I'm here for you." 

CCCAD maskcots

We're halfway through winter, on a calendar at least, but likely not nearly halfway through this pandemic. Guiness Pig suggested that every Groundhog Day should be a day set aside for Covid-Conscious Community Appreciation Day (CCCAD). He named the day under absolutely nobody's authority, and I'm here for that kind of energy! 

"Someone wrote about how bad it sucks that we're headed into year five of a global pandemic, and we've learned nothing. . . . A holiday just for the Covid-Conscious community since we're all trying to hold it together while the rest of the world keeps fucking around with a deadly, disabling virus and pretending like it's okay. . . . It can be [a religious observance]. Religions throughout the world teach that the body is a temple or an instrument for the divine. By protecting ourselves and others from Covid we're honoring the higher power that dwells within us all. Which is pretty fucking awesome so yes you should absolutely request February 2nd off from work as a religious observance. Your unmasked HR representative might deny your request. They might even laugh at you. If they do laugh, you should take the opportunity to fart while you're walking past their desk to leave their office. That might get them thinking about how the air is full of nasty shit they can't see but they know is there and that maybe the one person at work who masks and doesn't get sick all the time might be onto something. . . . If the groundhog comes out of the ground on February 2nd and doesn't see any masks, that means there will be six more weeks of Covid."

The Hot Model

Enjoy yourself. It's later than you think! 

Sabine Hossenfelder, physicist and science communicator, posted this 20 minute video: "I wasn't worried about climate change. Now I am." She describes the "hot model" that people originally questioned because it seemed so impossible that we'd go beyond 5°C this century, but now some of their projections are coming to fruition. She explains how so many people don't see how climate change affects them because they can just turn up the A/C. At 14 minutes in, she described what will happen in the next 20 years, and it isn't pretty.