Hello from Norfolk! James has retired out of the US Air Force, and we’re finally free to roam. Next stop: SCOTLAND. More on that later. Right now I’m worried that you don’t know how serious the situation is and terrified about what we’re doing to ourselves and our kids.
Covid is not a cold or flu. It is an airborne multi-system disease that causes serious illness and impacts multiple organs, no matter how healthy or young you are or if your infection is mild. The CDC put the chance of long-term health problems at ONE IN FIVE INFECTIONS.
Covid has been shown to cause cognitive decline and dysfunction consistent with brain injury; immune damage and dysfunction; impaired liver, kidney and lung function; reduced sperm count, damage to embryos, sepsis, neurogenerative diseases, and significantly increases the risk of cardiovascular disease, and diabetes. If you are pregnant and catch Covid, your baby is at higher risk of miscarriage and developmental problems.
In plain English: Covid can damage every organ in your body particularly your heart, make you stupider, reactivate old viruses like Epstein Barr and shingles, and cause immune disregulation so you will get sick more. It does not matter if you have no symptoms, mild symptoms; or if you are young, old, sick, well, fat, thin, fit or vaccinated. It can still happen to you. There are a ton of studies out there about your chances of being unlucky in this Covid roulette and it ranges from one in three infections to one in ten. The CDC estimate of one in five is like a bowl of 100 M&Ms and twenty of them are poisoned. Except that poison means you now have heart disease.
And there’s more bad news. Every time you catch Covid, your odds get worse.
The picture that’s starting to come together is clearly the more times you do get infected with SARs-CoV-2, the more you’re at risk of ongoing clinical complications [such as] heart disease, lung disease, kidney disease.
Professor Stuart Tangye, the head of immunology and immunodeficiency laboratory at the Garvan Institute of Medical Research [Link]
And Covid sure is an easy virus to catch and spread. It is airborne and it only takes minutes to breathe enough to be infected. Washing your hands or using hand sanitiser won’t stop transmission. Covid fills the space and hangs like cigarette smoke in the air even after everyone has left the room. Any place humans breathe can have Covid and the more humans in one place the greater chance of catching it. 59% of people with Covid who pass it on have no symptoms, because they are either pre-symptomatic (contagious before they show symptoms) or asymptomatic (never display symptoms). Rapid at-home tests aren’t great for giving you an accurate result either: they often don’t display a positive result if the person is asymptomatic, and can take several days to show positive even after symptoms started while that person was contagious the whole time. Newer variants may have different symptoms making it harder to identify.
We’ve had so many stories about athletes and healthy young people either dropping dead, or having a cardiac arrest, or developing long COVID and becoming debilitated, so if you don’t think you’re vulnerable COVID might make you vulnerable.
Professor Raina MacIntyre, the head of the biosecurity program at the Kirby Institute at the University of NSW [link]
Your chance of having lasting impacts to your health increases with every infection, so if you have a 1 in 5 chance of one infection giving you “Long Covid” as estimated by the CDC, then you have a 50% chance of long-term health impacts after three infections. This is true whether you’re healthy, young, fat or thin. Studies show your chance of developing long-term symptoms are reduced if you are vaccinated but if you keep catching Covid your odds will still get worse over time anyway.
Mortality rates; heart disease rates; number of people too ill to work and long-term sick; rates of child absenteeism from school; infant mortality; strep, tuberculosis, shingles, pneumonia, and diabetes have all sky-rocketed. Fungal infections are on the rise. The reason for all this is that we are still in a global pandemic where nearly everyone has caught a serious vascular disease several times that has damaged their body and brain, impaired their immune systems, and every Covid infection is doing more damage.
This trend is not sustainable. This means at this rate EVERYONE will eventually be suffering long-term health damage from a Covid infection. There is no vaccine to eliminate “Long Covid” and there is no cure. Zero cure. Zip. The internet is full of stories of people whose lives have been destroyed after Covid infections begging clueless doctors to help them.
Every time you get infected, it does harm to the body in some way,
Dr. Avindra Nath, Senior Investigator and intramural clinical director at the National Institutes of Health who has led research on long COVID [link]
In the same study, those who had mild and resolved COVID-19 showed cognitive decline equivalent to a three-point loss of IQ.
Dr. Ziyad Al-Aly, Chief of Research and Development, VA St. Louis Health Care System. Clinical Epidemiologist, Washington University in St. Louis [link]
We are five years into this pandemic and there are thousands of studies showing the devastating long-term impacts of Covid infection. We are failing each other. We are failing our children. If our kids catch Covid even once a year then we are talking a dozen infections before adulthood. There are no studies saying that they can go through that without damage. Instead, we have an avalanche of evidence showing the opposite. It took five years for the US government to come up with a co-ordinated response to the AIDS crisis after years of jokes, minimising and blaming the homosexual community. Just like with AIDS, it has become clear the initial acute phase of Covid isn’t the biggest problem, and just like AIDS governments are burying their heads in the sand failing to respond to a worsening situation. The difference this time is almost the entire world has been infected.
I’m terrified for us all. I’m angry we’re forcing our kids into situations where they are going to catch this over and over. I’m outraged at the ignorance of the governments, institutions, and healthcare professionals we trusted to take care of us. I’m scared thinking about the effects of worsening brain damage in critical jobs. I’m shocked at the collapse of public health as we know it and watching as once-rare illnesses become commonplace again.
I want you to know what we’re facing so you can take measures to protect yourselves and your families. If anyone does come to save us from this, it will be tragically too late for some. I’m trying my best to make sure that’s not me. Or you.
‘There is no amount of money the government shouldn’t spend to fix Long Covid. The problem is so large, the only question is will the prevention or treatment even marginally work. There is no amount that’s overdoing it.’
David Cutler, PhD and Otto Eckstein Professor of Applied Economics, HArvard university [link]
- Record long-term sickness bodes ill for UK economic growth. People out of work due to long-term illness now at 2.8M, up 0.7M since 2020 | The Guardian
- New data shows Long Covid is keeping as many as 4 million people out of work | Brookings Institute
- Extra deaths in 2022 close to highest level in 70 years | Sky News
- Almost one in five UK doctors (18%) reported that they were now unable to work due to their post-acute Covid ill-health | British Medical Association
- The U.S. infant mortality rate increased more last year than it has in two decades | TIME
- April 2022 Long Covid and health problems during pandemic cost UK economy £8bn and 400,000 workers | The Independent
- More Americans who say they have serious cognitive problems — with remembering, concentrating or making decisions — than at any time in the last 15 years | New York Times
- COVID-19 is a leading cause of death in children and young people in the US | University of Oxford
- 6.4 million more US kids not going to school post-pandemic | PBS
“Five years, 10 years, 20 years from now, what are we going to see in terms of cardiac impairment, pulmonary impairment, neurologic impairment? It’s year five in the pandemic, but there’s still a lot we don’t know about it.”
Dr. Maria Van Kerkhove, head of WHO’s emerging diseases and zoonoses unit, said at a news briefing in Geneva.
- Child pneumonia and whooping cough cases in the Netherlands soar to a three-year high | NL Times
- Heart disease warning as early deaths at highest rate in more than a decade | Sky News
- The proportion of pupils classified as persistently absent has more than doubled in England since the pandemic | The Guardian
- Nearly one in every four American adults who get Covid-19 suffer from long Covid, but a new study found Oklahoma, at 34%, has the highest rate in the country | KFOR Local News
- Why so many kids are still missing school. After the pandemic, the number of absent students has almost doubled in America | Vox
- Number of workers taking sick leave hits 10-year high | The Guardian
- Severe absence from school hits record high amid calls for urgent action | Centre for Social Justice
- ‘Alarming’ rise in Americans with long Covid symptoms, 18M people could be affected | The Guardian
“The burden of disease and disability from Long COVID is on par with the burden of cancer and heart disease”
Dr. Ziyad Al-Aly, Chief of Research and Development, VA St. Louis Health Care System. Clinical Epidemiologist, Washington University in St. Louis, testifying at US congress
- Sickness absence rate jumps to the highest in a decade | Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development
- Health bosses warn of heart disease emergency in England | The Guardian
- Mycoplasma pneumonia: Deadly infection on the rise in children | Daily Telegraph
- Strep surge: While flu has peaked out, Alberta health-care workers face new challenge as they see record numbers of throat illness | Edmonton Journal
- Tuberculosis cases are on the rise in Colorado, but it isn’t clear why | Colorado Public Radio
- Mystery in Japan as dangerous streptococcal infections soar to record levels | The Guardian
- GEN X Excess death increases post pandemic UK (50-64) | The Lancet:
Cardiovascular diseases are up 33%
Ischaemic heart diseases are up 44%
Cerebrovascular diseases are up 40%
Heart failure is up 39%
Acute respiratory infections are up 43%
Diabetes is up 35%
Liver diseases are up 19%
“It was never flu. It will never be flu“.
Dr. Deborah Birx, the former White House coronavirus response coordinator [LINK]
Appropriately freaking out and want to do something? Read this to understand practical things about Covid: 42 useful things to know about Covid
Want to avoid infection? Read this: This all sounds awful, what can I do to protect myself from Covid?
