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We make people (and technology) better at Mount Sinai. Opinions are my own.

Sep 4, 2024, 7 tweets

Dangerous garbage being presented “science writing”. Two *actual* facts surrounding #COVID infection:
1. Your risk of #LongCOVID, a currently incurable chronic illness, after surviving an acute COVID infection currently sits conservatively at ~6-7%
2. Your risk of LC increases 1/

with each infection.

Now, in the face of this information, there are really five (or so) types of reactions:
1. Disbelief and denial
2. Being unaware or uninformed of the risk
3. Believing appropriate caution is necessary to avoid Long COVID
4. Believing it is worth the risk 2/

to yourself AND OTHERS to live your best pre-COVID life
5. Not having the financial freedom to not risk yourself and others by not taking precautions

Regardless of which of these 5 lanes you live in, won’t change the first two FACTS. So, as a person of questionable influence, 3/

let me remind you: #LongCOVID is life-changing and incurable. LongCOVID is caused by #COVID. We still have no way of predicting who will emerge unscathed from a COVID infection. The only way to avoid getting LongCOVID is to not get COVID. Let me also remind you that while 4/

@ClareWilsonMed ridicules people “putting sticks up their nose” if you should, god forbid, get #LongCOVID and you don’t have evidence of infection, things get harder for you to access good care. They shouldn’t, but they do. So since the “science writer” who penned this opinion 5/

didn’t lay it all out honestly in favor of publishing a bit of clickbait that hurts public health, next time you hear drivel like this, think about the 5 lanes of people and which lane you want to be in. Think about the fact that those minimizing COVID have been minimizing it 6/

since 2020 and have been consistently wrong since 2020. Magical thinking doesn’t make you safe and speaking realistically and quantitatively about risk stratification doesn’t make you a fearmonger. Writing junk like this DOES make you dangerous. Grow up, Clare.
/end

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