Thread by @HZiauddeen

🧵 LongCOVID and post-COVID sequelae:
Minimisation now sets up minimisation later

About how these are being minimised right now & for the future, with reference to the JCVI plan to deliberately infect children to control the UK pandemic and serve as boosters for adults

(1/18)

This isn't going to be a summary of the research so far on this area. We now have more than enough evidence* that COVID is associated with a risk for ongoing ill health as well as for future ill-health.

*enough to know that you would much rather not have it.
(2/18)

It is now clear that LongCOVID alone can be a very severe and debilitating illness. However LongCOVID most likely represents the more severe end of early post COVID sequelae.

*enough to know that you would much rather not have it.
(3/18)

There is already evidence that people who recover from COVID are at increased risk of hospitalisation over the coming months.
Given microvascular, immune & neurological effects it is possible there may be later sequelae even in those who may only have had mild illness.
(4/18)

The evidence for the longer-term impacts, especially in those who had milder illness, may only emerge over the next couple of decades.
This evidence will come in the form of people becoming unwell, in particular those who were infected as children.
(5/18)

In the UK government, PHE and JCVI, there appears to be little or no consideration for the current risks that children are facing (even with 100 children having died of COVID in the UK), let alone the future risk to children.
(6/18)

While LongCOVID clinics are being set up for adults and children in the NHS, LongCOVID continues to be questioned and minimised.
Childhood vaccination is being opposed by the organisations and people who are supposed to look after children.
(7/18)

Throughout the pandemic there has been a powerful minimisation trend. This is despite being faced with a novel virus that has led to the largest worldwide pandemic in a century and at a conservative estimate, 5 million deaths worldwide.
(8/18)

Much of this minimisation has become part of the discourse 'It's only 1%', 'It's only those with comorbid conditions', 'Most children will only have a mild illness', 'It's far less than we see in adults'.
(9/18)

What this has done is change:
1. The frames of reference: things are compared within COVID, rather than comparing COVID to other conditions e.g. 100 children dying of any other condition would be cause for uproar, not a positive compared to adults dying of COVID.
(10/18)

2. The values of people and systems: how much death and illness is acceptable, whose lives are important, whose lives can be discounted or disregarded, what is more important, whose suffering is either a necessary price to pay or can be disregarded.
(11/18)

The JCVI minutes make reference to most deaths being in children with neurodevelopmental disorders, from Asian & Black ethnicities, from deprived backgrounds, all groups impacted by many structural inequalities. The poor, minoritised & disabled are not acceptable losses.
(12/18)

I worry that these changes will persist well into the future and affect not only how we deal with the ongoing fallout from COVID but other aspects of society. As many of the architects of this disaster and their acolytes will be around for a while.
(13/18)

This is because they happen to be in government, in prominent scientific advisory and media positions, and given that they are allies in this disastrous plan, they will likely be promoted or stay around. They will likely continue to push the same lines.
(14/18)

They will also work hard to defend the decisions they took/supported during the pandemic and oppose criticisms and attempts at justice or reparation. They will continue to argue e.g. 'only a small percentage of children have serious chronic health problems after COVID'.
(15/18)

And the corrupted wider discourse will far more readily accept, 'it's only a small number of people, it's only those with comorbid conditions' etc. There will be calls to keep issues 'in perspective'.

The fact that so much of this was preventable will be brushed aside.
(16/18)

They will talk instead of how it is easy to say that in hindsight, dismissing those who point out that it was screamed repeatedly at the time and they refused to pay heed to it.

When pressed, they will respond with 'I did what I believed was right'.
(17/18)

In short, all the tactics that have been used to minimise COVID so far, will continue to be used to minimise it and its impacts both in retrospect and in future.

Including 'we need to learn to live with it'.
(18/18)

PS: Forgot to tag this to tweet 11

https://twitter.com/HZiauddeen/status/1437024094915072009?s=20