⚠️Listen up—Top 🇬🇧 scientists warns that “In the last week—there’s now evidence that T-cells…get damaged the same way that HIV and other RNA-virus damage T-cell immunity”. ➡️Prof Costello (@globalhlthtwit) raises serious concerns on #COVID19 & the 🧠—a🧵:
2) “My biggest worry all along has been the long term effects particularly on the brain. We know that people who get brain fog who get fatigue, cognitive problems, & smell and taste is very common—and that means the virus is affecting the brain 🧠”
3) “We know the virus can get intro the brain. We know the virus affects cells around blood vessels. I’m beginning to think—‘how long is this going to last’—because we have allowed millions of children to become infected with the virus.”
4) “And as @ArisKatzourakis said earlier, there’s **NO** real hard evidence [Omicron] is less virulent than delta in absence of vaccination! Now children have not (all) been vaccinated” 👀
5) What are some of the studies? Lots of basic science papers, but here is one study showing T cell death abnormality below… which contributes to #LongCovid
6) There is a surging mountain ⛰ of evidence on both #LongCovid - and particularly in kids. Notably, #LongCovidKids has tripled in kids in 6 months, and kids suffering longer than a year have DOUBLED! 👇 the Uk govt data doesn’t lie…
8) “We know Epstein-Barr Virus causes multiple sclerosis. We know chickenpox causes shingles. We know that measles in a few children causes very nasty neurodegeneration… Zika virus destroying the brains of babies. Viruses are risky. What worries me is the scale of this virus.”👀
9) What’s the latest evidence that EBV causes multiple sclerosis? This Harvard-led study published in Science that found a 32-fold higher risk of developing MS with EBV. For context, smoking a pack a day & lung cancer risk is only around 10-15-fold. 32 fold is off the charts!
10) “From previous waves we believe 7% to 10% developed long COVID, but with Omicron, the numbers being infected are so high that even if just 1% of infected children get long COVID, ➡️ it’ll cause more pediatric long COVID cases than Delta.” 👀 timesofisrael.com/1st-kids-omicr…
11) With Omicron spreading fast in schools and other places where kids mix, significant hospitalizations are inevitable, according to Dr. Moshe Ashkenazi. “the sheer numbers being infected will mean children being hospitalized”
12) Let’s rewind time — scientists warned in mid-2020 that the “Coronavirus Short-Circuits the Immune System—In a disturbing parallel to H.I.V., the coronavirus can cause a depletion of important immune cells, recent studies found.” ➡️yet we ignored. 🤦🏻♂️ nytimes.com/2020/06/26/hea…
13) Notably, “In May 2020, Dr. Wherry and his colleagues posted online a paper showing a range of immune system defects in severely ill patients, including a loss of virus-fighting T cells in parts of the body.” doi.org/10.1101/2020.0…
14) “In a separate study, the investigators identified three patterns of immune defects, and concluded that T cells and B cells, which help orchestrate the immune response, were inactive in roughly 30% of the 71 Covid-19 patients they examined”. (May 2020) biorxiv.org/content/10.110…
15) I remember when some doctors made parallels to “airborne HIV”— while we now know #SARSCoV2 isn’t exactly same as HIV, it seems it definitely is very airborne & very harmful to T-cell immunity. ➡️ DO NOT RISK COVID—we don’t know what its #LongCovid is capable of!
16) Moral lesson, always be wary when someone hand waving dismisses #COVID19 as “mild” whenever they couldn’t have possibly had enough data to really know for sure.
17) **with caption** - listen to Professor Costello explain why he is so worried about #COVID19 damaging T cells and #LongCovid concerns for the brain.
18) P.s. it’s not just T cell damage of COVID. It’s also vascular damage too. Case in point. 👇
It’s a trap: CATCH 22—if you register, ICE will deport you. If you don’t register, you’ve now committed a crime for the first time, and ICE will deport you. Trump doesn’t care if you’ve paid all taxes and followed all laws—ICE will deport you.
2) The Department of Homeland Security announced that it was mandating that all people in the United States illegally register with the federal government, and said those who didn’t self-report could face fines or prosecution. ***Failure to register is considered a crime***
3) Registration will be mandatory for everyone 14 and older without legal status. People registering have to provide their fingerprints and address, and parents and guardians of anyone under age 14 must ensure they registered. The registration process also applies to Canadians who are in the U.S. for more than 30 days, such as so-called snowbirds who spend winter months in places like Florida.
3) “Kennedy is set to announce Thursday the planned changes, which include axing 10,000 full-time employees spread across departments tasked with responding to disease outbreaks, approving new drugs, providing insurance for the poorest Americans and more”.
SICKENING—Trump’s DHS just deported a surgeon from Brown University Medical School—who is here legally on an H1B visa that doesn’t expire until 2027, and has committed no crimes. Trained in the U.S. at Ohio State, University of Washington, and Yale as a **transplant surgeon** (one of the most difficult surgical fields in all of medicine!!!), she is a highly trained doctor on kidney transplants, which cannot be easily replaced. Her phone was seized at the border. A federal judge handed down an injunction against her deportation—but she was already deported on a plane en route to Paris. Brown’s kidney transplant clinic is now strained by her deportation.
2) Full text:
PROVIDENCE — A Rhode Island doctor who had traveled to Lebanon to see her parents was prevented from re-entering the United States at Boston’s Logan International Airport on Thursday evening, her lawyer and a colleague said.
Dr. Rasha Alawieh, 34, who lives in Providence, has been working at Brown Medicine’s Division of Kidney Disease & Hypertension since last July, and she [has] been part of the transplant service at Rhode Island Hospital, according to Dr. George Bayliss, the organ transplant division’s medical director. She has been studying and working in the United States for about six years, he said Friday.
The US consulate in Lebanon had issued her an H-1B visa, which is given to people in specialty occupations requiring expertise. The visa was valid through mid-2027, said Thomas S. Brown, an attorney representing her and Brown Medicine.
Alawieh was detained when she returned to Logan airport, and family members are afraid that she is about to be deported to Lebanon, he said.
“We are at a loss as to why this happened,” Brown said. “I don’t know if it’s a byproduct of the Trump crackdown on immigration. I don’t know if it’s a travel ban or some other issue.”
He said her phone has been seized and he has not been able to contact Alawieh.
Bayliss said a lawyer filed a petition with the US District Court in Massachusetts, and Judge Leo T. Sorokin issued an order saying Alawieh should not be moved outside of Massachusetts without 48 hours notice. But he said that message apparently did not reach immigration officials in time, and a plane carrying Alawieh left for Paris.
“This is outrageous,” Bayliss said in an interview. “This is a person who is legally entitled to be in the U.S., who is stopped from re-entering the country for reasons no one knows. It’s depriving her patients of a good physician.”
A US Customs and Border Patrol spokesperson, Ryan Brissette, was not able to immediately answer questions about Alawieh on Friday evening.
Bayliss said Alawieh graduated from the American University of Beirut medical school and came to the United States for a nephrology fellowship at Ohio State University. She then landed a transplant fellowship at University of Washington and had a residency in the Yale hospital system before starting at Brown Medicine last July, he said.
“She’s really a very humble and able person,” Bayliss said. “She takes care of her patients. She is talented and thoughtful and a great addition to our division.”
Bayliss said Alawieh went to Lebanon to visit parents and planned to be gone for two weeks. He said she texted a colleague at 6:30 p.m. Thursday saying she was back in Boston, but then her family heard from immigration officials.
Dr. Paul Morrissey, surgical director of the organ transplant division at Brown University Health, said Alawieh works on getting people in Rhode Island on the list for a kidney transplants, and that’s a crucial job at a time when there has been a lot of focus on the need for kidneys and their equitable distribution.
He said Alawieh should not have had any problem traveling out of the country with an H-1B visa.
“It’s an unfortunate set of circumstances,” Morrissey said. “It’s putting a strain on our office. Her work has been exceptional.”
3) There is a new Trump ban against many countries, including tourist visa bans against all countries in the red and orange lists. This list is still tentative. And it shouldn’t have affected people with existing visas, such and the Brown kidney transplant surgeon
I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again… once upon a time, liberals did have our own “Leftist Joe Rogan”… his name was Joe Rogan…
Here he is advocating for socialized medicine, healthcare for all, and supporting labor unions to protect workers.
2) Recall, Rogan was once pro Obama and pro Bernie Sanders, and pro Yang Gang, and anti Trump. It’s sad he has since failed to the dark side. But like Vader… maybe he can be redeemed someday and come back to the light.
Joe Rogan was also pro gay rights and pro DACA and pro helping inner city communities that suffer economic and social injustices. It’s sad what he has become. I feel we should try to pull & welcome him back someday. Everyone can be redeemed.