Thread by @kaveri59872487

I teach patho to nursing students. Every semester since spring of 2020, I have taught about Covid. And every semester to have to change my lecture to keep up with new data. I was teaching Covid this semester and I told them that if nothing else, understand the science 1/n

I explained how Covid attaches to ACE2 receptors in the nose, throat, heart, kidneys, and gut first. That’s why you see a runny nose, sore throat, myocarditis and acute kidney failure first. There aren’t as many ACE 2 receptors in the lungs, so Covid hits the lungs later.

That’s why you see lag time between initial infection and respiratory symptoms. More importantly, I explained that Covid is not just a lung disease, it is a massive systemic inflammatory response to the virus. Covid also upregulates a protein called bradykinin, causing clots.3

If nothing else, I told them to think of Covid as huge inflammatory process that causes injury, scarring and clots to form everywhere. That’s why we are seeing so many strokes, MIs, weird liver failure in peds, bowel ischemia, and long Covid. 4

It all points to chronic inflammation. There is no immunity as the variants keep changing, kind of like the flu, which is why we get flu shots every year. We’ve just let this run rampant, so a slew of Covid variants keep popping up, rendering treatments less effective. 5

The worst part of this was when one student said that their parents had gotten Covid and asked how to keep them safe from the complications. Another student piped in and said she had Covid 3 times and was she at risk too? It was my moment of reckoning. 6

I realized that there wasn’t much I could say except to protect themselves with masks, vaccinations, and to try not to get Covid again. I told them that if they had Covid, they were at higher risk of long Covid and lantern complications. There was nothing to be done 7

Except to protect themselves going forward. After that there was silence. One of my students then said how disappointed in government and public health leaders he was. Another told me she was disappointed in her professors and her school for not being more vigilant. 8

I told them that as long as they understood the patho of the disease, they could guard against misinformation. I told them to educate their families and patients about the science, not the rumors. This left me feeling so sad. What have we done? 9

If I can teach this to first semester nursing students, why couldn’t we have taught this to everyone? People do not understand the disease and no one bothers to explain it. Perhaps that’s why we have failed so miserably. 10

We need to backtrack and explain the disease before we start talking about immunity debt (a non issue) and endemicity. My students are so young. It’s heartbreaking. 11

Btw,remember when they said diarrhea wasn’t a thing with Covid? It is. ACE2 receptors in the gut and all.

I have been asked for some basic material on Covid. I made a quick YouTube video. Please forgive all the “umms” in it. This is just meant to be basic knowledge for people. If you find it helpful please share.

One hugely important thing I need to add-getting Covid can lead to autoimmune disease. Covid causes autoantibodies to form. These autoantibodies attack our cells and tissues and cause many of the post Covid symptoms we see, such as shortness of breath, fatigue, and brain fog.12

Covid also causes B cell (antibodies) and T cell abnormalities and immunosuppression. The rise in RSV and Influenza that we are seeing is likely because of this immunosuppression, NOT immunity debt!!13

Immunity debt is a myth to cover up the fact that by letting Covid run rampant, we have now caused autoimmune disease and immunodeficiency. Anyone one who has gotten Covid is at risk, not just severe and long Covid.

#tellthetruth #BringBackMasks

A year later, almost all of my students have had COVID by now, some 3 or 4 times, if not more. No one is wearing masks, as the school dropped the requirement and determined we are “post Covid”. I am still wearing my N-95, and I have not tested positive for COVID.

I’m beginning to see the effects of Covid and long Covid in my students, and it is heartbreaking. Students describe cognitive issues, lack of energy, having to relearn how to study. Attention spans are shorter and there is just so much sickness.

I taught my Covid lecture last week. Four or five students out 90 were out sick and a few had just gotten over Covid. The students had so many questions. It shocks me how much we have failed them. One student asked if it was really true that Covid was airborne.

She said that people were saying it wasn’t airborne. I told her and the rest of the class that Covid was proven to be airborne and any other info was politics, not science. She then told me about a nurse who insisted that Covid was not airborne and all we need are surg masks.

I told them that this was a massive failure of our public health system. I explained how Covid travels through the body and why we see the symptoms we see. I talked a lot more about the autoimmune aspects of Covid, the “mysterious” myocarditis and hepatitis seen.

I explained that Covid causes massive clotting, systemic inflammation, and autoimmune disease. When I talk about risk factors for different diseases, I mention Covid a lot. They seemed scared, though not scared enough to put on masks. :(

At the break, a student came to me and said that he was newly diagnosed with asthma. He couldn’t figure out why until he heard the Covid lecture. He had COVID a few weeks before he was diagnosed. After lecture, one of my students came up in tears.

She thanked me for the lecture and told me that she had long Covid symptoms and she found the information validating. She told me that no one talked about it or explained all of this to her. Inside, I was boiling. Is this what our “esteemed” CDC and NIH have caused?

I feel so hopeless at times. But the only thing I can contribute is information. So I will keep trying and I will keep wearing a mask. I will say that for me, one way masking in a class of close to 100 has worked. I asked the class if they had gotten the booster.

Only a handful had. We talked about how a vaccine won’t completely prevent Covid, but the disease won’t be as severe. I hope that more of them get vaccinated. I worry about all of them, about all of us. Covid hasn’t gone away, it’s mutated into a completely new form.

But our tests and our treatments haven’t changed. All that Covid funding we could have used to update ventilation is gone. We haven’t kept up. Please spread the word. #COVIDisAirborne #CovidIsNotOver #TellTheTruth #BringBackMasks

Unroll

@UnrollHelper please unroll

Finally, something to note is that we no longer have accurate Covid data. The CDC has stopped timely reporting of Covid case and death data and is relying only on hospitalizations. Either way, information is not as readily accessible to the public.

Wastewater data will still be collected but there is a delay as the federal contract is changing from biobot to verily. Without the info, we can’t see the trends and there is little to back us up when we talk about the dangers of Covid. #COVID19 #COVIDisAirborne