Thread by @deepasivarajan

hey Emma, you & I knew each other in college. I can now barely leave my house due to being in month 7 of long COVID (after 2 years of being incredibly careful).

Why did you choose to actively undermine people who are still prioritizing COVID safety in this hit piece of yours?

https://twitter.com/emmaogreen/status/1608212488234962944

your article has so many issues that I’m not going to be able to name all of them, especially because I’m not a public health expert, but even to me - someone who has HAD to learn as much as I can, to protect myself - a number of obvious problems jump out
newyorker.com/news/annals-of…

firstly, why does the piece begin by naming that Fullilove, who is a professor of urban policy and health, is Black, while literally no other person’s race is mentioned? Is it to discredit her analysis as biased?

onto Long COVID: why are these facts treated as speculation?

It has, in fact, been proven that vaccinated people CAN get Long COVID (I am one of them) and that people who have mild symptoms at first can still develop Long COVID later. Why are these framed as "grievances"?

in fact, if you had done any research into Long COVID, you would fine that Long COVID data is chronically under-reported for a range of reasons, including that most Long COVID clinics and studies require you to have a positive PCR test to be considered to have it

this means we are missing not only the people who have only had a home test, but also people under 65 who contracted COVID too early in the pandemic to be eligible for a PCR test, some of whom have the harshest symptoms almost three years later

government and media also do such a poor job talking about Long COVID that many people may not even be able to self-identify that they have it, especially if they initially had a mild case of COVID! this piece just continues that trend

anyway, back to the piece. It might be true that MOST transmission occurs in the first few days of symptoms, but a recent study in The Lancet Respiratory Medicine journal determined that 2/3 of COVID patients could still be contagious at 5 days
ajmc.com/view/covid-19-…

this is supported by a number of other studies that showed similar results - all of which suggest that 10 days of isolation is a safer bet than 5
nature.com/articles/d4158…

it's also not surprising that people mistrust the CDC when it a) mishandled so much of the early response to COVID, and b) has continuously changed its policies without any scientific evidence backing

for instance, the CDC recommendations for 5-day isolation came out BEFORE any studies that confirmed it, and only days after the CEO of Delta Airlines wrote to the CDC director asking that the 10-day isolation recommendation be cut to 5
npr.org/2021/12/29/106…

okay, let’s talk mask mandates. the article first mentions them in relation to the People’s CDC calling for universal masking, but from there drops the topic of masks and instead suggests that the People’s CDC is biased by activism

nowhere is there any acknowledgment of the fact that mask mandates DID reduce COVID transmission, nor that people largely complied with them when they were in effect. in fact this interview makes it seem like mask mandates were useless

and even then Frieden acknowledges that universal masking is a good strategy in terms of public health. it’s the POLITICS around masking that changed, not the scientific efficacy of masks
msn.com/en-us/health/h…

over and over, this piece frames the People's CDC as driven by a political motive, accusing them of cherry-picking from the science to fuel their agenda

meanwhile, the death of mask mandates WAS purely political, but this is mentioned nowhere

(oh, and by the way, the idea that COVID denial is white supremacist is, in fact, borne out by studies that showed white American stopped caring about COVID when they learned it disproportionately impacted Black folks)
nbcnews.com/news/nbcblk/st…

it’s just completely irresponsible and biased to report on all of this without discussing how COVID numbers are currently under-reported because of home testing, or that life expectancies have gone down, or that COVID is still the THIRD LEADING CAUSE OF DEATH IN THE U.S.

COVID has been a public health failure on a massive scale. Over a million people are dead in the U.S. And yet we still get media reporting like this claims progressives are politicized over COVID while conservatives, what, aren’t? Are you kidding me?

Emma, I hope you never have to suffer from Long COVID because you would soon find that all of your assumptions are false. I came from a lot of privilege; you & I went to the same expensive private university. And yet my life was turned upside-down by this disease

I’m currently bedridden half the day; my only “good” hours in the morning are spent working part-time because I need to keep my health insurance. The rest of the day, I have completely debilitating headaches, nausea, and dizziness that keep me in bed

And I’m one of the lucky ones! Many Long COVID sufferers have far more acute cardiological and neurological symptoms. I got lucky in having no brain fog, which would have made my work completely impossible

of course, I guess we shouldn't expect much better from you, Emma, given that you apparently advocate against masking in your personal life as well!

https://twitter.com/mumblerant/status/1608259706006671360?t=4W7plbGVhr07WOHbtvtrFQ&s=19

but no, it's the people who want better COVID protections, the people who are actively trying to share the information that both government and media have failed to share, who are "biased". Fuck that. Do better, Emma.