Thread by @PutrinoLab

What a week for public health 🤦🏻‍♂️

I don’t know who needs to hear this, but: surviving an infection doesn’t make you “stronger” for it. Surviving a #COVID19 infection leaves a mark. Like a boxer, every fight leaves it’s mark on your body. It can be an easy fight or a hard fight 1/

but the point is it creates damage. Like a boxer, fighting new opponents can give you experience and make you better at fighting. Doesn’t change the fact that each fight does lasting damage. It doesn’t change the fact that every fight you pick causes damage that could have 2/

been avoided if you just prevented the fight breaking out in the first place, because every fighter knows that there comes a point where experience counts for nothing when the body can’t keep going. The more hits a boxer takes, the more likely it is that we will see the mark 3/

of boxing on their brain. But we can never predict which fight will change them forever until that fight happens. We watch these fighters transform from tall, strong and proud paragons to fragile, weak and lost in a heartbeat. We marvel over the ‘mystery’ of the brain, how 4/

no one can perfectly predict who will “get” CTE or dementia pugilistica or Parkinson’s from fighting whilst ignoring the obvious: we do know, without doubt, that in those who were disabled by these terrible illnesses, it was the persistent head trauma that got it done. There 5/

is no difference when it comes to persistent infection. I can’t tell you which acute infection of SARS-CoV-2 will give you #LongCovid, but I can tell you that in those who have it, it was the #COVID19 infection that got it done. You can tell me what every boxer, footballer and 6/

veteran has told me in my sports performance career: “won’t happen to me, David, because I *insert what makes them special here*”. Doesn’t matter. It takes them regardless. I know many out there don’t like my message. They call it “fear-mongering”, they prefer the messaging of 7/

other health professionals who tell us “COVID is over! Get back to your lives!”. I wish that were reality, but the reality is this: #CovidIsNotOver, #CovidIsAirborne and *every infection*, whether you feel it or not, leaves you diminished. Every infection, whether you feel it 8/

or not, could be the one that knocks you (or someone YOU INFECT) into #LongCovid. I know our culture tells us that strong people win fights, but I have thousands of impossibly strong patients from all walks of life who thought that way and now wish that they had just avoided 9/

the fight. They didn’t need to get infected, they just figured they were strong enough to survive it and what’s one more immune challenge. Well, guess what? They did survive it, but sometimes survival isn’t the only outcome that matters, and these folks: the ones who tell you 10/

to just get out there and get back to life - these “fight promoters”? Think they’ll have your back if you get #LongCovid? 🙄 So that’s my ‘radical’ public health message that has been so controversial this week: Don’t get infected by viruses over and over. Avoid the fight. end/