1. I think almost everyone who is still taking active steps to avoid being infected or re-infected with SARS-CoV-2 is tired at this point; I know I am. Having said that, late last night it occurred to me, with considerable clarity, that every single person I have had the...
2... pleasure of meeting through this platform, every single person still trying to avoid Covid, form, as a group, the most compassionate and resilient set of people I have ever met in my life. These shared qualities are not a coincidence. The great conceptual mistake that the..
3... individuals and organisations who attack our stance (ranging from individual written or verbal abuse, all the way to the enactment of structural policies at national levels designed to make avoiding infection more difficult) is this: we don't take precautions to avoid...
4... infection just to protect ourselves, but also to protect everyone else.
The science is very clear at this point: it is unquestionably a wise decision to avoid infection. It speaks volumes about the world in which we now live that something so obvious has to be stated.
5. I will end with this: all of you are doing the right thing, from the standpoints of health, ethics, and, quite frankly, common sense. You are all outstanding human beings, and, I assure you, you will not regret your ongoing decisions /end
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1. My late mother was an educator for her entire life, a teacher from age 21 to 65, until she was forced to retire by the education board here in Northern Ireland. Not impressed by this imposed retirement, she continued as a classroom assistant until aged 70.
2. Her passion was education - both teaching and learning. When her slow descent into ill-health began, in early 2018, her and I would spend hours talking. This conversation continued unbroken until she slipped into severe dementia about four months ago. As I've mentioned...
3... on this platform before, she never really understood social media, but she did understand that, well, her son had an audience. As such, about a year before she passed away, she asked me to tell you all the four regrets she had on entering a care home, and then a nursing...
1. What concerns me the most, by far, about SARS-CoV-2, is that, in the absence of better vaccines and therapeutics, we are heading towards an inexorable reduction in global population health. Even if the virus maintains the same virulence, the data we now have on the average...
2... rate of re-infection, combined with the data we have on the likelihood of sequelae of infection and Long Covid with each infection, makes it a near-certainty that a growing percentage of the world will continue to become chronically ill and / or disabled. The pandemic is...
3.. often framed as a 'mass-disabling' event, but what I think most people don't understand is what that actually entails. It means pressure on global healthcare services that will be detrimental to everyone, not just those suffering from Covid-related illnesses. It means...
1. 'Northland emergency doctor Gary Payinda said some viruses, which used to cause barely a sniffle in healthy adults, were now putting people in hospital.
"We're now seeing your typical regular healthy middle-aged person presenting to ED with...
2...bad cases of RSV. And that's pretty novel for us," Payinda said.
He suspected Covid may have damaged people's immunity in *subtle ways* that fell below the threshold to qualify as long Covid'.
* my emphasis.
This is where people aren't joining the dots. Sequelae of...
3... SARS-CoV-2 infection isn't confined to Long Covid; the immune dysregulation effect of infection (as @fitterhappierAJ has warned about for years) is, imo, causing other infectious diseases to present more severely in some individuals. This effect, in my opinion, will be...
1. A very important article on the impact of acute SARS-CoV-2 infection and also Long Covid on the firefighter community. The overall adverse effects of Covid-19 on both individual firefighters, and, arguably more importantly, on the *capacity of the service* itself, can be...
2... generalised across all emergency and security services (including organisations involved in national security). This is why addressing Covid-19, rather than attempting to systemically ignore it, is detrimental to society in general.
'It is often difficult to know when a...
3... firefighter is well enough to return to work, how to provide appropriate support to department members who are suffering from prolonged symptoms, and how to meet the operational needs of the department given the number of firefighters who may be out because of acute...
1. I rarely quote tweet, but Professor Lucey has provided me with what might be referred to as a 'teachable moment' here. So, to clarify, the professor is correct in one regard: I am not a medical doctor. However, my work explicitly does not depend on a 'constant fear of...
2. ... Covid', as he puts it. Rather, I collaborate with organisations who, for their own reasons, want to understand how Covid - and other infectious diseases - will affect their business in the future. In that regard, my role, as I've said many times before, relies on the...
3... accuracy of my predictions. I can assure you these organisations are not driven by fear; rather, they are driven by profit. I also collaborate with organisations in the diagnostics sector - again, not just for Covid but for other infectious diseases as well; these...
1. As many of you know, my mother lives in a nursing home, and has done so for nearly four years. She is clinically extremely frail and bedridden. A few days ago both myself and the staff nurse in her nursing home noticed a sharp decline in her health, and a GP visit was...
2... arranged for yesterday. As always, I visited my mum yesterday, and the nurse on duty told me the GP had been to see my mum earlier in the morning and would ring me later. Early afternoon yesterday the GP rang me, and told me, very gently, that it is very likely indeed...
3... my mum is in the final weeks, or even days, of her life. We had a discussion about hospitalisation, and both agreed that, sadly, it would be of no value to my mother at this point, and would only make her anxious and uncomfortable.