1. Every time the thought of taking an unnecessary risk of infection crosses my mind - as it did last night, walking around Belfast with its Christmas Market and nightlife in full swing - I immediately remember the effects that Covid had on people close to me.
2. One suffered Long Covid for three months, with crippling brain fog. Still has fatigue on exercise now, nearly a year later.
One ended up with crippling vertigo right after the acute infection resolved, lasted about a month.
3. One had to go to the emergency department with serious shortness of breath, took weeks to resolve.
One had altered taste and smell for about two months after the initial illness, resulting in significant weight loss (food tasted disgusting).
4. One developed new-onset atrial fibrillation, which has thankfully since resolved.
One developed secondary bacterial pneumonia.
One 'felt fine', apart from becoming occasionally disoriented - lost in familiar places - for several weeks afterwards.
All over 40. I'm 52.
5. That coffee in a packed cafe always becomes much less appealing then /end
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1. A core part of the analysis I perform involves zooming out; that is to say, taking a very broad view of the effects of infectious disease on populations, rather than individuals. People often reply to my posts here with something like, 'everyone I know who had Covid is ok'.
2. And that is almost certainly true, because most people only know a few people well. However, when I zoom out to the population level, it is crushingly obvious that continued unmitigated transmission of SARS-CoV-2 is having increasingly damaging population-level effects.
3. This manifests primarily as ever-increasing levels of disability, caused by Long Covid, and, more perniciously, sequelae of Covid. Increased cardiovascular problems, increased autoimmune problems, increased diabetes etc.
1. I agree with this point - meaning is very important in life, and meaning itself means different things to different people. This is why I constantly push for any and all measures that would remove (or drastically reduce) the need for indoor masking.
2. Such as: Indoor Air Quality (IAQ), access to fast and highly accurate personal testing, area-sensing, better vaccines and better therapeutics. I would have struggled with not eating and drinking in public spaces indoors at earlier periods in my life, for example.
3. In short, I choose where to set my own risk appetite based on my own knowledge and subject-matter expertise. However, I do not seek to enforce it on others. Rather, I seek to massively reduce risk everywhere while still allowing people to have meaning in their lives /end
1. So this is also a fair comment worth addressing, because it illuminates a false binary that often appears in these types of discussions. To be clear: wearing a respirator in public indoor spaces in no way puts my life on hold.
2. Sure, it entails not doing certain activities that I used to do pre-pandemic - essentially going to indoor restaurants and cafes. I fully accept such activities may legitimately be a huge part of a meaningful life for others, but they are not for me.
3. In point of fact, my life has become greatly enriched by spending much more of it outdoors than I did pre-2020, my fitness is better than it has been since I was 25 (I'm 52), my photography is much better, and my existing friendships have grown deeper and more meaningful.
1. I had a large electrical appliance delivered and installed at my home today. When the delivery van pulled up, I was waiting at my front door, wearing a respirator, as always. One of the two guys shouted over to me, 'you don't have Covid, do you'?
2. He was serious. This wasn't any kind of mask-shaming. I shouted across to him, 'no, I'm making sure I don't get it'. I stepped into my garage - door open - to let the two guys in to install the item.
3. The concerned guy said, passing me, 'I had it two years ago, I don't want it again, it was rough'. I replied, 'you should wear one of these', pointing at my Aura. A kind of muttered negative response in return.
1. This is the paper that's making the headlines today. I've read it in full, and its findings are, in my opinion, robust, and, frankly, align with common sense. The problem is not the paper, but its misinterpretation by the media.
2. This problem is compounded by individuals commenting on the press release, rather than the paper itself, a common problem on this platform.
To be clear: this paper is emphatically not discounting the deleterious effects on cognition that often occur as a result of Covid.
3. As an example, a direct quote from the paper:
"The worsening of cognition in people with a history of COVID-19 aligns with literature reports of the cognitive effects of the disease, in which up to 78% of people report cognitive impairment".
1. This is an excellent article. Trust is key to pandemic response. Trust between countries, trust in government, trust in public health, and trust between individuals. In an interview I gave in 2020, I made the point that the pandemic could not have arrived at a worse time.
2. With many countries - including, but not limited to - the US and the UK, already in the grips of significant political polarisation, it was obvious to me that pandemic response would become very politicised, very quickly. And, of course, it did.
3. And this intense politicisation - primed by a complete (and often justified) mistrust of the government before the pandemic began - set the scene for individuals (again, justifiably) not trusting the government's pandemic response.