A permademic of a virus with no durable immunity that makes everyone (or at least most) more susceptible to infections is bad news for public health & economies
At a time of war it becomes a potential enabler & amplifier of bioterrorism attacks, as well as a cover for them 🤔😬
Let's hope governments are smart, and think about moving towards a clean air infrastructure, requiring / recommending HEPA filtration in workplaces & schools & on public transport, putting in place the regulations & production capacity to implement this quickly
This will increase our societies' resilience against both existing airborne infections, novel pathogens of pandemic potential, and bioterrorism & biological warfare agents
It's kind of an existential threat, and in our economic and national security interests to fix this quickly
Other amplifying factors that need to be tackled are vaccine hesitancy & public ignorance of the need & means to avoid COVID (re)infections, & the funded disinformation networks that create & sustain this using certain notorious disreputable & discredited doctors & scientists
For those who want to understand why SARS-COV-2 will remain a permademic with continual non seasonal waves over a high baseline, please watch this space.
It's staggering how many people have been killed by COVID worldwide
The central estimate of the true death toll of the continuing pandemic, using excess deaths (as calculated by The Economist), is 27.3 million
It's hard to imagine how many that is. How a big a pile that is 🧵
So let's make it real for people
I asked ChatGPT to estimate if the COVID pandemic has killed 27.3 million people worldwide, how many swimming pools of would that that pile of bodies fill if piled up?
How much would that pile of bodies weigh?
And here is the answer.
To estimate how many swimming pools a pile of 27.3 million bodies would fill and the total weight of that pile, we need to make some assumptions about the average volume and weight of a human body.
Re SARS-COV-2, possible endoplasmic reticulum stress (h/t @mrmickme2), and how that can cause mitochondrial dysfunction, I queried chatGPT on how likely it is that ER stress is a significant factor in mitochondrial dysfunction in long COVID
Here is the response 🧵
Mitochondrial dysfunction in long COVID could indeed be related to endoplasmic reticulum (ER) stress, but other potential mechanisms may also contribute to this dysfunction. Mitochondria and the ER are closely linked through cellular signaling and metabolic pathways, and stress
in one organelle can lead to dysfunction in the other. Here’s a breakdown of how ER stress might cause mitochondrial dysfunction in long COVID and other potential mechanisms that could be involved:
1. Link Between ER Stress and Mitochondrial Dysfunction
If seven year olds are already being seen with problems like this, and it's due to their SARS-COV-2 infections, what hope will so many kids have, reinfected again & again, at least once a year?
Ok hopefully it will only be a subset
But we don't know how big a subset yet
And no, it's not even ok for there to be one kid left avoidably harmed by COVID
But we know it's not just one. It's not just hundreds. Not even thousands. Already millions worldwide 😔
Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 infection is linked to significant liver injury, emerging from the facilitated entry of the virus into liver cells, including cholangiocytes and endothelial cells, due to increased receptor expression🧵
This invasion triggers critical cellular alterations such as mitochondrial swelling, endoplasmic reticulum dilation, and hepatocyte apoptosis.
2/x
Confirmed by biopsy or autopsy, the presence of viral particles in liver tissues correlates with extensive histological damage, characterized by necrosis, steatosis, cholestasis, and inflammation.
3/x
"hyperglycemic conditions enhanced the viral entry receptor expression, infectivity, & susceptibility of SARS-CoV-2-induced cell death in the blood retinal barrier cells confirming reported heightened pathology in comorbid populations" journals.plos.org/plospathogens/…
"...intranasal exposure (to SARS-COV-2 virus, ie simulating inhalation) not only resulted in SARS-CoV-2 spike (S) protein presence in different ocular tissues but also induces a hyperinflammatory immune response in the retina..."
"... Additionally, the long-term exposure to viral S-protein caused microaneurysm, retinal pigmented epithelium (RPE) mottling, retinal atrophy, & vein occlusion in mouse eyes..."
"duck & human IAV receptors were widely expressed in the bovine mammary gland, whereas the chicken receptor dominated the respiratory tract. In general, only a low expression of IAV receptors was observed in the neurons of the cerebrum"