Blastic NK-cell lymphoma means something has gone *really wrong* in immune regulation.
It’s a malignancy of the cells that are *supposed to destroy infected cells*.
NK cells - "natural killer” cells - are the immune system's first-strike unit.
They're the ones that find and kill virus-infected cells before antibodies even show up.
If you start seeing more NK-cell cancers, something’s driving chronic activation and mutation inside that system.
Something up here.
Now, think about Covid infection:
Every infection triggers a massive NK-cell surge.
Those cells get overstimulated, exhausted, and sometimes permanently altered.
Post-COVID studies show lingering activation markers, basically, NK cells stuck in attack mode for months.
That means they keep dividing...
Keep generating oxidative stress...
Keep collecting DNA damage in a high-inflammation environment...
And all that while the repair pathways (like p53) are being suppressed (by cytokines like IL-6 and TNF-alpha).
At the same time, the immune brakes are off.
T cells are depleted and exhausted.
Interferon signalling is blunted.
So when an abnormal clone of NK cells appears, the immune system doesn't clear it. *It lets it grow*.
Add to that the reactivation of latent viruses (EBV, CMV, HHV-6) all known to cause NK/T-cell malignancies...
COVID reawakens them, repeatedly.
Each reactivation wave means another round of inflammation and oxidative stress and immune dysregulation.
The problems aren't just in adults... there's stuff going on in kids too.
So you end up with this:
A system of immune cells pushed to divide too often,
mutating in an inflamed environment,
with the tumour-suppressor side of immunity switched off.
And from that, you get what we’re seeing here. A surge in blastic NK-cell lymphoma.
I wonder what else is going on in that lymph system...
Oh boy.
😮
Oh boy.
Oh boy oh boy
Erm.
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And then strange things going on with other aspects of the immune system...
And this running away...
And then damage to all that lets this kind of damage loose...
And that this...
Hmm.
Those gut infections are really exploiting something these last four years, aren't they...
Oh my word.
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This is all just nuts.
This damage is in adults, kids, infants, everywhere.
It's in these kind of diseases where the end result is scarring of internal organs after immune hyperactivation:
This is in KIDS AGED 0 to 9.
You might expect this to pop up as a result of immune dysregulation in the gut...
Oh boy.
What the what.
What does inflammation in the brain cause...
More tomorrow... this list is long.
Maybe a few more...
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This is in *kids*
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This is in *young adults* 👀
flip.
Nothing to see here, just a doubling of TUBERCULOSIS OF BONE.
Oh dear.
Hmm.
I didn't expect so many people to read this thread, or I would have included a bit like this, explaining that not every condition is rising like that...
Today was the last day of term at one of our local schools, and after I did the end of term assembly, one of the teachers asked if I could stick around and meet a class to answer some questions.
I had an hour free, so I did.
It was an 'A level' biology class. A levels are the exams you take at about age 18 here in the UK. You normally take about 3 or 4, so students often specialise in subjects that will lean towards what they will go on to study at university.
The teacher knows me well, and he knew that some of his class were interested in the intersection of faith and science - including pupils from Hindu, Muslim and Christian backgrounds - so he wanted to give them an opportunity to ask some questions.
It's now a very widely established scientific fact that covid infections are not all cleared within weeks of infection.
It's not clear what proportion of people undergo persistent infection, but it's not a trivial number, or a rare occurrence.
We have multiple independent lines of evidence for this, including biopsies, autopsies, viral RNA and proteins found months later, successful virus culture in some cases, and sequencing showing the virus continuing to evolve within the same person over time.
No single study proves it on its own, but together they build a remarkably consistent picture that persistent infection is a genuine feature of SARS-CoV-2.
I've been writing a really long thread on the long covid dopamine study, but it's incredibly long winded and complicated and boring and depressing, and even I'm fed up of it, so here's the five tweet version:
I park my vintage 1970s steel car in the sea for a year, then take it out and wonder why it doesn't work.
I ask a mechanic whether the starter motor is rusty.
He says yes the starter motor is rusty.
Is there anyone in their right mind who would think that the starter motor is the only thing that is rusty?
🚨OH MY WORD. I WARNED FOUR YEARS AGO THAT REPEAT COVID INFECTIONS IN KIDS MIGHT LEAD TO EXACTLY THIS CONDITION.
I said that with Covid affecting blood vessels, immune signalling, inflammation, gut, nutrient absorption, nutrient handling, and calcium recycling processes, we should expect a wave of molar incisor hypomineralisation.
I was very surprised that the problem hadn't made it into the media before now - but I guess the children this is happening to now are the children who were born in 2020. The ones who were infected every year since.
There are some people who would have you believe that vaccines basically all work the same for different infections, and all have the same effect, but that's not true.
Let me explain this as simply as I can:
Some vaccines are like *insurance*.
You are unlikely to get tetanus, but if you do, vaccination can turn a catastrophic outcome into something far less dangerous. It is protection against a *rare but awful event*.
Some vaccines are like a *firebreak*.
The measles vaccine doesn't just protect the person receiving it. When enough people are vaccinated, measles struggles to find new people to infect, so the whole community is protected, including babies and people who cannot be vaccinated.