tern Profile picture
Oct 25, 2025 46 tweets 9 min read Read on X
How's that lymph system doing.
Blastic NK-cell lymphoma, England. Image
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. Image
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. Image
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.
😮 Image
Oh boy. Image
Oh boy oh boy Image
Erm.
👀 Image
👀 Image
👀 Image
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And then strange things going on with other aspects of the immune system... Image
And this running away... Image
And then damage to all that lets this kind of damage loose... Image
And that this... Image
Hmm.
Those gut infections are really exploiting something these last four years, aren't they... Image
Oh my word. Image
👀 Image
This is all just nuts. Image
This damage is in adults, kids, infants, everywhere. Image
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. Image
You might expect this to pop up as a result of immune dysregulation in the gut... Image
Oh boy. Image
What the what. Image
What does inflammation in the brain cause... Image
More tomorrow... this list is long.
Maybe a few more... Image
👀 Image
👀 Image
This is in *kids*
👀 Image
This is in *young adults* 👀 Image
flip. Image
Nothing to see here, just a doubling of TUBERCULOSIS OF BONE. Image
Oh dear. Image
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...
@PetersCynthia There's 9,000 charts in the database, it's hard to even view them all, let alone post them!

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More from @1goodtern

Mar 22
Five things about this study.

First, even mild Covid infection screws your immune system so you're 60% more likely to be hospitalised by EBV/mono/glandular fever for and the effect lasts ages.

Covid infection can screw up your immune system.
Second, we're talking about *hospitalisation* by EBV after the covid infection, so it's not just getting extra 'mild' bugs afterwards.
Third, the hospital data doesn't say whether the hospitalisations were *reactivations* or *new infections* of EBV.

But it's probably a bit of both.

I've been hospitalised by reactivated EBV. It was unpleasant.
Read 16 tweets
Mar 21
I've seen this gotcha quite a few times now:
"If the Kent meningitis outbreak was caused by Covid, why is it just in Kent?"
Which completely misses the point of what people mean when they say that outbreaks like this are made more likely by the damage caused by covid infections.
Wildfires aren't a perfect analogy for infection outbreaks - but they can help us understand certain aspects.

Think of a whole country made more prone to wildfires by a drought.
The whole country doesn't suddenly burst into flames.

In a drought ridden country, what happens it that you get wildfires happening locally sporadically.
Read 59 tweets
Mar 20
Enormously massively huge studies have shown that each wave of Covid infections causes damage to people's immune systems. The science is incontrovertible.

And yet you will not find a single media article about the current meningitis outbreak that mentions that.
It's really simple.
It's been established science for decades that "a low CD4 count... has been shown to be associated with an increased risk of Invasive Meningococcal Disease"
Governments base policies on this established science.
pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10…Image
And Covid infection... Covid infection hammers your lymphocytes including CD4 T cells... and the rest. Image
Read 11 tweets
Mar 20
Don't you get it?

If lots of people in your population have lower ability to fight infection, it doesn't just mean those people are more likely to *catch* infections.

It means they are more likely to *spread* them too.

Let me explain.
This is important.
Jack has a metal lunchbox.
No ants can get into his lunchbox, so when he leaves the park, no ants fall out of his lunchbox.

Annie has a lunch bag made of wool.
Ants can climb into it, and they can also fall out easily too.
And that's what they do.
Obviously it's more complex than that. But if you don't catch something in the first place then you don't spread it.

But there's much more to it than that.
Read 24 tweets
Mar 19
Ten things they'll be telling us about meningitis before the end of the week:
1
It's mild
2
Kids can't get it.
Read 56 tweets
Mar 19
I'm sitting at my computer with 46 tabs open with media stories about the meningitis outbreak from the last 3 days.

Following mainstream coverage, govt statements and UKHSA briefings on the meningitis outbreak has been surprisingly tiring.

Here are a few of the inconsistencies:
"Outbreak has been contained." Then within 16 hours: "It is too soon to say the outbreak is contained."
UKHSA said this looked like a "single event cluster" linked to a nightclub. Then they started saying there was likely "ongoing spread" in university halls. A contained exposure event and active transmission through accommodation networks are not the same thing, Susan.
Read 21 tweets

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