tern Profile picture
Mar 6 27 tweets 3 min read Read on X
Why don't people grasp how serious this is?

Across an entire population, losing more than three years of your healthy life expectancy...

That is just staggering.

Especially because of this:
The big problem is that it *isn't even distributed evenly*.
I mean you might think that losing 3.3 years is bad.

But actually, that's 3.3 years spread across all the people.
So if the population were 5 people, it would be 16.5 healthy years lost.
But because it is not distributed evenly, different people lose different amounts of healthy years.
So Person A might lose 1 year of healthy life.
Person B might lose none.
Person C might lose 2 years.
Person C might lose 0.5 years.
And then the rest of the full weight of the loss of healthy years comes down heavy on Person D.

They lose THIRTEEN YEARS of healthy life.
And actually it's bad enough if it's distributed evenly.

That's three and a third years of lost salary, lost contribution to society, lost family time, lost pensions contributions, lost joy.

But also the weight of all of that loss having to be carried by society.
The economic loss caused by that?
Huge.
The societal loss from all of that?
Huge.
The individual loss from all of that?
Huge.
But when it's distributed unevenly, you get some lives that win the lottery and some that don't.
And that's where the current injustice hits hardest.

Some people's lives have been absolutely ravaged by long covid.

Their healthy years have been snatched away from them, and it's there being charted in brutal black and white: Image
And blue and light blue.
But actually a load of people haven't even noticed yet that their own health has been stolen by covid infections.
I'm supporting a woman who's retiring early after developing a string of health problems after her covid infections.

She's struggling financially because she's supporting her own daughter who has a string of health problems after her covid infections.
And what's even more hideous is that the full effect of covid infections is not even fully evident in the healthy life expectancy charts.

These charts are built on actual health situations now.
They don't factor in what it means to kids born today to catch covid every year for the rest of their lives.
So the full scale of the problem isn't even close to appearing in these charts yet.
And, as someone who was predicting this decline in the charts long before it was even visible, believe me that it is going to get worse.
And worse.
And worse.
You should have believed me the first time.
You should have believed the science.
Covid infections, every covid infection you have throughout your life, will shave time off your healthy life expectancy.
Stop catching Covid, stop spreading it.
Unless you like growing old early, growing sick early, and dying early.

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More from @1goodtern

Apr 2
When you have a chronic health condition, it can be hard to explain to people without a chronic health condition what it means.
You say, "I have muscle pain", and they say, "oh yes, I did the London marathon and all my muscles hurt for two days".
You say, "I can't sleep", and they say, "oh yes, I was out at a concert last night and didn't get home until two. I only had five hours".
Read 17 tweets
Mar 31
Another quick dive into the NHS staff sickness absence data.

This gets nuts pretty fast...
The NHS shares sickness absence data for different groups of staff.

Most of these staff groups include people of every age. Image
For example you can be a nurse from 22 to retirement age.
Read 50 tweets
Mar 28
You may have thought that the chatter out of schools about kids having developmental problems was bad so far…

But this autumn, Reception will welcome kids born in late 2021… whose mothers caught Covid while pregnant… kids who have themselves caught Covid in every wave since.
I work with three nurseries, and, let me tell you, schools and society are in for an even worse jolt than the ones they've had so far.
I know one family where the mum caught Covid when they were trying for a baby, caught it again when they were expecting, and then the baby caught it when they were just four weeks old.

The most obvious developmental problems in that child are neurological.
Read 7 tweets
Mar 26
And did I post this one already for Core Training...

Covid infections cause a reduction in sets of your immune cells that fight infections... and when you keep catching covid that effect keeps getting worse, so you're increasingly prone to being off sick with cold cough flu. Image
There are over 750 of these charts for the different categories... so I'm just going to pull out a very few of the serious ones for the different groups.
There are pregnancy problems in loads of groups, as well as the ones I've already posted.

Imagine being a midwife and *knowing* this is happening to you and your colleagues.

Again, remember that we have every reason to assume this was not rising before covid. Image
Read 36 tweets
Mar 26
I'm in a lull on twitter without much visibility, so probably hardly anyone will see this, but here's an important thread on "why everyone's sick all the time".

No, you are not imagining it.
Sickness is increasing.
Sickness absence rates are increasing. Image
Let's start with this graph.
The monthly sickness absence rates of staff at the NHS.

They have over a million employees, so this is a massive slice of the population of the country. Image
The graph is *rate*, so it's the proportion of staff who are off sick each month.

So it's not rising "because there are more people working for the NHS". Image
Read 61 tweets
Mar 25
One of the subtle but serious problems in science and health communication at the moment is that people are treating Long Covid like a yes/no thing.

Do you have Long Covid? Yes
Do you have Long Covid? No
It's just not that simple.
I mean even if it were that simple, it's still not that simple.
Read 38 tweets

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