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.

• • •

Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to force a refresh
 

Keep Current with tern

tern Profile picture

Stay in touch and get notified when new unrolls are available from this author!

Read all threads

This Thread may be Removed Anytime!

PDF

Twitter may remove this content at anytime! Save it as PDF for later use!

Try unrolling a thread yourself!

how to unroll video
  1. Follow @ThreadReaderApp to mention us!

  2. From a Twitter thread mention us with a keyword "unroll"
@threadreaderapp unroll

Practice here first or read more on our help page!

More from @1goodtern

Apr 15
Look:
There is no such thing as overdiagnosis.

There is just diagnosis (correct) or misdiagnosis (wrong).

If a diagnosis is correct, then you can't have too much of it.
If there's any incorrect diagnosis, then it's a misdiagnosis.
So you can't have 'too much diagnosis'.

It's like saying something is too appropriate.
Read 50 tweets
Apr 15
Trigger warning.
It takes a while for this disgusting article to reach its point, but when it does, it does it with so much callousness and wanton cruelty.

"Long Covid – the disease that started as a hashtag"

No, you hideous ghouls, it starts as covid infection. Image
On 2020:
"it’s inescapable that the period was a melting pot for psychosomatic conditions."

Yes, that would be what killed that quarter of a million people, and hospitalised one and a half million people. Psychosomatic conditions.
Ffs. This doctor that "stresses she isn’t dismissing suffering" literally dismisses the suffering caused by covid infections.
Read 21 tweets
Apr 8
So it's now recognised that Long Covid is probably costing the world economy about a trillion a year in lost productivity.

You're reading that right.

So what should we do about it.
1) Reduce new infections by reducing transmission.

A) Clean the air in every public space now.

This is far easier than it sounds:
CHUMV (you can say it Chumvee):
CO₂ monitoring
HEPA
UV
MERV
VENTILATE
Read 21 tweets
Apr 8
Here's a quick personal story.

Twenty something years ago, I picked up a mystery infection that hammered my system and left me with all sorts of health problems.
I'll come back to some of those bits in a mo, but here's the point of the story:

After a while, I discovered that I'm ok with exercise as long as it's a very small increase of something that I'm used to.
(this is not an 'all you need to do to get better is exercise' thread, and it's not a prescription of exercise to people with any chronic illness, I'll explain that more later too)
Read 38 tweets
Apr 6
I did an experiment two weeks ago.
I posted a request in two very similar fb groups, asking for advice in one on how to support 'someone with Long Covid', and in the other 'someone with a complicated post-viral condition'.

Four observations about the replies:
Fewer people engaged with the long covid one.
The replies that were made to the long covid post were less sympathetic, even though the description of the symptoms was word for word the same.
Read 11 tweets
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

Did Thread Reader help you today?

Support us! We are indie developers!


This site is made by just two indie developers on a laptop doing marketing, support and development! Read more about the story.

Become a Premium Member ($3/month or $30/year) and get exclusive features!

Become Premium

Don't want to be a Premium member but still want to support us?

Make a small donation by buying us coffee ($5) or help with server cost ($10)

Donate via Paypal

Or Donate anonymously using crypto!

Ethereum

0xfe58350B80634f60Fa6Dc149a72b4DFbc17D341E copy

Bitcoin

3ATGMxNzCUFzxpMCHL5sWSt4DVtS8UqXpi copy

Thank you for your support!

Follow Us!

:(