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

Jun 9
Much of the media coverage of worsening health boils down to this:
Gasoline can't have worsened the fire, because the fire had already started.
Covid infections don't have to *cause* a problem to make it *worse*.
If you already have lung cancer, then you catch Covid, your chance of survival drops.
Read 19 tweets
Jun 8
I had one of those really horrible conversations last week with someone who has had a string of new gut and bowel problems in the last year.

Every moment of the conversation a new alarm bell went off.

I came home and checked the charts.
Then I called them and asked if I could post something about it anonymously.
They said yes, so here it is.
Read 17 tweets
Jun 8
The biggest challenge around Covid and Long Covid communication is:

Why doesn't everyone get the same effects.
"Covid can damage blood vessels."
"Covid can affect the brain."
"Covid can disrupt immunity."
"Covid can trigger POTS."
"Covid can cause Long Covid."
People hear that stuff, then they look around and think:

"Well Dave had it twice and he's fine."
Read 14 tweets
Jun 5
See how many of these you recognise:
➡️The biomarkers are inconsistent
👉Long covid is just a collection of vague symptoms
▶️Vaccination changed the risk, so old studies don't apply
♦️Patients are over-attached to biological explanations
➡️The symptoms are real, but that doesn't mean covid caused them
👉There's no unique biomarker for long covid
▶️This is somatisation
♦️Microclots haven't been proven
Read 25 tweets
May 27
I've been thinking about this a lot since a woman in our community lost her unborn baby at 32 weeks while ill with a viral infection.

If you look at this chart, it's horribly obvious how much extra suffering viral infections have caused to pregnant women since 2020.

But... Image
But the huge spike in 2020/1, 2021/22, and 2022/3 hides a bigger problem.

That as of the latest data, viral diseases are now causing *three times as many hospital episodes as before Covid came along*. Image
I'm just going to gray those three years out to help you see.. Image
Read 13 tweets
May 19
If covid infections make you *more vulnerable* to almost every other pathogenic infection by multiple mechanisms, then you'd expect increases in almost every other pathogenic infection.

And that's what we see.

Ten completely unsurprising news stories:
1
Dengue virus
"Cases of the mosquito-borne viral illness have touched a record high in the Americas this year."
reuters.com/world/us/us-cd…
2
Measles virus
"Measles cases in the European region doubled in 2024."
reuters.com/business/healt…
Read 70 tweets

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