Eye problems are one of the most common after-effects of covid infections, and one of the most common issues of Long Covid - but they're not talked about much.

This is part two of my thread working through eye conditions that have become *much more common* since Covid struck. Little step up in older adults.

Stan Laurel said your eyes are the windows to your soul.

I don't know about that, but I do know that your body is really complicated, but your eyes... yeah, your eyes are something else. An orbital disorder is a problem affecting the eye socket. It can involve swelling, pressure, pain, double vision, or inflammation around the muscles and tissues that move the eye.

I've written before about the confusion Covid causes when it affects different age groups in different ways.
I'd like to just illustrate that by talking about the way the body handles potassium. Potassium balance relies on four major systems:
Kidneys.
Hormones.
Acid base control.
Cell integrity.

Oh.
I suddenly get it.

They *don't know* that they're avoiding diseases spread by water, blood, food, faeces, because society is set up to do most of that work for them *without them knowing*. Most people move through life inside a cocoon of invisible infrastructure that quietly blocks whole categories of disease transmission.

For the last month I've been asking headteachers and staff at seven schools a simple question:

"Are repeated covid infections affecting pupil health?" I've been asking the question in person, face to face, while chatting to them about other issues, including staffing problems and attendance.

Three quick things about this year's flu wave. Has it actually 'kicked off' yet?

Look at 2019 and 2024.
They have one kicking off point.

Interestingly it was the same week in both years - the week kids go back to school after half term break.

From there it skyrockets.

I've been sent the text below, which is an extract from a proposed article that didn't make it to publication.
The writer asked me to share it.

For American readers: categories like Motor Neuron Disease include things like Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis/ALS/Lou Gehrig's disease. "There is growing concern among clinicians and researchers that COVID-19 infection may be contributing to a striking rise in rare but serious neuromuscular conditions such as motor neuron disease (MND) and spinal muscular atrophy (SMA) among younger adults.

I've been watching soccer players here get ACL injuries with painful regularity over the last five years.

I've had two ACL injuries myself, and some times of year I develop a painful ache just below and to the side of my knee that feels like a small ball of pure pain.
🧵 So whenever I hear about someone going through this, I feel a strong personal empathy.

You might think that public health bodies and institutions and their leaders know what they're talking about, but, sadly, they often just regurgitate garbage fake science that has no actual basis in fact, but sometimes it's more sinister than that. Here's an example, shared a couple of weeks ago by the American Society of Microbiology.

It includes a claim (a lie, actually, but we'll come to that) that you might have seen repeated a lot during the last few years.

I'm slowly working my way through the thousands of conditions covered by the uk hospital episodes data.

Quite a few people have been asking me about POTS and Dysautonomia.

Well... Where shall we start.

Autonomic nervous systems in teenagers?

I think it's worth taking a look at the trends in hospital episodes for breast cancer.
🧵

https://twitter.com/fillthewhole/status/1987442929766449169

A few graphs to follow.
They show the number of 'hospital episodes' for different aspects of breast cancer.

Hospital episodes are *not the same* as case numbers, or people suffering from breast cancer.

If Covid infections caused harm to the immune system like weakening immune surveillance and dysregulation of T cell balance, making it harder to keep old viruses in check, then you'd expect to see some things.

Things.
🧵 You'd expect dormant infections to flare up again.

Why are people fighting about what Long Covid is?

This is really important. Long Covid is the casual term for the long term health problems caused by Covid infection.

It's probably time to talk about bird flu again.
🧵 You may have noticed UKHSA going into intense *we're not panicking mode* about flu here.

So... teeth eh.

I went to visit a 45 year old man in hospital today.
He's recovering from complications of his recovery from surgery after an infection... and he said that while he was ill, three of his teeth fell out.

So I thought I'd look up statistics on teeth... Brace yourself.

Shall we work down the list?

https://twitter.com/EpiEllie/status/1877819129316389124

Look out for sharp increases in the last couple of years.

The five things you need to know if you're just realising that it's bad for you to keep catching Covid: 1
You can't properly reduce your risk of catching Covid and still look normal.

I have had another horrible realisation. It suddenly made sense of *loads* of things about the effects of covid infection itself, but it also made massive sense of why public health is missing what's going on.
🧵🙏 This is hard to articulate coherently, but I'm going to try.

I just want to do a quick thread about the doubling and more of sickness absence of young doctors.

Some graphs with real genuine NHS data on them. There is no equivalent dataset to this here in this country as far as I know.

The NHS is the largest employer in this country, about the sixth largest employer in the world.

So this database is *huge*.

I occasionally talk about how hideously incompetent the ukhsa is.

And, yes, it's hard to tell if it's hideous incompetence or plain malice sometimes.

Here's an example.

🧵 This discussion of the autumn booster contains this piece of staggering inaccuracy:

Young adults.
Let's see how they're doing. Or something that affects your skin in a dozen ways...