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tern Profile picture
tern
@1goodtern
kindness, science, hope.
135 subscribers
Feb 20 • 28 tweets • 5 min read
Here's what I think:

I think the covid wave here in the summer/autumn damaged people's bodies in ways that made them more susceptible to other infections like Flu B, and made them more likely to spread it.

There's no scientific debate about whether Covid can do that. Image The debates are only around how long the effects last and how bad the effects are for how many people.
Feb 19 • 21 tweets • 4 min read
Occasionally I wonder to myself whether I'm nuts.
Am I wrong to be trying to avoid catching all the diseases that everyone is passing round in this country at the moment.

And then I come across some data like in the NHS Workforce Statistics... You can find them here.
They're public and all available to download and ponder.
digital.nhs.uk/data-and-infor…
Feb 19 • 7 tweets • 2 min read
Holy cow 👀
I was writing a thread about something completely different, and I stumbled across the fact that 70% more NHS England staff are dying while working than ten years ago.

Do healthcare workers know about this?
#MedTwittera huge jump in the number of healthcare workers dying in 2020, but then the graph remaining high Bobbling along at nearly 1300 a year now. 👀
Feb 19 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
Trump doesn't 'believe Russian propaganda'.

Trump doesn't function on the level of 'belief'.

He functions on the level of doing whatever he is told to do by Putin. Belief implies conviction. Trump operates on being owned by Putin.
Feb 16 • 6 tweets • 1 min read
Yesterday in hospital a doctor in a flimsy surgical mask under his nose stood admiring my FFP3 mask.
Him: Oo. That looks like one of the good ones.
Me: Yes, it is.
Him: Has it stopped you catching anything?
Me: I've not been sick in five years.
Him: How do you know?
Me: I'm sorry? Him: How do you know you haven't caught anything?
Me: I don't understand what you mean.
Him: I said how do you know you haven't caught anything.
Me: I didn't say I haven't caught anything.
Feb 16 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
One of the things (one of the many things) that people don't understand about bird flu is scale.

If one teenager catches it now and is affected badly, they will get lots of attention and support.

If it goes human to human and 100,000 teenagers get it...

They'll get none. Because not only will there not be enough to go around, also the healthcare workers will all get it because they've decided to pretend not to know how to stop airborne viruses, so they'll all be out too.
Feb 15 • 20 tweets • 2 min read
A while ago I met with a group of teenagers. One of their teachers had suggested that I talk to them about career paths because they're all anxious about exams, university choices, future work. Instead of talking to them, I listened, and the actual problem was very different. Devastation as world’s biggest wetland burns: ‘those that cannot run don’t stand a chance’ This wasn't a group of random kids from across the school, they were some of the higher achieving kids with good academic prospects.
Feb 15 • 93 tweets • 6 min read
I had been baffled for a while by this weird and inaccurate obsession with droplet transmission in healthcare. How could some people in healthcare be so obstinately obsessed with *droplet* transmission while ignoring *aerosol* transmission.
Feb 14 • 13 tweets • 1 min read
So... let me see if I have this right:
People are avoiding healthcare because they're anxious.
And... People are attending healthcare more because they're anxious. People are thinking they're sick because they're anxious
People are denying they're sick because they're anxious
Feb 14 • 6 tweets • 1 min read
This tweet won't go viral. But when this flu season dies down, my bet is that virtually none of the flu cases in hospital now (in indiana or anywhere) will have been H5N1 and there will have been no reassortment of H5N1 proteins into other existing Flu A cases either.
Feb 8 • 11 tweets • 2 min read
🚨 New in depth study on #LongCOVID confirms what patients have long reported: symptoms are episodic, persistent, and disabling. Quality of life and functional status take a serious hit.
jogh.org/2025/jogh-15-0…Image 🔍 16-week cohort study found no clear recovery trajectory. Symptoms, especially fatigue, cognitive issues and breathlessness fluctuate wildly over time. The "get better with time" assumption does not hold up.
Feb 6 • 17 tweets • 1 min read
Ten things I want more than anything to be wrong about: 1
That Trump is going to cause worldwide disaster
Feb 5 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
In Dec 2022, a prominent infectionist wrote the tweet below intending it as a rebuke to those who said Covid damages the immune system.
He thought it was a mic drop, because TB was flat at the time.

But it wasn't a mic drop...

Like the man said *Latent TB turns into active disease in immunocompromised people*.

Since that mic drop there has been a FIFTY PERCENT rise in just TWO YEARS.Image Have been tracking this one for a while now.
😥
Feb 4 • 49 tweets • 5 min read
Oh hang on a second.

A penny drops... I've been thinking recently that wide spread of traditional winter viruses like flu, rsv, etc may (while also harming and killing people) trigger the immune system in ways that help fight other infections... and help prevent covid waves getting a foothold.
Feb 3 • 15 tweets • 2 min read
I don't think enough people appreciate that Covid infection can make you more vulnerable to developing PTSD.

A quick important thread... If you hang out in groups with people with Long Covid, it won't be long before you hear people talking about PTSD, but in the groups there doesn't seem to be the realisation that it may have been Covid infection itself that made PTSD more likely.
Feb 1 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
"When your patient coughing up blood, thought to be from clots in their lungs, tests positive for tuberculosis... and you realized you weren't wearing a mask in the room"

So many doctors like learning the hard way, it seems. From here:
Jan 31 • 12 tweets • 2 min read
This is a strange pattern.
I think it needs looking at very very closely.

Look at when Covid has dominated here in the last year. Image I don't have all the data handy for the previous year 2023 in the same format, but it looks like this for Flu, Covid and RSV: Image
Jan 31 • 31 tweets • 4 min read
Feel free to file this one under "tern knows absolutely nothing about anything so shouldn't even open his mouth", but occasionally I wonder about the way that Covid sometimes seems to behave more like some bacteria than like other airborne viruses. A few intracellular bacteria like TB and Chlamydia Pneumoniae are great at delaying or suppressing the early immune response to establish infection.
Jan 30 • 26 tweets • 3 min read
Back in 2020 I was warning about what Covid infections would do to some developing fetuses and babies and infants.
I was screaming it.

Here's the next stage of effects:
"teachers reported children with poor basic motor skills and underdeveloped muscles"... Image "A deputy head in the north-west reported an increase in “delayed walkers” with “clumsy movements, dropping things""
Jan 28 • 15 tweets • 2 min read
A few decades ago the New Statesman had a competition inviting people to write in following a three part formula:
I am x
You are y
He is z It was about the way that you describe your own actions or character.
Jan 27 • 18 tweets • 2 min read
This question is an amazing question - absolutely brilliant.

It is one of the *central problems* of the covid response puzzle.

I addressed it about two years ago, but can't find the thread, so here's another go... Single experts do not have the whole picture.

Their expertise applies to *one area*.