The Canadian Paediatric Society @CanPaedSociety, despite private requests to acknowledge the existence of Long Covid in kids and my public critique in @sciam of the baseless claims in their weak paediatric COVID vaccination guidance, still has not taken action. But it’s worse.
/1 Without releasing any guidance acknowledging pediatric long covid, which is proven to be a significant population health concern by an ever growing mountain of scientific evidence, they have now released this document that may harm kids needing care.
/2

cps.ca/en/documents/p…

A @NatureComms study of over 15 million people showed the risk (HR) of an arterial thrombotic event, e.g. heart attack or stroke, on day zero of COVID infection was:
-73x higher for vaccinated people
-255x higher for unvaccinated.

We aren’t out of this.

nature.com/articles/s4146… This is why ER docs continue to sound the alarm about rates of heart attack, stroke, pulmonary embolism, etc., particularly during viral surges.

Current KP.2 vaccine uptake is hovering at about 3% in my province. Similar elsewhere.

Again, we aren’t out of this.

Apparently I need to link to the sources my article uses to justify the estimate (stated noting uncertainty) of pediatric long covid incidence. Otherwise some will mislead into thinking I wrongly relied on a JAMA study designed only to describe symptoms:
🧵scientificamerican.com/article/long-c… The 10-20% number (noting uncertainty) is directly pulled from this JAMA Editorial which cites three studies in support, that I link to below.



/2jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/…

Long covid is harming too many kids, and we keep letting them be reinfected with new variants.

My evidence-based call for change in @sciam

We cannot ignore the accumulating risk of long covid in children who may be infected once or twice a year.
🧵
/1
scientificamerican.com/article/long-c… The unproven notion that public health measures were more harmful to kids than the disease is now codified dogma, and needs to be challenged on the basis of increasingly undeniable mounting research showing real physiological trauma to children from COVID-19.
/2

To clarify, you framed them as spreading insidious misinformation. It’s important to reflect on the fact that guests consistently invited over years have a long history of being wrong. Yet continue to be invited rather than those with greater demonstrated accuracy.
/1🧵

https://twitter.com/ianhanomansing/status/1842593676796764168

In this sense there is very much a media “in-group” that other experts with evidence-based but less palatable conclusions about the pandemic, its outcomes and the potential sustainability of the current approach struggle to penetrate into.
/2

A @UPennDBEI Professor of Biostatistics @takishinohara peer reviewed a highly publicized brain scan study, and allowed it to be published with a title claiming causation between brain maturation and an undefined variable not studied or controlled for, “lockdowns.”

Science™ I guess he needs a biostatistics 101 lesson on causation vs correlation.

TBH it’s so bad it seems malevolent.

https://x.com/BlakeMMurdoch/status/1833574687806566452

The authors and editors of @PNASNews should be fucking ashamed of themselves for publishing this study that is being picked up en masse in the media. It directly misrepresents its methods in its title by claiming causation (not correlation!) with a phenomenon it doesn’t study.🧵

https://twitter.com/EricTopol/status/1833225005842538553

So apparently other trauma, like kids watching their relatives die as I was during this time, didn’t stress them out, just “lockdowns.” Oh, and the study doesn’t control for covid infection? Which causes brain aging and is often asymptomatic or milder in children. You fools.

RETRACTION: The @JAMAPediatrics study claiming “strikingly low” incidence of Long Covid (PCC) in kids, retracted due to multiple errors whereby incidence was underestimated by a factor over 2.5. But also it’s methodologically completely invalid anyway.
🧵
jamanetwork.com/journals/jamap… Me, @Mark_Ungrin and @GosiaGasperoPhD previously published a response letter in @JAMAPediatrics and a breakdown social media of how the manuscript makes no sense and the methodology claims to use the @WHO definition of PCC but doesn’t at all. See here:
/2

https://x.com/BlakeMMurdoch/status/1752105777136066715

We desperately need better air purifiers for public spaces. The best I’ve seen is the metal box computer fan style using regular furnace filters.

Here I compare a @Vailima1-designed unit (~equivalent to @NukitToBeSure Tempest) to a Winix C535. Listen to the noise difference!

/1 The black metal box is way quieter and FIVE TIMES+ AS ENERGY EFFICIENT. It’s around 75% more efficient than any cleaner certified by Energy Star.

These metal box style air purifiers are effective, BIFL sturdy, quiet, nonadjustable, repairable and inexpensive to operate.

/2

My latest in @globeandmail highlights that broken or nonexistent social safety nets can push disabled folks into assisted dying. Also, with far-right ideology rising, language similar to "useless eaters" is now even publishable in a major newspaper.

/1
theglobeandmail.com/opinion/articl… I submitted this article for publication before the tragic story about Normand Meunier came out. It was already accepted by the Globe, and then modified to mention and reflect on this important new story. My article was in response to this horrible one:
/2
thetimes.co.uk/article/we-can…

It's time to clean the germs out of our indoor air.

My latest article in the @edmontonjournal discusses how after four years, the @WHO is finally on board. We have the opportunity to make the greatest advancement in human hygiene since water treatment.

/1edmontonjournal.com/opinion/column… What will be the benefits?

1. Mitigating all airborne diseases at the same time
2. Helping prevent future pandemics
3. Beneficial feedback loops/exponential decay
4. Healthy schools
5. Chronic disease prevention
6. Reducing burden on healthcare
7. Adapting to climate change

/2

Consider the following:

1. Covid likely can damage the blood brain barrier
2. Covid directly infects neurons and other brain cell types
3. We are reinfecting everyone with Covid over and over.

What range of outcomes could you foresee from this?

nature.com/articles/s4159…

"At some point we're going to have to have a discussion nobody wants to, one about how repeated COVID infections have left our children with permanent neurological changes / damage and how we are going to adjust our academic standards and expectations"
Signs put up in Brooklyn
🧵

Not a joke. It's based on the accumulating evidence we have about covid causing brain damage. In adults, covid, even mild, causes average of 3 IQ point drop, and 2 more for reinfection. How is this impacting child brain development?

https://twitter.com/sciam/status/1767889512863003100

This is how bad some long covid research is.

Our new letter in @JAMAPediatrics points out obvious, grievous errors in a recent study claiming “strikingly low” incidence of Post Covid Condition in children.

The study is clearly invalid and should be retracted.

A thread.

/1 Here is a link to the open access study, where you can confirm everything I am saying.

And yes, the pic in the first tweet is them citing a WHO definition of Post Covid Condition (PCC) and then completely changing the definition in their Methods.



/2jamanetwork.com/journals/jamap…

China and now France are having serious epidemics, and the suspected culprit is mycoplasma pneumoniae.

One possible explanation is that COVID-mediated immune damage, leading to lymphocytopenia, is causing opportunistic disease of higher severity.

Thread with citations below:
/1

https://twitter.com/nicolasberrod/status/1727746627098571028

We know that COVID can cause lymphocytopenia and that reinfection is common. It's in the Merck Manual for MDs. COVID is the only virus other than HIV specifically listed as a major cause of lymphocytopenia:



/2 merckmanuals.com/en-ca/professi…

Alberta finally gets a covid update. Yes, that is mere CASES of RSV and flu being presented alongside HOSPITALIZATIONs for COVID.

Modelling from @MoriartyLab suggests 47,000-65,000 are getting COVID in AB per week RN. Apparently COVID is not just a flu, who would have thunk.
/1 Almost all illness right now is COVID or secondarily, common cold. And COVID come with a serious risk of Long COVID, as high as 20% in women according to recent Statistics Canada information.

Link to @MoriartyLab's data:

/2lookerstudio.google.com/embed/u/0/repo…

*Preprint.* Bivalent booster 4% effective vs. XBB infection. CI *-12% to 18%.* Obviously still providing some temporary protection vs severe disease.

The ideological "let it rip" approach is ruining our vaccines. A self-compounding negative spiral.

🧵
medrxiv.org/content/10.110… This study had some other unusual findings as well, so we will see how it proceeds through peer review. @Daltmann10 could perhaps comment on the section regarding possible immune imprinting resulting in increased risk of infection for those who are highly vaccinated?

/2

This thread is for sharing stories of people who died or were seriously harmed after being infected with COVID in hospital. Please share your story.

The removal of masks in hospitals instead of upgrading to respirators will ensure these stories continue to happen every day:

🧵 Every story is a personal and community tragedy, not a number.

My heartfelt condolences.

https://twitter.com/__Granuaile__/status/1646127781246320640?s=20

/2

Ideology is driving decisions to end masking. Plenty of science shows that masking in hospitals saves lives.

1. Upgrading staff (not even patients & visitors) from surgical to FFP3 masks reduced hospital acquired infection 33% during Delta wave:
sciencedirect.com/science/articl…

🧵 2. FFP3 respirators provided 52-100% protection from infection for health care workers working on covid wards.

elifesciences.org/articles/71131

/2

Many people have "forgotten" there were mass graves in NYC in 2020, and without public health measures that would have happened everywhere.

Our new piece in @CMAJ is about a kind of historical negationism @CaulfieldTim and I call "lockdown revisionism."🧵
cmaj.ca/lookup/doi/10.… Lockdown revisionism involves false reimaginings of the pandemic where effective public health measures are wrongly reframed as discriminatory in intent and worthless. It can involve projection of already incorrect present beliefs onto a totally different context in the past.

/2

It hurts my brain and heart to see some MDs advocating for policies of minor convenience - ending universal masking in hospitals - that are 100% guaranteed to kill more vulnerable patients. Have they forgotten the purpose of their profession? Their oath? Their codes of ethics? 🧵 For example, the Canadian Medical Association code of ethics is here: policybase.cma.ca/media/PolicyPD…

Under "Fundamental Commitments of the Medical Profession:"
-"Commitment to the well-being of the patient"
-"Commitment to respect for persons"
-"Commitment to justice"

I can go on
/2