David Steadson #NAFO 🇦🇺🇸🇪🇺🇦🇪🇺🌍 Profile picture
Public Health Evangelist #plantpowered 🌱 #kyokushin 🥋 #longcovid (mostly recovered)
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Mar 11 7 tweets 2 min read
As many of you know, my eldest son has had Long Covid since January 2021. He turned 18 a week ago, and for the last 3 years has essentially been housebound. He's doing high school as a distance course on a reduced load.
> What you may not know is he has a younger brother, now 13. He doesn't appear to have Long Covid, but is home today sick. Again. He's coughing badly and headache. He seems to be getting sick *all the time*.
>
Dec 10, 2023 8 tweets 2 min read
This PISSES ME OFF. The Nobel Prize festival tonight, with amongst others @kkariko and Drew Weissman receiving the Nobel Prize for Medicine.

F**cking Anders Tegnell is invited, and says the vaccine saved at least 500000 lives in Europe

Here's the truth about Tegnell -> March 17 2020 -
At a press conference Tegnell says that vaccines against Covid are at least 5-10 years away. It's one of the justifications for Sweden's "sustainable" approach (and of course, the herd immunity goal)
>
Dec 7, 2023 21 tweets 5 min read
A lot of talk about @Karl_Lauterbach's recent talk referencing 3% risk of Long Covid, so I've done a new version of my Cumulative Risk of Developing Long Covid graph, below, incorporating this figure. I'm not sure which study he was referencing.

Some important caveats in the🧵
> Image (1) The graph assumes that risk from any particular infection neither increases nor decreases. Much like the odds of rolling a 6 remain the same each dice roll, but the more you roll, the more likely you'll eventually get a six. I've seen studies supporting both directions.
>
Sep 12, 2023 7 tweets 3 min read
A recent Swedish study out on risk of Covid infection and severe Covid by profession, using data from Oct20-Dec21 (h/t @WicMar)

No surprise, the most likely to be infected - Prison Guards. After that things get interesting for the Swedish narrative ...
>
sjweh.fi/article/4103 HALF of the top 10 riskiest occupations for Covid infection were in occupations working with children, with daycare and primary school teachers at second and third.

Who's not on the list? High school teachers. Sweden closed high schools.
> Image
Jul 16, 2023 4 tweets 1 min read
One of Sweden's top newspapers today, @aftonbladet.

"200000 affected. How you can get rid of Brain Fog. The expert's methods. Symptoms."

Anyone want to guess what is not mentioned once? 🤔 Image @Aftonbladet Apparently it is mentioned right at the end! (we were reading it in a supermarket checkout)

May 26, 2023 4 tweets 2 min read
Nearly a year ago I posted this graph based on elementary probability mathematics (and for which I was viciously attacked)

At the time there was a lot of differing information about Long Covid prevalence, and in particular the effects of vaccines, variants, and reinfections.
> This week a new study was published in @jama that estimates risk of Long Covid on first infection at 9.7%. For those with multiple infections, the estimate was just over 20% - exactly what the 10% risk grey line in the graph above suggests for people with 2 to 3 infections. Image
Mar 13, 2023 16 tweets 9 min read
@dom_ma @CollignonPeter Swedish media's statistical trick was to make up a new way to measure "excess mortality" that does no such thing.

Many analyses simply ignore thousands of deaths in Sweden with a missing date of death (a unique problem), a figure which has been increasing over the pandemic.
> @dom_ma @CollignonPeter Standard excess mortality calculations using 5 yr averages underestimate changing mortality trends. Sweden's has been decreasing for 30yrs. Australias most recently increasing. This overestimates "true" Oz excess and underestimates Swedens. A comparison amplifies the error.
>
Jan 17, 2023 31 tweets 9 min read
All datasets have strengths and weaknesses that as an analyst you need to understand and acknowledge. I'm regularly having to point out the methodological challenges with Excess Mortality data, especially as it relates to Sweden, so a brief explanation in this thread.
> There are multiple ways to calculate excess mortality. The simplest is simply looking at the average over a period - commonly the last 5 years - and then comparing deaths now to that average, and looking at the difference. A key problem with that is mortality trends.
>
Jan 1, 2023 41 tweets 9 min read
The Director of the US CDC caused waves a few days ago by saying "we can't stop the spread of #Covid19". Is this true? What does the data and science say?
> The Reproduction Rate is a measure of how fast a disease is spreading. If it's 1, cases are stable, every infected person on averaging infecting one other person. If it's bigger than 1, cases are increasing. If it's smaller than 1, cases are decreasing.
>
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_rep…
Dec 25, 2022 18 tweets 6 min read
Swedish Herd Immunity Covid-19 Endemicity is in full operation. Time for a little Xmas statistics. This is the number of people hospitalised for Covid-19, with just under 2000 patients hospitalised Dec 22, already approaching earlier peaks. (The odd gap is when they stopped reporting because the pandemic was over.🫤)

The positive news is that the vaccines are still holding up against severe illness, with ICU numbers trending up but looking more like winter 2022 than earlier waves.
socialstyrelsen.se/statistik-och-…
Nov 22, 2022 15 tweets 5 min read
This is the state of Swedish HealthCare and #longcovidkids -

My 16yr old son has been ill with long covid since an acute infection in January 2021. He started high school this year, and is so fatigued he had to drop out after attending just 3 days, spread over 3 weeks.

> For a year from primary care we got "all the tests are fine, nothing to worry about".

Then I gave them a list of tests to do from langtidscovid.se/frslag-p-basal…, a site setup by a group of Swedish doctors with #LongCovid

>
Aug 12, 2022 4 tweets 1 min read
You remember how Sweden has spoken about how overwhelmingly important school is for kids, and how that informed the pandemic response here?

Our school has informed us that the coming school year will no longer end June 16, but a week earlier, June 10.

You won't believe why.
> It's because *the private company* that has a monopoly on "public" transit in our county has decided that the "free" school bus pass (paid for by our local municipality) will only be valid until June 10, and that their Summer bus timetable will start the next day.
>
Jul 11, 2022 9 tweets 3 min read
This graph is a draft for a Long Covid paper I'm working on. The paper will be a while, but I think it's important that people - and policy makers - understand the implications now.

It is *very* serious. With current estimates of the risk of Long Covid at approx 20% at each infection (yellow line), and policies leading to an expected 2-3 infections per year, **the vast majority of people can expect to have suffered some form of Long Covid within the next 2-3 years**
Apr 6, 2022 13 tweets 5 min read
The bizarre events at the Swedish Public Health Agency continue. Followers may recall that a month ago the Agency announced that State Epidemiologist Anders Tegnell had resigned to take up a "top job" at @WHO

sverigesradio.se/artikel/anders… A few weeks later, it was revealed the job doesn't exist, and that WHO basically knew nothing about it.

svd.se/a/v5Knw5/tegne…
Apr 1, 2022 12 tweets 4 min read
Our paper about the Swedish pandemic response has now been accessed an astounding 112 thousand times in less than 10 days. It's ranked by Altmetric as one of the top 10 papers of the past 8 weeks and currently #301 of the past 11 years! 😬

nature.com/articles/s4159… It's been reposted by Nobel Prize winning virologists
Mar 31, 2022 4 tweets 2 min read
"They have sparked an indoor air revolution that will impact public health for decades to come"

The US @WhiteHouse came out a few days ago with clear messaging that #covidisairborne that both @WHO, and oddly, @CDCgov have been hesitant to do. They are 100% correct and those inertia-bound scientists around the world spouting scientific nonsense in defence of ... well, nothing but medical "tradition" need to adjust their world views to fit the science, not the other way around.
Mar 14, 2022 11 tweets 4 min read
There's sadly a very good chance that China is about to turn into a massive morgue and a SARS-CoV-2 variant factory. It's not because Omicron is unstoppable, it's because the west decided to #letitrip, making it harder and harder to prevent outbreaks. While compared to Europe, China currently looks like this - Image
Mar 13, 2022 4 tweets 1 min read
Question for #longcovid sufferers that improved after vaccinations.

I was "mildly" infected in wave 1 and very ill for most of 2020. Jan 2021 I was hospitalized with a reinfection, but LC improved significantly for some time then began to worsen again after a couple of months. > Then I was vaccinated and it improved further. Slightly worsened, then dose 2 improved things even more. Slightly worsened then dose 3 improved things again and I felt good enough I was planning on a return to training.
>
Mar 1, 2022 4 tweets 2 min read
My day today,

1. I took my 15yr old son to the Doctor, where they did a test. His results were worse than an elderly person with COPD. Thank you #LongCovid. Thank you #AndersTegnell. Thank you @Folkhalsomynd

> 2. We spoke to relatives in Russia, who claimed Russia was defending itself from attacks by Ukraine and NATO. We then spoke to our mutual, elderly, cousin, in a bomb shelter in Kyiv, expecting to die.

>
Feb 28, 2022 7 tweets 2 min read
Unconfirmed reports from a UA parliamentarian that Poland will let Ukraine fly combat missions from Polish airbase.

If true this sounds very risky as Putin may see it as NATO involvement and retaliate.

But! It may be a very smart move and here's why...

ukraine.segodnya.ua/amp-ukraine/ev… Right now, Putin is essentially daring NATO to get involved. I suspect he believes they won't because of the risk of nuclear war.

He believes however he will take Ukraine, forcing a surrender once he begins mass bombing civilians ala Grozny, Aleppo and Homs.
>
Feb 21, 2022 5 tweets 1 min read
More than 1yr after my son fell ill from Covid and never fully recovered he finally - after I demanded it - has a diagnosis of "post-covid" and finally - after I demanded them - had appropriate blood tests conducted.

The result? The Dr just called to say we should take him to ER A year. MORE THAN A FUCKING YEAR.

I'm furious.