🇨🇦 🇿🇦• writer • photographer • Long Covid first waver • maker of 12x Corsi-Rosenthals • Yukoner • @taniaspencer.bsky.social • 🦋
Oct 9 • 6 tweets • 1 min read
1/ Long COVID is a new stigmatized condition, still without a cure or much treatment. Justin Lemphers is one of 400 million people globally, who have experienced this often invisible and debilitating condition. 2/ Shared via YouTube, courtesy of the @CanCovSoc -
Jun 2 • 11 tweets • 2 min read
1/ My sons are filmmakers & have been masking on local film sets for 4 years. They occasionally get puzzled looks.
2/ Yesterday they were working on a film set in Whitehorse & were asked (not unkindly) why they always wear masks (because the pandemic ended in May 2023, right)?
Dec 12, 2022 • 34 tweets • 10 min read
1/ Herewith a longish thread on how these #CorsiRosenthalBoxes helped 3 of us avoid #COVID19 while a family member self-isolated. Extra challenges included (1) a Yukon winter, and (2) controlling infectious aerosols in an energy efficient house. 2/ I made these two C-Rs during our family's latest scrape with C19. These are my 9th and 10th DIY air cleaners. The others (save one) are in schools and a restaurant in the Yukon.
Nov 21, 2022 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
1/ Four months after I got very sick with COVID-19 and did not recover, Canadian Health authorities already knew about Long Covid. But they kept quiet.
And I couldn't get medical treatment because Yukon doctors didn't think it was real.
2/ What they were told:
1/ I wonder if, after 5 years of the pandemic, we may regret:
- Not issuing everyone with free N95 masks;
- Not putting (effective) HEPA units in all public indoor spaces (schools/workplaces);
- Not installing CO2 monitors in all public indoor spaces (schools/workplaces);
2/ - Ignoring health & safety in the workplace in a pandemic;
- Repeating "We have the tools" and not using them;
- Not addressing global vaccine inequity;
- Not listening to scientists, medical professionals, aerosol engineers;
- Favouring politics over science;
Jun 26, 2022 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
The muscles of Long Covid patients with post-exertional malaise (PEM) often struggle to extract oxygen from the blood, as efficiently as might be expected.
theguardian.com/science/2022/j…
"After coming across research that showed that mitochondria in white blood cells were not as efficient in generating ATP in patients recovering from Covid-19, she concluded that this might be the root cause".
May 2, 2022 • 9 tweets • 2 min read
"Pooled mean prevalence results for any experience of PACS (Long Covid) extracted from nine systematic reviews, ranged from 51%–80%".
Yes. Read that again. 51%–80% of infections develop Long Covid. /1.
publichealthontario.ca/-/media/Docume…
"Pooled mean prevalence results for specific PACS [Long Covid] symptoms were extracted, when available, from 32 systematic reviews".
Yes. Read that again. Extracted from 32 systematic reviews. /2.
Feb 9, 2022 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
I have been saying this for 23 months. A clear chest x-ray and apparently healthy pulse oximetry do not mean you are fine. Or that you can breathe properly. Not with COVID-19.
h/t @AngelaReiersen
“We know that when you have the COVID infection you have trouble breathing and that’s because there’s infection in your lung, but an additional explanation is that the virus enters the respiratory centers of the brain and causes problems there as well":
Long covid's cognitive dysfunction makes it easy to seem like the unreliable narrators of our own medical stories. Especially with doctors who practise evidence based medicine. Whereas I used to be articulate, I now search for words, forget symptoms, dates, chronology.
And sometimes in the middle of a sentence I give up, trail off...
While it is hard for doctors, it is harder for me. I have to be so focused, deliberate. It feels as if COVID-19 has burnt the neural paths I used to easily hop between, trace up, redouble - to extrapolate.
