Just read this beautiful author's note after finishing Bloodmarked by @tracydeonn
This encapsulates my discomfort with how we tend to glorify surviving trauma as 'strength' & those who suffer as 'resilient', when they have no choice & cannot escape the violence aimed at them. This is not to diminish in any way the lived experiences of survivors of trauma, but rather to re-iterate that being human and vulnerable means being able to fall apart, and not having to be 'strong' in the face of the cumulative grief & trauma of just living in the world we do.

The success of movements and their reach often depends on solidarity between these leading to advocacy on multiple related fronts. Health equality, disability advocacy, decolonialism, anti-racism, feminism, trans rights, climate justice, health & social equality, are connected🧵 Not all movement leaders see these connections. From my experience, it's often the least privileged groups, and/or groups with an understanding of systemic power structures (often because they are subject to systemic violence themselves) who understand these connections better.

This epidemiological history suggests there may be cow-to-cow transmission of H5N1 taking place (cows affected without clear exposure to poultry/birds), which is quite concerning. To date, mammal-to-mammal transmission has only been identified in experimental conditions. 🧵

https://twitter.com/HmpxvT/status/1774889358174167549

H5N1 has been showing adaptation to mammals (PB2-E627K and PB2-D701N mutations)- which may explain the extensive transmission to mammals (sea lions, cats, foxes, and now cows) and high mortality among mammals affected over the past year.

A huge point missing from the 'cumulative risk' discussion is that it's not just about the cumulative risk of developing long-COVID population-wide, but also what happens to the quality of life of those who have long COVID with subsequent infections. Or does no one care? The limited research we have so far shows that this group is at high risk of worsening with each infection- significantly affecting their quality of life. Something not measured in cumulative risk studies- because those studies only measure new LC among those who don't have it

Given that 'cumulative probability' has now become additive- I guess the chance of getting a head from three coin tosses is 50% +50% +50% =150%?
(yes this is a subtweet, and no those calculations make no sense at all to anyone who has any basic understanding of probability!) The *real* cumulative probability for getting LC is as follows: 1-(the probability of not getting LC)=
(1- [(1-x)(1-y)(1-z)]....), where x, y, z... are the probabilities of getting LC at 1st, 2nd, 3rd infection and so on. The probability increases with each infection.

A brief 🧵on recent experience with possible MCAS (Mast Cell Activating Syndrome) as part of long COVID. Hoping this thread may help others who have symptoms of MCAS post-COVID who may not have been diagnosed, or have considered this possibility & may be untreated as a result Some background- I have had hypermobility, GERD, auto-immune disease (UC) & mild POTS before COVID. After COVID, the POTS, GERD worsened & I developed fatigue, brain fog & PEM. To those who know about MCAS, none of this will be surprising, as all these are associated with MCAS.

The media won't cover high quality peer reviewed published evidence on the long-term impacts of COVID-19 on every single organ system, but rushes to cover 'expert opinion' on an unpublished non-peer reviewed abstract that contradicts everything we know about LC so far.🧵 And of course no one can really critique because we know nothing about the actual nitty gritty of the study, as it doesn't exist, even as a preprint. How does one deal with a system like this?

Using TV shows to support the hegemony of normalising COVID by dismissing those taking precautions as having 'post-covid anxiety'. These shows, like MSM serve to maintain the status quo by dismissing anyone whose actions may threaten this normalisation as 'anxious'.

https://twitter.com/cv_cev/status/1768180056130527361

This is how a one normalises mass infection with an illness with serious long-term consequences. First, they call it 'mild' and suggest it's like the 'flu'. Then they talk about how mitigations like masks are harmful (they're not) & onerous, & how 'people don't want to continue'

This is such an abelist way to framing of how long COVID affects a whole family. Rather than highlighting the systemic issues that lead to CV families lives becoming smaller, it frames the risk aversion of an LC affected person as 'anxiety'
npr.org/2024/03/11/123… Here the partner/spouse of the person suggests that a 'compromise' is needed, where the 'compromise' is basically the person with LC taking risks that could disable them forever if they get re-infected. 'Eating in a restaurant' for example is presented as a reasonable compromise

The public health situation in Gaza is dire -
>1/2 million at risk of famine.
16% of children <2 are malnourished- 70% have had diarrhoea in the past 2 wks
>300,000 cases of resp infection & >200,000 with diarrhoea (1/2 in children under 5)
reliefweb.int/report/occupie… This is entirely man-made- forced starvation and lack of clean water, crowding - all imposed by Israel with support from our govts. Please please speak up. We cannot be silent. Every day more children are dying. And this will continue until Israel is forced to stop.

As govts take aim at Muslims & immigrants with blatant racism, your regular reminder that the most dangerous entities responsible for the most suffering and death are capitalism, capitalist hegemony, austerity, fascism, and ecocide (all of which are linked with white supremacy). It's odd that all those who speak about the 'impacts of immigration' or 'multiculturalism', never speak about the huge impacts of capitalism, colonialism and white supremacy on the world- it's hard to imagine anything that has had greater impact on humans & their environment.

The CDC refuses to learn from UK failures of public health. School absences remained very high when isolation was dropped. Those who were economically inactive due to chronic illness increased. Dropping isolation means more ill people- more absences. It's not rocket science. Even if you want to serve capitalist interests and get the most out of your employees (let's be frank- that's all they care about)- this is a really 'shoot yourself (and everyone else) in the foot' strategy.

Wrong. Studies of N95+ masks show that these work really well when used consistently. The Addenbrooke's study showed near 100% reduction in infection! The authors of this study clearly say that they did not measure SARS-CoV-2 transmission, so this conclusion is incorrect. If this study shows anything, it's that HCWs may need better training in donning and doffing. Also, would've liked to see quantitative rather than qualitative fit tests (one of the limitations that the authors acknowledge).

It's been nearly a yr of long COVID: POTS, PEM, debilitating fatigue. Here's what I've learned about my illness in the past year👇 1) My body hates heat (despite growing up in a hot desert climate). My POTS is *so much worse* in the hot sun. Just a short trip dropping daughter to school & back can floor me. Humid heat is worse than dry heat

I find it interesting that even as the ONS publishes figures about the highest levels of labour shortages due to chronic illness ever, JCVI are taking away the only preventative measure (even if only partially effective) against long COVID in place from much of the population...

https://twitter.com/GillianSmith16/status/1755567895772336598

It's totally antithetical to public health. Once again, one has to consider that this can only be based on ideology, not evidence. The CDC by contrast presented very clear evidence as to why the whole population needed boosters. The JCVI is consistent in it's imcompetence.

Wearing my new Cleanspace halo on the flight. Fit tested. Very comfy. Filters all the air that I breathe in. As it’s transparent, I didn’t need to remove it for the identity check or even the automatic gate that scans my face to match with passport. Taking no risks this time. The clean space halo is a powered air purifying respirator. It has a battery operated filter which filters and delivers air through a closed system. Every time I breathe in, it senses the negative pressure and gives me filtered air.

well, good thing countries like the UK, and public health organisations like the WHO really prioritised vaccinating children against COVID, then.... oh wait...

https://twitter.com/Nature/status/1737414012290142398

Oh, and is literally anyone surprised by Buonsenso's (Munro's friend and colleague) comments here - yes long COVID is 'self-reported' rather than a clinical diagnosis. What does he think clinicians rely on to diagnose long COVID? He should know, being a clinician himself.

When you say the risk of long COVID is 'low' & we don't need to worry, what you really mean is that it's 'lower' than before but still too high for something that's infecting everyone again & again & that you don't care about the clinically vulnerable who are at much higher risk. From a population perspective, if in the current era even if the incidence of long COVID is 1%, for an infection that affects a whole population multiple times, that's high. Because that's millions of people, given the numbers that get infected each year.

I'm not even going to bother with the Ladhani + Hoeg paper except to say that they actually quoted the infamous DfE study of mask use *only in communal areas* against no mask use for just *2 wks* which found a diff that just wasn't statistically significant. They didn't even wear masks in classrooms! I couldn't bother to read the rest, but assume it's of similar quality, given they actually included that study... yup, masks don't work if you don't wear. Already knew that... moving on...

Imagine the level of dehumanisation that has been reached when newspapers publish articles saying that young children killed by Israeli bombardment are dolls. >6000 children have been killed in the most brutal manner imaginable. Even more are injured & many disabled for life.

https://twitter.com/Jerusalem_Post/status/1730991247416766516

Yet, it's normalised to jeer at this saying these aren't pictures of dead children, but dolls. It's beyond disgusting. Everyday we see pictures of injured, bloodied, dead children. Intubated children. Floppy unconscious children. The cruelty to suggest this suffering is made up.

I'm so tired of seeing women of colour bear huge personal costs for speaking out against the mass killing of Palestinians - often losing jobs/positions- while those with far more privilege debate the word 'genocide' or 'the distinction between ceasefire & pause' or are silent.. Why do the those who often have far less privilege in systems always bear the greatest cost of speaking out? While those who have more power in these systems and could have more influence with fewer consequences, are either silent or actively silence those who do speak up.