Innovation!

for bonus check out this awful URL from the nypost about it:

https://nypost.com/2024/06/13/us-news/hochul-open-to-ny-mask-bans-return-amid-rise-in-antisemitic-protests/

Original article if you love paywalls: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/05/health/long-covid-symptoms-recovery.html

“Long Covid can impact people across the life span, from children to older adults, as well as across sex, gender, racial, ethnic and other demographic groups,” it said, concluding that “long Covid is associated with a wide range of new or worsening health conditions and encompasses more than 200 symptoms involving nearly every organ system.”

The report cited data from 2022 suggesting that nearly 18 million adults and nearly a million children in the United States have had long Covid at some point. At the time of that survey, about 8.9 million adults and 362,000 children had the condition.

Surveys showed that the prevalence of long Covid decreased in 2023 but, for unclear reasons, has risen this year. As of January, data showed nearly 7 percent of adults in the United States had long Covid.

“Long Covid can result in the inability to return to work (or school for children and adolescents), poor quality of life, diminished ability to perform activities of daily living, and decreased physical and cognitive function for six months to two years or longer,” the report said.

But, the report said, “even individuals with a mild initial course of illness can develop long Covid with severe health effects.” And “given the much higher number of people with mild versus severe disease, they make up the great majority of people with long Covid.”

“Long Covid appears to be a chronic illness, with few patients achieving full remission,” the report said.

I love living through a mass disabling event as a disabled person who feels like they wouldn't be able to function if they got a new condition on top of the current ones! /s

Original article if for some reason you like paywalls: https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2024/06/06/covid-cancer-increase-link/

It was 2021, a year into the coronavirus pandemic, and as he slid into a chair, Patel shared that he’d just seen a patient in his 40s with cholangiocarcinoma, a rare and lethal cancer of the bile ducts that typically strikes people in their 70s and 80s. Initially, there was silence, and then one colleague after another said they’d recently treated patients who had similar diagnoses. Within a year of that meeting, the office had recorded seven such cases.

“We are completely under-investigating this virus,” said Douglas C. Wallace, a University of Pennsylvania geneticist and evolutionary biologist. “The effects of repeatedly getting this throughout our lives is going to be much more significant than people are thinking.”

“Covid wrecks the body, and that’s where cancers can start,” Tuveson said, explaining how autopsy studies of people who died of covid-19 showed prematurely aged tissue.

Feb 2022 is when they started transitioning from pcr's for everyone to home tests.

May 2023 is when they declared an "end to the public emergency" and ended the emergency and stopped requiring hospitals to test people.

This year they stopped requiring hospitals to report much of anything.

I guess this is just how it's going to be from now on, and we'll have to figure out what damage it's doing by analyzing excess death rates

BTW many parts of the US (Hawaii and SF, and my little town apparently) and world are experiencing a pretty sizeable covid surge at the moment. Most likely from the FLiRT variant, and there is also a different variant coming up called kp.3, so that's fun.

Can’t believe I’m just hearing about this.

I wear 3m auras and i kinda think they look like ass, I was wondering if anyone has recommendations for fabric coverings that make them look better without harming the function. Do such coverings exist?

An interesting study came to my attention this week that has me thinking much more about the dynamics of the interaction between influenza A virus (IAV) and the SARS-CoV-2 virus in a way that hadn’t occurred to me before.

The investigators infected a cell culture with IAV and then used spike protein from SARS-CoV-2 attached to a marker to study uptake of the spike protein. They found that “cells became highly sensitive (up to 10,000-fold) to the pseudo-SARS-CoV-2 virus after infection with IAV at different doses.”

They proceeded to repeat the experiment, but instead using live SARS-CoV-2 virus and then measured some of the genetic sequences that were produced as a metric for viral replication. They found that “cells that are inherently susceptible to SARS-CoV-2, IAV preinfection further increased SARS-CoV-2 infectivity by > 5-fold.” This suggests the production of far more of the COVID virus if they are already infected with influenza A, meaning that they will be much sicker but also much more likely to spread COVID because of the higher viral load.

They continued their study in mice. “A significant increase in SARS-CoV-2 viral load was observed in lung homogenates from coinfected mice compared to homogenates from SARS-CoV-2 single-infected mice…The lung histological data further illustrate that IAV and SARS-CoV-2 coinfection induced more severe lung pathologic changes, with massive cell infiltration and obvious alveolar necrosis, compared to SARS-CoV-2 single infection or mock infection.”

They went on to test a few other respiratory viruses to see if the same COVID virus amplification would occur, and it didn’t. This suggests that there is something unique about IAV that enhances COVID infection. In addition, they studied ACE-2 receptor (the binding site for COVID) expression and found that cell cultures infected with IAV expressed THREE TIMES as many ACE-2 receptors. In coinfection of the two viruses, ACE-2 expression increased 5-28x based on the cell culture line used.

My interpretation of the increased ACE-2 expression is that it suggests that someone who is coinfected with both IAV and COVID is MORE susceptible to infections that use the ACE-2 receptor to infect cells.

At this point, you might be wondering why this grabbed my attention since it seems obvious that getting infected with two different viruses simultaneously is bad for someone.

H5N1 is a type of an influenza A virus.

If you're immunocompromised, you should listen to this and know there are people out there who care about you and aren't heartless ghouls like the author of the NPR piece.

If you aren't immunocompromised, you should listen to this because there are a lot of really good perspectives from the hosts that will help you be a better comrade.

Not that there were a lot of people still masking anyways, but there was one person who sits next to me that was still masking until today. He just walked in bare faced and it really made my stomach sink…

Edit: came in this week and they have their mask back on… not sure why they took it off on last week, but happy to see it back on.

I got this all from their insta. https://www.instagram.com/p/C7es2xcJ8fS/

Biobot seems to have stopped publishing data and the CDC (really just the CD) is completely useless. Despite masking whenever I’m indoors in public with either n94s or n95s, I’m mildly sick, my kid is mildly sick, we had to cancel a small outdoor party because a guest’s parents are sick, and I heard of a local business recently temporarily shutting down because everyone there was sick. My kids are supposed to mask at school but I’m having trouble getting them to follow through with it since almost no one else is masking, so I probably got sick via one of my kids.

NGL, it wasn't much data anymore with how little monitoring is happening in florida, but it's still just about all that was reliable.

https://twitter.com/BiobotAnalytics/status/1791944840789291116

People are leaving replies asking them to reconsider. Hopefully they do.

In response to my partner and I still not going to indoor restaurants, one of our parents said that they have seen people claiming the vaccines are the cause of the various premature deaths of otherwise healthy people. I was trying to explain that we still have concerns over long covid and the possible part it played in our auto-immune disorders ramping up. I used an example of one of our family friends dying abruptly of heart failure without any sort of sign or warning, that was met with “well I’m seeing a lot of people might think it’s actually the vaccines…. I’m done… I really am. I can’t do this shit anymore, I’m so fucking tired of defending my decisions against people who can’t fathom a life without their very specific treats and vibes. Reataurants fucking suck anyway, anything in public is probably a dogshit experience, I can’t wait to move to the woods away from all these fucks.

Although heart failure mortality rates fell between 1999 and 2012, the proportion of people dying from the condition in the US has increased in recent years, according to a study published in JAMA Cardiology. By 2021, the heart failure mortality rate was higher than in 1999, signaling that earlier improvements have been “entirely undone” over the past 10 years, the researchers wrote. The findings were based on death certificate data collected by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

**The accelerated increase in heart failure mortality rates during 2020 and 2021 suggests that the COVID-19 pandemic might have contributed to current trends. **Changes in how heart failure is diagnosed and coded as well as improved survival for patients with conditions such as ischemic heart disease, which predispose them to heart failure, might also have contributed to the uptick in heart failure mortality rates, the researchers wrote.

It's just a super infectious and rapidly mutating virus that can cause heart disease, nbd.

BTW, Rates of covid are increasing rapidly in many parts of the world, including my town. It was low for about two months, and now wastewater levels are spiking again.

The latest edition of the World Health Statistics released today by the World Health Organization (WHO) reveals that the COVID-19 pandemic reversed the trend of steady gain in life expectancy at birth and healthy life expectancy at birth (HALE).

The pandemic wiped out nearly a decade of progress in improving life expectancy within just two years. Between 2019 and 2021, global life expectancy dropped by 1.8 years to 71.4 years (back to the level of 2012). Similarly, global healthy life expectancy dropped by 1.5 years to 61.9 years in 2021 (back to the level of 2012).

The 2024 report also highlights how the effects have been felt unequally across the world. The WHO regions for the Americas and South-East Asia were hit hardest, with life expectancy dropping by approximately 3 years and healthy life expectancy by 2.5 years between 2019 and 2021. In contrast, the Western Pacific Region was minimally affected during the first two years of the pandemic, with losses of less than 0.1 years in life expectancy and 0.2 years in healthy life expectancy.

Overall, our study demonstrates solid experimental evidence that SARS-CoV-2 can infect dogs and be transmitted to others by direct contact, producing pathologic brain changes even without prominent signs. Pathologic changes in the lung and brain were observed in dogs of both groups, providing additional evidence of virus transmission. Of note, SARS-CoV-2 infection has been reported to cause long-term pathologic effects even after the virus is cleared from the main organs of the body (17). Our study provides evidence that SARS-CoV-2 infection can damage the brain as well as the lungs in dogs at early and later stages of infection, suggesting a high potential for a long-lasting COVID-19–like syndrome to develop in affected dogs.

We detected SARS-CoV-2 in secretions from the nasopharynx and oropharynx of dogs in both the infection and contact groups, albeit at a low percentage. Remarkably, we found that the viral titers were higher in the nasal and oral mucosa of dogs in the contact group than in those in the infection group. That finding could be attributed to the role of the nasal and oral cavities as routes of virus entry for the contact group, resulting in higher replication of the virus at these entry points (18). We observed that during the early stages of infection, dogs in the contact group exhibited more severe inflammatory responses in the trachea and bronchioles than did those in the infection group. Those findings are consistent with results of previous studies that have shown that contact transmission can result in higher levels of virus titers and lead to more rapid onset of pathologic changes in the upper respiratory tract (19,20).

Tl;dr covid gives dogs brain damage.

So, we're almost assuredly giving our pets brain damage and long covid. Really gotta wonder what that's doing to their long term health and lifespan. Is it not just people that are gonna start dropping dead years before their time?

For example, I'd like to see a bell curve of VO2max for a bunch of randoms in 2024, and compare it to the same thing in 2018 or prior. Anyone know where to get data like this?

archive link

Over three days on Zoom, the course taught the ritual that forms the basis of the programme. Every time you experience a symptom or negative thought, you say the word "stop", make a choice to avoid these symptoms and then do a positive visualisation of a time you felt well.

You do this while walking around a piece of paper printed with symbols - a ritual the BBC was told to do as many as 50 times a day.

This costs £1000. Their target market is people who are often far too sick to work, and who have extreme difficulty accessing disability benefits due to the politicized nature of long covid.

In some cases the Lightning Process has encouraged participants to increase their activity levels without medical supervision, against official advice - which could make some more unwell, according to NHS guidelines.

A large proportion of people with long covid, and many of the most severely affected, have ME/CFS, which is a disorder of cellular energy production. People with ME/CFS deteriorate with overexertion, and for most this is irreversible.

The only way to manage this and prevent ongoing decline is pacing, which refers to a practice of monitoring your body for symptoms and restricting activity before it becomes too much. This is exceptionally difficult to practice from a psychological standpoint. It's also the exact opposite of what this process programs people to do.

High quality article on long covid fatigue here for those interested - archive link

The coach on the course stressed the importance of avoiding negative thoughts and words like "pain" and "fatigue", claiming using them can continue symptoms.

When we put these specific claims to Dr Parker [founder of this program], he said our questions seemed to be "informed solely by the rumours and misinformation" circulated by what he called "anti-recovery activists".

I have noticed that people in positions of power who push psychological therapies for neglected physical diseases like ME/CFS often use language like this - they speak of "rabid advocates" who "attack them." In general these types maintain that these patients, who almost without exception are not able to access any medical care for their illness, simply "don't want to get better" because of "secondary gains" (e.g attention, disability benefits) of being sick.

Covid-19 remained a bigger killer than the flu last winter, despite hopes the pandemic virus would eventually blend into the background with other respiratory germs that cause seasonal epidemics, a US study showed.
Patients hospitalized for Covid had a 35% higher risk of dying within 30 days than influenza patients, Ziyad Al-Aly and colleagues at the clinical epidemiology center of the Veterans Affairs St Louis Health Care System in Missouri found. Covid posed a 60% higher mortality risk than flu in hospitalized patients during the 2022-2023 season, the same researchers showed last year.

How totally unexpected and unavoidable.

Short answer: Yes, covid increases your risk of cancer, but it's not a huge risk.

Longer answer: Covid, like HPV, messes with our cells ability to make the p53 gene, which among other things, helps our bodies destroy cancerous cells.

In mild infections low p53 levels lasted 16-24 weeks before returning to normal.

In severe infections low p53 levels lasted past 24 weeks and may not return to normal.

It took a long time to measure the impact of the HPV vaccine, and it will take a long time to meaure the impact of covid and vaccines.

The video compares it to the risk of getting HPV and the Epstien-Barr virus. However I don't think either of those viruses mutate the way covid does, or have the potential to reinfect you with a different variant every several months the way covid does. Also, all three viruses have shown the ability to persist in people's bodies, which increases the risk of cancers and other long term health effects.