"’We noted gray matter alterations in both patients with #LongCovid and those unimpaired after a #covid19#infection,’ said [lead study author Alexander Rau]. ‘Interestingly, we not only noted widespread microstructural alterations in patients with long COVID, but also in those unimpaired after having contracted COVID-19.’”
These posts are no longer intended so much to warn people about the dangers of the #SARS2#virus as to remind my fellow lonely weirdo holdouts that what we’re doing (or mostly NOT doing—inhaling other people’s unfiltered lung exhaust) is actually the only sensible option.
There is just not an alternative that makes sense during a #pandemic with a dangerous airborne pathogen on the loose. And despite what the masses want to believe and what business and political interests want them to… 2/
…believe, some essential stubborn realities remain:
If you’re in any public place in North America, Australia, Europe—pretty much anywhere—with a hundred other people around, you are almost certainly within breathing distance of someone who is infected with the #SARS_COV_2 virus.
If you could smell that person smoking a (hypothetical) cigarette, then you are inhaling virus particles freshly budded off infected cells in their body, looking for a new host. Tag, you’re it! 3/
This virus causes brain damage, among many other things.
That really ought to be enough. I could go into all the different kinds of damage it does, to the immune system, liver, heart, blood vessels, kidneys, etc. etc. I could describe the fading hopes and unceasing misery and disability of the people afflicted with #LongCovid, not just from reading articles that no longer seem to get published much but also first-hand communication with them.
Frankly, I am beyond caring about the people who don’t care. These posts are just for you, fellow traveler on this lonely road—and for me, too—as we stare with dumbfounded resignation toward a horizon that looks as bleak as the ground we’ve already walked.
Nobody cares, including the people whose job it is to to care. We are utterly, profoundly, maddeningly alone.
It feels like being the only sober person at a party of drunks. And that metaphor is unfortunately quite apt. 5/
Most of us can drink a beer and feel fine. But there’s a reason why airline pilots can’t drink AT ALL before sitting in the cockpit of a plane. Not even one beer.
Because your brain has been subtly affected by even that small amount of ethanol. You might even enjoy the buzz from the slight impairment in your cognitive abilities. And if you’re kicking back in your recliner and don’t have a problem with alcoholism, why the hell not. You’ll be back to 100% in the morning.
This terrifying conclusion deserves a CW: It can infect the brain, and damage it in the process. The changes it causes are not always reversible. A lot of people with LC will never get better. There’s no way to tell if you’ll be one of them.
Even if you don’t get LC, the damage can lurk there under the surface, a permanent mild impairment to which you habituate, because that’s just what we do. We get used to losses.
@edsuom I appreciate your post, and I agree that Covid had significant impacts beyond what we fully understand. We need to take it seriously, but what further actions are necessary or recommended? (I am asking in seriousness, not flippantly). For those of us who are fully vaccinated, boosted, or even had a mild case after all of that… surely we do not need to wear masks everywhere in public. In doctor’s offices, mass transit, or around vulnerable populations- of course.
>surely we do not need to wear masks everywhere in public
Why would you think that so late in the game?
It has been YEARS. MILLIONS of people have died. You should wear a mask everywhere in public. Transmission rates are still higher than they were in March 2020 -- if you thought it made sense to wear a mask then, then it still makes sense to wear a mask now.
When the nasal vaccines come out next year we can re-assess.
@jmichaelsturm@edsuom
Vaccines — unfortunately, vaccines reduce the risks by something like a third... which is both excellent and also not nearly enough to rely on them alone
Masks — yeah, everywhere in public (indoors or crowded outdoors). At current rates, pretty much any public space will have someone who's infected, and indoors the virus can hang around in the air for hours. On the other side of the coin, pretty much every public space is somebody's mandatory workplace that they have to attend, whether they're vulnerable or not
"Masks indoors (except at home)" is also a much easier rule to follow than trying to evaluate on a case-by-case basis...
Clean air — if you're in charge of a public or shared space, no matter how small or occasional, you can go a couple of levels up the hierarchy and clean the air; improve ventilation, add air purifiers, reduce crowding, use outdoors when possible
That includes work, of course, but also things like family gatherings and when you have someone in the home to do work (plumber, guitar teacher)
Every lungful of virus that ends up in a mask or in a filter or out the window is a lungful someone won't have to deal with, possibly for the rest of their lives
@dave@jmichaelsturm Dave, I appreciate your sharing this. The only reason I think I might understand what you’re going through a little bit is having spent two years with #ChronicPain after an injury three years ago.
This past year has been nearly pain-free after some slow healing I’d all but given up on. I sincerely hope that happens for you, too.
There's a book by Stefan Zweig, The World of Yesterday, in which he described how being anti-war in Austria during World War I "made me doubt whether I myself was mad among all these clever heads, or perhaps was the only person to be shockingly sober amidst their intoxication". I immediately thought that quote exactly described being covid-cautious now.
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