Thank you for writing this super insightful piece. I feel less "out there" after reading it. The bit about the doctors? I had literally never thought of it that way and it's SO helpful.
ADHD so a STRONG since of justice, and I have been disabled by MECFS (I got it from mono) since 2012, didn’t get approved for disability until 2016, undiagnosed until 2019, no treatment offered at all until 2020.
My only critiques with the sate of the Still COVIDing movement are...
1. The failure of the community to bring disproportionate skepticism to new data, studies, etc. that don't reinforce the current COVIDer view of COVID. For example, the incredibly large and robust study that shows a dramatic reduction in the chance you'll develop Long COVID that scales with the number of times you've been vaccinated. Instead of being deeply interested and celebrating this potentially great news, COVIDers will poo-poo it say that Sweden's healthcare system is just gaslighting everyone (https://www.bmj.com/content/383/bmj-2023-076990)
2. Thinking that people with different values than us are bad/dumb/ignorant. Comments like "The folks who say “Well I have to go to brunch, it’s crucial for my mental health!!” — they don’t get it." fail to understand or appreciate that a large number of people, most people in facts, do get it and to them giving up many of the things they love is not worth the chance they may get Long COVID.
In the same way people engage in risky activities that could very likely result in bad health outcomes, like ride motorcycles, go skiing, drinking alcohol, having a BMI over 25, etc, people make the cost benefit of COVID and decide to do things we wouldn't. That does not make them bad/dumb, it just means they have different things that are important to them.
I am very much of the mind that COVID is bad, each infection is worth avoiding, and I take many steps to ensure those I love are protected (I've got a damn portacount in my basement), but we need to take a bit of a look in the mirror every now and then.
I could be a lot less judgmental of the people who feel the need to self harm for brunch if they weren’t taking others down with them. And if they absolutely can’t live without eating brunch in restaurants the least they could do is wear a mask in the grocery store, but they don’t do that.
I think my biggest frustration with people who refuse to modify their behavior in any way for an airborne pandemic is that they fail to understand if they become disabled they’re not going to be going to brunch much anymore. Not unless they’re already wealthy. It takes a LONG time to get approved for disability, and once you do it’s poverty level income pretty much. Not to mention that they’re going to feel sick all the time, so it’s not going to be like the before times when you get all cute and go to brunch with your friends and laugh and have fun. I mean you’ll do the best you can, and you’ll have fun with your friends for sure, and laugh, but you’ll probably get a couple days of PEM. So you won’t be able to do that often.
In the early days of Covid, when I thought there was a chance that we might be able to get past it, it was super frustrating to watch people disable themselves to the point where they can’t do the things they love anymore just because they couldn’t take a break from doing the things that they loved for a short time. At this point, since this is forever, I guess I understand the logic of people doing what they want now because there’s no guarantee we have a tomorrow to be healthy for anyway. I am not one of those people, I am already chronically ill, my life was destroyed by a virus and I lost almost everything waiting for disability to kick in. It took years to simply get a diagnosis and once I did there was no real treatment anyway, I found one in 2020 and it literally saved my life. And I’m not going back to that level of disability ever again.
It’s not your responsibility, nor right, to police what others do with their bodies. If an adult wants to risk being permanently disabled, that’s their business in the same way that one choses to ride a motorcycle, lay in the sun all day without sunscreen, or go swimming alone.
Should people be taking steps to reduce ensure they don’t get others sick when they have COVID? Absolutely, and we need to figure out a way to hold those who are reckless when sick accountable.
I don’t care what other people do with their own bodies. I care when they spread death and disease in the community. Because we live in a society. You don’t have a right to maim and kill people in your community.
“I could be a lot less judgmental of the people who feel the need to self harm for brunch if they weren’t taking others down with them.”
I know that’s hard for reply guys though. Reading comprehension is your friend. Have you had covid more than once? It may be affecting your brain.
Edited to add I see further down you do have long Covid. You might want to get your brain checked out if it shuts down after reading half of a sentence.
That's a very interesting study. In the summary, it says the control rate for UNvaxxed people was that 1.4% got long covid - type symptoms. Most other studies put the rate at least 10 x higher at 10% or even 30-50%. Any idea why there is such a discrepancy? Did they classify symptoms differently?
My take is that Sweden is probably underreporting, but universally so. Their definition of PCC was also very structured. So while the gross numbers are likely somewhat different, the percentage decrease by vaccinated cohort is still the same.
So that would bring the lowest bound estimate of Long Covid chances, 10%, down to about 3% per infection. Much better and definitely worth vaxxing....but still not anywhere near rare (medically rare = 1 in 1000).
Now where this gets super useful is stacking everything together -- metformin reduces the rate of Long Covid by 40% and Paxlovid by more (I can't remember -- let's say 15%?)
So .03 x .6 x .85 == now you're down to 1.5% chance per infection. Still not rare, esp. with cumulative infections and cumulative immune damage, but still better by a lot.
Also very curious to see what would happen if Paxlovid extended from 5 days to 10 days and if that would lower the instance of LC. My Long COVID resolved after I took a second course of Paxlovid 18 months after my infection.
And I say this as someone who had a child suffer from LC, and who personally suffered LC for 18 months before it resolved. It sucked, it was scary, and I don't wish it on anymore.
Oh, yeah I think you’re still suffering you had a really hard time reading a sentence that I wrote it’s like your brain shut down after half of it. Please take care of yourself I don’t think you’re doing OK.
Re: the study, I think they were looking more at recency of vaccination vs number of vaccinations. They weren't able to draw any conclusions about people >126 days after their 3rd+ vaccination. (n=199 of 589,722)
I fucking love this and totally relate! I feel so seen, so validated by what you wrote.
Thank you for writing this super insightful piece. I feel less "out there" after reading it. The bit about the doctors? I had literally never thought of it that way and it's SO helpful.
absof***kinglutely
Yep I am someone who fits #1-3.
ADHD so a STRONG since of justice, and I have been disabled by MECFS (I got it from mono) since 2012, didn’t get approved for disability until 2016, undiagnosed until 2019, no treatment offered at all until 2020.
YOU GUYS DON’T WANT THIS.
This. All of this. 👏🏽
My only critiques with the sate of the Still COVIDing movement are...
1. The failure of the community to bring disproportionate skepticism to new data, studies, etc. that don't reinforce the current COVIDer view of COVID. For example, the incredibly large and robust study that shows a dramatic reduction in the chance you'll develop Long COVID that scales with the number of times you've been vaccinated. Instead of being deeply interested and celebrating this potentially great news, COVIDers will poo-poo it say that Sweden's healthcare system is just gaslighting everyone (https://www.bmj.com/content/383/bmj-2023-076990)
2. Thinking that people with different values than us are bad/dumb/ignorant. Comments like "The folks who say “Well I have to go to brunch, it’s crucial for my mental health!!” — they don’t get it." fail to understand or appreciate that a large number of people, most people in facts, do get it and to them giving up many of the things they love is not worth the chance they may get Long COVID.
In the same way people engage in risky activities that could very likely result in bad health outcomes, like ride motorcycles, go skiing, drinking alcohol, having a BMI over 25, etc, people make the cost benefit of COVID and decide to do things we wouldn't. That does not make them bad/dumb, it just means they have different things that are important to them.
I am very much of the mind that COVID is bad, each infection is worth avoiding, and I take many steps to ensure those I love are protected (I've got a damn portacount in my basement), but we need to take a bit of a look in the mirror every now and then.
I could be a lot less judgmental of the people who feel the need to self harm for brunch if they weren’t taking others down with them. And if they absolutely can’t live without eating brunch in restaurants the least they could do is wear a mask in the grocery store, but they don’t do that.
I think my biggest frustration with people who refuse to modify their behavior in any way for an airborne pandemic is that they fail to understand if they become disabled they’re not going to be going to brunch much anymore. Not unless they’re already wealthy. It takes a LONG time to get approved for disability, and once you do it’s poverty level income pretty much. Not to mention that they’re going to feel sick all the time, so it’s not going to be like the before times when you get all cute and go to brunch with your friends and laugh and have fun. I mean you’ll do the best you can, and you’ll have fun with your friends for sure, and laugh, but you’ll probably get a couple days of PEM. So you won’t be able to do that often.
In the early days of Covid, when I thought there was a chance that we might be able to get past it, it was super frustrating to watch people disable themselves to the point where they can’t do the things they love anymore just because they couldn’t take a break from doing the things that they loved for a short time. At this point, since this is forever, I guess I understand the logic of people doing what they want now because there’s no guarantee we have a tomorrow to be healthy for anyway. I am not one of those people, I am already chronically ill, my life was destroyed by a virus and I lost almost everything waiting for disability to kick in. It took years to simply get a diagnosis and once I did there was no real treatment anyway, I found one in 2020 and it literally saved my life. And I’m not going back to that level of disability ever again.
It’s not your responsibility, nor right, to police what others do with their bodies. If an adult wants to risk being permanently disabled, that’s their business in the same way that one choses to ride a motorcycle, lay in the sun all day without sunscreen, or go swimming alone.
Should people be taking steps to reduce ensure they don’t get others sick when they have COVID? Absolutely, and we need to figure out a way to hold those who are reckless when sick accountable.
I don’t care what other people do with their own bodies. I care when they spread death and disease in the community. Because we live in a society. You don’t have a right to maim and kill people in your community.
It certainly sounds like you do - "I could be a lot less judgmental of the people who feel the need to self harm for brunch"
Not if you read the whole complete sentence:
“I could be a lot less judgmental of the people who feel the need to self harm for brunch if they weren’t taking others down with them.”
I know that’s hard for reply guys though. Reading comprehension is your friend. Have you had covid more than once? It may be affecting your brain.
Edited to add I see further down you do have long Covid. You might want to get your brain checked out if it shuts down after reading half of a sentence.
And apologies for all the typos, was up quite late 🤣
It’s the Covid brain damage hun
That's a very interesting study. In the summary, it says the control rate for UNvaxxed people was that 1.4% got long covid - type symptoms. Most other studies put the rate at least 10 x higher at 10% or even 30-50%. Any idea why there is such a discrepancy? Did they classify symptoms differently?
My take is that Sweden is probably underreporting, but universally so. Their definition of PCC was also very structured. So while the gross numbers are likely somewhat different, the percentage decrease by vaccinated cohort is still the same.
Interesting!
So that would bring the lowest bound estimate of Long Covid chances, 10%, down to about 3% per infection. Much better and definitely worth vaxxing....but still not anywhere near rare (medically rare = 1 in 1000).
Now where this gets super useful is stacking everything together -- metformin reduces the rate of Long Covid by 40% and Paxlovid by more (I can't remember -- let's say 15%?)
So .03 x .6 x .85 == now you're down to 1.5% chance per infection. Still not rare, esp. with cumulative infections and cumulative immune damage, but still better by a lot.
Agree.
Also very curious to see what would happen if Paxlovid extended from 5 days to 10 days and if that would lower the instance of LC. My Long COVID resolved after I took a second course of Paxlovid 18 months after my infection.
Did it though?
And I say this as someone who had a child suffer from LC, and who personally suffered LC for 18 months before it resolved. It sucked, it was scary, and I don't wish it on anymore.
Oh, yeah I think you’re still suffering you had a really hard time reading a sentence that I wrote it’s like your brain shut down after half of it. Please take care of yourself I don’t think you’re doing OK.
Re: the study, I think they were looking more at recency of vaccination vs number of vaccinations. They weren't able to draw any conclusions about people >126 days after their 3rd+ vaccination. (n=199 of 589,722)
THIS!
(#2 and 3)