Ivysaur [she/her]

Do the majority of infections clear completely?

The numbers are still unclear. Keep in mind that HIV/AIDS, TB et al have had a much longer time around to be studied. The researcher I quoted above mentioned studying HIV for 20 years. COVID is only approaching the end of year 5. In spite of its recency, we do still have a wealth of data to tell us how threatening it is, anyway. Being re-infected several times per year is certainly not tipping the odds in anyone’s favor, either.

The safest thing to do is also, thankfully, the simplest: wearing a well-fitting, N95-grade respirator whenever one is away from their home. These types of respirators are, regardless of anything you may have heard, extremely effective at protecting you and others from infecting one another, even if no one else feels so inclined.

This is from 2 years ago, but was being discussed as early as 2020.

To be clear, McComsey isn’t suggesting that the viruses themselves are similar. Coronaviruses are not retroviruses like HIV, nor are they sexually transmitted like HIV. But it’s the way they make the people they infect sick that caught her attention. It hides in the body and continues to wreak havoc in the various organ system by driving inflammation and disrupting the immune response.

“HIV patients don’t die from the virus itself. They die from immune activation – from the high levels of inflammation that causes cancer, heart disease, liver and kidney disease,” she said.

“The only reason we cannot cure HIV is because the virus hides where the HIV drugs can’t go in. So it continues to fuel this high inflammation. That’s why somebody like me who has been studying HIV for the last 20 years found that COVID is extremely similar to HIV. It’s a virus that produces a lot of inflammation. We see a lot of conditions that are known to stem from inflammation, and now we have some evidence that it persists in different organs.” McComsey is referring to various published research papers that suggest the SARS-Cov-2 may linger in various organ tissues long after nasal swabs and blood tests come back negative.

If you wanted a more “academic” perspective, this is a study on “Long COVID” from this year.

We used ‘omic” assays and serology to deeply characterize the global and SARS-CoV-2-specific immunity in the blood of individuals with clear LC and non-LC clinical trajectories, 8 months postinfection. We found that LC individuals exhibited systemic inflammation and immune dysregulation.

This tells us that Long COVID manifests as persistent symptoms far after an acute COVID infection and appears to be, in reality, a continued infection by COVID that doesn’t go away, instead hanging out in various organs and constantly challenging your immune system – despite vaccination. Hopefully I don’t need another source to tell you why this is a bad thing.

It is no longer the acute symptoms one needs to worry about. This virus is like HIV/AIDS and will stay in your system long after you are “over it”.

Covid wasn’t even “that” deadly.

You people are going to make me lose my mind. Current estimates in the US are at about 1500 deaths a week. The last four years are the most excess deaths “during peacetime” that have ever been recorded. Ever. How much worse does it need to get???

Do you wear a respirator in public?

Do you wear a respirator in public?

Do you wear a respirator in public?

Actually I do, motherfucker, because I wear a god damn p100 everywhere I go. A fucking gas mask with removable cartridges and everything. Do that and get back to me. I get stared at, laughed at, pointed at, and I stare right back. I go about my business. I organize with my local community to give out free respirators, information, and education to anyone who needs it. Now tell me what the fuck it is you do again?

I’ll say the same thing I said there: I don’t care how much of a struggle it is to mask in public anymore, because I do not get a choice. My immune system has been fucked up for the last 20 years due to biological lottery. I mask, or I die. You’re not saving the world by masking alone, but you are saving every sick person who has to go to the grocery store and brave the odds again for the 1500th day in a row (if they’re one of the lucky ones) from getting it from you, another potential risk vector. If your actions could swing the pendulum even slightly, if they could marginally tip the odds toward saving even one life in a tidal wave, why wouldn’t you do it? When you tell me your masking does nothing in the face of an apathetic society, when you tell me masking is “virtue signaling”, you tell me you are not serious. You tell me to my face that you are throwing your lot in with my enemy; you are ok with leaving me behind, for them. So I will treat you with the seriousness — and vitriol — you actually deserve, a grace not given to me or people like me as you kill us.

If you won’t mask: tell me why not. I could meet you in the grocery store. I could meet you on the train. It could be anyone in that store or on that train that gives me the covid infection that kills me, but it is just as likely to be you. Tell me why you wouldn’t wear a mask to prevent that possibility. Tell me in the same breath that you’d tell me you’re a comrade at the PSL chapter meeting. Tell me.

“Nobody’s doing it so why would I” are the words of liberalism. Kill it or die with it. How dare any of you call yourselves my “comrades”.

Hey all you saying you don’t mask anymore: thanks for contributing to the deaths of millions of people like me, a disabled person who doesn’t get a choice. Hope it’s worth it. Fuck you.