Really excellent interview by @erictopol with my risk measurement hero or the pandemic. With transcript.

"from medical school, from all my education, we're not trained to think that viruses, especially respiratory viruses, have these myriad effects and all these organ systems."

> @erictopol 🔗 https://mstdn.social/users/erictopol/statuses/111048570993591436
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My conversation with Prof Ziyad Al-Aly on his extraordinary body of research to understand the impact of Covid

https://erictopol.substack.com/p/ziyad-al-aly-illuminating-long-covid

#LongCovid #covid19 #sars2 #sarscov2

It's weird how no one has ever debated the efficacy of N95 masks against tuberculosis. Everyone agrees they work on that airborne illness. Odd, that. #Covid #CovidIsNotOver #COVIDisAirborne #LongCOVID #WearAMask

@luckytran
You know what social media platform doesn't censor authentic #COVID, #longcovid & #vaccine information?

#Mastodon #hashtags

“lingering symptoms” is not how I've heard a single person with #LongCovid describe it..

#Disability #ViralPersistence #OrganDamage #Autoimmunity #ShortenedLifeExpectancy

Hey #festivals Halifax Fringe is doing the right thing so masks are REQUIRED. How about you other festivals? What's your excuse?

"Halifax Fringe 2023 is MASK MANDATORY festival! Please remember to bring a mask with you to all shows. We will have masks available at all of our box office locations if you cannot bring one with you. Thank you for your care and support by wearing a mask!"
#CovidIsNotOver #COVIDisAirborne #covid19 #LongCOVID #WearAMask

https://halifaxfringe.ca/

Want to talk about the New Normal? The New Normal is wearing N95 masks. Get used to it or get sick. #CovidIsNotOver #COVIDisAirborne #LongCOVID #WearAMask

I'm cautiously hopeful that we may be looking at the first tangible victory for people in the Covid story in BC for a very long time. @protect_bc, Do No Harm, Masks4EastVan and others deserve credit for pushing the government tenaciously. If we can win this, we can get the schools too, in time. You wait and see. #CovidIsNotOver #COVIDisAirborne #LongCOVID #BCpoli https://www.cheknews.ca/b-c-considers-restarting-mask-mandate-in-hospitals-health-minister-1168143/

Here’s why even mildly symptomatic people shouldn’t attend school…they’re exhaling high viral loads for 8 days! Even if vaccinated.

Schools are crowded with poor air quality.

Northwestern University invented a device to measure amounts of SARS2 viral particles breathed out by people.

#CovidIsNotOver #COVIDisAirborne
#BringBackMasks #LongCOVID

Article:
https://news.northwestern.edu/stories/2023/09/covid-patients-exhale-up-to-1000-copies-of-virus-per-minute-during-first-eight-days-of-symptoms/

More people need to know that The Boss has Long Covid. This could be Long Covid's Rock Hudson moment. #LongCOVID #CovidIsNotOver #COVIDisAirborne #covid https://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-12493521/Fragile-Bruce-Springsteen-health-worse-peptic-ulcer-surgery-COVID.html

Covid cautious avatar frames!

• Keep Masks in Health Care:

https://www.cs.toronto.edu/~cmaddis/masksinhc/

• Long Covid Awareness:

https://www.cs.toronto.edu/~cmaddis/lcaware/

#CovidIsNotOver #COVIDisAirborne #LongCovid #covid #covid19 #KeepMasksInHealthCare #WearAMask @novid

Reminder for everyone who is still taking #covid19 seriously, including avoiding high risk scenarios (indoor/crowded), wearing a mask, and pushing for better air:

It may feel once again/still that we are somehow wrong.

We're not. We're being gaslit (still).

We were not wrong in the past, in every precaution we took. And the data has proven it over time (number of cases, severity of infection, #LongCovid, etc.)

It's still happening, and we will once again be proven right for being safe. Covid has not changed. It has not magically become less dangerous or less transmissable.

The only thing that changed is the visibility and media coverage.

Being cautious is never the wrong thing to do.

What do you think? Is the needle moving our way? A little bit? Is the scale of this wave starting to peel away people to our side who thought Covid was over? Is there a bit more masking out there where you are? Is there a shift happening in the way the public is more realistically perceiving Covid in terms of risk? Or is this just wishful thinking on my part? #CovidIsNotOver #LongCOVID #COVIDisAirborne #WearAMask

@porkpie Yes, I did, and i kept the code around. It's about 1.5 kB of perl (with comments) I can post and explain if asked. Using even the most optimistic PH numbers, the most common outcome is about 2/3 having had #longcovid at least once, and 1/4 at least twice

It's primitive, eg. completely ignores the fact that some covid variants seem to leave the victims to be, some time later, /more/ susceptible to future infection.

Has anyone done any #LongCOVID analyses/predictions relative to where we'll be in 2029 (10 years since #COVID appeared) if we continue the "let'er rip" approach of the past 2 years?

Man I hope when Biden gets to India with Covid he gives every single G20 leader a big sloppy breathy kiss on the cheek. One on each cheek for Macron. #CovidIsNotOver #Bidenomics #LongCOVID #uspolitics #macron

I've taken a lot of risks in my life. Taking risks can be great fun. Just because we're Covid-safe, doesn't mean we hate taking risks. What we object to with Covid is taking on HIGH risk for what benefit? Brunch? Yikes. That's a bad bet. #CovidIsNotOver #COVIDisAirborne #LongCOVID #LongCovidKids #WearAMask

The (all masked, outdoor) Clean Air Festival was a big success! So many people! I heard several kids say "That was the best day of my life!" so yeah. It IS possible to have a great time with music and dancing and fun, and #WearAMask to NOT infect your friends. Imagine. #festival #CovidIsNotOver #COVIDisAirborne #LongCOVID #LongCovidKids

@PacificNic funny the contradictory stats people latch onto. "A 10% chance of getting #LongCovid is not high enough to worry about mitigating transmission, and a respirator's 95% efficacy is too low to provide protection anyway. :mastozany: "

A pandemic of innumeracy.

#BadFaith #LiesDamnLiesStatistics

Media collude with governments in downplaying the realities of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic: https://niemanreports.org/articles/three-years-later-covid-19-is-still-a-health-threat-journalism-needs-to-reflect-that/

As shared in this post by @sheislaurence: https://mastodon.green/@sheislaurence/110985798852103791

#CovidIsNotOver #Covid19 #LongCovid #MainstreamMedia #SARSCoV2

@MediaActivist I agree – though I might not express it quite so strongly, given how much governments and media are downplaying risks (presumably to save ‘the economy’)

I just looked at the WHO website to check, and they’re still (informally) calling it a pandemic, though since May it has not been a PHEIC (public health emergency of international concern): https://www.who.int/news/item/05-05-2023-statement-on-the-fifteenth-meeting-of-the-international-health-regulations-(2005)-emergency-committee-regarding-the-coronavirus-disease-(covid-19)-pandemic

It’s easy to quibble over words, but the fact remains that, whether endemic or epidemic, SARS-CoV-2 poses a potential health risk to everyone, not only in terms of the immediate disease it causes (Covid-19), which rarely (but avoidably!) leads to death – but also because anyone infected can end up with long Covid, the implications of which may take years for us to realise

(And I shouldn’t really have to emphasise that everyone may be at risk of hospitalisation, death or long Covid: even if people in ‘vulnerable’ groups are at greatest risk, they are just as valuable as everyone else, and we should do all we can to protect them)

#WearAMask – #CovidIsNotOver

Speaking of masks, the WHO advice there is woefully outdated (some last updated in 2021), and they don’t even mention FFP2/N95 or FFP3/N99 masks in their advice to the public 😷

It even tells people how to make their own 3-layer masks (!), which was reasonable back when the droplet transmission theory was touted, but with the recognition that SARS-CoV-2 is primarily transmitted in aerosols that linger in unventilated air, cloth masks no longer suffice 🤦🏻‍♀️

The WHO do still recommend governments to keep monitoring the spread of the virus, but here in the UK that has all but stopped recently as far as I can tell

#covid19 #LongCovid #SARSCoV2 #ableism #WHO