Yves here. We are starting to see reports on the health consequences of Long Covid finally get out of the Covid-concerned ghetto. This may help blunt Covid denialism, but sadly what is more likely to do the case is more and more people being personally afflicted with Long Covid, or having a family member or close friend fall victim.
Given that we have no decent data on Covid cases thanks to many not getting tested, most of the ones that do using home tests that have a bias toward false negatives, and the lack of a mechanism for accepting reports of Covid cases, we have no idea of the frequency of infection and thus an imperfect notion of conversion rate from Covid cases to long Covid. Readers may recall that a large scale study found that the frequency of long Covid was 15% for a first case, rising to 38% with the third. Other studies have confirmed that more Covid infections increase susceptibility to long Covid.
Experts are acknowledging that Americans are getting Covid more often than the flu. Yet even with Covid deaths also much higher than flu fatalities (21,000 for the flu in 2022-2023 flu season versus over 70,000 for Covid in calendar 2023), the Biden Administration has succeeded in institutionalizing a reckless attitude in the public at large. So what happens when the economy and society start limping as the result of the ever-rising level of disability? It’s amazing that US officials exhort citizens to make personal risk assessments, yet also set out to make doing that well impossible.
By Lynn Parramore, Senior Research Analyst at the Institute for New Economic Thinking. Originally published at the Institute for New Economic Thinking website
In a candid discussion with INET’s Lynn Parramore, Dr. Phillip Alvelda highlights the imminent dangers of long COVID, criticizing governments and health agencies for ongoing preventable suffering and deaths. *This is Part 2 of a two-part interview.
Think you’ve grasped the full extent of COVID’s ongoing impact? Think again. As Americans shrug off vaccines and forget indoor air quality, the virus stealthily continues its destructive path. This was pretty much inevitable without new guidance urging a change in strategy and nobody telling us the full truth.
The danger is clear and present: COVID isn’t merely a respiratory illness; it’s a multi-dimensional threat impacting brain function, attacking almost all of the body’s organs, producing elevated risks of all kinds, and weakening our ability to fight off other diseases. Reinfections are thought to produce cumulative risks, and Long COVID is on the rise. Unfortunately, Long COVID is now being considered a long-term chronic illness — something many people will never fully recover from.
Dr. Phillip Alvelda, a former program manager in DARPA’s Biological Technologies Office that pioneered the synthetic biology industry and the development of mRNA vaccine technology, is the founder of Medio Labs, a COVID diagnostic testing company. He has stepped forward as a strong critic of government COVID management, accusing health agencies of inadequacy and even deception. Alvelda is pushing for accountability and immediate action to tackle Long COVID and fend off future pandemics with stronger public health strategies.
Contrary to public belief, he warns, COVID is not like the flu. New variants evolve much faster, making annual shots inadequate. He believes that if things continue as they are, with new COVID variants emerging and reinfections happening rapidly, the majority of Americans may eventually grapple with some form of Long COVID.
Let’s repeat that: At the current rate of infection, most Americans may get Long COVID.
In the following discussion with the Institute for New Economic Thinking, Alvelda discusses the wider social fallout from this ongoing health crisis, which could be avoided with the right mindset and action. He raises tough questions: Without robust surveillance and mitigation measures, how do we prevent future outbreaks from spiraling out of control? Is our pandemic readiness up to par for looming threats like bird flu? How do we cope with a population ravaged by the lasting impacts of Long COVID? The answers are a wake-up call.
Lynn Parramore: You’ve raised concerns about Long COVID rates surging under the radar. The National Academy’s new 265-page report is eye-opening, listing up to 200 symptoms affecting nearly every organ, hurting your ability to work, lasting months to years. They say cases of Long COVID are rising in 2024. How is this impacting people’s lives?
Phillip Alveda: Some people can get Long COVID, and maybe it ages them a little bit, but it doesn’t change them very much. But for others, their lives are devastated. The daughter of a friend was infected in 2020 and started having seizures. She had to drop out of school and couldn’t exercise. It took her four years to recover. She was just getting back to health, but a strenuous workout, a few late nights studying, and stress triggered more seizures and a setback.
A new report commissioned by the Social Security Administration in 2022 says that Long Covid is a chronic illness. People see gradual improvement in symptoms over time, but a plateau may occur 6-12 months post-infection, and only 22% fully recover within a year. Others remain stable or get worse.
LP: Those people may never get to their former health.
PA: That’s right.
LP: A recent JAMA study found that US adults with Long COVID are more prone to depression and anxiety – and they’re struggling to afford treatment. Given the virus’s impact on the brain, I guess the link to mental health issues isn’t surprising.
PA: There are all kinds of weird things going on that could be related to COVID’s cognitive effects. I’ll give you an example. We’ve noticed since the start of the pandemic that accidents are increasing. A report published by TRIP, a transportation research nonprofit, found that traffic fatalities in California increased by 22% from 2019 to 2022. They also found the likelihood of being killed in a traffic crash increased by 28% over that period. Other data, like studies from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, came to similar conclusions, reporting that traffic fatalities hit a 16-year high across the country in 2021. The TRIP report also looked at traffic fatalities on a national level and found that traffic fatalities increased by 19%.
LP: What role might COVID play?
PA: Research points to the various ways COVID attacks the brain. Some people who have been infected have suffered motor control damage, and that could be a factor in car crashes. News is beginning to emerge about other ways COVID impacts driving. For example, in Ireland, a driver’s COVID-related brain fog was linked to a crash that killed an elderly couple.
Damage from COVID could be affecting people who are flying our planes, too. We’ve had pilots that had to quit because they couldn’t control the airplanes anymore. We know that medical events among U.S. military pilots were shown to have risen over 1,700% from 2019 to 2022, which the Pentagon attributes to the virus.
LP: I suspect that most of the time, people don’t realize that COVID or Long COVID is an underlying factor in things like accidents or just feeling more tired or foggy or generally unwell than usual.
PA: Correct. The surges in these incidents are exactly correlated with each wave of the pandemic — and I want to highlight here that they are correlated strongly with the COVID surges, and most explicitly NOT correlated with vaccine distributions. We know people are generally sicker today than before the pandemic. There are more people unable to work, there’s more absenteeism, etc. All of this has gone up overall, and it’s key to point out that we’re not just talking about older people. The people who are proportionately most affected right now are the caregivers of school-aged children.
LP: How do vaccines safeguard us from both the short-term and long-term effects of COVID?
PA: The latest boosters/vaccines do offer SOME protection from catching the disease. And while it varies somewhat from variant to variant, that starts at about 60%, peaking 2 weeks after inoculation and lasts for about 4 months, and then after that declines at about 4% decrease in effectiveness per month thereafter.
What they do very well is prevent bad outcomes in the acute phase of infection, when one is most likely — though not certain — to have symptoms.
What they do poorly is prevent bad outcomes in the post-acute phase whether one has had symptoms or not. Recent studies have shown that the very latest booster/vaccine only offers a 20% – 25% reduction in the likelihood of Long COVID. And if you’re not current on your boosters, you have essentially no additional protection from Long COVID. It’s this last bit of information that public health agencies are failing to openly and clearly disclose, and most governments continue to pretend otherwise, having yet to take meaningful action to stem a growing post-COVID pandemic of disability.
LP: You’ve criticized the track record of the CDC and the WHO – particularly their stubborn denial that COVID is airborne.
PA: They knew the dangers of airborne transmission but refused to admit it for too long. They were warned repeatedly by scientists who studied aerosols. They instituted protections for themselves and for their kids against airborne transmission, but they didn’t tell the rest of us to do that. They didn’t feel like it would be advantageous, to be honest.
LP: You’ve also criticized the Biden administration for glossing over the ongoing situation during his presidency. Why the reluctance to offer clearer guidance and warnings?
PA: It’s interesting, I take part in a Global Biosecurity Working Group that played a big role in defining the nine-point plan to address the pandemic that Biden used to get elected. But the minute he was elected, he put a hedge fund guy, Jeff Zients, in charge of the pandemic response. Zients decided the best way forward was to convince people that the pandemic wasn’t happening.
We’ve seen a very troubling memo sent in February 2022 by leaders of Impact Research, one of the top political strategy and polling consultancies for President Joe Biden, on how Democrats should position themselves on COVID. Impact recommended that they should declare it over, claim victory, and keep quiet about ongoing threats and mitigation efforts. You can read the memo on the US House of Representatives web server and see how the report suggests it’d be politically more expedient to convince people the pandemic is not happening than it is to actually address it. And that’s just what the Biden administration has done. They haven’t been following science. They followed the political advice.
The Biden administration discarded almost all aspects of the nine-point plan that could have halted the pandemic, saved lives — and by the way, done better for the economy than their exclusive reliance on vaccines. They used the CDC, the WHO, and the HHS [Department of Health and Human Services] to amplify the message that the vaccine is all you need and you don’t need to worry about anything else.
LP: How would you grade Biden on how he’s handled the pandemic?
PA: I’d give him an F. In some ways, he fails worse than Trump because more people have actually died from COVID on his watch than on Trump’s, though blame has to be shared with Republican governors and legislators who picked ideological fights opposing things like responsible masking, testing, vaccination, and ventilation improvements for partisan reasons. Biden’s administration has continued to promote the false idea that the vaccine is all that is needed, perpetuating the notion that the pandemic is over and you don’t need to do anything about it. Biden stopped the funding for surveillance and he stopped the funding for renewing vaccine advancement research. Trump allowed 400,000 people to die unnecessarily. The Biden administration policies have allowed more than 800,000 to 900,000 and counting.
I would further note that all the while, the White House has maintained the very strictest abatements to protect people who live and work there from the virus: In order to enter the White House, they have to have had no symptoms for 14 days, the latest booster vaccinations up-to-date, and a negative rapid test. They have nine or better fresh air exchanges per hour and all filters are upgraded to MERV 13. They have also installed 220 nanometer Germicidal UV lamps. After a positive test, you have to have a PCR Test negative to return to work. The White House admitted quietly on CSPANthat the protections were still in place in July of 2023 when an Israeli delegation was not admitted after testing positive for COVID, after claiming with much fanfare the prior April that the pandemic was over and that it was safe to return to work.
LP: All those precautions are certainly not happening at the workplaces of the vast majority of Americans and in our schools.
PA: No.
LP: So what would Trump’s grade have been?
PA: D at best. He screwed up on the distribution and he politicized the whole thing so that now half the country doesn’t think the pandemic is real, and too many are disregarding precautions and opposing public health efforts. Trump really started the destruction of public health in the United States.
LP: How can we push for more effective COVID action from the government? Where to start?
PA: I think the number one thing is holding the people accountable who gave the bad advice that led to so many deaths, and removing them from positions of influence. It boggles my mind that in the UK, the proponents of the Great Barrington Declaration, which advocated for a herd immunity approach, continue to advise the government. That’s still the policy in the UK, and it’s still the policy here. We’re still acting like Long COVID doesn’t exist despite the growing mountain of evidence to the contrary.
LP: For those who may not recall, the Great Barrington Declaration was a controversial proposal sponsored by a libertarian think tank in 2020, which got people thinking that a sort of global chickenpox party would be a good idea for COVID — that it would help us achieve herd immunity. The herd immunity approach to COVID is now widely regarded as impractical and unethical.
PA: Correct. And we now have irrefutable evidence that each additional infection a person gets does mounting cumulative damage to the immune system.
LP: If you had to sum up your greatest concern right now, what would it be?
PA: That we’re slowly debilitating a generation by refusing to take obvious precautions.
LP: The parallels between the COVID situation and the Spanish flu are striking. The data from that pandemic tells a story of a generation dealing with all kinds of incapacitation, with many facing lasting post-infection health issues like respiratory troubles, neurological issues, and psychiatric disorders.
PA: Oh, for sure. People really want to forget what happened.
LP: Today, you see folks getting sick in all sorts of ways – dizziness, vision problems, more colds than usual, etc. — and yet don’t imagine it could be COVID-related. There’s this disconnect happening.
PA: Yes. You hear people saying they have another flu and they’ve had a cough for two weeks. But there’s no flu in circulation — and few flu infections last for two weeks. People don’t have a clear understanding of how you can still contract the virus. In their defense, no one has told them plainly that just walking into a room where someone with COVID was 40 minutes ago could get you infected.
LP: And as you’ve noted, a key issue is that people often don’t realize they’ve been infected or reinfected. How accurate are the over-the-counter tests at this point?
PA: Not very accurate at all because they haven’t been updated. They haven’t been updated because the government stopped sponsoring the creation of those tests. The volume of testing has dropped so low, it’s just not profitable for companies to develop new ones anymore.
LP: If you’re sick, how do you find out if it’s COVID or COVID-related?
PA: This is one of the problems with Long COVID. Many insurance companies are not even recognizing that Long COVID exists. Those that do require that you have a confirmatory PCR test. But many people have had COVID and didn’t get the PCR test. The good news is that now there’s a nucleocapsid test. This test can show you that you have had COVID, even if you don’t have an active infection now. So that is something.
But it’s a battle. My friend’s child is covered by Kaiser and they are completely incapable and unwilling to do anything to help her because she’s got a myriad of symptoms and doesn’t fit into their neat stovepipes of medical disciplines. Her brain was attacked by the virus and her autonomic nervous system doesn’t work properly. She’s got heart rate control issues, severe anemia, and sugar metabolism problems that are akin to diabetes, but it’s not quite diabetes. She’s got seizures, muscle tremors, cognitive issues, and vision problems. All these things come and go depending on how her body is stressed. No one in Kaiser is steeped in Long COVID or the fact that all these symptoms come from the original source of a viral infection, just like HIV.
Some places offer help. There is a local Long COVID care clinic at UC San Francisco and another one at Stanford. But if you can’t get a referral to those people, you’re screwed. And by the way, these places are overwhelmed. They’re not taking a lot of new patients.
LP: Can you say more about what’s at stake if we continue this way, with the low vaccination rates and abandonment of abatement measures?
PA: What does this look like if we continue on the way we are doing right now? What is the worst-case scenario? Well, I think there are two important eventualities. So we’re what, four years in? Most people have had COVID three and a half times on average already. After another four years of the same pattern, if we don’t change course, most people in the U.S. will have some flavor of Long COVID of one sort or another.
LP: That’s a really alarming possibility — that most Americans could potentially have Long COVID in as little as four years?
PA: That’s what I’m saying. And we know that somewhere between five and eight percent of those people will be so debilitated that they will no longer be able to work.
LP: What would be at the top of your list to move us in a better direction right now?
PA: I would put in place indoor air quality standards with teeth, standards that have tough compliance penalties, and requirements that every tested location be measured and certified regularly. And that should start with the schools. Then I would go to superspreader venues: arenas and churches, restaurants, bars, and gyms, especially the businesses that are densely populated, like meatpacking and assembly lines and things like that.
LP: Say you’ve taken your individual precautions – you’re getting your vaccine shot every six months, you mask in crowded places. What if your boss says, “I’m not shelling out fifty bucks for a CO2 device to test the air quality”? What can we do?
PA: It’s an important question. OSHA [the Occupational Safety and Health Administration] has been largely sidelined. Their decision not to emphasize the airborne transmission message stemmed from their acknowledgment that if they did, it would shift liability from individuals avoiding droplet transmission to institutions responsible for maintaining air quality. And they did not want the institutions to have that liability. Now, without question, the CDC and the WHO have finally acknowledged that they’ve been aware all along of its airborne nature. Donald Trump admitted as president he knew it was airborne in February of 2020.
We’ve been advising them since that time that it was airborne. In May 2020 [atmospheric chemist] Kim Prather did the actual physical experiment that demonstrated unequivocally that it was airborne and briefed [Anthony] Fauci and [Deborah] Birx in the White House. They have known for a long time that it’s airborne and they have resisted. And OSHA has been effectively powerless.
But I think the key is now that everyone’s admitted that the virus is airborne, there needs to be new indoor air quality standards. The healthcare industry has to require that healthcare workers are given proper respirators, N95 or better respirators, and not surgical masks.
I’m encouraged by a recent Colorado ruling where a surviving spouse got a judgment for her husband who was a healthcare worker. The courts said that the illness he died from was due to COVID contracted on the job and the employer, a nursing home, is responsible. That happened for the first time a few weeks ago.
LP: That’s a bit of encouraging news. Which nations, by the way, are doing a better job than the US and the UK? Who can we learn from?
PA: Those that did the best job are the ones that were run by women, notably, New Zealand, Taiwan, Norway, and Finland. It’s also the ones that are run by scientists and engineers: Singapore, Taiwan, Japan, Korea, Germany. The ones run by right-wing demagogues have done the worst.
LP: How can advances in surveillance and tracking technology help us as we go forward?
PA: Well, they’re almost immaterial because the government has shut down all the subsidies for them. The CMS [Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services] system still wants to charge so much for testing that it’s not monetarily feasible to do it on a national scale. And the government just turned off the requirement that the hospitals report their occupancy anymore. We’re turning off all the surveillance systems to try and get people to forget the fact that it’s still ongoing. Each new variant, really it’s just a coin toss on how lethal it is.
Now we also have to be concerned about the bird flu and the responses and mitigation efforts associated with that. Bird flu appears to have a very high death rate from infection, as high as 58%.
LP: The situation with bird flu is certainly getting more concerning with the CDC confirming that a third person in the U.S. has tested positive after being exposed to infected cows.
PA: Unfortunately, we’re repeating many of the same mistakes because we now know that the bird flu has made the jump to several species. The most important one now, of course, is the dairy cows. The dairy farmers have been refusing to let the government come in and inspect and test the cows. A team from Ohio State tested milk from a supermarket and found that 50% of the milk they tested was positive for bird flu viral particles.
LP: The FDA says that the milk is safe due to pasteurization, but they’re telling some states to curb the sale of raw milk and to test cows. What are you most concerned about?
PA: There’s a serious risk now in allowing the virus to freely evolve within the cow population. Each cow acts as a breeding ground for countless genetic mutations, potentially leading to strains capable of jumping to other species. If any of those countless genetic experiments within each cow prove successful in developing a strain transmissible to humans, we could face another pandemic – only this one could have a 58% death rate. Did you see the movie “Contagion?” It was remarkably accurate in its apocalyptic nature. And that virus only had a 20% death rate. If the bird flu makes the jump to human-to-human transition with even half of its current lethality, that would be disastrous.
LP: Does the mishandling of COVID render the population more vulnerable to other pandemics?
PA: Yes, it does. We’re facing a population with weakened immune systems that resist adhering to pandemic controls. That’s not a good foundation for dealing with bird flu and other potential pandemics.
LP: Thank you, Phillip. I hope we’ll be talking to you again as the bird flu situation progresses.
Is it hyperbole to suggest that this is murder and that we are the victims?
the Death Panel podcast often uses the term social murder à la Engels
https://www.bmj.com/content/372/bmj.n314
No. It is not hyperbole.
This is the Long Killoff, or Operation Stealth Jackpot, or whatever one wants to call it. It isn’t directed against any one individual person by name. It is simply part of a long multilayered multifaceted approach designed to get enough people killed to achieve whatever demographic endpoint goals the antipublic counterhealth authorities wish to achieve. But just slowly enough and seemingly accidentally enough that the big public accepts it as fate or bad luck or part of the inevitable decline and fall or whatever. If the Jackpotters speed up the killrate to the point where the public suspects and then rebels, then the Jackpotters have failed in an important part of their program.
As the mafia shooter is supposed to have said to his target . . . ” This ain’t personal. Its business.”
A successful movement to conquer every institution of power and policy at every level and purge every deliberate disease encourager from them might allow for the cancellation of Operation Long Jackpot. In the meantime, all the disease-cautious reality-based community can do is to try to keep themselves and eachother un-infected, or re-infected as rarely as possible, and perhaps scaled these efforts up to micro-community levels which can be decontaminated from the prevailing pro-covid-spread attitude and approach.
Trump promoted the idea of “covid is over” among the Redanons and Biden promoted the idea of “covid is over” among the Blueanons. So outreach and organization for self, mutual and co-safety should be primarily targeted at any non-anons of whatever team color they might be. Or no team color at all.
It’s a good thing covid is a hoax or people could be in real trouble.
But the same could be said of climate change, or of a number of imminent catastrophes. The effects of covid aren’t likely to contribute significantly to the ongoing collapse of civilization so we only pay a passing attention to it. It’s more important as political symptomology, but even there it’s largely just collateral damage and there’s plenty of that going around: people are disposable because it’s all about wealth and power and the neurotic human need to feel ‘special’. As a begonia I’m good so long as somebody waters me, even if everybody is too grossly irresponsible to attend to my root structure. I’m not going to beg.
Masking to protect against airborne pathogens is mostly prohibited in North Carolina, although there is a legally useless health exemption, of the same category as useless medical exemptions to pregnancy termination prohibitions. I would not kid you about such a thing.
I need society to get used to seeing people, especially school children, in full-face respirators.
I am doing my part!
At least you’re in a country that did much better than the USA!
Covid will solve the problems caused by Human overpopulation and there will be plenty of opportunities to monetize the decline, so it’s all good.
Not sure that COVID alone will do the job, which might account for the indolent response to the avian ‘flu outbreak in the dairy industry.
This is meant in snark, but I worry that it might not be that grotesque a caricature of what goes on in the minds of some of our elites.
In fact human population is scheduled to peak in 2050 or so and start declining. Then we will have the much more serious demographic problem of declining populations in which a relative minority has to support the majority.
We’ll have bigger things to worry about by then.
See: https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2024/05/preparing-for-collapse-why-the-focus-on-climate-energy-sustainability-is-destructive.html
“Super-rich may quit UK over Labour plans for inheritance taxes on trusts?”
They say that like it is a bad thing. It is not.
What a stupid, stupid timeline.
I know many people who insist they have never had Covid, or just had it once. The word is not out that (as I recall, and correct me if I’m wrong) up to 70 percent of Covid cases are asymptomatic, and unless someone close to them, such as a family member, has tested positive, asymptomatic people almost never get tested. Nor is the word out that the rapid antigen tests almost everyone relies on are worthless, because not enough moolah in it. Not only is almost everybody I know ignorant to these facts and practically everything else about Covid and Long Covid, they are dedicated to remaining so, heads firmly in sand.
I do think it’s better for the world overall, however, that most of us die sooner than later.
> most of us die sooner than later
IIRC, in “Brave New World”, people could look forward to a healthy span of 60 years, with a rapid and terminal decline after that point.
What we are setting ourselves up for is a similar average life expectancy, but with progressive chronic debilitation starting before adulthood.
It would, I think, be kind of like the world before antibiotics, except with a lot of technology operated by brain-fogged people.
NB: “brain fog” seems to be associated with diminished executive function. Executive function allows us to maintain mental focus appropriately, analyze a complex problem requiring multiple steps for a solution and carry them out in order, and set priorities. It also permits impulse control, delayed gratification, and long-term planning.
One could argue that a technological society (or really any society) requires all of the above to be successful. One could also argue that our society has been demonstrating a deficiency thereof for years now, predating Covid, and as a result is not being successful. Covid may just put the trend into high gear.
I have had covid once that I know of. If I have had unknown asymptomatic covid, then I too don’t know of it.
Perhaps I will retro-discover the answer if I break down faster than my family-genetics would seem to call for.
Why is the Impact Research memo (https://docs.house.gov/meetings/VC/VC00/20220302/114453/HHRG-117-VC00-20220302-SD009.pdf) on the house.gov website?
Yep. I know people that took a recent trip to Spain, as it happens I think the week after the Swift super spreading event. Both tested negative. I don’t know if they’ve tested any more times; it’s certainly possible it isn’t COVID. For one, the symptoms fit, though. It’s a shame no one thought we should iterate on the RATs so that maybe they work better.
It’s a shame no one thought we should iterate on the RATs so that maybe they work better.
But if we had RAT tests that worked and were affordable and readily available, people would perhaps be using them and questioning the narrative that Covid is over. PCR tests are more accurate but are no longer easily available, requiring a doctor’s order under many insurance plans and subject to deductible etc.
As someone once said, “If we just stopped all this testing, it would go away overnight, like magic…”
Yes, someone once said the quiet part out loud. And then the “later guy” applied that advice while keeping quiet about it.
CDC says you need to test at least 3 times for a negative:
https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/symptoms-testing/testing.html
But the public messaging is that none of this is serious, so… *shrug*
That has been my experience. I’ve had Covid three times, once resulting in Long Covid (bad enough I had to quit my job) that has lasted over a year and is still a problem. Every time I had Covid, I tested negative with a RAT test. We had a whole box at one point – I threw them all away.
I have long COVID since January of this year and I’ve had to give up playing live music as a result. Although I’m basically retired I still loved playing gigs at least once or twice a month, but it’s just not worth it. I tell friends that the tests are inaccurate but people don’t want to know.
I am a very long term family friend of a young couple; they are in their 30s. The woman is a school teacher and the guy is very smart and very well read but has a working class job (with a pension; that’s the thing) that requires a huge amount of personal contact with strangers. Since the pandemic started, her mother died at in her early 60s (supposedly not covid), her father died in his mid 70s of an insanely fast growing cancer (supposedly not covid), his grandparents (who raised him) both died. What I am seeing is that he looks pretty healthy, but psychologically damaged; she looks worn down. So does their girl. I wonder what sort of damage they have sustained. Their son looks fine so far.
Everything about their lives demands that they pretend to themselves that covid is nothing to worry about. Her job, his job, her pension, his pension, the well being of their kids, who are extremely active of sports and drama and singing. And there are all those big extended family get-togethers (smaller as people are dying from not-covid).
When I visited last I masked. I asked the guy about covid. He said it was his understanding that it continuously mutated to be milder. All that I could say was that that position was a matter of debate (he was in the middle of preparing a memorial service). He could see my mask. What else could I have said? I can’t replace their pensions. And they wouldn’t accept the changes they would have to make. If it isn’t too late anyway.
So I am stuck holding out the completely irrational hope that all of this worry about covid is a small mass psychosis. If I had told them what was up three years ago, they would have missed out on countless things that matter to them. And presently nearly everyone would be telling them that they had been idiots for listening to me. The virus’ time frame is not our time frame.
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=1p1nn
January 15, 2018
Life Expectancy at Birth for United States, United Kingdom, France, Germany and Italy, 2017-2022
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=1p1nX
January 15, 2018
Life Expectancy at Birth for China, United States, India, Japan and Germany, 2017-2022
I appreciate your posting these charts, and I do look at them when you post them, but I don’t know what to think of them. Are those big drops or a small drops?
They are drops. If you look at the blue strip under the main chart it shows the long term trend. There have been no other appreciable drops in 100 years.
Yes, thank you, I had not noticed the blue strip.
Apparently even such a large drop is not enough to make most people take notice.
They think it will happen to other people, not them.
Are those big drops or a small drops?
[ Remember, we are looking at an entire population. The life expectancy drops are huge, while the enduring markedly low US life-expectancy for a wealthy developed country is a repeating huge social loss. ]
But for the most part people are oblivious. Maybe that is partly due to covid brain damage, or maybe it is just that we do expect people to die, and there is usually no clear way to “tell” if someone one knows died early.
What we need is for a specialist to help address the fine questions. Notice the parallel social well-being concern about infant mortality, but with no “drop.”
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=1p1ol
January 15, 2018
Life Expectancy at Birth for United States and European Union, 2017-2022
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=1p1L6
January 30, 2018
Infant Mortality Rate for United States and European Union, 2017-2022
And maybe it is mass fatalism on the part of populations who realize that their rulers would prefer most of them to be dead and out of the way. And who just resignedly accept it. That’s the “fatalism” part.
A disheartening thought is that if the progressive mass debilitation of the population does take place, there won’t be as much of an economy left to provide the corporate operating or investment income that would fund those pensions. And the pensions won’t purchase as much, there being a general shortage of un-debilitated skilled labor.
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I recall an old sci-fi novel from 40-50 years back that began with a successful US operation in which operatives infected with a low-lethality influenza vacationed in Europe and caused a regional epidemic that damaged the local economies a bit but killed relatively few people.
I can’t imagine that the people who are keen on great power competition and US hegemony can be ignorant of the industrial/economic basis of international hard power (as Russia is painfully reminding US). Don’t they worry that if they wreck the health of US population, that will have negative consequences for US power? Or maybe they’re already so CV-brain-fogged that this doesn’t rise to the surface of their consciousness.
They say that Power is the ultimate aphrodisiac – but really, it’s brunch.
I wonder if some powerful people believe that AI, and other technology will make more humans redundant and they can rely on robots, drones, missiles etc. ?
This might be good news for the eugenicists and Malthusians – more “excess” human population can be eliminated. Some in the climate activist community might be secretly pleased: fewer humans, less greenhouse gas emissions.
The US already has dismal health outcomes, declining average life expectancy, and a privatized extortion racket posing as “health care”. Very few in power care about public health, and trust in both public and private institutions are understandably low. The US might want to create a modern, comprehensive health care system for starters, but that is always “off the table”, say the Bipartisan Consensus.
The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists list the ever higher likelihood of nuclear war and environmental/climate collapse as the largest threats to humanity. So, we can add the threat of another pandemic to the dystopian end times mix.
Some, including Jeffrey Sachs, have said that the virus was likely from a US biotech lab. This could very well be, as the US has had biological warfare research since WWII and even before. Who knows what has been done clandestinely.
https://www.jeffsachs.org/interviewsandmedia/2wts4jr6lccy9gxy9pdg99lzf2ntjn
Yves, thanks for posting the excellent interview. They covered a number of the issues we have been discussing here on NC. I would like to hear Dr Alvelda’s thoughts about the studies that seem to show a shift to IgG4 immune response in people who have been keeping up to date with the latest boosters:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10222767/
I heard they are talking about moving from XBB.1.5 to JN1 for next fall’s boosters…
Yesterday the FDA asked companies to focus on the KP.2 lineage if possible…
Thanks, Maggie!
There is long covid and then there is also damage from covid. I am definitely seeing damage from covid in people I know – kidney function is unexpectedly worse, blood pressure is high for the first time (and stays high), pancreatic insufficiency issues, frequent infections of all sorts. No-one I know is willing to believe that their new health problems are due to having caught covid. And to be truthful I can’t prove it in any particular case.
And what about the people who have long covid and damage from covid at the same time?
What name could we invent for post-covid damage? Post-covid afteritis? I thought of an analogy to explain the concept of post-covid damage. Lets say you get hit with a blast of gamma rays. After the blast of gamma rays has gone through you and is gone, you won’t be radioactive. You won’t emit gamma rays or any other sort of radiation.
But you will be damaged.
The money, it’s about THE MONEY. Via NC post from 2021, SMH,
I’m trying to assemble a good explanation in these terms. Of course the above doesn’t properly account for long covid. Just fatalities.
To inject an alternate timeline point of view; are the Reptilian Overlords immune to Covid? If so, that explains a lot.
I would guess that the Reptilian Overlords worry much more about the bird flu, they being more closely related, genetically, to birds than mammals.
Remarkably enough, twelve million Americans believe ‘shape-shifting reptilian people control our world by taking on human form and gaining power’. I haven’t met any of them and hope I never do.
Want to feel unique? Believe in the reptile people
As the article explains, the tendency to believe bizarre conspiracy theories is a manifestation of what deGrasse refers to as the neurotic human need to feel ‘special’. Abnormal psychology at its most abnormal unfortunately appears to be, well, normal.
I’m not going to rehash the Mad Gasser of Mattoon or the Tanganyika Laughing epidemic, or explore the catastrophic risk associated with the doomsday cult that seems to have taken over half the US electorate. I just want to live where people might be eccentric but haven’t gone batsh!t crazy. Let me know if anyone can tell me where that might be, but don’t do it if it presents too great a danger..
Roger dodger.
One “wake up moment” I had was during the early days of Phyl’s melanoma cancer episode. We had driven from Mississippi over to Houston Texas to inquire about enrolling Phyl in a clinical trial of an experimental cancer treatment. This was at the M D Anderson Cancer Center. Phyl started asking questions, especially about vitamins and supplements and their possible interactions with the formulation on offer. After about five minutes, the cancer researcher, a woman MD, stood up, glared at Phyl, and stalked out. We heard her stating to someone outside the doorway, “That woman is bats–t crazy.” That was our initiation into the insular and snobbish world of “properly credentialled” medical PMCs.
If we want to consider the ins and outs of a true Conspiracy Theory, we need look no further than Neo-liberal Economics. You see, there is this invisible spirit entity called “The Market,” and it has a preference for logic and order. Those who believe in “The Market” are blessed and become the Terran human Overlord class. Those who do not believe are cast out into the Deplorable Darkness.
You may be right in your assertion that there is a ” doomsday cult that seems to have taken over half the US electorate.” My question here is, which ‘half’ of the electorate is delusional and which half is ‘sane?’ I’m betting that both halves are deluded to a greater or lesser extent.
The fun bit about Conspiracy Theories is that they can be subjected to infinite regression.
Where Conspiracy Theories cross paths with Religion is a nexus better left unexplored.
Also, Covid can be ‘stopped’ cold with vaccines was known to be a lie by the official class that promoted the “vaccines.” An “Official” Conspiracy Theory that is no longer a theory.
In many cases, as my favourite bit of evidence, Feynman’s Addendum to the Space Shuttle Challenger Disaster Report, shows, centralized plotting is not needed. Simple congruences of interests can create an effect often indistinguishable from a Conspiracy. No Cabals need apply.
Stay safe!
Well, you know what they say about conspiracy theories.
” Its not a theory if it happened.”
” It’s not a theory if it’s happening now.”
And the Vaccines were palliatives with no side effects?
Excellent report on where things stand — much appreciated.
So here’s a basic dumb question… I understand there is no consensus around the exact percentage chance of Long COVID per infection, but there is some consensus that the chances increase per infection, because each one is apparently doing some permanent damage to the immune system.
But in terms of the math, do the chances of Long COVID increase like simple or compound interest?
Short answer, assuming an unchanging probability “P” (dimensionless, with value in the range 0 to 1) of Long COVID (LC) per infection, the probability after N infections that you will not have developed LC in any of them is (1-P)^N. So the probability of avoiding LC declines geometrically, as a power law. It’s more like compound interest than simple interest.
The situation is worse if the probability P is increased by prior CV infection.
For plausible values of P around 0.1-0.3, the number of infections for which the cumulative probability of avoiding LC is above 50% is not large, in the range 2 to 7. Many people have already experienced this many infections. This is why the writer asserts that, given present practices in terms of (lack of) precautions, most people will be (or will have been) afflicted with COVID in the not too distant future. At an individual level, it’s crucial to employ anti-CV precautions to keep the number of infections N as low as one can.
> most people will be (or will have been) afflicted with COVID
“COVID” here should, of course, be “LC”/”Long COVID”.
sorry for the goof
Thank you, this is very helpful. Regarding one point:
If each COVID infection does permanent damage to the immune system, can’t we say that, yes, the situation is worse because the probability P is increased…?
This is the point I’m unclear on, though maybe(?) you’ve answered it and I’m simply not yet grokking that.
My intuition is that the answer to your question is “yes”, but I think that the matter might not be definitively resolved. For example, if some forms of Long COVID have an auto-immune component, then immune dysregulation caused by prior CV infection might actually have an ameliorative effect with respect to those forms of Long COVID. IMO no-one should rely on that hope, however.
Regardless, IMO the only safe approach is to minimize N through as many layers of multi-layered defenses as one is able to implement.
We can hope for a “science is popping” outcome that might reduce both N and P, but even if that does happen, it is hard to imagine that they could be reduced to “zero”, and multi-layered precautions to reduce N will be advisable into the indefinite future.
Thank you, again.
For me, the take-away from your explanation is that even if P remains constant (and maybe it doesn’t), we are still dealing with an exponential function.
Completely agree with your last paragraph. Our best bet is a strategy of multi-layered precautions to reduce N, and the most promising one I see for now is working on air quality, primarily ventilation and perhaps UV-C.
I spent 15 years of my career working with population “mortality” of pretty complex systems. Do not overlook the possibility that as of yet unrecognized factor(s) are involved in not developing long COVID. Imagine a globally calculated P of 0.2. This could decline as you remove people who did develop long COVID from the study population.
Another goof — perhaps I have brain fog — the function (1-P)^N declines exponentially with N, not “geometrically, as a power law.”
I hope it’s just old age or, even better, lack of caffeine.
I think one of the reason Biden admistraition dont talk about COVID death numbers anymore is because they were saying how bad Trump admistraition bungle covid but under Biden more people died from covid at record number and i believe its covid what push Biden over the finish line. Liberal have no shame they will use anything to win a race after Biden won mainstream media stop talk about covid.
I think we need to resign ourselves to a different reality. The earth is a biological entity and, at the moment, it suffers from cancer. The cancer is human beings.
There is only so much plastic you can dump in the ocean, species that are eliminated, or other damage done before the earth reacts. Viruses are but one way to rid itself of the human cancer.
It is known that a fever triggers the human immune system and helps fight infections. Likewise, the earth will do little to mitigate the rising temperatures and use it to eliminate the human cancer.
The story is not humans v. the viruses or the climate, rather, it is humans v. the earth. Everything points to the earth curing itself of the human cancer.
I know two people, in their 70’s, who now have an auto-immune disease RS3PE, that appeared without warning after having the mRNA vaccine. There is also a paper by a NY doctor who studied two patients early in the vaccine rollout, who came in with this immune disease RS3PE.
RS3PE is really quite rare and is easily misdiagnosed. It’s also deeply debilitating.
I know this is all anecdotal, but for all the good the vaccine did, it does carry unknown risks.
I don’t disagree. We did not link to the first paper for its aggressive promotion of Covid vaccination, particularly given evidence of declining efficacy and anecdata about immune system costs (before getting to injuries, which have not been well tracked at all) and under-emphasis on non-pharmaceutical interventions. This paper is less doctrinaire.
Anyone recommend a specific duckbill N95 SKU they personally use & recommend?
I recall that U Maryland study cited here that duckbill N95s filter more particles than KN95 or surgical masks.
Try getting an appointment with a neurologist in NYC…you have to wait close to a year….some private shyster clinics have opened that do not take insurance and charge $950.00 for just the first visit. So, once again we see the exploitation against the poor, duped US taxpayer, no matter what the issue…
Your post was actually very enlightening. The fatigue effects indeed might be due to changes in mitochondria function.
Don’t be discouraged by the reply. I have also noticed many of the posters here have a weak grasp of even basic biology and chemistry. Probably one of the reasons why long covid isn’t given much attention with the average person thinking it’s all in their head.
Do you believe the average NaCap commenter thinks long covid is all in the patient’s head?
Response to Al above.
“I have also noticed many of the posters here have a weak grasp of even basic biology and chemistry.”
We can’t all be experts. I often come here to gawk and end up having to do some reading to add to my knowledge base.
If N is persons who learn from a comment and C is the number of times a comment is read, then N/C=a statistically measurable increase in the public good.