❦ If parents, and politicians and teachers, and healthcare workers and public health bodies wanted things to change, all they need do is read . It’s all there. But they don’t. They won’t. And they insist on their medical and scientific flat-earthing – hand-sanitiser for aerosol-transmitted disease – because they prefer the world to be flat. So let them walk off the edge of the world. [ Caveat: The earth is not flat, and doing nothing will not flatten the curve – but walk far enough, and you are likely to fall off a cliff.] © 2024 C19.Life

❦ “We cannot individually assess the risk of infection from poor indoor air quality (IAQ). Just as we cannot individually assess food safety in restaurants, or fire safety in cinemas, or aviation safety on flights. These are in the control of others, and are regulated for our health and safety.”

❦ “The reason why most people aren’t taking Covid-19 seriously is because they simply can’t imagine that their public health body would abandon protections and let an incredibly disabling and airborne virus spread wildly. They will be very angry when it becomes clear to them that that’s exactly what has happened.” ❂ © 2023 Dr. David Keegan, MD CCFP(EM) FCFP ➤

❦ “If you’re puzzled as to why governments and public health departments almost never mention the remotest possibility of SARS-CoV-2-induced immune dysregulation, it’s because to do so would be to admit the greatest mistake made in the history of modern health policy.”

“There’s nothing radical about clean air and compassion.”

“We are drunk-driving in healthcare... with a pathogen that has a 10% fatality rate in that setting.”

❦ On that 700-day cough... It’s a new thing, but it’s only reserved for inside supermarkets and offices. And pharmacies and hospitals and care homes. Oh, and your living-room. But apart from that, it’s not exactly a deal-breaker. I mean, c’mon. They put up with way worse in the 1900s.

❦ “If you are letting yourself get infected and taking no precautions against passing it on, you are not a passive bystander for your next infection. You’ve participated in creating it.”

❦ If parents, and politicians and teachers, and healthcare workers and public health bodies wanted things to change, all they need do is read . It’s all there. But they don’t. They won’t. And they insist on their medical and scientific flat-earthing – hand-sanitiser for aerosol-transmitted disease – because they prefer the world to be flat. So let them walk off the edge of the world. [ Caveat: The earth is not flat, and doing nothing will not flatten the curve – but walk far enough, and you are likely to fall off a cliff.] © 2024 C19.Life

❦ NHS nurse in 1990: — “Shit, I just got a needlestick injury.” ❦ 2024: — “Yeah, well, whatever. We all gotta die of something.”

❦ Mitigation = ‘Lessening the force or intensity of something unpleasant; the act of making a condition or consequence less severe.’ 1. Clean indoor air . The priority should be air filters in schools and hospitals . New ventilation and air filtration standards for all public spaces . Grants made available to businesses to upgrade ventilation and air filtration . 2. FFP2/3 [N95/N99] respirators (masks) in all healthcare settings . 3. Free Covid vaccines available to everyone. 4. Wider access to Covid anti-viral treatments . 5. Free LFT/PCR testing . 6. Improved Covid surveillance , including wastewater monitoring and Long Covid prevalence . 7. Paid sick-leave , so that people don’t go to work when ill. 8. Respirators (masks) on public transport , including flights . 9. Better support and treatments for Long Covid patients . ... and last, but by no means least: 10. A public education campaign on the long-term risks of Covid – and why people should do more to protect themselves. ❦ Addendum : Allocate adequate research funding for a sterilising vaccine as well as treatments/cure for Long Covid . ❂ © 2024 Cat in the Hat . ➲

❦ “Chronic disease is like the perfect medical crime. The cause is usually long gone by the time the disease manifests, and nobody links the two until it’s much too late for most.” ❂ © 2024 Henry Madison . ➲

❦ “It’s really not in the interest of the virus to kill us quickly. That’s why it has mutated to immune escape. That way it enters silently, and then eats you slowly whilst you’re still a spreading vector. Refrigerator trucks are long gone. That’s all the political class wanted. The unseen costs of CVD [cardiovascular disease] , DM [diabetes mellitus] , and both dementia and Parkinson’s Disease are the train coming down the tunnel. The economists are catching up. The actuaries are already there. Politicians and most people? Not yet...” ❂ © 2024 Dr. David Joffe PhD / FRACP (Respiratory Physician) ➲

❦ “I was in hospital for tests this morning. A nurse asked me: — “How come so many people are wearing masks? Is there something I don’t know?” I almost lost the power of speech.”

❦ “Every single case in which a person with COVID-19 infects another person in a healthcare setting – patient, relative, or hospital staff member – is a significant failure of hospital procedures. Every single instance .”

❦ “We cannot individually assess the risk of infection from poor indoor air quality (IAQ). Just as we cannot individually assess food safety in restaurants, or fire safety in cinemas, or aviation safety on flights. These are in the control of others, and are regulated for our health and safety.”

❦ Person puts hand in flame. Gets burnt. Knows fire burns flesh. Has a fear of getting burnt in the future, because fire and flesh create undesirable pain. Lives in a permanent state of fear of fire for rest of life? No. Becomes cautious of fire, and takes precautions to not be burnt again. If anybody accuses you of ‘living in fear’ for taking precautions to avoid catching SARS-CoV-2 (Covid-19) again and again, know that you are, in fact, ‘living with sensible caution’ – as you know that the headaches and heart attacks and strokes and plaque build-up in arteries and the killing of one’s own parents and the reduction of your children’s IQ and fertility, and your daily fatigue, and your memory disorders and immune dysregulation and your new-onset susceptibility to other opportunistic viral, bacterial and fungal infections, and your high blood pressure, and your aggressive, new-onset or recurrence of cancer and the rapid, aggressive, new-onset dementia – are all things you should rightly be afraid of. For yourself, and for other people. But SARS-2 is clever. You often only feel the burn weeks or months later, and you don’t make the connection between the time you stuck your hand in a fire and the now-septic wound that has worked its way into the gristle of your toes. SARS-2 isn’t stupid, you know, and it has had four years of mutating repeatedly inside several billion humans and animals to hone its game while we sit on the lawn and watch our house burn down. ❂ © 2023 C19.Life .

❦ “Coughing into one’s sleeve while in shared air is like peeing into one’s swimsuit while in shared water.”

❦ Covid Conscious friend’s 40-year-old partying brother gave Covid to their 80-year-old parents. Mother: spent three weeks in the hospital. Father: went into hospice, and died this morning. Forty-year-old brother never went to hospital nor hospice to visit, because “they’re old”, and “what can I do anyway?” He remains maskless. Co-worker who got Covid along with her father at the family reunion... Covid+ father passed out and was found unconscious in his home. Suffered an acute kidney injury; wears a catheter because he can’t ever urinate on his own again; is now in Palliative Care. Co-worker suddenly can’t remember being sick with Covid, nor her father having had Covid and passing out... and is now telling people that he suffered a kidney injury from a slip and a fall. Colleague says on a virtual call: — “Now that the pandemic is over and people have recovered...” She’s been coughing non-stop since July, and can’t figure out “what I’m allergic to”. Friend posts a picture of a box of KN95s [ear-loop FFP2 respirators] that she purchased online with the caption, “Going back to masking. Got them ready. People protect yourself.” Then for the next three weeks posts maskless pictures at a Patti Labelle concert, a wedding, a birthday dinner, a congressional party... I asked her when she’s going to start using the masks that she posted on Facebook. — “When the president mandates us to.” How many people have you talked to about Covid that have had an “Aha moment”, and immediately starts wearing a well-fitted mask and adjusts their behavior long term? The part of the brain that controls emotions like empathy is damaged. The part of the brain that controls cognitive thinking is damaged. Troll behaviour is at an all-time high because people are triggered by you protecting yourself and them. How incredibly bizarre is this behaviour, and almost everyone who is living in this world at this time! ❂ © 2024 Lady Chuan . ➲

❦ I’ve often wondered if Covid, a.k.a. SARS-CoV-2, has its own marketing firm. Over the years, we’ve seen annual “campaigns”, if you will. ❊ 2020 : Hide your elderly and disabled! ❦ Covid still kills and disables children , athletes , and working-age adults . ❊ 2021 : Vax and relax! ❦ You can still transmit COVID if vaccinated; the vaccines wane much more quickly than promised; and lack of masking means faster viral evolution via on-going transmission chains. The vaccines only prevent some severe outcomes some of the time . ❊ 2022 : Back to normal, rise and grind! ❦ Forcing a return to offices and schools without proper mitigations in place – such as ventilation , accurate testing and masking – continues to spread Covid. People wonder why “no-one wants to work anymore”. It’s because they’re out sick. ❊ 2023 : Some folks will fall by the wayside. ❦ Anthony Fauci said this in mid-2023. It is intended to normalize continued higher-than-normal rates of death and disability . Please recall that Fauci had to be pushed hard by Larry Kramer to repurpose meds for HIV while he was at the NIH (USA’s National Institutes of Health). ❊ 2024 : There was no way we could have known. ❦ As rates of global disability climb with no long-term antiviral combination therapy approved, the press and the public start to vent frustrations . We absolutely did know – thanks to the basics of exponential functions and mounds of research. ❊ 2025 : Have you considered MAID? ❦ Due to Canadian efforts at successfully delaying care and benefits to living people while pushing medically-assisted intentional death (MAID), Western governments widely adopt the practice as a way of cutting costs. Influencers suggest 65 is “too old”. ❊ 2026 : Your disease, your responsibility. ❦ Government officials assert that it’s your fault if you didn’t wear an N95 [FFP2 respirator] because there was that one time the CDC (USA’s Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) director barely got the word “mask” out on a video in early December 2023. They use it as a reason for blanket denials of benefits . ❊ 2027 : Get adequate rest! ❦ Campaigns designed to educate the public on the benefits of sleep hygiene are ramped up in the face of increased disability. People are encouraged to work fewer hours if they aren’t feeling well, while their employers demand even more. People are tired. ❊ 2028 : Do your homework, kids! ❦ As PISA studies (Programme for International Student Assessment) continue to show global decline in student performance , education officials ignore the cognitive harms of COVID and instead decry cell-phones and “laziness”. Teen suicides increase due to more pressure, but social media is blamed. ❊ I could go on. A different future is possible, but it’s going to require big changes. Ignore the propaganda. Look at the data. Wear an N95 everywhere where people and air mix – and carry extra masks for others if you can. ❂ © 2023 Chalis Montgomery ➲

❦ “The reason why most people aren’t taking Covid-19 seriously is because they simply can’t imagine that their public health body would abandon protections and let an incredibly disabling and airborne virus spread wildly. They will be very angry when it becomes clear to them that that’s exactly what has happened.” ❂ © 2023 Dr. David Keegan, MD CCFP(EM) FCFP ➤

❦ Always Covid+ Colleague: — “One of the medical groups. One of the groups. One of the groups...” Moderator: — “Is there something you want to share?” Always Covid+ Colleague: — “I was asked something. I don’t know. It has something to do with something.” This is what Covid is doing to the brain. Unfortunately this is not an isolated incident – but something I’m witnessing all day long throughout the company. ❂ © 2023 Lady Chuan ➲

❦ “If you’re puzzled as to why governments and public health departments almost never mention the remotest possibility of SARS-CoV-2-induced immune dysregulation, it’s because to do so would be to admit the greatest mistake made in the history of modern health policy.”

❦ Two million people living in this country have Long Covid, and there have been over 230,000 deaths due to Covid. That’s why masks are now commonplace, and people want to help protect each other ❤️. It’s why hospitals across the NHS are striving to do all they can to limit the spread of nosocomial Covid, recognising the increased risk of death it carries, wanting to limit Long Covid, as well as protect their staff in work ❤️. It’s why your workplaces and schools have introduced safer ventilation and clear policies to reduce outbreaks, to clearly communicate what’s happening, and protect generations of the future from a multi-system, vascular-driven illness ❤️. It’s why, instead of ignoring Covid, society has gathered together as one to help limit the devastating damage we have all witnessed, and why it has collectively said “no” to any further preventable death or disability from this pandemic by all taking simple, effective mitigations ❤️. © 2023 NHS Medical Consultant . ➲

❦ — “I don’t know anyone with Long Covid.” — “Everyone I know is tired.” ❂ © 2023 Antiviral Marketing . ➲

❦ “Respirators and masks have been removed from healthcare. Now schools are encouraging parents to send their sick children to class. We didn’t get here by accident. We have been brought here through carefully orchestrated system changes. They have been common in many countries. Few have noticed. ➲ Step One : Re-label everything to do with the pandemic – a global emergency that has so far killed an estimated 24.4 million people, and resulted in over 400 million post-Covid-19 syndrome cases – so it all appears benign. This language will soon enter media and common conversation. Use it: use it often. ❦ Brain damage = “ Brain fog ” . ❦ Cardiac damage = “ Fatigue ” . ❦ Long Covid (vascular disease affecting every organ system) = “ Anxiety ” . ❦ A leading cause of death worldwide = “ Mild ” . ❦ Hospital admissions = “ Probably in with something else ” . ➲ Step Two : Stop government press conferences, and begin to refer to the on-going pandemic in the past tense. This begins to create the illusion that it has passed, and begins to drip down into common conversation. Never speak about Long Covid or post-Covid complications. Don’t mention deaths. ➲ Step Three : Stop surveillance systems in your country so that there is no way to know how prevalent infection is. Continue to use phrases like “during the pandemic”. There isn’t any accessible data to prove that wrong now. ➲ Step Four : Get media to stop reporting on Covid. They have already followed your government’s cue to refer to anything Covid-related in the past tense to further the public perception that it’s over. In fact, remove the Covid section entirely from the BBC news page. Yes, that really happened. ➲ Step Five : Remove availability of free lateral flow testing for the public. Now you can’t check if you have it. Like to know if there are other cases in your area? Too bad: the surveillance system was shut down last month. Oh well; too bad. Get back to work. ➲ Step Six : We’ve let you believe that a leading cause of mortality and morbidity is “mild”; we’ve stopped monitoring, and removed availability of free testing. The public has decided that it must be 2019 again, and are ignoring risk. Now is a good time to turn to stripping back healthcare mitigations. ➲ Step Seven : Now that no-one’s looking, let’s remove NHS sick leave for Covid, and force staff into disciplinary action if they exceed normal sick leave. Let’s tell them that it’s time to “live with Covid”. They’ll probably think we will upgrade ventilation or adopt new approaches. ➲ Step Eight : Except we won’t. We will just revert to “pre-pandemic” policy, remove universal masking, stop routine staff-testing (asymptomatic transmission? What’s that?), restrict Covid testing – even in symptomatic patients – and reduce time off from work with Covid, despite all the science. Less than a quarter of COVID-19 cases shed infectious virus before symptom onset; under a crude five-day self-isolation period from symptom-onset, two-thirds of cases released into the community would still be infectious... 📖 (18 Aug 2022 ~ The Lancet: Respiratory Medicine) Onset and window of SARS-CoV-2 infectiousness and temporal correlation with symptom onset: a prospective, longitudinal, community cohort study ➤ ❦ 66% were still infectious 5 days after their symptoms began. ❦ 25% were still infectious after 7 days. ❦ You aren’t necessarily OK to be out spreading it about on Day 5 as you’ve been told… ❦ Take some responsibility for not disabling or killing others. ➲ Step Nine : Now that we’ve fixed Covid in hospitals, it’s time to begin restricting vaccine delivery. Unlike other countries, we will only give acute community Covid treatments or vaccines to a select group of the population. No-one will care: they think it’s all over. We told them. ➲ Step Ten : Let’s have a think about banning masks entirely now. I think the public are sufficiently conditioned to go for that. Yeah, they clapped for those healthcare workers in 2020, but I think we will be OK to push this step through – given they all believe Covid’s no issue. ➲ Step Eleven : Let’s force everyone to send their sick children to school. Hold on, during a pandemic? When we know the risks of multi-system organ damage and Long Covid – even in children? Risking repeat infections over and over? Yes. Let’s do it. No-one will mind. Trust me, it’s time. ➲ Step Twelve: Media never mention it, but weekly death totals are still on websites. We need to bury those numbers further. Let’s include the pandemic years as part of our baseline of “normal” for annual deaths, so that the excess deaths during those years is “normal”, and hides on-going death. ➲ Step Thirteen: Hold a ‘Covid Inquiry’ so that we can get it on record how well we did “during the pandemic”. Really hammer home the message that it must be over, and begin talking about “being prepared” for “the next pandemic”. Really important to repeat those messages again and again. So there you have it: a 13-step programme for convincing your population that a global pandemic is nothing to worry about; to ensure that the media never mention it; and to ignore the mounting evidence of excess deaths from Long Covid and post-Covid health issues in the millions. It’s quite impressive really. The worst thing is that the longer the Covid pandemic runs – now completely without mitigations – the more it will spread and mutate, and more cumulative damage will ensue. Perhaps it’s too late to make change given societal beliefs; perhaps not”. © 2023 NHS Palliative Care Medicine Consultant.

❦ Someone I loved a lot had polio as a kid. She spent months in an iron lung, a year in a full-body cast, walked on crutches for life, was housebound with post-polio syndrome for three years and then died on a ventilator at the height of the pandemic. You babies bitch about masks. © 2023 Laurie Allee . ➲

❦ You can’t get someone to understand something if their lifestyle depends on them not understanding it. ❂ © 2023 Sunspots . ➲

❦ “When someone shows a severe personality shift, there could be many reasons. One possibility? Their brain may have been affected by COVID-19. It’s crucial to approach with empathy, to consider all potential causes, and to consult healthcare professionals. Don’t jump to conclusions, but stay informed.” © 2023 Dr. Sean Mullen . ➲

❦ There’s a huge difference between panicking, and doing simple things to reduce your risk of catching a disease that is randomly disabling. © 2023 Dr. Yoni Freedhoff . ➲

❦ There’s no fear on a worksite with a good safety culture. Just confidence and security. © 2023 Tracy Casavant ➲

❦ “Anything that is more transmissible will kill in two ways. Infecting more people. Worsening pressure on healthcare.”

❦ “In real life, no-one… and I mean no-one… is actually living a normal life if they have abandoned C-19 precautions. Either they are suffering the effects of illness themselves, are caring for someone that is sick, grieving, or all of the above. It’s not all people of one race/genotype either. It’s across a broad spectrum of people. It’s not even segregated by money. People with money that did not take it seriously enough to seek treatment have also fallen foul of problems. At this point in my social world the denial is being peeled away… and people are opening up about issues. However many still feel unable to prevent further problems. I’m seeing everything from acute COVID deaths to long COVID deaths. Every kind of autoimmune disease seems to be on the cards, colitis, hearing loss, joint problems… One common thread… people either have not made the connection to C-19, or think they are the odd one out. That they have somehow personally failed to be tough enough to weather the SARS storm. One can only congratulate the ghouls that have allowed that feeling to spread. I mean no-one I know… So all these people that I see on-and-off are living in their own quiet bubble of difficulty… and no-one is brave enough to tackle anything because no-one wants to be different… or perceived as a failure… or in many cases, they don’t know what to do anyway… This is a massive failure of public health. The anti-maskers are out on social media, loud and proud; public health departments barely whisper some diluted numbers once a week. Literally, things tick along “normally” in the conversation until you hit that bump. Ever since my last infection I _____. Fill in the blank. It’s often something that sounds really minor… but those that have read the data know what it really means. Quit the gym. Food is bland. Ringing in ears. Headaches. Joint pain. Stomach upset. Dizzy. Heart races. Tired. Stopped driving or stopped driving long distances. Quit the booze. Rashes. Keep getting xyz infections. Just going to tack on here that the first sentence contains an omission. “Real life” = People I know in real life. My real-life home village is sick or grieving or caring. Pretty much every household.”

❦ “The truth is that SARS2 is so contagious, so virulent, and reinfects so easily that there is no off-ramp for masking in healthcare. At least not without better vaccines and therapeutics that actually stop transmission and prevent Long Covid, Cardiovascular Covid and Neurocovid.”

❦ Ten people who were wrong 1. The people who said it was the 'exit wave' in April 2020, October 2020, February 2021, July 2021, October 2021, January 2022, May 2022, September 2022, December 2022, January 2023, and March 2023 are also wrong when they say it's the exit wave in July 2023. 2. The people who said that kids don't catch it, they were wrong. 3. The people who said that everyone had already caught Covid in Spring 2020 and that we were all immune to it by June 2020, they were wrong. 4. The people who said Omicron was mild, they were wrong. 5. The people who said that Covid infection didn't harm kids, they were and are wrong. 6. The people who say that people are prone to illness now because of lockdowns three years ago, they're wrong. 7. The people who say that working from home is worse for your health than working in an office, they're wrong. 8. The people who said that the best way to stop the spread of Covid is to wash your hands, they were wrong. 9. The people who said that you can't get reinfected, they were wrong. 10. The people who said that there wouldn't be any reinfections, and then when there were reinfections said that the repercussions of them would be milder, they were wrong. 11. The people who said that Covid is over, they were wrong. 12. The people who said Covid was just a flu, they were wrong. 13. The people who said that everyone had to get it, they were wrong. 14. The people who said that variants would be rare, they're wrong. 15. The people who said that Covid was seasonal, they were wrong. 16. The people who said that long-term repercussions of Covid infections would be rare, they were wrong. 17. The people who said that vaccines would end the spread of Covid, they were wrong. 18. The people who said that it wasn't airborne, they were wrong. 19. The people who said that Covid infections don't damage your immune system, they were wrong. 20. The people who said that Omicron was nature's booster, they were wrong. The people who said that 5G was causing the pandemic, they were wrong. The people who said that the way to end the pandemic was to stop testing, they were wrong. The people who said that masks don't work were technically right if you're talking about masks that don't work, but if you're talking about respirators that do work when worn properly, they're wrong. The people who said that restaurants and cafés were safe, they were wrong. The people who say that Covid isn't causing heart disease, they're wrong. The people who said that it would only affect China and the Far East, they were wrong. The people who said that Western hospitals and healthcare would be able to cope with Covid, they were wrong. The people who said that we should just let it rip, they were wrong. The person who told us to eat out to help out, he was wrong. The people who said that Covid infections weren't causing the increased RSV waves, they were wrong. The people who said that Covid infection was safe for healthy people, they were wrong. The people who said that Long Covid was a psychological problem, they were wrong. The people who said that Long Covid was caused by deconditioning, they were wrong. The people who said that repeat Covid infections for kids would be harmless, they were wrong. The people who said that standing two metres apart meant that you were safe, they were wrong. The people who said that schools were not super-spreaders, they were wrong. The people who said that Covid was solely a respiratory infection, they were wrong. The people who said that we just have to get it over with, they were wrong. The people who said that Covid would attenuate, they were wrong. The people who said that we had to infect healthy children with Covid, they were wrong. The people who said that Covid infections were finite and did not persist inside you, they were wrong. The people who said that Covid was a hoax, they were wrong. The people who said that Covid did not cross the blood-brain barrier, they were wrong. The people who said that letting Covid spread would be good for the economy, they were wrong. The people who said that only people with pre-existing medical conditions would be at risk were technically right, except we all have pre-existing conditions, so they were wrong. The people who said that the vaccine was a greater risk for kids than the virus, they were wrong. The people who said that you should vax and relax, they were wrong. The people who said that frequent testing made people vulnerable to Strep A, they were wrong. The people who said that Long Covid doesn't exist, they were wrong. The people who said that Covid infection was unavoidable, they were wrong. The people who said that we're all in this together, they were wrong. The people who said that most of the effects of Covid were felt in the aging West and not in middle-income and developing countries, they were wrong. The people who said that Covid would not mutate to evade immunity, they were wrong. The people who said that we didn't need to lock down, they were wrong. The people who said that the best thing to do was to make Covid endemic, they were wrong. The people who said that HEPA air filtration doesn't help, they were wrong. The people who said that ventilation doesn't help, they were wrong. The people who said that it's safe to end isolation at five days, they were wrong. The people who said that it's safe to end isolation at three days if you're under 18, they were wrong. The people who said that there was no such thing as a Paxlovid rebound, they were wrong. The people who said that Molnupiravir wasn't triggering mutations, they were wrong. The people who said that Covid is no longer causing serious illness, they were wrong. The people who said that we need to learn to live with Covid were technically right, but they meant just catching it repeatedly forever, so they were wrong. The people who said that pathogenic infections are good for children, they were wrong. The people who said that the severity of on-going repercussions of a Covid infection depends on the severity of the initial infection, they were wrong. The people who said that Covid infections don't leave you vulnerable to other opportunistic infections, they were wrong. The people who said that Covid infections couldn't be chronic, they were wrong. The people who said that Covid couldn't damage your brain, they were wrong. The people who said that testing was pointless, they were wrong. The people who said that we overreacted in 2020, they were wrong. The people who said that there was no asymptomatic infection, they were wrong. The people who said that adults couldn't catch Covid from children, because adults are taller than children and stand above their coughs and sneezes, they were wrong. The people who said that Covid infections couldn't accelerate dementia progression, they were wrong. The people who said that Covid infections couldn't dysregulate the immune system, they were wrong. The people who said that Covid infections couldn't cause or trigger autoimmune disorders, they were wrong. The people who said that Covid infections couldn't cause permanent disruption to metabolic processes, they were wrong. The people who said that Covid infections were beneficial, they were wrong. The people who said that unvaccinated people generally have better outcomes from infections than vaccinated people, they were wrong. The people who said that Covid doesn't cause strokes, they were wrong. The people who said that Covid doesn't cause heart attacks, they were wrong. The people who said that Covid doesn't cause high blood pressure, they were wrong. The people who said that Covid mitigations were just delaying the inevitable, they were wrong. The people who said that Covid infections were only dangerous because the virus was novel, they were wrong. The people who said that it should be personal responsibility as to whether you use mitigations, they were wrong. The people who said that Covid wouldn't mutate past anti-viral treatments, they were wrong. The people who said that Covid would just go away, they were wrong. The people who said that you can only catch Covid from strangers, they were wrong. The people who said that herd immunity would end the pandemic, they were wrong. The people who said that hybrid immunity would end the pandemic, they were wrong. The people who said that super immunity would end the pandemic, they were wrong. The people who said that we had achieved herd immunity, they were wrong. The people who said that all the damage of Covid infections is evident at the time of the initial infection, they were wrong. The people who said that Covid infection doesn't affect developing foetuses, they were wrong. The people who said that Covid infections don't cause neurological issues, they were wrong. The people who said that Covid won't affect infants developmentally, they were wrong. The people who said that Covid infection doesn't affect cognitive function, they were wrong. The people who said that it takes fifteen minutes to get infected with Covid, they were wrong. The people who said that Covid particles couldn't hang in the air for hours and cause infections hours later, they were wrong. The people who said that singing, shouting, aerobic activity, breathing, coughing and sneezing are not aerosolising activities, they were wrong. The people who said that vaccine efficiency would not wane, they were wrong. The people who said that you can tell if you're infectious, they were wrong. The people who said that Covid infections do not increase your risk of death from other causes, they were wrong. The people who said that waves of Covid infection no longer put a strain on healthcare systems, they were wrong. The people who said that the cure for Long Covid was graded exercise, they were wrong. The people who said that a Covid infection guaranteed that you were safe from Covid for months, they were wrong. The people who said that people were just being hospitalised with Covid, they were wrong. The people who pretended that Covid didn't exist, they were wrong. The people who said that the cure for Covid was Ivermectin/Hydroxychloroquine/prayer, they were wrong. The people who said that Covid infections didn't cause blood-clots weeks and months after the initial infection was over, they were wrong. The people who said that it was impossible for Covid infections to cause or accelerate cancer, or that Covid infection couldn't damage the body's ability to fight cancer, they were wrong. The people who said that Covid infections couldn't reactivate latent viruses, they were wrong. The people who said that countries with x or y climates wouldn't experience waves of Covid infection, they were wrong. The people who said that Covid can't trigger, cause, or worsen epilepsy, they were wrong. The people who said that Covid infections couldn't cause appendicitis, they were wrong. The people who said that your pets couldn't catch or be harmed by Covid, they were wrong. The people who said that you had to catch Covid to strengthen your immune system, they were wrong. The people who said that Covid infections couldn't cause POTS, dysautonomia and tachycardia, they were wrong. The people who said that you couldn't be infected by two different variants at the same time, they were wrong. The people who said that your sense of smell always comes back if you lose it during a Covid infection, they were wrong. The people who said that Covid infections couldn't affect male or female fertility, they were wrong. The people who said that Covid infections couldn't cause erectile dysfunction, they were wrong. The people who said that Covid infections aren't causing massive excess deaths, they were wrong. The people who said that Covid infections wouldn't lower life expectancy, they were wrong. The people who said that there is no such thing as superspreader events, they were wrong. The people who said that you just need to have faith to not catch Covid, they were wrong. The people who said that talking about the pandemic makes the pandemic continue, they were wrong – except in the case where someone with Covid is talking to someone else without Covid about the pandemic, thereby giving them Covid. The people who said that Covid was evolving into a dead-end branch that would end the pandemic, so far they're wrong. The people who said that immunity by infection is better than immunity by vaccination, they were wrong. The people who said that Covid infections would not have a significant effect on the economy because only a small proportion of people become sick straight away, they were wrong. The people who said that Covid infections couldn't cause permanent damage to the immune system, they were wrong. The people who said that Covid infections couldn't present like a stomach bug, they were wrong. The people who said that Long Covid is caused by lockdowns or masks or anxiety or anything other than Covid infection, they were wrong. The people who said that Covid infections couldn't dysregulate your gut microbiome, they were wrong. The people who blamed other viruses for the damage done by Covid infections, they were wrong. The people who said that Long Covid doesn't cause fatigue, they were wrong. The people who said that Covid infections couldn't damage the autonomic nervous system, they were wrong. The people who said that Covid infections couldn't cause endothelial dysfunction, they were wrong. The person who told me that Covid particles couldn't travel across a room because they had to obey the laws of physics, they were wrong. The people who said that we should take it on the chin, they were wrong. The people who said that the mental health consequences of lockdown were worse than the consequences of Covid, they were wrong. The people who said that Covid variants couldn't spontaneously combine to form recombinant variants, they were wrong. The people who said that mask-wearing only protects the people around you, they were wrong. © 2023 Tern, a Priest in England . ➲

❦ “Feeling validated that life is ‘back to normal’ as you see all of those unmasked people around you in restaurants, shops and cinemas? I’ll let you in on a little secret. Those who recognise the risk and who would be masked up aren’t even there. They are busy elsewhere staying healthy. More than 400 million now have Long Covid; a disease from Covid that can impact any organ system, and is proven to cause damage to the brain, heart, lung, kidney, gut, immune and multiple other systems. That’s one in 20 globally. How come you don’t know anyone with it? It’s one of three likely reasons… 1. They have been sick so long that they do what most chronically ill people do when they are asked, “How are you?” They say, “I’m fine”. 2. They don’t recognise the relation of their recent heart attack/memory impairment/new diabetes to their Covid illness in the last year. 3. It’s because they aren’t at that restaurant, movie, theatre, work night out as they don’t fancy worsening their already awful situation with a further infection. Out of sight, out of mind. Even those who know someone with Long Covid will minimise it, as it doesn’t fit with the general narrative that Covid is over. It’s too much cognitive dissonance for most people to handle. Easier to believe that everything’s OK, and it must “just be them being anxious”. It’s not over. I’ll let you in on another special secret; it’s not anxiety. It’s a calm determination to maintain health, in the full knowledge of what Covid can do.” © 2023 NHS Palliative Care Medicine Consultant .

❦ The pandemic branding team deserves a gold star. Brain damage = ‘Brain fog’. Cardiac damage = ‘Fatigue’. Long Covid (Vascular disease affecting every organ system) = ‘Anxiety’. A leading cause of death worldwide = ‘Mild ™ ’. Hospital admissions = ‘Probably in with something else’. © 2023 Prognostic Chats . ➲

❦ This weird stage of the pandemic feels like being the only sober person stuck at a party where everyone else is starting to pick fights, break furniture and throw up. Every few minutes a guy yells, “Isn’t this the best night EVER ?” Trying to show people Covid data now is like trying to convince that party guy that he’s too drunk to drive. ❂ © 2023 Laurie Allee . ➲

❦ Fixing the Covid messaging over the past two years: “Learn to live with much earlier death.” “Learn to live with much earlier stroke.” “Learn to live with much earlier heart attack.” “Learn to live with much earlier dementia.” “Learn to live with much earlier cancer.” “Learn to live with much earlier immune dysfunction.” ❂ © 2023 Radical Centrist . ➲

❦ “Since the pandemic began, I have constantly made the argument that a healthy workforce is a necessity for a healthy economy. This, to me, is the definition of obvious. The same argument applies to education. I’m writing this because I’ve received a large number of messages and e-mails this week from parents who are being placed under extreme pressure by schools in an attempt to stop their children trying to avoid infection. Let me be very, very clear: education is extraordinarily important. Health is extraordinarily important. A child’s education will suffer if that child is unwell. Again, the definition of obvious. Parents should not be put in a position in which they are being forced to choose between their child’s health and their child’s education. It is a false dichotomy that mirrors the pernicious culture of presenteeism that is sadly still present in many workplaces. It’s also driven by the nature of box-ticking bureaucracies that always seek to maintain the status quo. This is both an ethical and pragmatic argument. Ethical, because placing pressure on parents to have to choose between access to education and near-certain infection of their children is morally wrong. And, believe me, I make moral statements carefully. Pragmatic, because if schools simply introduced air-filtration as standard, and encouraged parents to keep children with acute Covid off school, there would be far, far less transmission in schools – thus improving the quality of education for all. Again, the definition of obvious. Much like the economy, we need to employ medium- and long-term thinking now, rather than short-term thinking that clings to the status quo purely for its own sake. And remember, reduction of transmission in schools reduces transmission in the wider community. As such, this means that less adults are sick at any given time, which is also good for the economy. This is so clear that it baffles me that most policy-makers seem to fail to understand it.” © 2023 Conor Browne . ➲

❦ “There is no such thing as “personal risk assessment” for the vast majority of people. A tiny number of dominant personalities in your life (and it could be you) have decided what to do, and the rest will follow. Even those that are making the decisions are not making a personal risk assessment. They are making a group risk assessment and taking their whole family/community with them. People may not even realise this – that they have made the decision on behalf of their entire household/class/company... but they have... If there is no responsible public health leadership, someone else is leading... because that is how we work, by and large, as a species. Someone is in charge... someone is always in charge, and unfortunately... misinformation is rife.”

❦ “No-one said life was gonna be easy. No-one said living through a pandemic was going to be easy. It’s all about what you think is important and worth fighting for. I chose health, lives, and sticking together. I chose to try to solve problems, not hide them. You can rewrite history. You can say that the mass overseas graves didn’t matter. You can say that we didn’t need to lock down in Australia in 2020 (when we had no PPE, no vaccines, and no therapeutics). I know different. I was there. Shed enough tears, attended enough zoom funerals… I know it wasn’t easy. I saw the tears when I said that a family on the breadline needed to isolate. I saw the heartbreak as I led a person away from their family, across the red line into the “red zone”. Even as I walked away from my family every day into the red zone, I felt your effort with me. When I said goodbye to my kid every day, and isolated away from my family to protect them from any accidental breaches... I know you all sacrificed too... ...and I was so grateful, and so proud... I wasn’t the one saving lives, you all were. You saved my life... I’m sure of it. We didn’t have enough PPE... Don’t ever forget that, and don’t let those bombastic characters writing rubbish articles about lockdown ever take that away from you.”

❦ “Yesterday someone confronted me about my social media content – saying that while I’m not wrong, I’m too radical. They asked me: — “OK. What happens once everyone agrees (that Covid reinfections are problematic ) – then what?” Then we clean the air. HEPA filters are not radical. I don’t know what they expected as an answer. We regulate water safety and food safety in an effort to decrease population rates of waterborne and foodborne illnesses. Having clean air standards to lower the rates of respiratory illnesses isn’t radical. It’s also not radical to suggest we keep masking in healthcare and in essential indoor spaces so that the disabled, the high-risk, the elderly and their families can safely enjoy community life again. Wearing a respirator is not hard. Wearing 4-inch heels is hard, and I do that all the time for no good reason other than vanity. Accessibility is not radical. Advocating in favor of a public health response to an on-going threat is not extremism. SARS-CoV-2 is the Number One infectious-disease killer in Canada, and our excess deaths are still high. It’s not radical to think we should do something about it... It’s also not radical to advocate for the bare minimum in terms of public health education campaigns on Long Covid / Post-Covid Syndrome, and airborne transmission. Empowering people through education is not radical. It’s just wild for me that someone would think my Covid public health advocacy is radical when, in reality, they agree that we should clean the air, mask in healthcare and other essential places, and educate the public. Did they think I was going to answer with “lockdowns” ? Or is the radical part that I care enough to advocate out loud? Even when it’s not popular? Even when there’s an increasingly intense push to frame Covid health advocates as radicals and extremists? Or maybe I’m a radical because I don’t value brunch or maskless grocery shopping enough to risk Long Covid, or to betray my values? Is it radical that my physical health and my integrity are important enough to me that I’m at peace with my decision not to conform to societal expectations? If you’ve misclassified people you actually don’t disagree with as “radicals” in your mind, you should take half a second to examine how and why that happened, and re-examine your assumptions. There’s nothing radical about clean air and compassion. We don’t lack scientific consensus. The pandemic is complicated because we lack values consensus .”

❦ “I’m a little confused at the “making people feel bad about how their choices harm others is bad advocacy” takes. Didn’t we do that with smoking? Wasn’t the “second-hand smoke kills” education campaign exactly that? Isn’t “if you drive drunk, you could kill someone” exactly that? Since when is it controversial to point out how our choices could harm other people? Some people seem to think that advocacy should never make anyone feel uncomfortable… Do they really not realize that they’re out here shaming the oppressed for making their oppressors feel bad? We’ve created a system of structural violence against the immunocompromised, disabled, and clinically vulnerable. One that now extends to healthcare. We deserve to feel ashamed about it and we should always feel uncomfortable with perpetuating structural violence against others.”

❦ “Since January 2020, a substantial part of what I do has, quite simply, been trying to tell the future. That is fundamentally what forecasting is. I have been right far, far more times than I have been wrong. Much as my reputation hangs on accuracy of prediction, I would much rather have been wrong. This is the difference, I think, between people like myself and people who seek to minimise: they want to be right – I want to be wrong. These thoughts often crystallise for me when I write, rather than discuss. Today, I was writing a report for a client and, completely unbidden, a fragment of a quotation from Michael Shaara’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel ‘The Killer Angels’ came to my mind. I reached for the book on my bookshelf to read it; indulge me while I share it with you: ‘The vision was brutally clear: he had to wonder at the clarity of it. Few things in a soldier’s life were so clear as this, so black-line etched that he could actually see the blue troops for one long bloody moment, going up the long slope to the stony top as if it were already done and a memory already, an odd, set, stony quality to it, as if tomorrow had occurred and there was nothing you could do about it, the way you sometimes feel before a foolish attack, knowing it will fail but you cannot stop it or even run away but must even take part and help it fail.’ I’m telling you all now – and, believe me, I want to be wrong – that if we don’t slow transmission of this virus and develop new treatments and second-generation vaccines, the damage we are allowing to occur to the health of our global population – not just the elderly, the disabled and the vulnerable, but everyone – well, that damage is unsustainable. And the vast majority of that population don’t understand the risk, because they haven’t been given the information. An odd, set, stony quality to it.” © 2023 Conor Browne . ➲

❦ It’s not so much that there isn’t validity to the desire to live as though Covid is behind us. It’s more that being an adult involves recognizing that choices have consequences. © 2023 Dr. Thomas Finch .

❦ “I think a big problem is that many people’s conceptions of morality do not extend to invisible viral transmission and indirect chains of harm. Punching someone in the face and bloodying their nose is unconscionable. Killing a hundred people in a chain of negligent transmission? No biggie.” © 2023 Blake Murdoch ➤

❦ “I’m vaguely following the chatter on the comparisons of COVID with HIV. I’ve never been a fan of this, because there are so many unanswered questions. One thing I am sure of. Research shows the immune system does get damaged. It does. Which bits? How much? Recovery? What opportunistic infections? Impact on global disease patterns? Impact on animal disease patterns (ecology and food-chain threats)? All questions that will be answered over time. No-one should be surprised by this. It should not be even vaguely controversial. Plenty of viruses damage the immune system . We will find out exactly the extent of the nature of COVID on this aspect of health. Another thing I can say with some certainty. Your chances of recovery from a depressed post-viral immune system will not be improved by further [SARS-CoV-2] infections. I can see a lot of people directly comparing COVID with HIV. Rest assured. I am concerned. I just don’t find that particular comparison helpful. As many have already pointed out, there are significant differences too. You don’t walk into the supermarket and catch a new strain of HIV starting a whole new acute infection every 6-8 months, for example. But there are also signs that some immune cells are recovering many months after infection too – then again, there are probably reservoirs in the body that could potentially continue to mutate, and then cause other pathology down the line – as some animal coronaviruses do. I think COVID is quite an interesting and horrible disease. I expect we will see what repeated infections really do as time goes on. Excess deaths are already through the roof. One last attempt to clarify. Trying to make COVID into either a cold, or HIV, and ending up with “half-way between” – when in reality COVID is doing 100% COVID, which is turning out to be really, really bad in its own right… and it’s airborne… and we are catching it all the time. That’s the part I find frustrating with this comparison. SARS is a dangerous, dangerous disease. It always has been. Both of them [SARS-1 and SARS-2] . Yes, there are threads of similarities, and we can use our wealth of knowledge to extrapolate possible outcomes, and test treatments… But SARS is not half-way to anything. It is, in itself, a giant problem.”

❦ Lady at the Dash In convenience store… — “Why are you still wearing a mask?” — “Because I’m Not A Narcissist,” I said. (The entire area went silent.) …and this is how I’m rolling into 2023. ❂ © 2023 Lady Chuan ➲

❦ “No. We haven’t gone back to normal. We have gone forward into abnormal. Really abnormal. Kill your elders abnormal. Douse the kids in viruses abnormal. Ignore and kill disabled people abnormal. Please go back to normal... because I don’t believe for a second that when you wake up and look in the mirror, that this is what you ever wanted to see looking back at you. It’s not too late.”

❦ “The way I see it, if somehow all the data on the cumulative risk of death, hospitalisation, disability, heart attacks, strokes, etc. with repeat Covid infections turns out to be wrong, I will have worn a mask for longer than I needed to and missed a few social events. I’m OK with that. Whereas if I decided to follow the crowd instead of the available science, and the available data turns out to be right about the risks of cumulative Covid infections, then I’d be facing high odds of poor health, disability, and premature death. Those are very high stakes. When the stakes are high, you can’t afford to be wrong. So seeing ‘experts’ wave around the absence of certainty as their justification for choosing the high-stakes position, when the high-stakes position is the one that requires the most certainty… it’s just so absurd. On the other hand, I can pull up multiple scientific studies on how Covid (and the loss of parents/primary/secondary caregivers) harms children…”

❦ — “How was your New Year?” — “S’ok...” Sad face... young adult person... “I got sick... kind of like a cold...” (But face says, “It ruined my New Year.”) So much is left unsaid. So many assumptions that everyone else is having fun – why not me? Guilt about being a let-down. (‘Am I not strong enough? My immunity not good enough?’) Others move on to chat about dining out at restaurants... This young person turns away, and continues to work. Isolated in her thoughts... How desperately I wanted to go over to her and say, “You are not alone...” But I’m a stranger, just passing... I think about how people in power are misleading and hurting young people. It’s deplorable.

❦ “COVID-19 causes lung fibrosis. It affects the immune system, and it causes liver fibrosis . COVID-19 causes brain inflammation and heart inflammation, strokes, heart attacks and large blood clots. COVID-19 causes diabetes . COVID-19 can cause kidney failure. I could go on... and on. Bone necrosis, joint pain, hair and teeth falling out. Do you normally expect a cold to make your teeth fall out ? Look up ‘lung fibrosis’ and ‘liver fibrosis’. Google them, and read about the complications. Read how patients that have these progressive diseases die. (Apologies to patients that already know.) Time and again, these patients have said to me (particularly when I was a young medical student): “Don’t do what I did.” “Don’t smoke.” “Alcohol is...” “I wish I had never...” “Save yourself...” Of those dying of infectious causes of lung and liver fibrosis: “Why me...?” “I wish I could have avoided that infection...” Stop. Stop as many COVID infections as you can. Stop now. Now is your chance to avoid treading these terrible paths. Once COVID has weakened your organs and immune system, every other pathogen – and even some environmental/commensal bugs – can move in... You will feel nothing wrong, nothing wrong, nothing wrong... then... the cascade of deterioration will snowball. Stop now while you are still in the “I feel nothing wrong” phase. There may well already be stuff wrong, but it’s better to try to stay in this phase than accelerate towards death any faster than is avoidable. No, not everyone will get every effect to the same extent, but macrophages do get activated by COVID (as well as other immune pathways and cells). Some of the inflammation in the body has been observed for months. That is a recipe for damage and fibrosis. I wrote this after hearing – again and again – “I have a cough, it just won’t budge, and it’s not COVID”. I don’t know what's causing all the coughing. Could be anything... but this is one of the ways I would expect widespread prevalence of lung damage to present. It’s also one of the ways I would expect chronic infections with slow-growing pathogens (like TB or atypical pneumonias) to present... Chronic coughs can also have other malignant or serious causes. These should be assessed and monitored by a GP if it’s not budging. Please... try to look after yourselves.. .”