I know I've said it before, but I never try to convince people in my life that COVID's serious anymore. It just always leaves me frustrated.
So, that said, my wife best friend just texted to say she's got COVID for the first time and she knows we "keep up with COVID" and wanted to ask some questions. Sure, no problem.
She was on a flight last weekend and asks if it's possible that she just tested positive now. We tell her that RAT's are supposedly around day 5-11 now, so that's totally possible.
She asks if we know what the workplace rules are for her, and sure we send her a link. She says that's not at all what her boss said, but OK.
She asks if it's even possible to not give her husband COVID. We go over ventilation, filtration, masks, etc and this is where it really starts to go off the rails. She's just like "Yeah, we're not doing any of that."
She asks if long COVID "is real" or if there's anything else she should know and we're like yeah, it is, there's a lot that's unknown. We're sending you some links about what is known with long COVID rates, the things to look out for, what you can try to do in the meantime, etc. and she reads it and goes "Ummm, yeah. That all looks super sketchy. If any of that were real I'm sure the news would be talking about it. I'm sorry but I think you guys have fallen for some hoax or something here. I have a fever, a runny nose and muscle aches. I'm going to take some Tylenol. We have a birthday party to attend tonight, a kid's party tomorrow and my boss wants me back at work on Monday. Thanks anyway."
I give up.
Our health messaging sucks, proven yet again.
They went out last night, maskless, "but outside for most of the time" so, therefore, obviously safe.
Today her and her husband decided to stay 6' away from each other because that guarantees he won't get it. Yes, they're hanging out together in the same room, but staying 6' apart.
It's been a while since someone I knew well shared all of their thoughts regarding COVID and it just baffles me how this is what people believe, but it goes to show we're probably never getting out of this mess. Plan accordingly in your life.
@BE oh man. This sounds so hard.
@BE with current work rules it seems almost pointless though. We have people in work coughing and splattering saying 'There's no point in testing because I had covid a few weeks ago and you test positive for 30 days' I just keep my 2 air filters on high, wear a mask and hope for the best.
You're not wrong at all. We need to control it both at work and at home in the end.
I might as well say this every day, but, we're just so far away from even beginning the process of fixing this.
@BE we have more people out with covid and other not-covid rsv (which I think is still covid) right now than at any other point in the last three years.
Yeah, once it reached the levels this winter that Jerome Powell's talking about it you know that business owners are concerned.
@BE @urbanfoxe Unfortunately, I suspect a lot of business owners are dealing with it by pressuring employees to come in anyway, and letting next week’s resulting outbreak be a problem for next week.
@lauraintheory @BE I don't work for a business I work for the biggest public school system in the world and that's scarily the attitude of our leaders too.
I debated whether it was even worth updating this thread, but, because you mentioned work rules and how pointless it all is, here we go...
She took Monday off of work and told her boss and HR that she had COVID. Both called her later that day and told her she had to be in at work on Tuesday. She's been in the rest of the week and at least as of yesterday she's still symptomatic.
Shocker, I know, but the husband got COVID, too. They convinced themselves that it wasn't the not isolating and just sitting 6' apart from each other and that he actually had it before then. He's also been at work all week.
@BE I'm out for 5 days that don't come out of my sick days now based on positive test. I feel fine except groggy head which is why I took the test. I'm home in my room wearing a mask but it's not easy to isolate in an apt.
Feel better soon!
Mask, ventilation and filtration. As much as possible for all if there's anyone else around.
I could almost see my brother saying this. Former liberal arts professor, as liberal as they come, etc. In other words, your basic over-educated NPR listener. But he's also the "Get over it" guy whenever I mention masking up in a public situation. Claims he hasn't had so much as a cold since pre-Covid. Oh, really. 🤨
@BE the horseshoe on the left and right on this is very real - definitely a point at this the “ends” meet up. Just bonkers.
@BE Liberals have been doing the denial thing for most of the pandemic at this point! I live in SF, which is better than most places in this regard … and it still isn’t good.
@BE Look, you made a valiant effort. I think that's the best any of us can do.
The sad thing is, it's hard not to let the dismissiveness affect relationships, isn't it?
I think it's frustrating to me at this point because I know that nearly everyone feels the same way they do, so I don't bother, but they reached out to *ask the questions* and then didn't want the answers. It's like falling into a trap that you fell into before. No one to blame but yourself.
@BE The answers were inconvenient, I suppose. That's what it comes down to for most, isn't it? They're receptive to input from those they know to be more knowledgeable, assuming that the response doesn't require actual effort or sacrifice.
And there, is the bottom line for so many things. Including, but not limited to, COVID and the climate crisis.
@BE @MelMScow my dad nearly died from Covid a few months ago, but if I thought he’d learned a lesson I couldn’t have been more wrong. As the holiday wave was gaining strength, he lashed out at me, accusing me of “lecturing” him when I tried to talk about our holiday plans and how we might adapt to the realities. My wife later spotted him maskless in a grocery store, and I knew then that I was wasting my breath trying to explain things to him.
@BE Well, just tell her "Can't I talk to your husband?"
She's decided to infect her husband, might as well tell him what she's doing.
At this point I would simply tell everyone else she's about to infect. She's a bad person.
I guess I left out that the "We're not doing any of that" was after consulting him. He's apparently perfectly fine with being infected. I guess if there was something that required practically zero effort they might have attempted it.
@BE
1)The lack of reliable COVID information is intentional. I learned more about SARS-CoV-2 from SARS and MERS than I did from most contemporary research, much of which is utter garbage meant to justify a market for pharmaceuticals that have already been developed but have yet to be placed with a market, like the less than useless Remdesivir (as an antiviral monotherapy, at least; might help buttress a combo), or cytokine targeting therapies even though CKs aren't overly deterministic
@VeeRat
@franktaber
1)Sure. Much of media attention and public health discourse has focused on the Spike protein and cytokine interactions. I can only assume that this is because they wanted to establish markets for pharms that targeted those.
Real pathogenic coronavirus ARDS is Complement--rather than cytokine--driven. These reactions occur first in the interstitial fluids and are anaphylatoxin driven in a manner similar to CVF factor envenomation.
@franktaber
3)The lack of Factor H means that vWF multimers are much larger than normal. This forms the core of SARS-CoV-2 hypercoagulopathy. There are other contributions that come later in the disease process, but Factor H depletion sets the stage for what comes after.
So the real question, in terms of formulating strategy, is when was this known and why was it ignored. (Note the last author on this 2018 paper)
@noyes Thank you for sharing. I don't know much about this research. Could you say more about what it means regarding how we should deal with COVID during an illness or after, if anything?
We should deal with it with a big fat infusion of C1-INH or Narsoplimab during the first five days after infection to starve off ARDS, but we don't. As for chronic disease, I'm sorry to say that I have no answers for you. It looks frighteningly intractable to me.
@noyes In the countries that faced SARS and MERS I believe they used some of their traditional medicines to try to deal with those viruses and ailments. While I doubt any of those traditional medicines are true cures or remedies for ARDS, are you aware of any that have some effect?
Not for ARDS. Prior to the onset of ARDS:
Before, during, or longhaul
Berberine HCL
Berberine Extract
Red Sage Root Extract
Horse Chestnut Extract
Bovine Colostrum (lots)
Quercetin
Bromelain
Resveratrol
Vitamin C
Vitamin K/K2 (controversial w/acute)
Vitamin D
Selenium
Zinc
Potassium Humate
Stinging Nettle Extract
Hesperidin
Kratom*
Rutin
Aspirin
NAC
Acute:
Lactoferrin
Benadryl
Andrographis*
Skullcap Extract*
Paxlovid*
Glycyrrhizin*
* cautions against long term use
2)Also, carotenoids Lutein, Zeaxanthin, and Astaxanthin downregulate production of core Complement factors. Think of those factors as tinder-like detritus on the floor of a forest. The less tinder, the smaller the existential threat of a fire. They take weeks to have an effect, so starting tomorrow is a good idea in terms of prevention of overall severity.
@noyes Thanks for sharing this list. What about Natto or similar foods that have a fibrinolytic effect?
4)And finally, it's the nucleocapsid that is causing the dysregulated convertase assembly responsible for inflicting much of the damage seen. It's normally inside the virus, but once the immune response ramps up, some people lyse the virus, causing the nucleocapsid to be drawn out into the interstitial fluid. Pretty much exactly the same as both SARS and MERS. No way they didn't notice this from the start.
@franktaber
2)A fair definition of ARDS is ALI + whatever pathogen specific injuries affect resp function. SARS, MERS, and SARS-CoV-2 are slightly different because they infect different tissues.
Ex: SARS-CoV-2 is much better at infecting the endothelium than its cousins. This puts virus-Complement interactions in the proximity of Weibel-Palade bodies, where vWF is stored. Those C' interactions deplete Factor H, one of few known vWF multimer reductases.
@BE Really sorry to hear this. Sounded like she was hoping you'd tell her something more reassuring, then shut down when it wasn't forthcoming. Hopefully her case is mild enough, she'll have the luxury of continuing to believe it's a hoax.
Yes, it's sadly that. I'll give a shred of credit that she took the time to test, but putting any effort into it beyond that was clearly a bridge too far. I definitely gave her too much credit to think that she wouldn't just take some Tylenol and go infect other people. Lesson learned. In all likelihood she will be fine from this infection and will go back to blissful ignorance, at least until the next one.
@BE Sorry to hear. That's a tough situation. Just out of curiosity, I searched for long covid nytimes and found lots of stories from NYT. Not that they're necessarily more reliable or anything but if this is someone who cares about what the mainstream media says, well there's a lot at NYT.
You make a really good point. "Here's a great scientific article" or even "Here's a review article in Nature" isn't for everyone.
Given their geography I'm betting they listen to the crew at UCSF, but that's just a guess.
@BE My three and six year olds do this all the time. Come looking for validation of some ridiculous thing they're doing. When I don't give it because clearly it can't be condoned, they act out like I was suddenly an aggressor against their world view. It used to be religion or politics that filtered out friends. Now we mostly have no friends because mostly everyone has buried their heads like your friend. And we just. can't. "abide".
You're right. It's hard to have much of a social circle at this point. I'm sure most people who see the problem understand how hard it is to condone the poor behavior. People I never thought of as particularly selfish have definitely revealed themselves over the last couple of years. I know I'll never see a lot of people the same way that I did before.
@BE @surfingreg If it weren’t for social media, I’d probably be pretty much done with any of humanity outside of my own household.
@lauraintheory @BE @surfingreg You said it.
@BE this sounds to me like she wanted your answers to validate what she already decided, and didn't want to accept something different.
@BE
I feel your pain friend... but I'm sure you likely have helped many people think twice!
Just tonight I managed to convince my mom to wear an #N95 to an event she's attending. Some know and pretend not to. Some don't believe it. But some *will* come around... and they're worth it. We're all worth it.
That's an absolutely fabulous statement and congratulations on convincing your mom to mask up!
@BE Your experience captures so well the disconnect those of us who are well-informed re COvid feel, the impassable chasm between ourselves and the vast majority of people who have fallen for the minimizing & disinfo
Oligarch bros have done an extremely effective job w/ their propaganda, using our colleagues, friends, family to create massive peer pressure to conform to this break from reality.
@BE Thinking about the intentionally created & maintained pandemic mass delusion.
Folie a deux= 2 ppl with shared delusional system.
What do we call it when it's a mass delusion, with intense pressure to conform & keep quiet?
I'd forgotten I wrote this about her. My wife was telling me earlier in the week about how her husband's on strike(they live in LA) and won't wear a mask anywhere anymore, but it's mostly OK because "it's mutated so it can't kill people anymore."
She was bragging about how she'll still wear a mask to the grocery store and the doctor, because immunocompromised people need to be there...but nowhere else, I guess...My wife didn't congratulate her for her behavior, so I guess she got upset about it.
All I could really think is that if this is what passes as California leftist behavior these days they're really not that different than the people of Florida. They just act more polite about their behavior.
Long way of saying that you're correct. It's mass delusion, or at least mass willful ignorance so as not to be inconvenienced.
@BE Yeah- I try not to get angry at the minimizers/disinfo ppl, try to remember they're heavily propagandized. But it's hard to endure the mass delusion- when even close friends & colleagues have that attitude as if you're "overreacting" or "anxious" about Covid.
No- just more informed than them about the dangers Covid presents.
Odd how incurious so many are. Odd how they don't even seem to be able to process level of risk of 1 in 10 infection leads to LC & cumulative risk.
Before it comes up, I feel the need to say, too, that this woman and her husband are college educated, west coast liberals. We're not talking the southern Republicans that I live around. We're so far from having the right discussions around COVID and the future.