Anne Whateley posted:

Fwiw I have the same exposure level pretty often (but with glasses) and I’ve never gotten it while I was masked. I wouldn’t worry as much, unless you’re on an immunosuppressant or you did one of those “I wore a mask (except while eating)” things.

I think continuing to test is good, and the outdoor birthday party is fine. More ventilation indoors can’t hurt, but I wouldn’t go nuts with it if the heaters can’t keep up or something. I would let my mom make the call about indoors vs. outdoors, since it’s cold.

https://edition.cnn.com/2024/02/08/health/aging-discrimation-kff-partner-wellness/index.html posted:

Thousands of seniors are still dying of Covid-19. Do we not care anymore?
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The pandemic made things worse
Prejudice against older adults is nothing new, but “it feels more intense, more hostile” now than previously, said Karl Pillemer, 69, a professor of psychology and gerontology at Cornell University.

“I think the pandemic helped reinforce images of older people as sick, frail and isolated — as people who aren’t like the rest of us,” he said. “And human nature being what it is, we tend to like people who are similar to us and be less well disposed to ‘the others.’”

“A lot of us felt isolated and threatened during the pandemic. It made us sit there and think, ‘What I really care about is protecting myself, my wife, my brother, my kids and screw everybody else,’” said W. Andrew Achenbaum, 76, the author of nine books on aging and a professor emeritus at Texas Medical Center in Houston.

In an environment of “us against them,” where everybody wants to blame somebody, Achenbaum continued, “who’s expendable? Older people who aren’t seen as productive, who consume resources believed to be in short supply. It’s really hard to give old people their due when you’re terrified about your own existence.”

Although Covid continues to circulate, disproportionately affecting older adults, “people now think the crisis is over, and we have a deep desire to return to normal,” said Edwin Walker, 67, who leads the Administration on Aging at the Department of Health and Human Services. He spoke as an individual, not a government representative.

The upshot is “we didn’t learn the lessons we should have,” and the ageism that surfaced during the pandemic hasn’t abated, he observed.

Ageism is pervasive
“Everyone loves their own parents. But as a society, we don’t value older adults or the people who care for them,” said Robert Kramer, 74, co-founder and strategic adviser at the National Investment Center for Seniors Housing & Care.

Kramer thinks boomers are reaping what they have sown. “We have chased youth and glorified youth. When you spend billions of dollars trying to stay young, look young, act young, you build in an automatic fear and prejudice of the opposite.”

Combine the fear of diminishment, decline and death that can accompany growing older with the trauma and fear that arose during the pandemic, and “I think Covid has pushed us back in whatever progress we were making in addressing the needs of our rapidly aging society. It has further stigmatized aging,” said John Rowe, 79, professor of health policy and aging at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health.

“The message to older adults is: ‘Your time has passed, give up your seat at the table, stop consuming resources, fall in line,’” said Anne Montgomery, 65, a health policy expert at the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare. She believes, however, that Baby Boomers can “rewrite and flip that script if we want to and if we work to change systems that embody the values of a deeply ageist society.”
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Future generations will get their turn
That’s a message Kramer conveys in classes he teaches at the University of Southern California, Cornell and other institutions. “You have far more at stake in changing the way we approach aging than I do,” he tells his students. “You are far more likely, statistically, to live past 100 than I am. If you don’t change society’s attitudes about aging, you will be condemned to lead the last third of your life in social, economic and cultural irrelevance.” [ed. a strategic mistake, as Zoomers know they won't live to 50]

As for himself and the baby boom generation, Kramer thinks it’s “too late” to effect the meaningful changes he hopes the future will bring.

“I suspect things for people in my generation could get a lot worse in the years ahead,” Pillemer said. “People are greatly underestimating what the cost of caring for the older population is going to be over the next 10 to 20 years, and I think that’s going to cause increased conflict.”

Steve Yun posted:

https://x.com/1goodtern/status/1755494099103154222?s=46

new study saying long COVID brain changes usually become noticeable a month after infection in kids

tern seems to think brain changes 4 weeks post COVID, heart and abdomen 6 weeks

Steve Yun posted:

https://x.com/1goodtern/status/1755494099103154222?s=46

new study saying long COVID brain changes usually become noticeable a month after infection in kids

tern seems to think brain changes 4 weeks post COVID, heart and abdomen 6 weeks

Strep Vote posted:

TBH I'm feeling good about lozenges and nose sprays. Protecting and enhancing the mucosal defenses is probably the best an individual can do, so if you have to open up because you're on the spreadsheet, titers+mucosal immunity+mucosal barrier is going to go a long way to keep you safe.

Atrocious Joe posted:

The blows against public health in the US have been dealt through challenging the state's ability to enforce mask mandates or lack of will to enforce already enshrined workers' protections.

quote:

Racialized mass incarceration in the US is a specific policy that must be combated. Its continued existence is a crime against humanity. However, coercive state power in itself is not obsolete until exploiting classes no longer exist.

quote:

The Palestine organizing anecdote was about how the rhetoric of inclusivity and disability rights can be weaponized against health very quickly if there is not a deeper understanding and set policies even in activist spaces with relatively high levels of consciousness. Like, most Palestinian diaspora spaces I've been in don't even have masks present.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-024-52908-5 posted:

Abstract
The term chronic critical illness describes patients suffering from persistent organ dysfunction and prolonged mechanical ventilation. In severe cases, COVID-19 led to chronic critical illness. As this population was hardly investigated, we evaluated the health-related quality of life, physical, and mental health of chronically critically ill COVID-19 patients. In this prospective cohort study, measurements were conducted on admission to and at discharge from inpatient neurorehabilitation and 3, 6, and 12 months after discharge. We included 97 patients (61 ± 12 years, 31% women) with chronic critical illness; all patients required mechanical ventilation. The median duration of ICU-treatment was 52 (interquartile range 36–71) days, the median duration of mechanical ventilation was 39 (22–55) days. Prevalences of fatigue, anxiety, and depression increased over time, especially between discharge and 3 months post-discharge and remained high until 12 months post-discharge. Accordingly, health-related quality of life was limited without noteworthy improvement (EQ-5D–5L: 0.63 ± 0.33). Overall, the burden of symptoms was high, even one year after discharge (fatigue 55%, anxiety 42%, depression 40%, problems with usual activities 77%, pain/discomfort 84%). Therefore, patients with chronic critical illness should receive attention regarding treatment after discharge with a special focus on mental well-being [ed. lol, come the gently caress on].

Shiroc posted:

I've always found it disappointing that when China could no longer maintain zero covid, instead of pointing to the material problems of how impossible the task was to maintain in the face of the rest of the world actively failing and that they should continue to do as much as they could, the rhetoric immediately hard reversed into "MILD! OVER!" the same as everyone else.

Pingui posted:

lol, you don't say?
"New analysis reveals many excess deaths attributed to natural causes are actually uncounted COVID-19 deaths"

Study proper:
"Excess natural-cause mortality in US counties and its association with reported COVID-19 deaths"

A quick note here. Because you had a reduced disease burden from other diseases, this is likely still an under count, though admittedly it is contentious if a person dying from COVID instead of influenza should be counted as excess, it is something that should be considered in the public health sphere.

https://www.muckrock.com/news/archi...h-certificates/ posted:

Two years after admitting to us that he ‘doesn’t do COVID deaths,’ Missouri coroner criminally charged with lying on death certificates

The elected coroner of Cape Girardeau County, Missouri — who admitted to journalists in 2021 that his office simply “doesn’t do COVID deaths” and that he didn’t personally investigate deaths himself, despite being legally required to do so — was criminally charged Tuesday with three counts of providing false information, by lying on multiple death certificates, and one count of misdemeanor stealing, for allegedly stealing cash from a dead person.

Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey filed the charges — three felonies and a misdemeanor — along with a legal petition to remove the coroner, Wavis Jordan, from office.
(..)
“You know, I have to go by what the family says,” Jordan told us in a 2021 interview. “The family can tell me all they want that this person had COVID, but I just can’t put it on there unless I have some type of proof.”

Many likely COVID-19 deaths didn’t get counted as such. The result was a badly skewed picture of mortality in Cape Girardeau County, MuckRock
(..)
The attorney general’s petition to remove Jordan from office describes him as “a failed coroner.” It goes into detail about repeated incidents where Jordan failed to investigate true causes of death, including three suspected suicides, where investigators found sodium nitrate liquid, medications and suicide notes near the dead.

In all three cases, Jordan determined that deaths were “probable myocardial infarction – etiology unknown,” or heart attacks.

In one of the cases, Jordan allegedly told a police officer and a family member that he would officially log it as a “‘heart attack’ just for paperwork purposes” because “suicide is a sensitive subject.”
(..)
Not a single person was pronounced dead of COVID-19 in Cape Girardeau County in 2021. Meanwhile, deaths at home attributed to conditions with symptoms that look a lot like COVID-19 — heart attacks, Alzheimer’s and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease — increased dramatically.
(..)
Death certificates have long been prone to error. There is a lack of training, certification, job requirements and accreditation in many states. There is a lack of funding for rural, elected coroners for salaries and personnel, equipment and autopsies. And there is an increasing number of cases many coroners and medical examiners see each year.

There is also a measure of clinical judgment — the idea of assigning one specific cause of death as the ultimate single reason for someone’s demise — that allows for a level of nuance and subjectivity on the part of the coroner. Up to 20 contributing causes of death can be listed on the document but there can be just one final cause.

That can lead to an all-too-common incorrect cause of “cardiac arrest” listed on death certificates, which Cape Girardeau has assigned to 35 deaths in 2020 and 2021.
(..)
As part of its “Uncounted” projects, experts described the antiquated, decentralized system of investigating and recording deaths across the U.S. Short-staffed, undertrained and overworked coroners and medical examiners took families at their word when they called to report the death of a relative at home. Coroners and medical examiners didn’t review medical histories or order tests to look for COVID-19.

They, and even some physicians, attributed deaths to inaccurate and nonspecific causes that are meaningless to pathologists. In some cases, stringent rules for attributing a death to COVID-19 created obstacles for relatives of the deceased and contradicted CDC guidance.

These trends were clear in small cities and rural areas with less access to healthcare and fewer physicians. They’re especially pronounced in rural areas of the South and Western United States, areas that heavily voted for former President Donald Trump in the 2020 presidential election.

https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/immunology/articles/10.3389/fimmu.2024.1341843/full posted:

Introduction: A group of SARS-CoV-2 infected individuals present lingering symptoms, defined as long COVID (LC), that may last months or years post the onset of acute disease. A portion of LC patients have symptoms similar to myalgic encephalomyelitis or chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS), which results in a substantial reduction in their quality of life. A better understanding of the pathophysiology of LC, in particular, ME/CFS is urgently needed.

Methods: We identified and studied metabolites and soluble biomarkers in plasma from LC individuals mainly exhibiting ME/CFS compared to age-sex-matched recovered individuals (R) without LC, acute COVID-19 patients (A), and to SARS-CoV-2 unexposed healthy individuals (HC).

Results: Through these analyses, we identified alterations in several metabolomic pathways in LC vs other groups. Plasma metabolomics analysis showed that LC differed from the R and HC groups. Of note, the R group also exhibited a different metabolomic profile than HC. Moreover, we observed a significant elevation in the plasma pro-inflammatory biomarkers (e.g. IL-1α, IL-6, TNF-α, Flt-1, and sCD14) but the reduction in ATP in LC patients. Our results demonstrate that LC patients exhibit persistent metabolomic abnormalities 12 months after the acute COVID-19 disease. Of note, such metabolomic alterations can be observed in the R group 12 months after the acute disease. Hence, the metabolomic recovery period for infected individuals with SARS-CoV-2 might be long-lasting. In particular, we found a significant reduction in sarcosine and serine concentrations in LC patients, which was inversely correlated with depression, anxiety, and cognitive dysfunction scores.

Conclusion: Our study findings provide a comprehensive metabolomic knowledge base and other soluble biomarkers for a better understanding of the pathophysiology of LC and suggests sarcosine and serine supplementations might have potential therapeutic implications in LC patients. Finally, our study reveals that LC disproportionally affects females more than males, as evidenced by nearly 70% of our LC patients being female.

https://medicalxpress.com/news/2024-02-telltale-amino-acid-deficiencies-key.html posted:

In research recently published in Frontiers in Immunology, the team reports that a disproportionate number of people affected—nearly 70%—are female and face debilitating symptoms that are identical to chronic fatigue syndrome, now referred to as myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome or ME/CFS. Blood samples show telltale amino acid deficiencies, suggesting readily available supplements have potential as therapy.
(..)
"We do not actually believe that long COVID is a separate new disease," explains rheumatologist and clinical immunologist Jan Willem Cohen Tervaert, professor of medicine, who is an expert in fatigue associated with rheumatic illnesses.

"Some symptoms—such as the loss of taste and chest pain—are very specific for COVID, but we see a common pathway with ME/CFS, which leads to the same fatigue, brain fog, post-exertional malaise, widespread pain and non-refreshing sleep," he says.
(..)
Persistent abnormalities
For the study, the researchers carried out clinical exams and analyzed blood samples from 75 people. Fifteen of them had never been exposed to SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, and were used as a healthy control group.

Thirty patients had persistent severe long COVID symptoms 12 months after their acute infection that met the criteria for a ME/CFS diagnosis. Fifteen others were hospitalized at the time of their acute infection but then recovered fully, and 15 had the infection but never developed acute or long-lasting symptoms. All 60 COVID cases were confirmed as the Wuhan viral strain in 2020 using molecular testing at the University of Alberta Hospital.

Analysis at Canada's Metabolomics Innovation Center, based at the U of A, showed that all of the people who had acute COVID exhibited some changes, but the 30 long COVID patients exhibited several persistent metabolomic abnormalities 12 months after their acute illness.

The first change the researchers noted was abnormally low levels of adenosine triphosphate (ATP), which is the cellular source of energy, likely due to mitochondrial dysfunction caused by the disease.

"Mitochondria are like the powerhouses of the cell, generating ATP, which is like a rechargeable battery that provides power to cells," Elahi explains. "When those two are not working properly, it may explain why these patients are always tired—they simply don't have enough energy to function and carry out their routine activities."

Next, the team noted signs of chronic systemic inflammation, including finding markers of compromised gut integrity resulting in gut products leaking into the blood [ed. this is very interesting considering gut infections] —a problem often observed in patients with HIV.

Finally, the researchers noted significantly lower-than-normal levels of the amino acids sarcosine, glutamine and serine in the plasma of the long COVID patients. All three are associated with normal brain function [ed. or in this case, lack thereof]. Sarcosine is used as a supplement to treat depression and schizophrenia, low glutamine can cause the gut to leak, and low serine is associated with seizures and learning difficulties.

Strikingly, the team found that long COVID patients with lower plasma levels of these amino acids were more likely to report symptoms of clinical depression, anxiety and mental impairment.
(..)
Cohen Tervaert hopes the work will lead to more research involving patients with ME/CFS in general.

"ME/CFS has been labeled as a psychosomatic disease, and patients still have to fight for recognition by their doctors and their peers," he says. "For some, they can never leave their beds again. It really is a disease that needs more attention."

Silent Linguist posted:

What lozenges and sprays do you use?

Strep Vote posted:

I'm hype on betadine/carrageenan nose spray and currently researching on S. salivarius as a probiotic that has its own antimicrobial secretions and may stimulate local mucosal immunity. I still wear a purple breatheteq though. I like my current homeostasis a lot.

Pingui posted:

I completely agree that it is disgusting, but reading it I cannot help but consider my interactions with my own parents (both boomers) and how getting them to wear a loving mask has been an impossible struggle. If you value your life less than your normalcy, how can you expect others to value your life more than their normalcy? If you pathologize the people trying to work against the pandemic, why do you expect people to still give a poo poo?

I won't blame the victim. I just really wish the boomers gave more of a poo poo themselves.

Ojetor posted:

Hello plague thread! Been out of the loop for a while. Need a bit of thread wisdom.

I haven't had a shot since the ol' days of the OG Covid vaccines back in 2021. Turns out the Mexican government really hosed up and/or gave up on booster distribution after a solid initial push for vaccination. Still somehow Covid free (or fully asymptomatic if I did catch it) by some miracle of biology or masking in public, who can say.

Anyway, Covid vaccines are finally widely available to the public at local pharmacies. They have both Moderna and Pfizer. Any studies available on the efficacy of these two or is it close enough not to matter which I get?

Silent Linguist posted:

What lozenges and sprays do you use?

Steve Yun posted:

https://x.com/1goodtern/status/1755494099103154222?s=46

new study saying long COVID brain changes usually become noticeable a month after infection in kids

tern seems to think brain changes 4 weeks post COVID, heart and abdomen 6 weeks

Ojetor posted:

(..)
They have both Moderna and Pfizer. Any studies available on the efficacy of these two or is it close enough not to matter which I get?

https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/73/wr/mm7304a2.htm?s_cid=mm7304a2_w posted:

Early Estimates of Updated 2023–2024 (Monovalent XBB.1.5) COVID-19 Vaccine Effectiveness Against Symptomatic SARS-CoV-2 Infection Attributable to Co-Circulating Omicron Variants Among Immunocompetent Adults — Increasing Community Access to Testing Program, United States, September 2023–January 2024
(..)


(..)

toggle posted:

this is loving horrifying

which state wanted to send kids back to school after 1 day of infection?

lmao

tuyop posted:

Alright Atrocious Joe, I'll bite and just lol and lmao at you a little here because you're saying some really stupid stuff.

Here are some questions that I hope can guide you toward truth. Namaste and lol lmao goatse whatever you need. If you want further reading, just ask.

You need to go back one step in your analysis. Who did the challenging? With what tactics? To what end? Basically, who are you hiding with the passive voice here?

Now, what actually happened to kill public health and what would we have needed to prevent it? Would more police and prisons have helped us? What has been the effect of police and prisons on the pandemic?

Ah yes, the only possible coercive power: policing and incarceration. After all, that's the only reason people refrain from doing anything! Definitely stops crimes!

In seriousness though, let's go further anyway: from when does policing originate and what problem was it solving? Who has been served by police powers and who has been bound by them? Why?

Now that you know some poo poo and maybe read a book or two:

What do you think police are for? What do you think they should be for? Given the history and structural precursors and consequences of police, do you think this is a realistic expectation to reform towards?

Possible followup questions: Why is the relationship between police resourcing and social wellbeing inverted? If police and carceral institutions keep getting more and more of our resources, why do they always need more? What are those resources actually for since they get used and don't produce any socially positive results?

I agree with this but would argue that these folks have a high level of consciousness of the fads and not of the actual concepts involved in being a leftist. It takes only a moment to plan the meeting to be safe from the airborne hazard and accessible to people with hearing issues. Like nobody offered to scribe for this person or anything? loving sad, worse sense of community than many middle schoolers.

Shiroc posted:

As long as they're the newest ones, Moderna is probably still marginally better between the two but if you can get Novavax it is probably the best of all.

Pingui posted:

Based on the data we have the most important thing is that you get an updated shot, but if you absolutely want a preference in order of apparent protection it goes: 1) Novavax, 2) Moderna and 3) Pfizer. Generally people experience worse side effects with Moderna though, in which case people prefer Pfizer over Moderna. What little difference there may be between the mRNAs isn't worth being laid flat for a day or more, if you can avoid it.

Ojetor posted:

Novavax is approved for medical use in Mexico but not yet approved for sale to the public, unfortunately. Moderna it is, then. I'm getting it tomorrow after work so even if it lays me down a day or two it won't affect much, I was planning on binging Infinite Wealth over the weekend anyway.

Thanks a bunch!

Ojetor posted:

Novavax is approved for medical use in Mexico but not yet approved for sale to the public, unfortunately. Moderna it is, then. I'm getting it tomorrow after work so even if it lays me down a day or two it won't affect much, I was planning on binging Infinite Wealth over the weekend anyway.

Thanks a bunch!

Atrocious Joe posted:

Shiroc posted:

As long as they're the newest ones, Moderna is probably still marginally better between the two but if you can get Novavax it is probably the best of all.

Shiroc posted:

You admitted to not wearing masks due to perceived peer pressure but apparently getting made fun of by us helped.

I also recommend learning to be able to express any leftist ideals in ways that don’t turn into rambling and dull history lessons in that conditions of the Soviet Revolution because nobody cares who isn’t already in your book group.