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It sounds like Destin took great care to remain positive and supportive, but I can't help and read between the lines the reality of Diane's dire situation: a ye
by btbuildem 3y ago
It sounds like Destin took great care to remain positive and supportive, but I can't help and read between the lines the reality of Diane's dire situation: a year and a half later, her situation has not improved. This is with full support of an amazing, resourceful spouse (and presumably, her family as well).
The unspoken hard truth here is this: Long Covid is a nightmare, it's an open-ended sentence for lifetime disability. We as a society have generally "moved on" - which again, translates to a ruthless abandonment of those who happen to tangle with the actual reality of this ever-present illness and lose the to the russian-roulette-odds of the draw where the acute phase ends, but the long-term consequences bloom.
It's an absolute absurdity that we collectively "went back to normal", pretending this endemic virus that can wreak havoc across multiple organs and systems just went away - while we did very, very little to enact any impactful change at all.
Every Covid-19 infection carries with it a 15% chance of Long Covid, and the odds worsen with every subsequent infection - by the 5th time, you're basically looking at a coin toss. Diane is one example, but there are over 65M people worldwide with this affliction - a debilitating, fully disabling, long-term illness with no known cures or mitigations. There doesn't seem to be much urgency in finding any, either, and the entire situation is not getting mass media attention, while "content creators" who post about it appear to get demonetized.
The risks are real, and the consequences catastrophic. This is a mass-disabling event, and we're pretending not to notice; it's slow roll is making that easier. If we do nothing today, a decade from now our society will be utterly transformed.
We need to invest time and effort into changing the public perception, push for air quality standards to be enforced via OSHA and equivalent, and otherwise promote clean air standards in shared indoor spaces. People don't like wearing "masks" (fair, the surgical or cloth ones don't do much here, you need a proper N95 respirator or equivalent), but unless we have proper infrastructure in place, this is the only fallback.
The comparison to the (somewhat apocryphal) actions of Dr John Snow and the plague-spreading water pump in London's old SOHO has been made again and again -- the learnings from that time are what led the officials to build entire sewer and water purification systems, a basis which permit modern cities to exist. The same thing needs to happen today for the air which we breathe.
Content creators and online personalities with big followings have a responsibility to spread a science-positive, pro-social message like this. And if a call to a "greater good" falls on deaf ears - think selfishly. If a very popular online persona like Physics Girl can fade into obscurity overnight, what will happen to you?
- thenerdhead 3y agoThe CDC director and other country health ministers have started to publicly recognize long covid recently. The government is trying to get ahead of the accessibility challenges of potentially life-saving/reversing drugs too: https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2023/12/14/fact-sheet-biden-harris-administration-announces-dozens-of-pharma-companies-raised-prices-faster-than-inflation-triggering-medicare-rebates/ https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases... > The Administration is focused on making sure medications developed with taxpayer funds are available to Americans at reasonable prices. > In September 2023, ASPR finalized a Project NextGen contract agreement for a potentially life-saving COVID-19 treatment being developed by Regeneron stating if the product is commercialized, its list price in the United States will be equal to or less than its retail price in comparable global markets. The big problem is 100% public perception. We have as a country failed miserably to further message the pandemic's second-order consequences. We need courageous public leaders to message this public health crisis in terms that will get through to people: i.e. economics, productivity, and the anguish of other human beings. https://scholar.harvard.edu/files/cutler/files/long_covid_update_7-22.pdf https://scholar.harvard.edu/files/cutler/files/long_covid_up... The https://johnsnowproject.org/ https://johnsnowproject.org/ has been a voice of reason here. We can go further with other innovations like far-UV lights. https://www.cuimc.columbia.edu/news/new-type-ultraviolet-light-makes-indoor-air-safe-outdoors https://www.cuimc.columbia.edu/news/new-type-ultraviolet-lig... I believe Physics Girl is going to make a video on long covid or post-acute infection syndromes soon. Hopefully that can help bring additional awareness here.
- btbuildem 3y agoI didn't mean to sound so hopeless -- you're right, there are people pushing in the right direction. But as you say, public health officials and elected leaders have by and large dropped the ball, stabbed it a bunch of times, and threw the deflated remnants down an abandoned mine shaft. All it took was some clever targeted manipulation of the most susceptible people and the weak spines / weathercock nature of politicians. We knew back in 2020 that LC is a thing, and what the treatments could look like [1]. Researchers at the time likened it to HIV, and did so with the treatments as well (a cocktail of antivirals). 1: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/26/health/coronavirus-immune-system.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/26/health/coronavirus-immune...