Some kids have almost permanent sniffles, so under ME14's proposal they would miss a substantial amount of schooling.
I remember my nephew had a permanent runny nose for many many years. He would never have been allowed to go to school.
A significant amount of children are suffering from mental health issues due to lockdown and it is totally wrong and also unworkable to be proposing that children are kept off school for every illness, including the slightest sniffle.
I think you've lost touch with the reality of the lives of people with children and grandchildren.
It was quite apparent from the early Covid days that you you would find it nigh on impossible to return to living a normal life. I'm very sorry that it has turned out that way. All the best.
I lead a perfectly normal life, you're quite wrong to suggest that I don't.
What I am suggesting is that with all the evidence that we have, that having a Covid infection can cause so many health problems, we should be informing people of those risks. Instead it is being hidden from most of the population. If it was explained to people that letting your child have multiple infections may well affect their health for life, I think the attitude would be very different.
The number of people living with long term illness is growing and when we have a virus that is known to cause so many of those illnesses, it is wrong to keep that information from the population.
If children with new symptoms could be tested for Covid, we could then keep those children at home and prevent them from mixing until clear.
@ShootersHillGuru sadly many have learnt nothing from the early pandemic years and when the next pandemic hits, which it surely will, I think it will be very difficult to take the necessary actions to prevent huge loss of life and illness.
With all due respect ME you make it sound like the government are deliberately hiding stuff from the general public and that we are all to stupid to realise. When in fact I believe most people are fully aware of what Covid entails. The thing is we all draw our own conclusions as to the potential dangers and act accordingly. Most of us are happy to have the booster injection when it when offered and then carry on our lives as usual. You see it as a bigger problem and that's fine but most of us don't see it in the Same way as you do.
Unfortunately I don't think the vast majority of the population has a clue about the many studies linking Covid infection with ill health, that is the problem.
Covid is never mentioned by anyone in Government unless it is given as a reason for why things are going so badly in the UK.
The UK Health Security Agency is run by Dr Jenny Harries who has been a mouthpiece for the Government since the early days of the pandemic. The same Jenny Harries who told the nation it was OK for people to attend football matches prior to the March 2020 lockdown; that it was OK for people to attend the Cheltenham Festival; that there was no shortage of ppe when NHS staff were not provided with adequate ppe.
Covid is almost always referred to in the past tense.
Truthfully and im not denier at all, I probably wont have another one for the forseeable. I had three and I was worse after the last one than i was with the actually sickness. As a fairly healthy 33 year old I dont think i will have another jab.
Not everyone can work from home. So what do those do with a kid who has a runny nose. Take annual leave at short notice? Lose a day's salary so you can set your kid up in the front room with an ipad/laptop that you might not even own. All for a runny nose 🤦♂️
In perhaps a perfectly perfect world, that might be the way to go but we don’t live in that world so we have to recognise that will rarely if ever happen. Adjust to the reality and get on with it.
Thought so. Well that's what I'll be doing anyway. My little snotbag will be going in to join the other little germ monsters.
Truthfully and im not denier at all, I probably wont have another one for the forseeable. I had three and I was worse after the last one than i was with the actually sickness. As a fairly healthy 33 year old I dont think i will have another jab.
So does one - A Spend the rest of their lives hiding away and or wearing a mask to prevent Covid infections or B Live their lives to the full and enjoy themselves to the max whilst they can?
I'm B and living life to the full while I can. And that Jeremy is my final answer.
I think people should be aware of the risks with each infection , but it's being ignored everywhere. People think it's all over.
Parents are being told to send their children to school even if sick because school absences are so high. Has anyone thought that perhaps there are so many absences because children are sick. Also what effect will so many infections have on children's future health.
We have millions of people unable to work through sickness. There needs to be a realisation that Covid is not 'over'.
At the very least we should be demanding better filtration of air, particularly in schools. Parents should not be told to send their children to school when unwell.
It's not right that everyone is being lulled into a false sense of security. A Covid infection still had the potential to do a great deal of damage and it's wrong that people are not being warned of the risks.
People with children know that children get sick, one of the joys of being a parent is that from November to March, at least 1 human in the house will be unwell with a cold etc.
Scarlet fever was the latest on our houses bingo card.
Scarlet Fever no picnic for anybody and potentially really very nasty for many The outbreak in the 1950s saw kids in isolation wards for weeks on end
So does one - A Spend the rest of their lives hiding away and or wearing a mask to prevent Covid infections or B Live their lives to the full and enjoy themselves to the max whilst they can?
I'm B and living life to the full while I can. And that Jeremy is my final answer.
I think people should be aware of the risks with each infection , but it's being ignored everywhere. People think it's all over.
Parents are being told to send their children to school even if sick because school absences are so high. Has anyone thought that perhaps there are so many absences because children are sick. Also what effect will so many infections have on children's future health.
We have millions of people unable to work through sickness. There needs to be a realisation that Covid is not 'over'.
At the very least we should be demanding better filtration of air, particularly in schools. Parents should not be told to send their children to school when unwell.
It's not right that everyone is being lulled into a false sense of security. A Covid infection still had the potential to do a great deal of damage and it's wrong that people are not being warned of the risks.
People with children know that children get sick, one of the joys of being a parent is that from November to March, at least 1 human in the house will be unwell with a cold etc.
Scarlet fever was the latest on our houses bingo card.
Scarlet Fever no picnic for anybody and potentially really very nasty for many The outbreak in the 1950s saw kids in isolation wards for weeks on end
I had scarlet fever when I was a kid. Luckily I was too young to remember it but my mum tells me I was pretty ill.
I’m amazed how quickly people forget how desperate things were and now we are back to the pre pandemic view an illness is just another one to add to the list of things that happen and probably to others but not me and if they do it will not be as bad as before. I’d rather take the advice off a person qualified in the respective field rather than a government minister or someone who cherry picks reposted links from social media.
The latest government snotty nose and guts ache guff trivialises what could be nothing but who knows. Personally speaking my mother, in the late 70s, had that get on with attitude until one event changed her mind for life. Healthy people don’t get seriously ill quickly is another myth.
Obviously this government like any other government puts public health high on its priorities,( I might be wrong there), but I seriously doubt they or the next government would be able to react to a similar situation now or in the future to another pandemic any more effectively than we did a few years ago.
So does one - A Spend the rest of their lives hiding away and or wearing a mask to prevent Covid infections or B Live their lives to the full and enjoy themselves to the max whilst they can?
I'm B and living life to the full while I can. And that Jeremy is my final answer.
It isn't a binary decision, there are measures that can be taken that don't restrict normal life, but first there needs to be a recognition that having a Covid infection risks future ill health. Older people may think that risk is worth taking, but condemning children to a life of ill health is not right.
There has been an increase in sudden cardiac arrest in young, previously fit people and we know that having a Covid infection increases the likelihood of heart problems in the months following the infection, that is not in doubt
I know people want to think we are back to 'normal' but we aren't and instead of trying to hide that fact and actually telling people that they should send their children to school is unforgivable.
How many times have people had Covid in the last 4 years and how many times have they had flu in their lifetime, very few I suspect, so comparing the two is not correct.
The last paragraph makes no sense.
You also wrote:
In the last 2 years protection for the population by vaccination had been far worse than many comparable countries. I believe that inyil very recently, the US was suggesting that everyone get boosters, including children
From The Lancet concerning Covid fatality rates in March 2020:
The fatality rate for children 0-9 is 0.0026% , so 2.6 in 100,000
The fatality rate for children 10-19 is 0.015% so 1.5 in 10,000
The fatality rate for adults 40-49 is 0.71 so 7 in 1000
The fatality rate for adults 80+ is 23.3% so 23 in 100
Then there is this from you:There has been an increase in sudden cardiac arrest in young, previously fit people and we know that having a Covid infection increases the likelihood of heart problems in the months following the infection, that is not in doubt.
What you have studiously ignored here is that adverse reactions to Covid Vaccines have also resulted in 'heart problems' for the young, not to mention life changing/debilitating long term illnesses of people in older age groups.
In March 2020 there were no vaccines for Covid, so what point were you making? What do you think would have happened had there been no vaccines, do you not remember the awful scenes across the world, where people were dying in large numbers. Far too many people were taken before their time and many are still suffering from the effects of having been infected.
I accept that there will be some people who have an adverse reaction to a vaccine, but why do you not seem to accept that many more die and suffer long term damage from the actual disease itself.
Covid infections have not yet set into a seasonal pattern as we still have several waves each year, flu is largely a seasonal disease. Most people don't get full blown flu (not man flu) every year, but in the 4 years since the SARS-Cov-2 virus appeared, people have been having multiple infections. Each time you have a Covid infection you run the risk of Long Covid, however mild the infection. If you have multiple infections the likelihood of Long Covid increases.
In March 2020 there were no vaccines for Covid, so what point were you making? What do you think would have happened had there been no vaccines, do you not remember the awful scenes across the world, where people were dying in large numbers. Far too many people were taken before their time and many are still suffering from the effects of having been infected.
I accept that there will be some people who have an adverse reaction to a vaccine, but why do you not seem to accept that many more die and suffer long term damage from the actual disease itself.
Covid infections have not yet set into a seasonal pattern as we still have several waves each year, flu is largely a seasonal disease. Most people don't get full blown flu (not man flu) every year, but in the 4 years since the SARS-Cov-2 virus appeared, people have been having multiple infections. Each time you have a Covid infection you run the risk of Long Covid, however mild the infection. If you have multiple infections the likelihood of Long Covid increases.
Some kids have almost permanent sniffles, so under ME14's proposal they would miss a substantial amount of schooling.
I remember my nephew had a permanent runny nose for many many years. He would never have been allowed to go to school.
A significant amount of children are suffering from mental health issues due to lockdown and it is totally wrong and also unworkable to be proposing that children are kept off school for every illness, including the slightest sniffle.
I think you've lost touch with the reality of the lives of people with children and grandchildren.
It was quite apparent from the early Covid days that you you would find it nigh on impossible to return to living a normal life. I'm very sorry that it has turned out that way. All the best.
I lead a perfectly normal life, you're quite wrong to suggest that I don't.
What I am suggesting is that with all the evidence that we have, that having a Covid infection can cause so many health problems, we should be informing people of those risks. Instead it is being hidden from most of the population. If it was explained to people that letting your child have multiple infections may well affect their health for life, I think the attitude would be very different.
The number of people living with long term illness is growing and when we have a virus that is known to cause so many of those illnesses, it is wrong to keep that information from the population.
If children with new symptoms could be tested for Covid, we could then keep those children at home and prevent them from mixing until clear.
@ShootersHillGuru sadly many have learnt nothing from the early pandemic years and when the next pandemic hits, which it surely will, I think it will be very difficult to take the necessary actions to prevent huge loss of life and illness.
So you’re living a perfectly normal life, but think we should deprive school children of exactly that?
I’m a primary school teacher and see first hand the damage caused by lockdown, the difference between grade 3 kids today and grade 3 kids pre covid is so noticeable, academically and socially. We should be doing everything we can to keep kids in school.
Some kids have almost permanent sniffles, so under ME14's proposal they would miss a substantial amount of schooling.
I remember my nephew had a permanent runny nose for many many years. He would never have been allowed to go to school.
A significant amount of children are suffering from mental health issues due to lockdown and it is totally wrong and also unworkable to be proposing that children are kept off school for every illness, including the slightest sniffle.
I think you've lost touch with the reality of the lives of people with children and grandchildren.
It was quite apparent from the early Covid days that you you would find it nigh on impossible to return to living a normal life. I'm very sorry that it has turned out that way. All the best.
I lead a perfectly normal life, you're quite wrong to suggest that I don't.
What I am suggesting is that with all the evidence that we have, that having a Covid infection can cause so many health problems, we should be informing people of those risks. Instead it is being hidden from most of the population. If it was explained to people that letting your child have multiple infections may well affect their health for life, I think the attitude would be very different.
The number of people living with long term illness is growing and when we have a virus that is known to cause so many of those illnesses, it is wrong to keep that information from the population.
If children with new symptoms could be tested for Covid, we could then keep those children at home and prevent them from mixing until clear.
@ShootersHillGuru sadly many have learnt nothing from the early pandemic years and when the next pandemic hits, which it surely will, I think it will be very difficult to take the necessary actions to prevent huge loss of life and illness.
So you’re living a perfectly normal life, but think we should deprive school children of exactly that?
I’m a primary school teacher and see first hand the damage caused by lockdown, the difference between grade 3 kids today and grade 3 kids pre covid is so noticeable, academically and socially. We should be doing everything we can to keep kids in school.
One child going to school when ill may result in 20 others becoming ill and unable to attend, how does that keep children present in school?
Is it not just common sense, a runny nose send them in. If they are vomiting, chills shivers, fever or diarrhea keep them home.
At some point if a virus that is in circulation rapidly cant be controlled we just have to live with it, yes some people will undoubtedly pass away and that is a tragic but normal aspect of life. Now we can (and should) make certain provisions for environments where we know sick people will be, in the same way we do for extreme allergies.
Also one child missing a week of school due to Covid (or any other illness for that matter) is not the end of the world in terms of their development.
Last week there was a Long Covid Awareness Day which prompted the article in the Guardian which @Ross referred to yesterday. I found this article which sums up the media response and refers to that article. It's a long read but I am copying in case viewing is difficult. I am aware that the second link I posted yesterday did not open properly on a mobile screen.
Media celebrated Long COVID Awareness Day by denying its existence
Just a week ago, in response to an NPR piece that framed a disabled man’s existence in an inaccessible society as a burden to those around him, I wrote:
Long COVID is the faulty, load-bearing beam in the rickety pandemic denial superstructure. Were the public to grasp how common and how severe it is, the entire post-pandemic facade would come crumbling down.
Therefore, as Long COVID patients become louder, as their presence becomes more undeniable, as their numbers grow, the COVID normalization project must pivot from attempting to disappear these victims to steadily stigmatizing them.
Four days later, on March 15 aka Long COVID Awareness Day, outlets across the globe chose to elevate an unpublished, un-peer-reviewed, observational text-message based “study,” and its absurd claim that Long COVID is nothing new and everyone should stop talking about it.
This political choice- elevating a single unpublished study which examined a total of zero patients and ran a total of zero tests- when tens of thousands of others contradict its findings, is unsurprising. The political choice to do so on a day intended to draw attention to the suffering of tens of millions of people is cruel in the extreme.
Long COVID Awareness Day intended to do just that; create awareness through organized actions, many of them put on by disabled people struggling with day-to-day activities. Major media outlets ensured that the top “Long COVID” results on Google that day would be minimizing, unscientific propaganda instead of news about activists, their work, their message, and their illness.
It feels tiresome to continually relitigate those tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of studies demonstrating the existence of post-COVID health impacts and in particular the cluster of symptoms known as Long COVID. Viral persistence, microclots in the blood and endothelial dysfunction, immune system dysregulation, mitochondrial damage leading to severe fatigue and exercise intolerance, blood-brain barrier disruption have all been documented in Long COVID patients. The CDC’s most recent data found that 6.8% of Americans are currently suffering from Long COVID, or approximately 24 million people. There is no legitimate scientific debate, whatsoever, about whether Long COVID “exists.”
If it feels like a waste of time to debate every minimizer and grifter popping up to proclaim COVID, a novel virus that has killed tens of millions of people since 2020 in one of the deadliest pandemics in human history, can’t possibly harm “healthy” people (whatever that means), it is. It is the same propaganda playbook used by Big Tobacco and Big Oil. Deny, deny, deny. Get people arguing with you about their very existence; they won’t have time to argue about their rights.
While we might expect the NYPost to run such propaganda- in their case under the disgusting headline, “On Long COVID Awareness Day, Remember This: Long COVID is Fake!”, more respected outlets like The Guardian ran the same story with the same message, albeit under the more liberal-friendly “Time to stop using term ‘long COVID’ as symptoms no worse than those after flu.” The average person is infected with COVID 5-10 times more frequently than flu, for the record. So even if post-COVID effects were comparable to post-flu effects (they aren’t), we’d still have a public health issue 5-10 times as large, on top of the pre-existing burden of flu.
None of this is about evidence, papers, studies, charts, or data. If it were, media would splash “Long Covid and Impaired Cognition”, the self-explanatory title of a recent article in the New England Journal of Medicine, across their front pages. Is it not front-page news that a disease we’ve all been encouraged to repeatedly contract, for the rest of our lives, causes cognitive damage? Aren’t there some concerning implications to the scientific finding that people are losing cognitive ability with every infection, and the entire public is being repeatedly infected with no end in sight?
Media outlets, their corporate owners and their editors have one view of COVID-19: the crisis is over. Therefore, any evidence that might indicate otherwise is presented quietly, if at all. Evidence that confirms their pre-conceived notions- notions which just happen to align with the worldview that all is well, and our beneficent capitalist overlords are ruling wisely- will be loud and unavoidable.
We see the same phenomenon with climate reporting, for the same reasons; although there is more coverage now of the looming catastrophe, it has never been presented with the urgency merited. The people behind these publications do not understand the true nature of the climate emergency, because they still believe in the “meritocracy” they sit atop. To question its doings, to ask aloud if this system might just kill us all in the end, is to question their own identity and sense of superiority. In other words, they simply cannot believe that those in charge could be so stupid and so wrong, to take us down a path so destructive and so irrational. It’s important to internalize that those in charge have done so with climate and are doing so with COVID; there are no adults taking care of us, only oligarchs squeezing profit from us.
The dehumanizing debate over the existence of Long COVID patients assumes, first and foremost, that Long COVID patients cannot and should not speak to their own experiences. The Guardian’s piece does quote a dissenting doctor, toward the end of its article. It does not quote a single patient living with this disease that they are once again encouraging people to ignore, dismiss, and doubt. Articles like these aren’t simply insulting or offensive; they have material impacts. Every suffering patient going to the ends of the Earth to convince their family members, friends, and even doctors that yes, they have a real disease, is set back by these articles. They are materially and violently harmed by such pieces.
Many people living with Long COVID cohabit with people who do not understand or believe in it; the wife from NPR’s article is one relatively benign example. Although she does want to force her husband to risk lifelong disability to eat in the inside part of the restaurant, she does at least still mask in many places. She does not believe Long COVID is “fake,” but also does not seem to fully internalize the risk of exposure. Other patients deal with angry, mocking family members who refuse to test or mask at all, who purposely expose them, who believe they are lying or malingering. Articles like this reinforce their beliefs and behavior.
Additionally, such misinformation harms those who do not yet have Long COVID. Most Long COVID patients will tell you that they did not know that COVID could leave them long-term ill or disabled when they got sick. Four years into the crisis, that’s not an oversight. There is a deliberate, highly successful effort to misinform the public that COVID cannot harm them. President Biden has mentioned the words Long COVID aloud once or twice. A quick search of his twitter account reveals it has never been mentioned there. To this administration, the inconvenient victims of “letting COVID rip” with zero mitigations in place simply do not exist. The press is doing the necessary ideological and social work of convincing the public that anyone who claims otherwise is lying or crazy.
It’s hard to think of anything more awful that attacking people your policies already disabled. But discrediting victims is the only way to continue to double down on forever COVID infections.
If we take a step back- back from the years of blinding, top-down propaganda, back from the inane questions, back from the social denial- the absurd basis of the entire push to disappear Long COVID patients is the idea that a dangerous virus cannot hurt anybody. That instead of listening to all the millions of patients who’ve been harmed and are trying to warn us, we should listen to a handful of prominent minimizers who want you infected. That is what the press, in a thousand different ways, with a thousand different tactics, continually tries to impress upon the public. COVID won’t hurt you. If it hurt someone else, it’s because they’re unlucky, bad, lying, or insane. The political purpose of this is to encourage you to risk COVID, again and again and again. It is a comforting fantasy; stripping away the years of unscientific reporting, you should be able to see it for what it is: a complete absurdity.
Never in the history of public health have citizens been encouraged to contract and spread disease. Never in the history of viral illnesses, outside of anti-vaxxer spaces, have people been encouraged to believe that pathogens improve the immune system (they don’t!). Never in the history of humanity have societies welcomed disease and disease spread as a good or neutral event. These outlets are brainwashing you not only to accept COVID, but to accept that nothing can be done about it, and that those who want something to be done about it are bad and crazy. They are brainwashing you, in fact, to accept and embrace COVID; why else are those wearing masks treated as freaks for wanting to avoid it?
To pretend COVID- like any other disease- cannot be mitigated- is bizarre, unscientific, defeatist logic, and it is, in fact, a lie! We have the technology to drastically reduce airborne disease spread; we are choosing not to use it because it requires spending money on the public. After several years of strange, upside-down world messaging in favor of reinfections, people are siding with a fantasy over the shouts of the many harmed, and siding with COVID over their own health.
Some kids have almost permanent sniffles, so under ME14's proposal they would miss a substantial amount of schooling.
I remember my nephew had a permanent runny nose for many many years. He would never have been allowed to go to school.
A significant amount of children are suffering from mental health issues due to lockdown and it is totally wrong and also unworkable to be proposing that children are kept off school for every illness, including the slightest sniffle.
I think you've lost touch with the reality of the lives of people with children and grandchildren.
It was quite apparent from the early Covid days that you you would find it nigh on impossible to return to living a normal life. I'm very sorry that it has turned out that way. All the best.
I lead a perfectly normal life, you're quite wrong to suggest that I don't.
What I am suggesting is that with all the evidence that we have, that having a Covid infection can cause so many health problems, we should be informing people of those risks. Instead it is being hidden from most of the population. If it was explained to people that letting your child have multiple infections may well affect their health for life, I think the attitude would be very different.
The number of people living with long term illness is growing and when we have a virus that is known to cause so many of those illnesses, it is wrong to keep that information from the population.
If children with new symptoms could be tested for Covid, we could then keep those children at home and prevent them from mixing until clear.
@ShootersHillGuru sadly many have learnt nothing from the early pandemic years and when the next pandemic hits, which it surely will, I think it will be very difficult to take the necessary actions to prevent huge loss of life and illness.
So you’re living a perfectly normal life, but think we should deprive school children of exactly that?
I’m a primary school teacher and see first hand the damage caused by lockdown, the difference between grade 3 kids today and grade 3 kids pre covid is so noticeable, academically and socially. We should be doing everything we can to keep kids in school.
One child going to school when ill may result in 20 others becoming ill and unable to attend, how does that keep children present in school?
Find me one teacher that tells you that’s not always been the case, schools are germ central, people get sick.
Why do you get to live a normal life, but children can’t?
Some kids have almost permanent sniffles, so under ME14's proposal they would miss a substantial amount of schooling.
I remember my nephew had a permanent runny nose for many many years. He would never have been allowed to go to school.
A significant amount of children are suffering from mental health issues due to lockdown and it is totally wrong and also unworkable to be proposing that children are kept off school for every illness, including the slightest sniffle.
I think you've lost touch with the reality of the lives of people with children and grandchildren.
It was quite apparent from the early Covid days that you you would find it nigh on impossible to return to living a normal life. I'm very sorry that it has turned out that way. All the best.
I lead a perfectly normal life, you're quite wrong to suggest that I don't.
What I am suggesting is that with all the evidence that we have, that having a Covid infection can cause so many health problems, we should be informing people of those risks. Instead it is being hidden from most of the population. If it was explained to people that letting your child have multiple infections may well affect their health for life, I think the attitude would be very different.
The number of people living with long term illness is growing and when we have a virus that is known to cause so many of those illnesses, it is wrong to keep that information from the population.
If children with new symptoms could be tested for Covid, we could then keep those children at home and prevent them from mixing until clear.
@ShootersHillGuru sadly many have learnt nothing from the early pandemic years and when the next pandemic hits, which it surely will, I think it will be very difficult to take the necessary actions to prevent huge loss of life and illness.
So you’re living a perfectly normal life, but think we should deprive school children of exactly that?
I’m a primary school teacher and see first hand the damage caused by lockdown, the difference between grade 3 kids today and grade 3 kids pre covid is so noticeable, academically and socially. We should be doing everything we can to keep kids in school.
One child going to school when ill may result in 20 others becoming ill and unable to attend, how does that keep children present in school?
Find me one teacher that tells you that’s not always been the case, schools are germ central, people get sick.
Why do you get to live a normal life, but children can’t?
I wouldn't go into public places if I thought I might pass on a virus to others. Sending children to school if they are not well risks passing on that illness to others and as much as people want to believe it doesn't matter, and that Covid poses no risks, there are numerous studies that suggest it does.
Some kids have almost permanent sniffles, so under ME14's proposal they would miss a substantial amount of schooling.
I remember my nephew had a permanent runny nose for many many years. He would never have been allowed to go to school.
A significant amount of children are suffering from mental health issues due to lockdown and it is totally wrong and also unworkable to be proposing that children are kept off school for every illness, including the slightest sniffle.
I think you've lost touch with the reality of the lives of people with children and grandchildren.
It was quite apparent from the early Covid days that you you would find it nigh on impossible to return to living a normal life. I'm very sorry that it has turned out that way. All the best.
I lead a perfectly normal life, you're quite wrong to suggest that I don't.
What I am suggesting is that with all the evidence that we have, that having a Covid infection can cause so many health problems, we should be informing people of those risks. Instead it is being hidden from most of the population. If it was explained to people that letting your child have multiple infections may well affect their health for life, I think the attitude would be very different.
The number of people living with long term illness is growing and when we have a virus that is known to cause so many of those illnesses, it is wrong to keep that information from the population.
If children with new symptoms could be tested for Covid, we could then keep those children at home and prevent them from mixing until clear.
@ShootersHillGuru sadly many have learnt nothing from the early pandemic years and when the next pandemic hits, which it surely will, I think it will be very difficult to take the necessary actions to prevent huge loss of life and illness.
So you’re living a perfectly normal life, but think we should deprive school children of exactly that?
I’m a primary school teacher and see first hand the damage caused by lockdown, the difference between grade 3 kids today and grade 3 kids pre covid is so noticeable, academically and socially. We should be doing everything we can to keep kids in school.
One child going to school when ill may result in 20 others becoming ill and unable to attend, how does that keep children present in school?
Find me one teacher that tells you that’s not always been the case, schools are germ central, people get sick.
Why do you get to live a normal life, but children can’t?
Does you school filter the air the children breathe? Filtration of air can reduce the the likelihood of infection. Covid is an airborne virus spread by aerosol, tiny particles that hang in the air like smoke.
There is a campaign for better filtration of air in public places, this is something that would make it safer for everyone.
When there is evidence of harm to humans by Covid infection, and that evidence is not being communicated to the public, it takes people like me to get that information out there. There is a lot of evidence out there of the harms and it is growing, my post on Sunday gave links to just 122 of them, there are many more.
As in the Post Office scandal, it sometimes takes people like me to keep informing others, people in that case were not believed for many years, this has the potential to be another scandal.
We now have lots of people denying that Covid killed anyone at all. No point discussing anything with them.
Yes, you're right, I see plenty of people on social media calling Covid a hoax.
It’s funny that the vast majority of those that think Covid was a hoax and the vaccines were some dastardly experiment are exactly the same people that think that there are chemtrails in the sky, 911 was a CIA conspiracy and self inflicted, Sandy Hook shootings were false and the grieving were actors, milk is for calves, microwaves are changing foods dna, and that Elvis is working in a chip shop in Sidcup. Funny that.
When there is evidence of harm to humans by Covid infection, and that evidence is not being communicated to the public, it takes people like me to get that information out there. There is a lot of evidence out there of the harms and it is growing, my post on Sunday gave links to just 122 of them, there are many more.
As in the Post Office scandal, it sometimes takes people like me to keep informing others, people in that case were not believed for many years, this has the potential to be another scandal.
So what is the answer ? shut things down ? harm childrens education ? ruin the economy ? to stop what ?
I dont think the population need evidence communicated to them anymore than it already is tbh. Everybody is aware that Covid is here to stay and yes sadly some people will die but guess what everybody dies of something, that isnt me being flippant but it is true we ALL die at some point. Some people it seems are too afraid to actually live until that time comes.
When there is evidence of harm to humans by Covid infection, and that evidence is not being communicated to the public, it takes people like me to get that information out there. There is a lot of evidence out there of the harms and it is growing, my post on Sunday gave links to just 122 of them, there are many more.
As in the Post Office scandal, it sometimes takes people like me to keep informing others, people in that case were not believed for many years, this has the potential to be another scandal.
So what is the answer ? shut things down ? harm childrens education ? ruin the economy ? to stop what ?
I dont think the population need evidence communicated to them anymore than it already is tbh. Everybody is aware that Covid is here to stay and yes sadly some people will die but guess what everybody dies of something, that isnt me being flippant but it is true we ALL die at some point. Some people it seems are too afraid to actually live until that time comes.
You're missing the point, most people know nothing about all these studies that suggest that Covid causes damage to the body. People should be told so they can weigh up the risks.
Comments
Covid is never mentioned by anyone in Government unless it is given as a reason for why things are going so badly in the UK.
The UK Health Security Agency is run by Dr Jenny Harries who has been a mouthpiece for the Government since the early days of the pandemic. The same Jenny Harries who told the nation it was OK for people to attend football matches prior to the March 2020 lockdown; that it was OK for people to attend the Cheltenham Festival; that there was no shortage of ppe when NHS staff were not provided with adequate ppe.
Covid is almost always referred to in the past tense.
The outbreak in the 1950s saw kids in isolation wards for weeks on end
You also wrote:
From The Lancet concerning Covid fatality rates in March 2020:
The fatality rate for children 0-9 is 0.0026% , so 2.6 in 100,000
The fatality rate for children 10-19 is 0.015% so 1.5 in 10,000
The fatality rate for adults 40-49 is 0.71 so 7 in 1000
The fatality rate for adults 80+ is 23.3% so 23 in 100
Then there is this from you: There has been an increase in sudden cardiac arrest in young, previously fit people and we know that having a Covid infection increases the likelihood of heart problems in the months following the infection, that is not in doubt.
What you have studiously ignored here is that adverse reactions to Covid Vaccines have also resulted in 'heart problems' for the young, not to mention life changing/debilitating long term illnesses of people in older age groups.
I accept that there will be some people who have an adverse reaction to a vaccine, but why do you not seem to accept that many more die and suffer long term damage from the actual disease itself.
Covid infections have not yet set into a seasonal pattern as we still have several waves each year, flu is largely a seasonal disease. Most people don't get full blown flu (not man flu) every year, but in the 4 years since the SARS-Cov-2 virus appeared, people have been having multiple infections. Each time you have a Covid infection you run the risk of Long Covid, however mild the infection. If you have multiple infections the likelihood of Long Covid increases.
Not with Covid.
At some point if a virus that is in circulation rapidly cant be controlled we just have to live with it, yes some people will undoubtedly pass away and that is a tragic but normal aspect of life. Now we can (and should) make certain provisions for environments where we know sick people will be, in the same way we do for extreme allergies.
Also one child missing a week of school due to Covid (or any other illness for that matter) is not the end of the world in terms of their development.
Media celebrated Long COVID Awareness Day by denying its existence
Just a week ago, in response to an NPR piece that framed a disabled man’s existence in an inaccessible society as a burden to those around him, I wrote:
Four days later, on March 15 aka Long COVID Awareness Day, outlets across the globe chose to elevate an unpublished, un-peer-reviewed, observational text-message based “study,” and its absurd claim that Long COVID is nothing new and everyone should stop talking about it.
This political choice- elevating a single unpublished study which examined a total of zero patients and ran a total of zero tests- when tens of thousands of others contradict its findings, is unsurprising. The political choice to do so on a day intended to draw attention to the suffering of tens of millions of people is cruel in the extreme.
Long COVID Awareness Day intended to do just that; create awareness through organized actions, many of them put on by disabled people struggling with day-to-day activities. Major media outlets ensured that the top “Long COVID” results on Google that day would be minimizing, unscientific propaganda instead of news about activists, their work, their message, and their illness.
It feels tiresome to continually relitigate those tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of studies demonstrating the existence of post-COVID health impacts and in particular the cluster of symptoms known as Long COVID. Viral persistence, microclots in the blood and endothelial dysfunction, immune system dysregulation, mitochondrial damage leading to severe fatigue and exercise intolerance, blood-brain barrier disruption have all been documented in Long COVID patients. The CDC’s most recent data found that 6.8% of Americans are currently suffering from Long COVID, or approximately 24 million people. There is no legitimate scientific debate, whatsoever, about whether Long COVID “exists.”
If it feels like a waste of time to debate every minimizer and grifter popping up to proclaim COVID, a novel virus that has killed tens of millions of people since 2020 in one of the deadliest pandemics in human history, can’t possibly harm “healthy” people (whatever that means), it is. It is the same propaganda playbook used by Big Tobacco and Big Oil. Deny, deny, deny. Get people arguing with you about their very existence; they won’t have time to argue about their rights.
While we might expect the NYPost to run such propaganda- in their case under the disgusting headline, “On Long COVID Awareness Day, Remember This: Long COVID is Fake!”, more respected outlets like The Guardian ran the same story with the same message, albeit under the more liberal-friendly “Time to stop using term ‘long COVID’ as symptoms no worse than those after flu.” The average person is infected with COVID 5-10 times more frequently than flu, for the record. So even if post-COVID effects were comparable to post-flu effects (they aren’t), we’d still have a public health issue 5-10 times as large, on top of the pre-existing burden of flu.
None of this is about evidence, papers, studies, charts, or data. If it were, media would splash “Long Covid and Impaired Cognition”, the self-explanatory title of a recent article in the New England Journal of Medicine, across their front pages. Is it not front-page news that a disease we’ve all been encouraged to repeatedly contract, for the rest of our lives, causes cognitive damage? Aren’t there some concerning implications to the scientific finding that people are losing cognitive ability with every infection, and the entire public is being repeatedly infected with no end in sight?
Media outlets, their corporate owners and their editors have one view of COVID-19: the crisis is over. Therefore, any evidence that might indicate otherwise is presented quietly, if at all. Evidence that confirms their pre-conceived notions- notions which just happen to align with the worldview that all is well, and our beneficent capitalist overlords are ruling wisely- will be loud and unavoidable.
We see the same phenomenon with climate reporting, for the same reasons; although there is more coverage now of the looming catastrophe, it has never been presented with the urgency merited. The people behind these publications do not understand the true nature of the climate emergency, because they still believe in the “meritocracy” they sit atop. To question its doings, to ask aloud if this system might just kill us all in the end, is to question their own identity and sense of superiority. In other words, they simply cannot believe that those in charge could be so stupid and so wrong, to take us down a path so destructive and so irrational. It’s important to internalize that those in charge have done so with climate and are doing so with COVID; there are no adults taking care of us, only oligarchs squeezing profit from us.
The dehumanizing debate over the existence of Long COVID patients assumes, first and foremost, that Long COVID patients cannot and should not speak to their own experiences. The Guardian’s piece does quote a dissenting doctor, toward the end of its article. It does not quote a single patient living with this disease that they are once again encouraging people to ignore, dismiss, and doubt. Articles like these aren’t simply insulting or offensive; they have material impacts. Every suffering patient going to the ends of the Earth to convince their family members, friends, and even doctors that yes, they have a real disease, is set back by these articles. They are materially and violently harmed by such pieces.
Many people living with Long COVID cohabit with people who do not understand or believe in it; the wife from NPR’s article is one relatively benign example. Although she does want to force her husband to risk lifelong disability to eat in the inside part of the restaurant, she does at least still mask in many places. She does not believe Long COVID is “fake,” but also does not seem to fully internalize the risk of exposure. Other patients deal with angry, mocking family members who refuse to test or mask at all, who purposely expose them, who believe they are lying or malingering. Articles like this reinforce their beliefs and behavior.
Additionally, such misinformation harms those who do not yet have Long COVID. Most Long COVID patients will tell you that they did not know that COVID could leave them long-term ill or disabled when they got sick. Four years into the crisis, that’s not an oversight. There is a deliberate, highly successful effort to misinform the public that COVID cannot harm them. President Biden has mentioned the words Long COVID aloud once or twice. A quick search of his twitter account reveals it has never been mentioned there. To this administration, the inconvenient victims of “letting COVID rip” with zero mitigations in place simply do not exist. The press is doing the necessary ideological and social work of convincing the public that anyone who claims otherwise is lying or crazy.
It’s hard to think of anything more awful that attacking people your policies already disabled. But discrediting victims is the only way to continue to double down on forever COVID infections.
If we take a step back- back from the years of blinding, top-down propaganda, back from the inane questions, back from the social denial- the absurd basis of the entire push to disappear Long COVID patients is the idea that a dangerous virus cannot hurt anybody. That instead of listening to all the millions of patients who’ve been harmed and are trying to warn us, we should listen to a handful of prominent minimizers who want you infected. That is what the press, in a thousand different ways, with a thousand different tactics, continually tries to impress upon the public. COVID won’t hurt you. If it hurt someone else, it’s because they’re unlucky, bad, lying, or insane. The political purpose of this is to encourage you to risk COVID, again and again and again. It is a comforting fantasy; stripping away the years of unscientific reporting, you should be able to see it for what it is: a complete absurdity.
Never in the history of public health have citizens been encouraged to contract and spread disease. Never in the history of viral illnesses, outside of anti-vaxxer spaces, have people been encouraged to believe that pathogens improve the immune system (they don’t!). Never in the history of humanity have societies welcomed disease and disease spread as a good or neutral event. These outlets are brainwashing you not only to accept COVID, but to accept that nothing can be done about it, and that those who want something to be done about it are bad and crazy. They are brainwashing you, in fact, to accept and embrace COVID; why else are those wearing masks treated as freaks for wanting to avoid it?
To pretend COVID- like any other disease- cannot be mitigated- is bizarre, unscientific, defeatist logic, and it is, in fact, a lie! We have the technology to drastically reduce airborne disease spread; we are choosing not to use it because it requires spending money on the public. After several years of strange, upside-down world messaging in favor of reinfections, people are siding with a fantasy over the shouts of the many harmed, and siding with COVID over their own health.
https://www.thegauntlet.news/p/media-celebrated-long-covid-awareness?fbclid=IwAR0GYSp9R46-wfhORvh3QdSIEaM2DKkpIf6Rsvf8XzPj9xJOdXAMZGH38tI
Why do you get to live a normal life, but children can’t?
There is a campaign for better filtration of air in public places, this is something that would make it safer for everyone.
As in the Post Office scandal, it sometimes takes people like me to keep informing others, people in that case were not believed for many years, this has the potential to be another scandal.
I dont think the population need evidence communicated to them anymore than it already is tbh. Everybody is aware that Covid is here to stay and yes sadly some people will die but guess what everybody dies of something, that isnt me being flippant but it is true we ALL die at some point. Some people it seems are too afraid to actually live until that time comes.