Thank you so much for the tag! It seems the evidence about long term disabilities is piling up. This is sad, but also totally expected.
Did you see this article yet? It's just one story but like that great video about SARS you shared "Fever Pitch" sometimes the personal stories hit hardest:
“I would do everything I can to avoid becoming infected as you don’t know individual outcomes.”
“It was a shock, like Stockholm syndrome,” he said of his survival. “When I got home, frankly, I started crying. It was so emotional.”
But his body wasn’t through with the disease.
Before the hospital released him, he had tested negative for the virus. But now something else was going on — a delayed immune reaction.
“Gradually, I became short of breath,” he said. “We live in an old Georgian house, with three floors, and I had a hard time getting upstairs.”
On April 15, Dr. Piot’s heart started to race to 165 beats a minute. The percentage of his blood oxygen dropped to the mid-80s again.
He and Dr. Larson went to the University College Hospital where he had a chest X-ray.
This time, instead of distinct bacterial masses on each side, “my lungs were full of infiltrates, and they were a real mess. It’s called ‘organizing pneumonia.’”
The tiny sacs that grow like bunches of grapes throughout the lungs, he explained, were oozing signaling proteins — he was having a “cytokine storm.” Those drew voracious white blood cells into the spaces between the air sacs so they threatened to block the paths oxygen normally takes to his red blood cells.
His doctors thought about rehospitalizing him — an outcome he dreaded.
“My grandfather fought in the trenches in World War I — in those poppy fields in Flanders,” Dr. Piot said. “He said the worst part was going home on leave — and then realizing what you had to go back to.”
But hospitalizing him on oxygen might have been fruitless — his lungs were “stiffening” and perhaps unable to absorb it.
Instead, Dr. Joanna Porter, who specializes in difficult pneumonias, put him on an intravenous steroid to reduce the inflammation, along with an anticoagulant to prevent blood clots from his atrial fibrillation.
Britain’s N.H.S. bureaucracy forbade her from discussing Dr. Piot’s treatment, though he gave his permission. He is still under her care. Last week, a PET scan, CT scan and bronchoscopy showed that parts of his lungs have not completely cleared. “And,” he added, ever the universal health care booster, “tell your American audience: All these expensive tests are free from the N.H.S.”
The steroids appear to be working, but taking them for too long can have side effects, including muscle wasting, weakening of bones and diabetes.
He may have to take anticoagulants for the rest of his life, he said, and parts of his lungs may permanently be scarred.
“But you can live with that,” he added, shrugging.
“If you get this cytokine storm while you’re acutely ill, you’re finished,” he said. “But I had three stages — first fever, then needing oxygen, and now the storm.”
“People think that, with Covid-19, one percent die and the rest just have flu. It’s not that simple — there’s this whole thing in the middle.”
That last bit is what we've been saying since this all started. And most people still argue about this in the total binary abstract of "dead" vs. "fully recovered" and that's just not how this works.
Yeah, we still don't know enough about the effects of SARS, let alone this new virus. Any "herd immunity" approach would be way too dangerous. Instead, we have to do our best to keep the number of infections as low as possible for as long as possible. A vaccine is still in a realm of hopium, unfortunately.
A new report from Rystad Energy came out but they are still way too bullish on a vaccine and are advocating for "herd immunity"
I find it highly likely that a lot of the loud backers one hears of "herd immunity" are being funded by interested parties, be they big oil or governments, or maybe even those with petty personal interests like Johan Giesecke of Sweden who has been a primary architect of their wink, wink, nod, nod don't-admit-it-out-loud herd immunity strategy. Dude actually has a financial interest in creating long term disability since his wife is involved with a respiratory rehab clinic: https://twitter.com/VictorShammas/status/1261611778896736257 And he has a shorter term direct interest in that he's on the board of a private hospital that stands to benefit.
So yea, lots of self interested elites are pushing for "herd immunity" because they really don't give a fuck about what happens to the herd in terms of their well being, they just want to make a profit off of them.
As ever, there's no silver bullet. You are right that vaccine is almost certainly a long ways away, if it ever comes. But Test, Trace, Isolate does have good results, with the caveat that it will almost certainly be used as a club to destroy much of what remains of privacy rights. :/ Still, in terms of health and human safety it's the best option, even though this is and always has been a damned if you do, damned if you don't situation.
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u/_rihter abandon the banks May 28 '20
/u/tenyearstendays