Table of Contents
Covid – a bug going around
Some viruses make people unwell immediately. Cold, Flu and Noro-virus are the most well known. These are what we are generally referring to when we say “there is a bug going around”. You get infected, become unwell and recover.
Other viruses cause damage to the body that leads to long term, chronic illness. These progressive illnesses can still sometimes surface quickly, sometimes not manifest for 10 years, but get steadily worse and often have no cures. Polio, HIV, Epstein Barr (leads to MS) and Lyme are well known examples. You get infected, you do not recover, your life is changed forever. No-one would describe these as a “bug” and no-one would go out of their way to get infected with these and pass them on to their families.
Critically – when you get infected with this second type of virus – you seem fine, you don’t die, the damage takes time, often years. We do understand this concept, we just aren’t prepared to mentally process it when linked to a virus that impacts our daily lives.
Viruses don’t generally infect everyone on the planet in a matter of months, so when Covid did and continues to do exactly that and a small % of those infected suffered severe illness, hospitalisation and death – that was unprecedented (in modern times) numbers of people. It is easy to see how that became the narrative of the Covid virus. Polio and HIV don’t cause hospitalisation on infection, both may give mild cold like symptoms. That doesn’t mean they are fine – this is not complicated. We are told we should think of Covid in the same terms as the flu.
Unfortunately, that is not what Covid is. Covid belongs with Polio and HIV. Although, as noted, in a small % there is an immediate manifestation, for the vast majority of people infected with Covid the impact will not become visible for years or decades. Each repeat infection increases the risk and accelerates the process. Based on current knowledge, no-one is safe from the risk of endless repeated infections. Covid has mutated unchecked for 5 years now, the recent variants are massively more immune evasive than the early variants – this means most people don’t get unwell on infection, it is now for most like a bit of a cold (because the virus hides so the body does not mount an immune response). This is not good, this is very bad. It means people are unaware when they are infected so pass it on to more people. This is how viruses become more dangerous.
It is also absolutely clear now that the majority of household transmission starts in schools. Children. Are. Getting. Repeatedly. Infected
One last nugget – Covid didn’t magically go away – the government just shut down all data collection and reporting, told you it was freedom day (because money) and ….. you very much wanted to believe it was freedom day. Covid infection waves have continued pretty much unchanged for 5 years now.
Everything predicted by those studying Covid is starting to happen; rates of bacterial and viral infections are much higher in children post covid infection; levels of heart problems are much higher; cognitive decline is measurable, millions have had to stop working, the number of children with Long Covid doubled last year (long after the pandemic was “over”).
Covid causes five main (currently known) types of long term illness;
- Autoimmune – this is where the central and peripheral nervous system become disrupted. Rheumatoid arthritis and ME are Post Infection autoimmune conditions. Long Covid is primarily an autoimmune condition that can manifest very quickly after infection. For some people one infection was enough, for many more who thought they had recovered from a covid infection and were now ‘protected’, a subsequent reinfection triggered Long Covid. Current estimates are that over 200 million people world-wide are living with Long Covid. Long Covid is devastating.
- Vascular damage – Covid causes persistent body wide inflammation which damages the vascular system, leading to hardening of arteries and micro blood clots. These both stop blood (and therefore oxygen) reaching organs throughout the body, so we see lung damage, heart damage (pericarditis and myocarditis), heart attacks and strokes. Levels of all these conditions are massively increased across age groups. This damage is not visible for most people until it is too late. In almost all cases the link to covid is not being made by the doctors treating it – who the media would have us believe are “baffled” by the increased rates being seen.
- Neurological damage – Covid both directly infects the brain and triggers persistent inflammation. Brain tissue is reduced, neurons die, glial cells are infected and the Blood Brain Barrier caused to become leaky. Covid is causing all the pre-cursors of dementia, Alzheimers and Parkinsons and neurologists are warning that we are going to see an epidemic of these conditions in years to come. Again this damage is not visible – although large scale studies are showing objectively measurable reductions in cognitive ability in all age groups, in people who say they fully recovered from Covid and feel fine.
- Immune system damage – Covid causes progressive depletion of key components of the immune system. Largely the same elements that HIV targets. We know exactly how this goes, in the early years we see more outbreaks of opportunistic infections, rare diseases make a comeback (cf TB and measles outbreaks), diseases we had got rid of re-appear, cancer progression speeds up, until eventually the immune system becomes so weak that even a cold can become fatal. It took 10 years for AIDS to be acknowledged. History is repeating itself.
- Dormant virus reactivation – (this might be a downstream effect of the immune depletion) Covid reactivates viruses that were dormant in the body. Outbreaks of shingles are not in fact “mysterious”, they are the measles virus being reactivated. Studies show EBV anti-bodies in large numbers of participants indicating that this virus has become active.
Covid and the death of reason
The true harm is invisible and won’t manifest for years. The wealth class want their businesses to carry on generating profits unfettered – so politicians and media are told to tell us everything is back to normal. Humans have a very powerful urge to believe everything will be OK.
We can’t see it, we are being told it is harmless and we want to believe it is harmless. Job done.
It’s just every scientist that has spent the last 5 years researching and studying Covid is saying this does not reflect reality. They talk of Covid as a mass disabling event.
Trump just won the US election, we live in a post fact, science denying world – but you think if Covid was really this bad we would be told about it.
People give all sorts of reasons as to why they are not taking any precautions against Covid. I have no choice, I have to go to work. My kids have to go to school. I have to look after my grandchildren. You have to live your life. You can’t stay locked in your house forever. I could get knocked over and killed by a car tomorrow. We do all sorts of things that are bad for us. Everyone has to make their own decisions.
None of these hold water. None of these explain why you wouldn’t still take some steps where you can to reduce risk. The only reason you don’t wear a mask on the train is because you don’t want to.
Choice one. You have kids who attend school, they are in the highest risk group, they are going to catch covid once or twice a year whatever you do. Therefore you may as well carry on going to the pub, restaurants, socialising, living your best life.
Choice two. You have kids who attend school, they are going to catch covid once or twice a year whatever you do. We know that the risk of Long Covid increases with each infection. If you have children, the stakes are even higher for you than someone with no kids – you need to do everything you can to keep them safe, which right now means keeping the number of infections they get as low as you can. If you go to a packed pub, bring Covid home and give it to them, that is one step closer they are to developing Long Covid. Because you wanted to go to the pub more than you wanted to keep them safe.
People who would genuinely do anything for their children are drawing the line at having to wear a mask indoors, testing when meeting up with people and for now stopping eating and drinking indoors. Saying you care about something is easy. It gets harder when you have to demonstrate it.
“You do You” does not work with highly infectious diseases. If you don’t take steps to reduce your risk of infection you have decided you don’t care if you end up infecting other people. You can say you do care and get angry at this statement, but your actions say otherwise.
Yes it is true that public health messaging has deliberately misled you and that the reality of covid as set out above is not being clearly communicated. But most people know someone who has been trying to tell them about it, the truth is only a quick google search away, there is 5 years of science now. Most people have opted for plausible deniability – with the health of their families.
Long Covid
Those campaigning for support and research use the phrase Long Covid to describe all post covid conditions, in an attempt to get people to understand how huge the problem is. Most people who say “I’ve got Long Covid” are generally suffering with a particular subset which is mainly autonomic, meaning a disrupted central nervous system.
Common symptoms are Post Exertional Malaise, PEM, which is experienced by people with ME, it feels like extreme exhaustion but is the body no longer processing energy properly. A neurological deficit described as ‘brain fog’ but again a very real change in the way the brain is functioning that makes concentrating difficult or impossible. People with Long Covid have less blood flow to the brain. Then heart palpitations, sustained high heart rate when not exerting energy, dizziness, nausea, inability to regulate temperature, sensitivity to light and a huge list of other possible symptoms. If you have any of these symptoms a good start is to get tested for POTS
You will read and hear a lot of downplaying of Long Covid. “It mainly affected people infected with the alpha and beta variants”, “it can last for more than 3 months”, “symptoms include feeling tired”. The truth is there is no treatment and no cure, very few people have recovered, people have been ill for years. In the 12 months from March 2023 to March 2024 the number of children with Long Covid in the UK doubled from 60,000 to 120,000. This fact alone reveals the dishonesty in the endless ‘news’ coverage of the condition.
People with Long Covid have the added, also devastating, emotional toll of close and even immediate friends and family distancing themselves and not making the effort to properly understand Long Covid, asking if they are feeling better every time they meet, saying how terrible it is for them before saying they are heading off to a packed restaurant, or refusing to comply with requests for basic mitigations ahead of a planned get together.
If someone in your close family has to use a wheelchair and you arranged a family christmas get together in a tree-house, then we’d all be clear what sort of human being you were. If someone in your close family has Long Covid or is at high risk from Covid, then arranging a large christmas get together where people aren’t asked to test and stay away if unwell – feels exactly the same as the tree-house to those people. You don’t want to have to be thinking about Covid, it will be best for everyone (ie you) if they just don’t come. It is them making that choice, not you, you invited them.
People with Long Covid are forced to withdraw from society so are not visible, this means society concludes ‘everyone is fine’. When you meet someone with Long Covid they are putting every ounce of energy they have into appearing happy and looking nice (or appearing to be OK so they don’t lose their job). Also claims that 10% or more of all infections result in Long Covid don’t correlate with our day to day experience – everyone is getting Covid, clearly not 10% are severely ill, this is just fear mongering. The disconnect arises because of the huge range of illness covered by the term but also by the normalisation of a much higher level of general illness within the population. Also by the fact that they falsely believe they have recovered.
The biggest thing not understood by most people is that the risk of developing Long Covid increases with each reinfection. Pretty much everyone has had Covid, ‘recovered’ and on that basis concluded that for them Covid is not a major worry. This is just wishful thinking not aligned with any of the science.
Resources:
Children
Just some quick basic facts then a video to watch.
- Children tend to have less severe acute reactions to a Covid infection, often completely asymptomatic – so it is easy to be persuaded that they are not being affected.
- The hidden longer term internal damage that Covid inflicts affects children in the same ways it affects adults.
- Schools are known to be the main source of community transmission – it is simply ridiculous to pretend children are not getting infected with Covid repeatedly
- Over 120 thousand children in the UK are already living with Long Covid, double the number from 2023
- School absence is at record levels
- Schools can be made safer with basic ventilation and air cleaning, multiple studies have proved sickness levels are reduced when Hepa filters are deployed. In the UK even where parents have bought filters and tried to give them to schools, in almost all cases the head teachers are refusing to allow them to be used hiding behind government guidelines.
- Schools are demanding parents send their children to school even with a positive Covid test “as long as they feel OK” and demanding the same of teachers. Attendance officers are even threatening and taking legal action against parents. At the same time we are listening to the Covid inquiry and saying how shocking it is that the government ignored the science “during the pandemic”, seemingly being incapable of making the mental leap to realise that this is happening right now.
- Heading into the end of 2023 the 0 to 4 years age group is experiencing the highest level of covid related hospitalisation other than age groups over 60
- Globally school children are showing lower educational attainment and more problems concentrating. This is being blamed on a few months of lockdown over 3 years ago – not the virus they keep being reinfected with that is known to directly attack the brain.
- We are supposed to keep children safe, not hide from information about Covid so we can keep going to restaurants.