What we know about Covid - absolute basics

Covid, more accurately the virus SARS-COV-2, has a very wide range of impacts on our health. Some are immediate, most are long term and invisible. The following discusses broad areas that are impacting large numbers of people and that are well understood and researched. It would be nearly impossible to attempt to create a complete list as Covid can and does impact every organ in the body. Some brilliant “What we currently know about covid” summaries have been written by leading experts and you can find links to some of these on the research page.

The Acute phase is where people say “I’ve got Covid” but actually is just the body reacting to the infection. The early variants caused higher numbers of deaths and severe illness, although even then many infections caused mild or no reactions. Covid is still causing a large number of deaths but in general terms has evolved so that it is now more common for the acute phase to be more like a bad cold. Public messaging is all designed around keeping us focused on this phase, there are less deaths so it is now less dangerous. (Worth noting that the “less deaths than flu” narrative is in fact not true, these charts compare under-reported Covid deaths on one hand to Flu + Pneumonia deaths on the other, where the large majority are Pneumonia).

Covid causes a persistent state of inflammation throughout the body. The immune system revs up and key elements of this become exhausted / depleted. Cells throughout the body are directly infected by the virus causing those cells to change their behaviour. The central nervous system becomes disrupted causing irregular heart rhythms. Covid invades muscle tissue and even bone marrow creating viral reservoirs that can then drive all the above potentially without end. Which of these cause which, whether they all happen in everyone or whether they all happen and then all interact is not clear as studies have found all of these and all are capable of being the source cause, but that these things happen is clear, has been demonstrated in study after study and is not disputed by those researching Covid.

Persistent inflammation is catastrophic. Arteries harden and become damaged. Young children have the vascular age of people in their twenties, fifty year olds have arteries of seventy year olds. These people all feel fine and have ‘recovered from Covid’. We only know this is true because studies have taken groups of children not reporting symptoms and examined their arteries. Hardening was found in almost every case. Damage to the vascular endothelial lining causes micro-clots, blood clots cause heart attacks and strokes, heart attack and stroke rates are rocketing, the media wants you to believe this is because you worked from home for a few months four years ago.

The inflammation also causes brain damage. Again it is not clear whether the inflammation triggers an immune response within the brain and that then causes damage, or if Covid triggers the immune response or if both these and other mechanisms cause the changes in the brain. For most of us, what matters is just that this is happening and brain damage is bad. The neurological damage is so pervasive that many neurologists are saying Covid is primarily a neurological disease. (coronary damage is so common that cardiologists say Covid is primarily a vascular illness).

All the above can happen to anyone, of any age, irrespective of previous health and after any reinfection.

It is simply impossible to overstate how bad Covid is based on the state of current scientific knowledge. It is similarly impossible to reconcile this to the fact that everyone firmly believes the pandemic is behind us and the danger to most people is low.