Or: SARS 2, the forever plague
The peer-reviewed understanding of covid is that it is more than just a respiratory disease. In binding to the ACE2 receptor, it affects every organ system in the body, and you don’t have to show symptoms to experience the damage it can cause. About 1 in 3 people won’t know they have it, and asymptomatic spread is estimated to be over half of all transmission.
SARS 2 airborne and can enter any mucous membrane — in rare cases the eyes — and the omicron subvariants have evolved to make this more possible in any setting, including outdoors.
Vaccines protect against worse outcomes in hospitalized patients during the acute phase of the disease, but even mild infections cause capillary clotting and vastly increase the risk of dangerous cardiovascular outcomes like heart disease and stroke, various neurological outcomes from damage to the brain and blood-brain barrier, and even metabolic outcomes like diabetes. Oh yeah, and it’s making tinnitus worse.
SARS 2 is a virus capable of disrupting the normal functioning of the immune system, which opens the door for secondary viral, bacterial, and fungal infections. This is why reinfections are so dangerous, and the most likely reason we are seeing such massive spikes in flu and RSV this season. “Immunity debt” — a term that never appeared before 2021 and is a real but irrelevant phenomenon — does not explain the sheer amount of evidence suggesting that this is simply what this virus does.
An excellent analysis by Andrew Nikiforuk for The Tyee discussed the early predictions of a T cell researcher and the peer-reviewed research that has since validated them. We have learned a lot about this thing, and we seem to be letting the worst case scenario come true as pediatric hospitals fill up.
We are flying blind into winter with vastly underreported case counts because contact tracing is gone and many people are not reporting their infections to public health departments anymore (or completely unaware they have and are spreading SARS 2 asymptomatically).
Chris Murray, director of the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, estimates that only 4% to 5% of infections are being reported, because so many are uncovered through at-home tests and aren’t reported to public health departments, or they aren’t being detected at all.
I am scared that — just like climate change — the world is not taking this seriously enough, and that we will continue to see massive excess deaths year after year from all manner of health issues exacerbated by it. I am taking it as seriously as any individual can, and will continue to take an abstinence approach to any potential exposure whenever possible. There is no acceptable level of risk — given what we now know — that exists with this virus to me.
As Hayley Williams of Paramore put it:
This is why I don’t leave the house
You say the coast is clear, but you won’t catch me out
Oh, why?
This is why
References:
- Frontiers in Cellular and Infection Microbiology — ACE2, Much More Than Just a Receptor for SARS-COV-2
- Postgraduate Medicine — Multisystem effects of COVID-19: a concise review for practitioners
- National Geographic (via archive.today) — Why some COVID-19 infections may be free of symptoms but not free of harm
- Vaccines — Percentage of Asymptomatic Infections among SARS-CoV-2 Omicron Variant-Positive Individuals
- JAMA Network — SARS-CoV-2 Transmission From People Without COVID-19 Symptoms
- Nature — Why the WHO took two years to say COVID is airborne
- Medical Science Monitor — SARS-CoV-2 and the Eyes
- Health — Omicron BA.5 May Increase the Risk of Outdoor Transmission
- Current Pharmaceutical Design — Vaccination Against SARS-CoV-2 Protects from COVID-19-induced Endothelial Dysfunction
- The Biochemical Journal — A central role for amyloid fibrin microclots in long COVID/PASC: origins and therapeutic implications
- Nature — Heart-disease risk soars after COVID — even with a mild case
- Journal of Neuroinflammation — COVID-19 and cognitive impairment: neuroinvasive and blood‒brain barrier dysfunction
- Nature — Diabetes risk rises after COVID, massive study finds
- Frontiers in Public Health — Changes in Tinnitus Experiences During the COVID-19 Pandemic
- PLOS Pathogens — Impaired function and delayed regeneration of dendritic cells in COVID-19
- T. Ryan Gregory via Twitter (via Threadreader) — "Oh, we understand the claims of 'immunity debt' (est. 2021) just fine."
- Noor Bari via Twitter (via Threadreader) — "I was curious to see if RSV had acquired any new tricks."
- The Tyee — What If COVID Reinfections Wear Down Our Immunity?
- Dr. Eric Ding’s Journal — Pediatric hospital COVID admissions in 2022 already exceeds 2021 + 2020 combined
- NBC News — Covid testing providers scale back despite worries of another winter surge