Perfectionism is an aesthetic curse and nothing more. I was more inclined to take AJ Leonardi seriously because his writing style is odd and full of weird formatting choices. The truth can be a weird, rambling post without a precision coat of form and still be the truth. The more people mocked him for things that had nothing to do with what he was actually saying, the more I knew he was saying something important enough that they either couldn't refute, or couldn't prove wrong when they tried.
Over and over again he was proven right, and over and over again what he's warned about with regard to what hospitalized patients go through with covid, the rest of us go through as well – just at a much less dramatic end of the spectrum. This virus is harmful to blood vessels and the immune system, every time. Even when it sneaks past mucosal immunity and we never get the sniffles, it is harmful. If we judged every virus by the acute symptoms they elicit, HIV would be a cold.
Speaking of which, there remains no evidence that this is a virus the immune system can fully clear. No, really – if that evidence exists, I can't find it, and you would really make my day if you can. You would really make my year. What that would imply would change the course of this entire pandemic. Alas.
That's SARS-CoV-2. Know it, respect it. We're coming up on year six, and so far, our vaccines to combat it suck. They suck! Like, absolutely keep getting them, but know that they are not enough to protect us from this virus getting in and causing harm that unfolds on the scale of years. I mean this kindly, but someone only looks like more and more of a fool the longer they try to deny what is right in front of us, because we write virological fact with blood. What's already happened to the most vulnerable among us will happen, is happening, to all of us.
It looks like tens of millions of missing people and untold thousands disabled. It looks like strokes and heart attacks too young. Like fatigue and tremors and coughs that don't seem to go away anymore. Like autoimmunity, reactivated mono, herpes, TB, and dormant cancer. It might even look like measles and polio vaccines that don't work as well anymore (this one's on me – there's no proof of that yet). The list will grow.
That's SARS-CoV-2. Know it, respect it, or be fooled. If that was the best we could do before the Trump admin cuts funding for vaccine research, then anyone left relying on them to save us from covid, bird flu and mpox better get used to mechanical solutions real fast, or end up donating more of their blood to the virological fact being written with it. The only way out is through. And perfectionism may be an aesthetic curse, but prevention is not. Infection control is not. Don't get them confused.
References:
- CDC – Reported Tuberculosis in the United States, 2023
- Easy Chair – Reactivated TB is a Bellweather for Covid's Immune Harm
- [Covid Fact Sheet]
- [The Myth of SARS-CoV-2 Clearance]
- [Why the Covid Vaccines We Have Are Not Enough]
- Our World in Data – Estimated cumulative excess deaths during COVID-19, World
- Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis – Population With a Disability, 16 Years and over