CIRCLE WITH A DOT

Another article with a mix of warnings and optimism about #COVID19. This German article notes that Long Covid and ME/CFS are "a huge problem right in the heart of society."At the same time, it notes, "While the number of Long Covid cases has decreased by approximately 114,000 since 2024 – despite an estimated 13 to 15 million Germans being infected with SARS-CoV-2 in 2025 – the number of ME/CFS cases has increased by nearly 6,800 during the same period."https://www.manager-magazin.de/lifestyle/leute/long-covid-und-me-cfs-neue-zahlen-zeigen-enorme-volkswirtschaftliche-kosten-a-ba6b3017-7dca-47ee-b0ca-71713ea6b154?d=1777281106

@augieray Yup, I mostly follow three Cs now but I always have a mask with me. We do eat out often and try to do so in less crowded places and off times.

@patrickhadfield And yes, I'm sure austerity has been a big factor.

@HelenBranswell however this article omits the danger posed by long Covid, which this year became the number 1 disease suffered by children, beating out asthma for the top spot. Many people know someone (I know 2) suffering from long Covid, with debilitating effects such as fatigue, weakness, insomnia, brain, lung, heart and other organ damage. Not dead, but not living well!

@ewenmcneill @stephen that's an excellent find! Thank you

"I dream of a future where masks are normalized and I can access healthcare spaces without the increased risk of breathing in a new issue to contend with. Advocating for myself as a patient is challenging enough as it is."#Covid19 #Healthcare #DisabilityJustice #Accessibility #MaskUphttps://thesicktimes.org/2026/04/24/we-need-masks-in-healthcare-now/

«Steht der Nutzen in einem angemessenen Verhältnis zum Risiko? Im Falle der Covid-Impfstoffe, die nicht nur Einzelne, sondern auch die Gesellschaft vor den Folgen des Virus schützten, fällt diese Abwägung auf Basis eines sehr umfangreichen Datenschatzes eindeutig zugunsten der #Impfung aus – sie retteten laut Hochrechnungen weltweit viele Millionen Menschenleben.»https://www.nzz.ch/wissenschaft/corona-impfung-was-wir-nach-5-jahren-ueber-wirkung-und-nebenwirkungen-wissen-ld.10003584#COVID19 #Pandemie #Coronavirus

@augieray5.17 sounds accurate for my kids, across 2 blended households. Which is terrifying for our future. Adults in each affected household seem to have fared slightly better. Which feels "weird" but would align well with the statistic of ~50% transmission within a household.

This week's Pandemics in BC blog posts:General: https://covidbc.webfoot.com/2026/04/24/2026-04-24-general/BC: https://covidbc.webfoot.com/2026/04/24/2026-04-24-bc/#covid19bc #covid19 #covid #rsv

We're slowly reaching a point where so many people will have been deeply effected by #Covid19 that the general populace will have a harder time ignoring it.--Long COVID potentially affects nearly 6 million children in the US. This South Shore teen is one of themDefined as a chronic condition that lasts for at least three months after a COVID infection, long COVID is diagnosed not by a single test but by a pattern of symptoms that cannot otherwise be explained. Those symptoms can include fatigue, headaches, brain fog, sleep disruption, and pain, but they often look different depending on age.https://www.bostonglobe.com/2026/04/23/metro/long-covid-teens-children-boston/?s_campaign=8315:varf--#LongCovid #Covid19 #Boston #Infectiousdisease #PublicHealth #CovidisNotOver #GetVaccinated #WearAMask

#Toronto folks: if you're looking for a #dentist who takes #covid19 precautions, I have a good one, in North York. Hit me up.

CNN: HHS rejects publication of study showing Covid-19 vaccines prevent hospitalizations, ER visitshttps://lite.cnn.com/2026/04/22/health/hhs-cdc-study-covid-19-vaccines#vaccines #antivaxxers #covid19

First US reported case, mid January 2020. By late February, first US deathRight around this time, April 2020, word from the first vaccine hitting Phase-II (human testing). Pfizer used a leaked (thank you, dying Chinese scientist) sequencing from Shanghai.MAGAts were gargling ivermectin, bleach and thinking about shoving IR lamps up their asses. Lest we forget.Refirgerated truck, mobile mortuaries were seen in big US cities.2/x#TurdReich #MAGAts #tRump #GOP #COVIDIOCY #COVID19 #USPol

This week, April 2020, refrigerated trucks (aka "mobile mortuaries") were arriving in some big cities. The Orange Anal Wart and his MAGAts were both denying the existence of a pandemic AND gushing about worm paste as panacea for it.MAGAts will kill us all.#COVID19 #MAGAts #USPol

@augieray The late comic George Carlin had a joke: “Have you ever noticed that anybody driving slower than you is an idiot, and anyone going faster than you is a maniac?” COVID-19 mitigation measures are kind of like that: anybody who is doing less than you are is an idiot, and anybody who is doing more than you is an overly fearful hypochondriac.The people who follow you have been following you, in part, because you've been one of the voices calling for more mitigation, and so *for that audience*, seeing you "change lanes" might feel like you now consider tham overly fearful hypochondriacs... which might be upsetting for them (especially since they have had so few people in their lane to start with!) So they yell at you, which is upsetting for you. Lose-lose! It's also easier to yell at you because you are one person, instead of having to yell at the approximately eight billion people who are taking fewer mitigation measures.

@PizzaDemon I get it, but given low hospitalizations and declining surges, there's not much reason to think there's a giant difference in transmissibility or severity. If anything, all signs point to past infections and vaccinations driving down acute and infection risks (until or if we get a serious mutation.)

"CoViD iS jUsT tHe FlU."STUDY: Across three time periods, #COVID19 was 63% to 94% more likely to result in severe outcomes than influenza. Severe outcome included ICU admission, mechanical ventilation, ECMO, or death during hospitalization.https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2666776226000840

This week's Pandemics in BC blog posts:General: https://covidbc.webfoot.com/2026/04/18/2026-04-18-general/BC: https://covidbc.webfoot.com/2026/04/18/2026-04-18-bc/#covid19bc #covid19 #covid #measles #h5n1

RE: https://disabled.social/@tomkindlon/116417351897995176This study https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/17501911.2026.2656361 passes lots of hurdles:this is one of the few epigenetic studies to analyze persistent genome-wide DNAm in longitudinally matched samples across COVID-19 and Long-COVID phenotypes, including targeted assessment of the contributions of genes on the X chromosomeAnd some of their findings are encouraging; they found no sign of increased epigenetic pace of aging in pre-COVID loci.That's no guarantee on that front though; epigenetic clocks may not be causally harmful, there are surely other as-yet unidentified loci, and there may be epigenetic changes at a small set of loci causally tied to Long COVID - remember a single methylation can in some conditions drastically alter expression - but it's quite encouraging.And I want to be happy and positive about their other findings, but really I'm happiest about the fact they do their job as scientists and point out what you might have guessed:The Illumina EPIC V2 array interrogates only a small fraction of the estimated 28 million CpG sites in the human genome, and while many of these are in regulatory regions, it is estimated that up to 80% of CpGs are constitutively methylated and may not have any regulatory relevance. Moreover, the methylome is highly correlated within individuals, meaning that subtle or localized changes could be missed in genome-wide analysesTheir estimates of cell-type composition were coarse (only 6 types, no Tn measure) and as expected for that coarseness there's no sign of pathology.#COVID #COVID19 #SARSCoV2 #CovidIsNotOver

@ThunderHoneySnow Your sentiment is noble; I hope to find someone to help and support me🤍🤍🫂