We don't know what we don't know, but we are learning. And what we're learning is pretty alarming.
What my physician said. It will take long-term studies until we really understand this. By then, there will likely be more. This comes with costs, real and financial. The price tag globally is already in the trillions and the real costs in terms of resources, human resources in particular, have not yet been inventoried. So far, the emphasis has been on deaths. But that is only part of it.
Then, there is climate change.
Meanwhile, the world is caught up in endless war which is also running in the trillions in financial costs. and real losses, including lost opportunity.
We (humanity) are not coping with this well. The future is cloudy at least, if not stormy. All these are interconnected and influence each other in the world system. Now we are looking at them separately. That doesn't bode well for the future. This is what should be occupying attention about leaving the grandkids instead of the national debt foolishness.
The Lens
The Long COVID Road Ahead
Stephanie Kelton | Professor of Public Policy and Economics at Stony Brook University, formerly Democrats' chief economist on the staff of the U.S. Senate Budget Committee, and an economic adviser to the 2016 presidential campaign of Senator Bernie Sanders
https://stephaniekelton.substack.com/p/the-long-covid-road-ahead
See also
The Sanders Institute
https://sandersinstitute.org/fellows/dr-stephanie-kelton/
8 comments:
There's a problem with this.
When you hand out money for medical research into a topic, unsurprisingly they find an awful lot of it - particularly in any area where the results are subjective.
The reason for that is straightforward - this is a job to those who are being asked to do the work. And people whose salaries depend upon seeing something will see it.
It's the same process as the beliefs that arise in economics. Somebody does a study, they see what they want to see, they write it up formally using long words and upwards sloping graphs. Lot's of nodding dogs then sagely agree, and the item become fokelore that cannot be questioned or your career will be ruined.
It then rapidly becomes accepted dogma. Including bizarre physical rituals that cannot be questioned but which objectively do nothing.
Too much of the response to COVID fell into this camp, which is becoming, unfortunately, an increasingly standard form of operation in so called science - and that has more in common with medieval witch trials than enlightenment principles.
Debilitation from respiratory illnesses is not new. From personal experience I've known previously fit and health people pick up a bad cold on Wednesday and be dead by Sunday, and that catching the flu can lead to intensive care and permanent loss of life function.
It seems to me that some people are struggling with the reality of their own mortality - particularly those in comfortable middle class professions.
Diabetes is a chronic condition that causes a lot more damage to human health than Long Covid - despite the fact that there are measures an individual can follow to control it.
But hey, priorities...
“ so called science - and that has more in common with medieval witch trials than enlightenment principles. ”
Right Neil you have many actual Art Degree morons going all around the place saying “trust the science!” when they’ve never been trained in it and don’t even know what it is…
“ Debilitation from respiratory illnesses”
Neil there are still people smoking here in US even at $12 per pack, smoking crack cocaine… smoking pot, etc..
I'm mostly calling bullshit on "long covid."
Do people sometimes take months to fully get over an illness, especially if they're not that healthy to begin with? Yes, of course, covid can be nasty (especially the earlier strains with unvaxed ppl) but only with covid do we call it "long".
No one says you have "long cold" when a nagging cough lasts a month, or "long car wreck" if you're still limping a few months later. You feeling under the weather right now? Well that's probably cause of that covid you had 4 months ago. It can't be just that people get sick for all sorts of reasons.
In children anyways, the Lancet a few months ago published a metastudy, covid mostly doesn't have long lasting effects in children. Sure, some already unhealthy children have issues, but they have that with everything. The money-quote was "the usefulness of considering post-COVID-19 syndrome as a single entity is unlikely to have empiric validity." In other words, unhealthy people take longer to get well for all kinds of reasons.
So get vaxed (or don't, I don't give a shit), get enough sleep, cut out the junk food, and get off your ass and exercise a few times a week, that's about all you can really do.
There's developed an almost crippling neuroticism among certain liberal classes, you know the type, the ones that make their healthy 12 year old wear an n95 while playing in a basketball match. I would love to see a long covid study fully controlling for vax status and age, but separate the analysis out by political affiliation. I wonder how much long covid is just a hyperneurotic liberal that woke up with the sniffles, immediately thought "long covid, I'm gonna die!" and psyched themselves into illness?
For a long time, we've had these fear based conservatives who are scared of their own shadows, have to have a personal arsenal, and sees a communist or terrorist around every corner.
Now we have this neurotic brand of liberal that keep their otherwise healthy children away from their friends, strap n95's on their faces outdoors and have made covid a center point of their identity (this does seem to be fading a bit, but it could come back with a slow news cycle).
Good points Joe..,
There are chronic autoimmune disorders for which there is no formal medical treatment. Women tend to suffer from these more than men, so it rarely makes the news.
That being said, why is there a disease Olympics?
Why is Long Covid more newsworthy than Diabetes or Multiple Sclerosis?
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