His advice: Get the vaccine, wear an n95 indoors, and avoid public indoor spaces.
“I find it very distressing that we, as a society, aren’t willing to talk openly about COVID,” Dr. Dick Zoutman declared.
“The media are almost completely silent, and it’s really perplexing,” Zoutman said of the disappearance of COVID-19 from the headlines in the fourth year of the pandemic. “We are missing a huge opportunity to protect our loved ones, our children, our elderly, our vulnerable … by taking simple interventions.”
Although the mortality rate for COVID-19 has declined thanks to mass vaccinations, the infectious disease specialist stated that long COVID threatens the health of the general population.
“We don’t understand all the implications of long COVID,” he said of the lingering symptoms that may develop after the acute phase of the illness. “Basically, this virus gets into your body and it doesn’t leave. …And it invades the lining of the blood vessels and every organ of your body,” he explained.
“Long COVID syndrome occurs in at least 10 per cent of every infectious episode and may be as much as 30 per cent. Stop and think about that: if you get COVID twice a year, that’s a 20-60 per cent chance that you’re going to get long COVID. And the next year, it’s now 40-120 per cent. Almost certainly … you’re guaranteed statistically to acquire some form of long COVID.”
"You can't wear a mask forever" coughs in your face "I'm following CDC recommendations and washing my hands."
And the next year, it’s now 40-120 per cent. Almost certainly … you’re guaranteed statistically to acquire some form of long COVID.”
This is not how probability works but he's got the right idea that subsequent infections don't decrease the likelihood of long covid infection
It's what annoys me whenever I hear that Covid is just the flu, especially after the MSM pushed the idea of Covid being endemic.
I've got family that have caught Covid multiple times and I really don't get it anymore. My mom just got over her first Covid infection, but she's still got a bad cough. She was speaking with one of my cousins recently and they were both saying that dumb shit about the Covid just being the flu.
My cousin had also recently had covid a few weeks ago and was also coughing like crazy. The most upsetting part of it all was that her mom passed away due to Covid and is now really just out here acting like it's nothing.
One of my family members that isn't particularly careful with masking got COVID and then shortpy after had a stroke (COVID at least triples stroke risk). They're still not being careful with masking.
I'm curious how bad things will need to get before any acknowledgement. Or is this going to be one of those things that in 20 years everyone acts like it was obvious and there was just some people ignoring it in a dangerous way. Ya know, the way liberals will act like they supported gay marriage 20 years ago and were against the war on terror.
I think it's going to be more like climate change. Things will steadily get obviously worse, but people will just shrug and say "what're you gonna do?". Politicians will shift rhetoric excruciatingly slowly towards maybe taking some sort of action and "believing the science", but will continue to do nothing.
Hopefully someone smarter than me can clarify things more, but no. Lots of viruses are gone from your body after infection clears up, although retroviruses like HIV are permanently embedded in the DNA of infected cells.
My understanding is that the virus for covid isn’t one of this class of virus, but the doctor is talking about how it causes permanent damage to infected tissues. So even once the virus is gone, patients will experience symptoms due to the damage to lung tissue, blood vessels, etc. More knowledgeable comrades, please correct me if any of this is wrong
Correct, most viruses get cleared out by our immune system (by the immune system killing infected cells and mopping up viral particles). Some viruses csn integrate into the genome and stay a long time that way, like retriviruses.
SARS-CoV-2 appears to infect a huge amount of the body, so many orgsn systems, and in many people seems to not really get cleared after the acute infection phase. Not just damage seen after infection, it seems like for many people they still basically have a long-running lower-level infection in various organs. This is often associated with long COVID, but is found in other people too.
Thank you for the better information comrade. Do you happen to know if there’s an answer to why the lower level infection occurs? I know permanent tissue damage can make it easier to be infected in the future due to pockets of scar tissue allowing new infections to take hold, is it something like that?
I'm not sure if people know why the low-level infections remain exactly. It hits a lot of systems because it binds to a very common receptor. I also know that it does bad things to the immune system and that might be related.
Some viruses like mono (epstien-barr), or chickenpox (later shows up as shingles), will stay in the body but be kept in check, and only flare up under certain conditions like if your immune system is weakened. In covid infections these viruses can be reactivated, likely because it is hard on the immune system.
What covid is doing in some people with long-covid is infecting hard to clear areas of the body, like the gut and lymphnodes, and sometimes even bone marrow. It's either an active infection that doesn't go away, or leaving remnants in these areas that your body percieves as an active infection, so your body will constantly be trying to fight it. It's bad for your immune system, since it churns through t-cells and we can only make so many at a time, and also causing autoimmune problems. I'm not sure if it's confirmed or not, but one of the theories as to why covid was so deadly at the beginning was that it was causing our immune system over-react and attack all parts of our body.
