Four Reasons To (Still) Take Covid-19 Seriously

It has been nearly 4 years since covid-19 burst onto the scene and shut everything down in March of 2020. A lot has changed in these past 4 years, a few things haven’t.

For the better, more people than before the pandemic wear masks in public (whether they’re sick or not), and wash their hands more often.

Ultimately, that will help reduce transmission of germs and pathogens (not just covid!), which means fewer people will get sick in general. No one likes being sick, so this is good. I think we can all agree.

As I understand it, the advent of mRNA based vaccines is a big achievement of science and medicine. That’s a good thing as well.

However, masking became so politicized in some places that people get threatened and even assaulted for wearing a mask. Except for medical staff and dentists, apparently it’s still OK for them.

I get it, the first year of the pandemic was hard enough. The months of lockdowns and genuine fear as no one really knew with complete certainty what covid was, how it spread, or how lethal it was.

We were all stressed and many of us were afraid.

The second year, I think people still mostly tolerated the restrictions, as we were still learning. But then the vaccines came. Once people started getting vaccinated, many seemed to think that was all the protection that they needed and were willing to take that risk.

To be clear — vaccines do help protect us, but they DON’T make us immune.

The news media has mostly stopped even covering covid which is a HUGE disservice, as it has allowed the disinformation and misinformation voices to fill that void, and ultimately make us all less safe. And that’s part of why I’ve written this article.

For whatever it’s worth, I’ve curated this article to give you information as to why you should still be covid cautious and at the very least, wear a mask in public (ideally an N95).

Thank you for reading.

1. Getting Covid Used To Mean You Were Immune For 3–6 Months. Now You Can Get Reinfected Again Within 28 Days.

It used to be that if a person got covid and ‘recovered’, it wasn’t just a celebration of recovery, it was a celebration of being effectively ‘immune’ for a while, and thus not having to worry as much about being so careful or isolated.

Unfortunately that is no longer the case due to Omicron.

The currently (as of Dec 2023) dominant strains of covid — BA.4 and BA.5 — are better at ‘immune escape’ than any previous variant of covid, meaning that reinfection risk has risen.

According to this article in The Guardian:

“People may become re-infected with Covid-19 as early as 28 days after recovering from the virus, according to the latest advice from the Australian Health Protection Principal Committee. Previously, reinfection was defined as a case occurring more than 12 weeks after an initial infection.

The committee said the Omicron subvariants BA.4 and BA.5 “are associated with increased immune escape and we are likely to see rates of reinfection rise among both those who have previously been infected and those who are up to date with their vaccinations”.

If a positive test is returned after 28 days, this should be treated as a new case. If you develop symptoms again, make sure to test and isolate.”

Also, people are familiar with the ‘six feet rule’, but covid is now known to linger in the air for long periods of time (several hours).

This means that even if a space is empty when you enter, someone who was infectious might have been there hours ago and the virus could still be floating around for you to breathe in. This is why masking indoors and ventilating enclosed spaces is so important.

2. Covid Spike Proteins Can Build Up In The Body and Brain, Damaging Organs, Increasing Risk For Long Covid Or Worse

Covid is thought of as a ‘respiratory disease’, and that IS the primary mode of infection, but the virus does not only affect our lungs. Brain fog, memory loss, and loss of sense of taste and smell are all neurological symptoms.

There are also other fun symptoms such as “musculoskeletal pain, gastrointestinal disorders, dysautonomia, disruptions in heart rate, blood pressure, sweating, and other functions our bodies carry out without our control.”

Some people believe that covid is just a slightly worse flu, but influenza does not cause the level of effects that covid does.

From this NPR.org article “Is Covid-19 A Disease Of The Blood Vessels?”:

“Whether it’s strange rashes on the toes or blood clots in the brain, the widespread ravages of COVID-19 have increasingly led researchers to focus on how the novel coronavirus sabotages the body’s blood vessels.

The virus warps the layer of cells lining the inside of every blood vessel.

Dr. William Li, a vascular biologist says “When the virus damages the inside of the blood vessel and shreds the lining, you wind up with a situation that is really untenable for blood flow.”

In a study published this summer, Li and an international team of researchers compared the lung tissues of people who died from COVID-19 with those who died from influenza. They found stark differences: The lung tissues of COVID-19 patients had nine times as many tiny blood clots compared with those of the influenza patients.

Link to the tweet thread the above screenshot is from.

Even if you ‘recover’ from covid, it can leave a mean mark. From brain fog to memory loss to heart attacks and a surge in strokes among young people, covid hits much differently than the flu.

“A recent study found that heart attacks in people ages 25 to 44 increased by 30% compared to the expected number over the first two years of the COVID-19 pandemic.”

But even scarier is this, from WebMD “Part of the Virus May Stick Around In Your Brain”:

“Researchers in Germany found that part of the virus, the spike protein, remains in the brain long after the virus clears out.

These investigators discovered the spike protein from the virus in brain tissue of animals and people after death. The finding suggests these virus fragments build up, stick around, and trigger inflammation that causes long COVID symptoms.

About 15% of COVID patients continue to have long-term effects of the infection despite their recovery. Reported neurological problems include brain fog, brain tissue loss, a decline in thinking abilities, and problems with memory.

“These symptoms clearly suggest damages and long-term changes caused by SARS-CoV-2 in the brain”. Problems with thinking and memory after COVID infection are relatively common. Even people who had mild COVID illness can develop brain fog later.

So why are researchers blaming the spike protein and not the whole COVID virus? As part of the study, they found SARS-CoV-2 virus RNA in some people after death and not in others, suggesting the virus does not need to be there to trigger brain fog.

People like to say ‘oh, you’re young and healthy, you have nothing to worry about’, but between the increased strokes and heart attacks among young people, Olympic athletes getting covid and struggling to compete anymore, it’s not as simple as being young and healthy.

The StatCan chart below highlights that the risk of long term symptoms is cumulative, increasing each time with the number of infections. By the time you have 3 or more infections, your risk of long-term symptoms is 38%, or every 1 in 2.6 people.

As seen in Chart 2, Canadians reporting two known or suspected COVID-19 infections (25.4%) were 1.7 times more likely to report prolonged symptoms than those reporting only one known or suspected infection (14.6%), and those with 3 or more infections (37.9%) 2.6 times more likely.

How many times do you want to roll those dice?

And in the most extreme case (short of death), you could end up with Myalgic Encephalomyelitis / Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (ME/CFS).

Myalgia is the medical term for muscle pain, and Encephalomyelitis is inflammation in the brain and spinal cord.

Perhaps one of the most notable and heartbreaking examples of which is Dianna Cowern, aka Physics Girl, a Science YouTuber who has become completely debilitated by long covid which led to ME/CFS. She was one of those perfectly healthy young adults, she was active, full of life, and long covid has taken that all away.

Another good video about ME/CFS (not about Dianna specifically):

3. You Can Have Long Covid And Not Know It

Long Covid is ‘a condition that occurs when patients still have symptoms at least four weeks after they have cleared the infection. In some cases, symptoms can be experienced for months or years.’

As mentioned earlier in this article, even after recovering from covid, you can still have various symptoms.

As former radio host Gill Deacon wrote, long covid can cause a myriad of symptoms and it can be hard to get a diagnosis.

Two summers ago, my otherwise healthy heart began erratic pounding — atrial ectopic beats, the cardiologist said at the time.

I soon developed other symptoms I initially mistook for a flu. But no fever, nor any other signature COVID symptom. By all measures, I was COVID-free.

Which is why, when I began to feel a peculiar set of symptoms, no one thought to look under the COVID rock for the key.”

My sinuses hurt but my nose isn’t stuffed up or runny.
Sinusitis virus, they said.

I’m thirstier than usual.
Test for diabetes, they said.

I have no energy.
Blood work and ultrasound of thyroid.

My stomach often gurgles and cramps after I eat.
Refer to gastroenterologist for endoscopy.

The top of my head is chilly, tingly, and I wear a toque day and night.
Rest, they said, it’s a virus.

Eventually, the discomfort became untenable, and by December 2022 I had to leave my work as a CBC radio host.

While yes, long covid isn’t extremely common, it is estimated to affect approximately 6–7% of all Americans, upwards of 23 million. That’s almost 1 in 15. According to Stats Canada, 1 in 9 Canadian adults have experienced long-term COVID-19 symptoms; most continue to experience symptoms.

More than one in four — 26.4% — long COVID patients reported significant limitations in their ability to perform day-to-day activities in June 2023. The authors said this percentage has not changed much since the year before.

And finally:

4. The Similarity Between COVID and HIV/AIDS

Covid damages our immune cells and causes them to be less effective. This is a similar problem as to what AIDS does.

As Stephanie Tait tweeted:

“When the first researchers started to propose that Covid would cause AIDS like immune dysfunction, one of the main pushbacks was that since Covid had infected most of the population, we should be seeing surges of opportunistic infections & bacterial pneumoniae if that was true.

The Big Name Minimizers all repeatedly said “Where’s the surges of previously well controlled illnesses? Where’s the fungal infections? Where’s the bacterial pneumoniae?”

Now we’ve seen ALL THREE. In the last year.”

And further:

“The beginning of AIDS epidemic was marked by the same thing: strange increases in cases of common infections hitting people WAY harder than is normal (and in populations that were young and should otherwise be fairly healthy,) and an unexplained surge in bacterial pneumoniae.

In March, an NIH study came out saying “findings suggest that SARS-CoV-2 infection damages the CD8+ T cell response, an effect akin to that observed in earlier studies showing long-term damage to the immune system after infection with viruses such as hepatitis C or HIV.”

So no, hearing that these surges in serious cases of pneumoniae in populations we don’t usually expect this from is “just” bacterial pneumoniae is not actually good news in the least.

It’s the very thing even the most ardent of minimizers was saying would be EXACTLY what you would see if the Covid/HIV similarity actually existed. It’s time for us to get serious about what Covid infections — especially repeat infections — mean for us on a population level.

Here’s a supporting tweet from Laura Miers:

Here’s an (incomplete) list of outbreaks reported in the US over the last year and a half. This may look familiar if you remember the early days of HIV/AIDS.

There are several links at the end of Stephanie’s tweet thread linking to more evidence to support this, so take a look.

Now, I suspect at this point you might be thinking ‘well Lacey, you must never leave your house then? You must live alone and never go anywhere if you’re so scared!’

And you may want to call me a hypocrite for saying that I do leave my house. But I also wear an N95 and I do my best to be more careful. Because yes, if we all went to the utter extreme we’d all become 100% recluses and society would cease to function.

The point, is that we have to work together to protect each other, and the more vulnerable among us. Getting vaccinated is an important step, but masking is also incredibly important.

During the first two years of the pandemic, it wasn’t well publicized what one of the key reasons for lockdown/isolation is. That reason is that the more the virus is allowed to spread to new hosts, the more chance it has to mutate and get better at avoiding our body’s immune response. Each new mutation (like BA.4 and BA.5) can become more immune evasive, and more likely to infect us and cause long covid.

This is why we were told to lock down and isolate for months, to limit the spread and mutation of the virus, to give us a chance to get vaccines out, then keep limiting spread and keep covid from mutating into something worse.

Why Covid Restrictions (Still) Matter

You may not have heard, but Sweden took the same ‘let it rip’ strategy that the United States ultimately has arrived at, while Sweden’s nordic neighbours did not. What was the difference?

To deal with the COVID-19 outbreak, on the 12th of March 2020 the Norwegian government implemented drastic measures such as mandatory home offices, closed institutions, social distancing and restriction of public gatherings. On the 16th of March 2020, the country was officially shut down for travel. Denmark, Iceland and Finland implemented similar measures, while in Sweden, apart from few restrictions, life continued as normal.

According to ECDC (5) there were in total 1.16 million documented COVID-19 cases in Sweden, while more than 14,900 people lost their lives due to the disease. In Norway during the same period, there were 193,000 confirmed COVID-19 cases and 871 COVID-19 related deaths. Adjusted to the population size, the number of cases was five times higher in Sweden, and the number of COVID-19 related deaths was 12 times higher in Sweden than in Norway.

That is why the restrictions were important and necessary, and why they should still be in place.

The way I look at it is, I don’t want any of the above to happen to me or anyone I can about — friends or family. So I urge my loved ones to still mask and be careful, and I’m sad that some of them don’t. But I can’t do more than ask.

Again, thank you for reading and considering. Please do share this article with your friends and loved ones if you think it might help encourage them to be more careful as well.