I have Covid. This is the first time I’ve tested positive, though I’m pretty sure I had it in February/March 2020 after traveling in Europe. Covid is becoming a universal experience, but it’s a cruddy disease, and the idea that we’re stuck with it—and its repeated bouts of damage, since immunity doesn’t last—feels dismal.
Good point about the comparison with measles. Its ability to continue evolving and escaping our immunity means that it continues to be a threat, although much diminished.
I still consider direct animal-human transmission the most likely scenario, probably because I've read accounts of so many other zoonoses which have entered the human population that way. But I think lab escape can't be ruled out.
Stephanie -- SO SORRY you are suffering with COVID. I hope you come through it completely with no long-term impact. I have a good friend who I play tennis with occasionally who never recovered his sense of taste a full three years later -- ugh. Almost two months ago I started feeling not so great (no positive COVID test to that point). I would imagine I have take 15-20 COVID tests over the years. During my slow viral infection I took 4-5 tests and they were always negative. Maybe I've had it before but who knows.
Anxiety and close-mindedness is an interesting issue for humans. What we call COVID is just the 7th broad coronavirus examples that have affected humanity. It is amazing to me that people treat it as something genuinely novel. I think they have mostly emerged in high population density areas although one of them likely emerged in the San Diego area. I'm glad via the CDC we monitor birds for the emergence of new flus that might jump species. I think they were first noted in Hong Kong back in 1997. The US worked hard to train and deploy early warning systems over time. It is one of the least talked about bad policies that had outsized consequences when the US WITHDREW its training programs for identifying bird flus from labs like Wuhan over a trade spat just before COVID messed up the whole world.
I want to compliment you on a VERY GOOD primer on the spread of disease. Very easy to follow!!!
Time for some opinion to stir the pot :) I wrote a post about the first vaccine back in the lat 1700s. It is amazing how BAD THE COMPLEXION was of many of the Founding Fathers. Smallpox was an absurd scourge. I give people the benefit of the doubt about acting foolishly over vaccines. There were tons of rubes who were "just asking questions ala Joe Rogan" through the 19th and 20th Century about smallpox. Smallpox killed more people in the 20th century than the great influenza and the two world wars combined. People subordinate expert advice to myth and will always do that.
Walking upright for 2M years and we've only been doing vaccines for 200 years so I guess I can understand how readily manipulable people might be. Its okay for some subset of us to just get it wrong or be easily duped. I am thankful that COVID turned out to not have a high kill rate. For that we were fortunate. My sense is I don't have any children who went down the rabbit hole with nuttiness and I am VERY GRATEFUL. We've had less than 30 years of Coronaviruses. One of them killed a fair amount of us. Two of them before COVID had higher kill rates. My sense is the next Coronavirus just may have a Darwinian impact on the doubters. I hope not but rolling the dice with your lives and influencers on X sounds like a bad plan. My sense is the influencers who rant about the next vaccine will secretly get the jab while selling advertising on TikTok or driving turnout for their votes.
Hi Mark, thanks for your comments! Glad you enjoyed the "spread of disease" primer. It's amazing to me how polarized this topic has become. I feel like every time I say something about it, I anger someone. But I have Covid, so it's what I was thinking about this week, and writing about something else felt disingenuous.
Personally, I've had four Covid vaccines, and I'm grateful to have had them. But I wish there had been more nuanced messaging about effectiveness, specifically holding back on the "vaccinated people can't get or spread Covid" claim that only lasted a few months before evolution laughed. I think that jumping-the-gun really damaged the vaccines' credibility as tools against hospitalization and death. They're useful tools, not magic bullets.
I remember feeling distinctly like I couldn't openly question the animal-origin thesis, because it was a debate that was prematurely shut down by saying anyone who didn't agree was categorically wrong and didn't know what they were talking about. Similarly, the foot-dragging on admitting that Covid was spread by aerosols, not droplets, shut down debate on things we should have talked about sooner (like improving air quality and ventilation in buildings, which is still not happening to the degree it could have).
I feel like balance and nuance are slowly returning to these conversations, but every time I come near the topic, I grit my teeth waiting to see what the reaction will be.
Oct 29, 2023·edited Oct 29, 2023Liked by Stephanie Losi
I COMMEND you for taking on the topic. I occasionally still encounter people who claim the microchip in the vaccine. The comedian Ron White comes to mind. Your insights AND tone were just right I think. I have a living relative whose parents shipped her off for non-standard treatment for polio in the 1940s. She was 3 or 4 years old at the time and she was sent away for nearly two years. Her Dad was OSTRACIZED in his community for not doing what everyone else might do as he was a physician. The rest of the story is she was shipped to the Twin Cities and was an early patient of the former Australian bush nurse Sister Elizabeth Kenny. She left in a wheelchair and returned able to walk. Now in her early 80s, she has lived a long and fruitful life. Sister Elizabeth Kenny is credited with the development of physical therapy. Innovation often requires risk. I wish there had been more openness about the experimental nature of some of the vaccines. President Trump should be credited for authorizing Operation Warp Speed. The three elements he should have also been proud to trumpet to the American people was (1) the indemnification of the drug companies which he embraced (2) the protection of IP which made it ALWAYS unlikely that the ROW would never get the broad effective vaccinations they all would need and (3) the expiration of pricing controls on the vaccine which we taxpayers paid for -- this is why the retail price of current boosters is closer to $300. All of these may have been good policies and necessary. Speed (especially warp speed) requires the adoption of some risk. They should however lie at the feet of the very people who made them possible. There are no guarantees especially with the rapid development of m-RNA treatments. I wonder how many people have gotten the RSV vaccine and don't realize it is built on the same technology. The difference is there are not people yelling and screaming on SM about it this time around.
I believe, within our lifetimes (even mine) there will arise another virus (perhaps another Coronavirus) with different values of R0 and Rf. The m-RNA process will save a large swath of humanity. No one will say thank you or apologize. It is estimated somewhere between 5-10 million people died in the process of eliminating smallpox from the face of the earth. Risk and reward is part of all things. Eradicating a disease from the face of the earth is quite a thing.
A long time ago I wrote about the eradication of smallpox. I think as a result of that post which few read I had to block a couple of crackpots.
How brave your relative's parents were! Yeah, someone has to be the first patient to try new therapies, which often look weird to others. I will grit my teeth and agree re: crediting Trump for Operation Warp Speed. He does deserve credit for that, and it was an incredibly fast and effective delivery to market.
I hope you're on the upswing from your viral illness, too!
So sorry you’ve got Covid. Is this your first time? Were you a Covid virgin? Hubby and I were the last of our friends to get it a year ago. Are your symptoms minimal?
Meanwhile, we all “know” this was a man made disease. Given that “hypothesis” keeping up with the hundreds of variations plus that it was made in a lab makes Covid almost impossible to cure. Sigh. Still, you’re spot on regarding improving public health information. I also believe muting other scientists who have different ideas other than a vaccine is a bit fascist. Science is not always correct. Science is about discussion and being open to new ideas not making big pharma a deity.
My symptoms were pretty rough on the first couple of days: fever, headache, sore throat, joint aches, congestions - but then eased up. I didn't cough much back in early 2020, and I didn't cough much this time either. Back then I was sick for 18 days, this time hopefully less!
I believe Covid was probably a lab escapee, but don't know it for sure since I can't prove it (and no one else can either, at least so far). The important part is "what next?" I think healthcare is best delivered locally by trusted members of the community; building up public health departments seems like the best way to do that, given how messed up our insurance/primary care system is (about a third of U.S. residents don't even have a primary care doc, which would have been unheard of when I was a kid).
And I totally agree with you re: the scientific consensus shouting down different views before all the data is in, rather than engaging in open debate. It wasn't a good look when that happened early on in the pandemic.
Oh no, sorry you've got Covid, it's no fun.
Good point about the comparison with measles. Its ability to continue evolving and escaping our immunity means that it continues to be a threat, although much diminished.
I still consider direct animal-human transmission the most likely scenario, probably because I've read accounts of so many other zoonoses which have entered the human population that way. But I think lab escape can't be ruled out.
Thanks, Melanie - I just keep resting, hoping for a smooth-ish recovery!
Stephanie -- SO SORRY you are suffering with COVID. I hope you come through it completely with no long-term impact. I have a good friend who I play tennis with occasionally who never recovered his sense of taste a full three years later -- ugh. Almost two months ago I started feeling not so great (no positive COVID test to that point). I would imagine I have take 15-20 COVID tests over the years. During my slow viral infection I took 4-5 tests and they were always negative. Maybe I've had it before but who knows.
Anxiety and close-mindedness is an interesting issue for humans. What we call COVID is just the 7th broad coronavirus examples that have affected humanity. It is amazing to me that people treat it as something genuinely novel. I think they have mostly emerged in high population density areas although one of them likely emerged in the San Diego area. I'm glad via the CDC we monitor birds for the emergence of new flus that might jump species. I think they were first noted in Hong Kong back in 1997. The US worked hard to train and deploy early warning systems over time. It is one of the least talked about bad policies that had outsized consequences when the US WITHDREW its training programs for identifying bird flus from labs like Wuhan over a trade spat just before COVID messed up the whole world.
I want to compliment you on a VERY GOOD primer on the spread of disease. Very easy to follow!!!
Time for some opinion to stir the pot :) I wrote a post about the first vaccine back in the lat 1700s. It is amazing how BAD THE COMPLEXION was of many of the Founding Fathers. Smallpox was an absurd scourge. I give people the benefit of the doubt about acting foolishly over vaccines. There were tons of rubes who were "just asking questions ala Joe Rogan" through the 19th and 20th Century about smallpox. Smallpox killed more people in the 20th century than the great influenza and the two world wars combined. People subordinate expert advice to myth and will always do that.
Walking upright for 2M years and we've only been doing vaccines for 200 years so I guess I can understand how readily manipulable people might be. Its okay for some subset of us to just get it wrong or be easily duped. I am thankful that COVID turned out to not have a high kill rate. For that we were fortunate. My sense is I don't have any children who went down the rabbit hole with nuttiness and I am VERY GRATEFUL. We've had less than 30 years of Coronaviruses. One of them killed a fair amount of us. Two of them before COVID had higher kill rates. My sense is the next Coronavirus just may have a Darwinian impact on the doubters. I hope not but rolling the dice with your lives and influencers on X sounds like a bad plan. My sense is the influencers who rant about the next vaccine will secretly get the jab while selling advertising on TikTok or driving turnout for their votes.
Hi Mark, thanks for your comments! Glad you enjoyed the "spread of disease" primer. It's amazing to me how polarized this topic has become. I feel like every time I say something about it, I anger someone. But I have Covid, so it's what I was thinking about this week, and writing about something else felt disingenuous.
Personally, I've had four Covid vaccines, and I'm grateful to have had them. But I wish there had been more nuanced messaging about effectiveness, specifically holding back on the "vaccinated people can't get or spread Covid" claim that only lasted a few months before evolution laughed. I think that jumping-the-gun really damaged the vaccines' credibility as tools against hospitalization and death. They're useful tools, not magic bullets.
I remember feeling distinctly like I couldn't openly question the animal-origin thesis, because it was a debate that was prematurely shut down by saying anyone who didn't agree was categorically wrong and didn't know what they were talking about. Similarly, the foot-dragging on admitting that Covid was spread by aerosols, not droplets, shut down debate on things we should have talked about sooner (like improving air quality and ventilation in buildings, which is still not happening to the degree it could have).
I feel like balance and nuance are slowly returning to these conversations, but every time I come near the topic, I grit my teeth waiting to see what the reaction will be.
I COMMEND you for taking on the topic. I occasionally still encounter people who claim the microchip in the vaccine. The comedian Ron White comes to mind. Your insights AND tone were just right I think. I have a living relative whose parents shipped her off for non-standard treatment for polio in the 1940s. She was 3 or 4 years old at the time and she was sent away for nearly two years. Her Dad was OSTRACIZED in his community for not doing what everyone else might do as he was a physician. The rest of the story is she was shipped to the Twin Cities and was an early patient of the former Australian bush nurse Sister Elizabeth Kenny. She left in a wheelchair and returned able to walk. Now in her early 80s, she has lived a long and fruitful life. Sister Elizabeth Kenny is credited with the development of physical therapy. Innovation often requires risk. I wish there had been more openness about the experimental nature of some of the vaccines. President Trump should be credited for authorizing Operation Warp Speed. The three elements he should have also been proud to trumpet to the American people was (1) the indemnification of the drug companies which he embraced (2) the protection of IP which made it ALWAYS unlikely that the ROW would never get the broad effective vaccinations they all would need and (3) the expiration of pricing controls on the vaccine which we taxpayers paid for -- this is why the retail price of current boosters is closer to $300. All of these may have been good policies and necessary. Speed (especially warp speed) requires the adoption of some risk. They should however lie at the feet of the very people who made them possible. There are no guarantees especially with the rapid development of m-RNA treatments. I wonder how many people have gotten the RSV vaccine and don't realize it is built on the same technology. The difference is there are not people yelling and screaming on SM about it this time around.
I believe, within our lifetimes (even mine) there will arise another virus (perhaps another Coronavirus) with different values of R0 and Rf. The m-RNA process will save a large swath of humanity. No one will say thank you or apologize. It is estimated somewhere between 5-10 million people died in the process of eliminating smallpox from the face of the earth. Risk and reward is part of all things. Eradicating a disease from the face of the earth is quite a thing.
A long time ago I wrote about the eradication of smallpox. I think as a result of that post which few read I had to block a couple of crackpots.
How brave your relative's parents were! Yeah, someone has to be the first patient to try new therapies, which often look weird to others. I will grit my teeth and agree re: crediting Trump for Operation Warp Speed. He does deserve credit for that, and it was an incredibly fast and effective delivery to market.
I hope you're on the upswing from your viral illness, too!
I'll share a link to a news story about her return home after two years. A cool story.
So sorry you’ve got Covid. Is this your first time? Were you a Covid virgin? Hubby and I were the last of our friends to get it a year ago. Are your symptoms minimal?
Meanwhile, we all “know” this was a man made disease. Given that “hypothesis” keeping up with the hundreds of variations plus that it was made in a lab makes Covid almost impossible to cure. Sigh. Still, you’re spot on regarding improving public health information. I also believe muting other scientists who have different ideas other than a vaccine is a bit fascist. Science is not always correct. Science is about discussion and being open to new ideas not making big pharma a deity.
My symptoms were pretty rough on the first couple of days: fever, headache, sore throat, joint aches, congestions - but then eased up. I didn't cough much back in early 2020, and I didn't cough much this time either. Back then I was sick for 18 days, this time hopefully less!
I believe Covid was probably a lab escapee, but don't know it for sure since I can't prove it (and no one else can either, at least so far). The important part is "what next?" I think healthcare is best delivered locally by trusted members of the community; building up public health departments seems like the best way to do that, given how messed up our insurance/primary care system is (about a third of U.S. residents don't even have a primary care doc, which would have been unheard of when I was a kid).
And I totally agree with you re: the scientific consensus shouting down different views before all the data is in, rather than engaging in open debate. It wasn't a good look when that happened early on in the pandemic.