It's just a cold

I use a qwerty - I do have a French keyboard but as I write in English 95% of the time I find it easier just ti switch the language if I want an accent.

I use a Samsung phone to post and hold down the character e to get a selection like è,é,ê,ë,ē all in a line. I just move along to the one I want.

Thanks for posting Maisie, interesting and including a useful set of articles and research reports.

I think now, positions are becoming entrenched, just like Brexit. It's hardly worth posting because it's become political, people have got to the point where they believe what they want to believe and the government love it. Let's go shopping folks, just step over the bodies, move along...

I too don't think Covid is just a cold and I also think that there are genetic susceptibilities and comorbidities which make some unfortunates more likely to succumb.

There are a million or so with Long Covid and anyone can find out the physiological reasons why. This virus is much more invasive and dangerous than others. The scale of callous indifference to Long Covid sufferers and to the medical staff who continue to slave away in over crowded, underfunded hospitals is scandalous. The current figures of people in hospital and deaths are shrugged off.

Oh and someone rushed to eagerly point out the other day that being hospitalised wasn't the same as being in ICU. No quite, ICU means very serious or likely to die but I don't think being in hospital is exactly breeze or to be taken lightly.

Oh well, best to have a stiff upper lip and what can’t be cured must be endured. We all have to die of something in the end I suppose.

It does worry me. I worry that it’s something that might lie dormant in the body for many years and then re emerge. After the tick bite I had in the summer I read that Lyme disease can lie dormant in the body and cause problems in later life. But what has really upset me recently is finding out that one of my oldest friends has been diagnosed with Altzheimers which seemed to come on after she had suffered from a very long and painful attack of shingles. Now, whether she was in the early stages of Altzheimers anyway and the shingles made it worse or if the shingles triggered it in some way I don’t know. I wasn’t going to say anything because I don’t want to worry people that have had shingles but the point I’m trying to make is that once we have a virus we have no idea what the long term implications are. We just have to hope that, unless we suffer from long covid there aren’t any but we really don’t know do we and we shouldn’t just assume there won’t be. I had hoped that, with so many people suffering from long covid ME would be taken more seriously but I don’t think that’s happening.

Anyway, I shall continue to be very cautious and the rest of you can do what you like...
Thanks Maizie and that’s what we all need to do find our own comfort level and get on with living ….what is the point of life if we are just hiding away worrying Do what you can to protect yourself and then carry on as near to normal as possible and stop reading and writing about things we can do NOTHING about I m sure long CoviD exists perhaps CoviD does harm organs but I can’t do anything about it so if I sit reading up and worrying about it what can I possibly achieve ?

We now have a unvaccinated consultant can’t remember his name, telling us the vaccinations are not useful how many are going to listen to him and hang on every word

We need to stop living, breathing, dreaming LISTENING to everything about CoviD, hanging on to numbers, league tables, what ifs and carry on with life as if it wasn’t around because we can do NOTHING to remove it
It’s here for ever

Here's a tweet from Saturday from an actual epidemiologist who has just been named by Nature as one of the top 10 scientists who helped shape science last year. She's not one to sugar coat things and minimise covid. Actual epidemiologist, not private citizen with an agenda and no qualifications in this area.
mobile.twitter.com/kallmemeg/status/1479773960279633925

Her comment? Do not buy into this message. It's rubbish. But she says it better than me. Because she's an actual epidemiologist.

She is not, however denying that long covid exists.

I think that is the issue that needs to be addressed.

It is no good piling into a perceived inaccuracy if you then overlook the glaringly obvious, which is that the more people who get covid, the more are likely to suffer long covid. Long covid can be suffered regardless of how serious your initial condition. Of course it can given that it is a reaction by your immune system.

Long covid is a potentially disruptive and serious threat to long term health outcomes as well as implications for employment etc.

That I think is what the OP has been saying on a number of threads.

Of course it’s made to build fear in you because a fearful person does exactly what they are told to do, they conform, they are led, they lose hope , they lose normality.they are obedient, they are ‘trained’
This pandemic has floored the world because of all the media including Twitter, Fb, social media in general, Radio, Tv, papers and us talk of little else …it dominates, it terrifies

Stop analysing, stop chewing your own nails ( they are already down to the quick) conform as much as your able and move around within the sensible constraints as normally as possible using your own common sense
Would I book a holiday No it’s two fold,, rules change on a sixpence, and it’s a bigger risk, would I jump on a bus with my mask on and go to the city to look round the shops yes I would Would I hold a big party no I wouldn’t but would I meet up with friends for lunch or coffee yes I would

We CANNOT analyse this illness we don’t know which way it will twist or turn, so live life with some caution but as well as you can and stop trying to understand it or worse still project it’s future or ours for that matter on ourselves and others

Sensible post BlueBelle. Middle paragraph puts things into perspective.

bluebelle I think most people are already doing just that tbh.

There will undoubtedly be a tiny minority who worry, but they will worry regardless.

She is not, however denying that long covid exists.

I think that is the issue that needs to be addressed.

Of course she's not, nobody with half a brain is denying Long Covid exists. But plenty of people with half a brain, such as the original tweeter, are drawing conclusions that are not justified and sending them out on Twitter to scare people. That's all it does, it's not shedding new light on the subject, or making sensible deductions, or helping people understand the situation.

I see he's agreed that what he wrote was inaccurate and he's deleted at least one of the tweets. This stuff is dangerous. You don't learn anything from the tweets of people who don't know what they're talking about and you end up with ideas that are based on fallacies and inaccuracies.

That's why it's doomscrolling. It's pernicious.

I think you made your point initially. Isn’t it time to move on?

Hyperbole is not the answer either.

I'll move on when people stop posting that the tweeted articles are interesting and useful, that is, when people understand that this is codswallop. Too hyperbolic for you? I think not.

Until then, thanks for the suggestion.

Oh dear. A little calmness would not go amiss.

Well that's a bit below the belt isn't it WWM2? Because anything I say now can just be countered with well you would say that, you're just not being calm.

So I'll interpret it this way; that you meant that for the writer of the original tweets. Because surely nobody would consider that a systems architect collecting outdated research papers to make a spurious set of claims about the long term effects of Covid could be described as calm, could they?

There are conversations to be had about Long Covid, I'm sure, because people are worried about it. But the discussions should be based on reality, not on the discredited thoughts of the Twitterati. So as long as there are still comments praising the tweet which started off this thread, I'll be commenting. Have a discussion about Long Covid, by all means, I probably won't take part because I know nothing about it. But I know about scaremongering, and this was it.

The nature of viruses and indeed many other illnesses, is that they have long term effects.

People who had polio and recovered, in the days before the polio jab, and remained healthy for decades, in their late middle and old age, developed debilating and disabling problems as a result of their childhood illness. Many of those with impaired immune system and auto-immune disease developed them after having something else.

Being alive means being constantly at risk, from illness, and its after attacks, from natural disasters, from accidents, the list is endless. My sister was killed in a car accident, my DD left disabled in a separate car accident.

I am with those that say, after 2 years of incredible hardship and difficulty, from children with fractured educations to old people, immured in care homes without visitors or suffering mental illness from being isolated and at home with no human contact, we have not succeeded in defeating COVID, we now need to learn to live with it.

Unfortunately collective hive hysteria is popping up everywhere including GN.

This man’s tweets add nothing to the discussion on long Covid, they do however feed the hysteria.

I am interested to learn what the epidemiologists have to say on this subject of long Covid and as they learn more hopefully so can the general public without the knee jerk histrionics.

I hear what you are saying. And perhaps those of us who are quite healthy can accept this. Would you say the same if you had loved ones, be it husband, daughters and sons, grandchildren- who are particularly vulnerable? Who have, as you said above, suffered in so many ways in last two years - and who are now told 'ah well- let's go back to normal, even if it kills you- all part of life!'

Why can't we just take care of each other for just a bit longer- see the winter out at least- and wait for further research too into long term effect. Because NO, it is NOT just a cold.

I was accused of being unkind because of one of my comments yesterday- but saying 'just learn to live with it' - to those who are particularly at risk- be they young, old or anything in between, that is cruel and nasty beyong belief. 'Knee jerk histrionics' aimed at their genuine fears is beyond the beyond.

There was an article in the Herald this morning about an anti-vax march in Glasgow. Only it wasn't an anti- vax march, it was a march for people who were concerned about compulsory vaccination and vaccine passports. People a bit like me actually. Fully vaxxed, mask wearing, compliant old me.

We are in a situation where anybody expressing any slight deviation from what the hive thinks is immediately tarred as being an extremist willing to kill your granny so they can go to the pub. Who are told they'd think about things differently if it was your loved ones.

The long term effects on society of this virus will be more than just physical.

I have chronic asthma, my lungs are not the best.

I do not want the UK (or anywhere) to shut down to protect me, I do not want mandatory vaccines to protect me, I do not want vaccine passports to protect me.

I will protect myself, I do my own risk assessments, I am triple jabbed and wear a mask.

I would match against compulsory vaccines. I am not sure that history is going to look back kindly on decisions made during this time.

March not match

Alegrias?