A Concerned Scientist @BE@qoto.org

Given that hundreds of thousands of papers have been published in the scientific literature over the last three years about COVID, I highly recommend you stop and think about why one that you may hear about on the news, or covered in CNN, may have gotten there.

It would be a good idea to actually read the paper, before sharing, if you're willing and able.

I see a lot of probably well meaning sharing of information just because a certain paper may gotten on CNN or NBC and they're not always conveying the best information(some papers are better than others) or sometimes what the paper itself was even trying to say in the first place.

Yes, I'm referring to a certain one that's all over today, but, what I wrote will never be wrong.

I'd like to point out to anyone who thinks that "you do you" public health is sustainable that it's illegal to wear a mask in many public places in the US. This has only been on hold because of the emergency declaration and that's about to end.

For example, let me introduce you to my local law in Florida. Florida State statute 876.12:

Wearing mask, hood, or other device on public way.—No person or persons over 16 years of age shall, while wearing any mask, hood, or device whereby any portion of the face is so hidden, concealed, or covered as to conceal the identity of the wearer, enter upon, or be or appear upon any lane, walk, alley, street, road, highway, or other public way in this state.

This law was pointed out to my wife by a law enforcement officer who really wanted to arrest her for wearing a mask in a grocery store last year.

If you think you're going to be able to avoid COVID after the end of the emergency declaration you'd better be a full on hermit who never has to venture out.

Given that hundreds of thousands of papers have been published in the scientific literature over the last three years about COVID, I highly recommend you stop and think about why one that you may hear about on the news, or covered in CNN, may have gotten there.

It would be a good idea to actually read the paper, before sharing, if you're willing and able.

I see a lot of probably well meaning sharing of information just because a certain paper may gotten on CNN or NBC and they're not always conveying the best information(some papers are better than others) or sometimes what the paper itself was even trying to say in the first place.

Yes, I'm referring to a certain one that's all over today, but, what I wrote will never be wrong.

I can't really speak too deeply to this latest COVID research as it's out of my wheelhouse. Yes, it's "cultured microglial cells" but it turns out they're pretty important to your brain.

https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fimmu.2023.1158460/abstract

Here's a pretty decent look at what this might impact.

https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fneur.2021.654850/full

Further evidence that clearing COVID from your nose and nasopharynx has little to do with actually clearing the virus from your system.

"We found that SARS-CoV-2 RNA persists longer and in higher abundance in saliva than in nasal swabs, even beyond 14 days."

https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0282708

For #LongCovidAwarenessDay I hope everyone focuses on the people who are *really* struggling, and that's not me. I am, however, going to share a story about how easy it is to miss what's going on in your own life.

I've read hundreds, maybe thousands, of COVID studies and articles. I've gone deeply into the science and I've learned an awful lot over the last three years. I'm going to guess that I know more about COVID and long COVID than 99% of people on the planet, which really isn't all that hard given how little the average person knows...if they even know anything.

I probably had COVID in the very early days, before there were even tests invented yet. More than likely I'll never know for sure. It's very likely, though.

I struggled quite a bit in 2020, with no real idea what was going on at all, and by 2021, thankfully, I considered myself to be over the day to day issues. However, I have had a few things that lingered.

Now, I want to make clear again that I manage just fine in my daily life, unlike so many others.

So, in a Telehealth appointment recently I'm describing some things; purple feet when sitting, chest pains despite heart testing being fine, occasional "skipping" of a beat or a fluttering feeling in my heart(thankfully way less than 2020, they can be really scary)...and the woman I'm talking with starts to list some other things. Shaking and sweating, dizzy spells and I'm nodding along. Yes. Occasional fatigue. Yeah, sure, but I'm getting older. Happens, right?

She, literally, starts snickering. I look at her quizzically, I imagine, and she tells me "You taught me about this and you aren't recognizing it in yourself."

I am still suffering some symptoms of POTS. I check my Apple Watch heart rate data....and wouldn't you know it, every time I go from laying to standing my heart rate jumps 40 beats.

I have spent countless hours over the last 3 years teaching people about things *just like this* and I never looked at myself. Now I have a name, beyond just long COVID, that I can look at, learn, and work on.

Anyway, please boost people sharing info about #LongCovidAwarenessDay and whatnot today and be kind except to the continuing minimizers and deniers. The whole world's going through this together.

Don't forget to set your clocks ahead an hour in most of the US this weekend.

I normally never say this to anyone, but I've found a LOT of people seem to think that Congress ended the twice a year time shenanigans last year. They didn't. The Senate passed it, but the House never even took it up.

"The mayor of NYC, recently knighted by the Biden administration, has taken up a crusade against masking. He suggests mask use helps criminals by telling shops that they shouldn’t let in people wearing a mask."

https://easychair.substack.com/p/the-war-on-masks

The "science" of constant reinfection laid out by @fitterhappierAJ

https://www.npr.org/2023/03/02/1160358099/school-attendance-chronic-absenteeism-covid

Yet another "it's a mystery!" article. This one from the formerly reliable news source of NPR with such gems as:

"I think people have been a little bit under the false impression that when COVID became more endemic, that that would then result in a significant improvement in attendance. And I'm not seeing that."

and

"...Carlson says his district's Native families don't generally think of school as a safe place.

"It's really difficult to get those families to say, 'Yeah, sure, we'd love to send our kids back to school.' "

The solution? Not making schools more safe, of course. That would be too straightforward.

"Money is not an issue ... The entire nation is currently flooded with federal [COVID] assistance money."

"Home visits are one proven strategy schools are investing in."

or

"His district has also hired more attendance counselors and "community navigators" to help caregivers tap into district resources"

or even

"Chang says another way to improve attendance is to gather regular, transparent data throughout the school-year, rather than only once, at the end of the year."

because, clearly, collecting attendance data will solve the problem.

These people really don't get it and I've lost hope that they ever will.

An acquaintance of mine is sending out pictures to people this morning at the Super Bowl festivities, and casually mentioned that everyone is sick because there's "something going around" and laughing about how everyone is "staying in bed sick all day every day so that they can party all night" and I had two realizations.

One, 20 years ago this totally would have been me...but we weren't in the midst of a pandemic.

Two, I'm bothered by it all.

To add to the growing list of sources about this here's an article from the ACLU just prior to the pandemic about how these laws have been used. I can't believe I missed this before:

https://www.aclu.org/news/free-speech/americas-mask-bans-in-the-age-of-face-recognition-surveillance

I'd like to point out to anyone who thinks that "you do you" public health is sustainable that it's illegal to wear a mask in many public places in the US. This has only been on hold because of the emergency declaration and that's about to end.

For example, let me introduce you to my local law in Florida. Florida State statute 876.12:

Wearing mask, hood, or other device on public way.—No person or persons over 16 years of age shall, while wearing any mask, hood, or device whereby any portion of the face is so hidden, concealed, or covered as to conceal the identity of the wearer, enter upon, or be or appear upon any lane, walk, alley, street, road, highway, or other public way in this state.

This law was pointed out to my wife by a law enforcement officer who really wanted to arrest her for wearing a mask in a grocery store last year.

If you think you're going to be able to avoid COVID after the end of the emergency declaration you'd better be a full on hermit who never has to venture out.

Know what DeSantis does? He comes through with a pay raise for teachers every single year. Know how many of those there were before him? Off the top of my head:

One for $2500 by Rick Scott over his 8 years. Charlie Crist vetoed one that passed the state legislature. Jeb Bush talked about it? Maybe went through with one? I’m honestly not sure on that one, but that gets you back to the 90's.

Are those 30% of teachers who identify as liberals mad? I’m sure they are. I’m sure you can even get quotes from a lot of them. I have this general discussion with friends who live on the west coast and other liberal areas all the time. It’s like a different world down here. It *feels* like there should be outrage. I get it. However, teachers down here aren’t largely ideologically against DeSantis and they’ve seen more raises the last four years than they’ve ever seen before. The population at large is even less liberal than the teachers and they think DeSantis is the greatest thing ever.

I guess my point is this. If you think there’s about to be an uprising against DeSantis in Florida it’s not going to come from some silent majority. They don’t exist. Point to Florida from wherever you are and say “Let’s not end up like that here” but, honestly, stop acting like the people here don’t have the government that the majority want. Florida has moved from a swing state to a solidly republican majority.

I mean, I agree with the outrage and all, but, look, the reality on the ground here is that even the majority of teachers love DeSantis across the state. I say this as the husband of a longtime teacher here who’s no longer in the classroom, but stays plugged into the local community of teachers. She's in a lot of teacher chat groups. There's no mass outrage. This morning the biggest discussion I saw amongst teachers was them talking about how kids are "rightfully angry and lashing out these days because the government came in and locked them down in their homes" years ago....for all of like two weeks, but, honestly, that’s the predominant discussion here.

The last data that I saw from the Florida teacher's union was that about half of teachers voted for Hillary and only about 30% of them identify as Democrats. There's not a ton of ideological outrage about any of this, frankly, and it's hyper localized. Know how many counties voted against DeSantis all of three months ago? 5. Out of 67. Two around Tallahassee, one at Jacksonville, one at Orlando and one north of Miami. Even Tampa voted for DeSantis this time.

I currently split my time between my off-grid life in the Appalachians that we're working on making a real full time homestead and suburban Florida. Every time we take a little time up north and then come back south I swear it's noticeably further to the political right. I'm going to preface this with the fact that I am vehemently anti-DeSantis, so don't come at me with any "DeSantis apologist" crap.

This is going to be unpopular amongst most of the people that I follow on here, but, I think it needs to be said, so I'm going to say it.

I see a lot of posts about Florida teachers here, and understandably so, there’s a lot of wild stuff coming from the Governor’s office. Unfortunately probably 99% of those posts come from outside of the state and I’m here to tell you something.

I don't know exactly how to say this, so I usually stay outside of political conversations here, but, calls for a teacher strike or all of the "I'm outraged at Florida" posts really reek of outsider echo chamber. I don't want to be the "Sure that sounds great, but" guy all the time, so I just don't get into it. They just aren’t representative of the people in Florida, though.

If possible, I'd like to pick the brains of the more biologically inclined out there.

Piggybacking off of this article that @fitterhappierAJ posted today, this is something that's been on my mind for a long time now and I'm not afraid that I feel like I'm missing something.

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-00086-1

I've read about "original antigenic sin" aka imprinting for a year or two now in regards to COVID and vaccines. I believe I understand the basics and have long been under the impression that continually updated mRNA vaccines would give positive, but limited benefits.

Given what we know, should we see the bivalent vaccine as having over-performed thus far? Is there a real benefit to continually updated mRNA vaccines after all?

Our health messaging sucks, proven yet again.

They went out last night, maskless, "but outside for most of the time" so, therefore, obviously safe.

Today her and her husband decided to stay 6' away from each other because that guarantees he won't get it. Yes, they're hanging out together in the same room, but staying 6' apart.

It's been a while since someone I knew well shared all of their thoughts regarding COVID and it just baffles me how this is what people believe, but it goes to show we're probably never getting out of this mess. Plan accordingly in your life.

To balance out my frustration of yesterday here's how my Sunday is going so far.

It's a beautiful, cold day in the woods. My wife keeps feeding me fresh hush puppies and the kids are cleaning without even being told to. The 9yo even put on a mask to "not smell stuff" while cleaning and wandered off talking about how awesome masks are.

Not sure what I did to deserve such a nice Sunday, but I'll take it.

Before it comes up, I feel the need to say, too, that this woman and her husband are college educated, west coast liberals. We're not talking the southern Republicans that I live around. We're so far from having the right discussions around COVID and the future.

I know I've said it before, but I never try to convince people in my life that COVID's serious anymore. It just always leaves me frustrated.

So, that said, my wife best friend just texted to say she's got COVID for the first time and she knows we "keep up with COVID" and wanted to ask some questions. Sure, no problem.

She was on a flight last weekend and asks if it's possible that she just tested positive now. We tell her that RAT's are supposedly around day 5-11 now, so that's totally possible.

She asks if we know what the workplace rules are for her, and sure we send her a link. She says that's not at all what her boss said, but OK.

She asks if it's even possible to not give her husband COVID. We go over ventilation, filtration, masks, etc and this is where it really starts to go off the rails. She's just like "Yeah, we're not doing any of that."

She asks if long COVID "is real" or if there's anything else she should know and we're like yeah, it is, there's a lot that's unknown. We're sending you some links about what is known with long COVID rates, the things to look out for, what you can try to do in the meantime, etc. and she reads it and goes "Ummm, yeah. That all looks super sketchy. If any of that were real I'm sure the news would be talking about it. I'm sorry but I think you guys have fallen for some hoax or something here. I have a fever, a runny nose and muscle aches. I'm going to take some Tylenol. We have a birthday party to attend tonight, a kid's party tomorrow and my boss wants me back at work on Monday. Thanks anyway."

I give up.

I'm pretty sure "grappling with candidate quality" isn't the best way to frame the GOP's electoral problems.

https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/3802872-gop-grapples-with-candidate-quality-problem-ahead-of-2024/

My 9yo and 11yo boys have been dabbling with coding in python, swift, java and html for a couple of years now on and off. Yesterday they decided to participate in their first code jam. They started out, got it set up the way they wanted and left it until today.

This morning turned into nothing but arguing as it didn't come together the way they both wanted it to. The arguing turned into a huge fight(as an aside, as an only child I'm continually impressed by how much and how often brothers can fight, particularly over the smallest of things) and they both ran away crying and screaming at each other. I decided not to intervene and just let it play out.

Well, a couple of hours later I heard them cheering and went to check on them. They were jumping up and down, hugging, and cheering because they finally worked out the code they were stuck on and it was working the way they wanted. They've been glued to the computer working on the rest of their code for hours straight now.

It's not easy to convince kids these days to be resilient, at all, when everything seems to be geared towards instant gratification, but it's so worth it when it works out. However the rest of their project works out it was already a win in my book.