Many people are desperately afraid of “forever masking.”

I'm afraid of #COVID19 remaining a top five cause of death indefinitely.

I'm scared COVID will leave billions with lasting damage to their heart, brains, and immune systems.

I'm frightened that children infected three, four or nine times will have lifelong health issues.

I'm worried that a rapidly mutating virus could yet spin off a deadly new variant.

Why is it so hard to do something so simple to possibly save a life? #WearAMask

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@augieray

A child born today, with today's lack of precautions in school and daycare would have to be expected to contract COVID upwards of 40 times by college, right? I don't see how that child survives that.

Seems like a lot of people are just waiting for the magic science pill that makes it all go away....which is really no different than people who are "concerned" about climate change but believe scientists will solve the problem any minute now without them having to do anything. Scientific wishful thinking.

@BE Honestly, I wish I could say that was exaggerated, but unless we develop better vaccines, COVID stops mutating, we adopt safer practices, or immunity starts miraculously remaining stable, you're right--that could well happen. I tell people even if COVID was "just" the flu (and it's not), no one could get the flu two or three times a year indefinitely without it adversely impacting their health and quality of life.

@augieray

Couldn't be more spot on. I say that to people all the time, too!

@BE @augieray

1)I doubt they'll survive. I'm not sure that a single exposure is survivable. SARS survivors were pretty messed up at 10 years, and a good chunk died between 10 and 20 years. IPF-like pulmonary fibrosis was common among survivors.

CTL remediation is severely impaired. It's almost like HPVs 16 & 18 in that regard, and they're long term killers.

The nucleocapsid protein is highly pernicious. If N is constantly being introduced into the interstitial spaces by infected donor cells

@BE @augieray

2) that tissue will eventually be destroyed. This is the most likely explanation for the fibrosis that occurred in post acute SARS survivors. SARS-CoV-2 penetrates much deeper than SARS, so I expect more tissues to be affected. It's just the nature of this beast.

@BE @augieray Trouble is it has worked at least once.

Nobody set out to solve the horse manure problem, but the prediction in 1894 that London's streets would be under nine feet of horse manure by 1944 never happened.

@TimWardCam @BE There are all sorts of examples where new solutions to problems were found. There are also plenty of examples where humans ignored the risks and paid the price. With a worldwide pandemic causing mass morbidity, do we really want to roll the dice rather than take a few sensible precautions?

@augieray @BE Just sayin', *some* people might have that mind set - "doing nothing worked for horse manure so why wouldn't it work with climate change and covid?".

I'm not one of them.

@BE @augieray the magic pill is actually an MRNA vaccine that helps protect people from the virus and by extension limit the spread.
Combined with masking in tight places it's not difficult.

@maximusnoobus @augieray

There's certainly both vaccines available as well as masks/ventilation. Unfortunately the vaccine's not sterilizing and only lowers your chances of long COVID about 15%.

nature.com/articles/d41586-022

However, yes, to your point, vaccines(hopefully better ones down the road) as well as masks and ventilation would make a huge difference if everyone used all of it. People would largely rather assume nothing bad will happen to them and then wait for science to fix it once it does, though.

@BE @augieray
What do you want people to do?

71% of carbon emissions is coming from 100 companies. We can't "personal responsibility" our way out of this. I try to reduce my contribution, but my contribution is a sliver of that remaining 29% shared by the rest of the world.

Those 100 companies won't change their ways unless the government forces them to, and they have bought off many of the most powerful countries' governments.

@tofugolem @augieray

I'm 100% not going to turn another person's COVID thread into a carbon emissions thread, but I'll gladly agree that it does depend on whether you believe that the US(~13% of emissions, but the highest per capita) should lead the way toward a more green future, or whether you believe that China(26% of global emissions, but 4th per capita) should.

@BE @augieray
Alright, I'll shut up. It's just that the biggest logjam is political in nature. We have to find a way to impose certain changes on certain companies when they have immense control over the governments that would have to do the strong-arming.

@tofugolem @augieray

Love to discuss either DM or in another thread anytime. It's a good discussion that should be had.

I'm going from the idea that most of the top companies in the list you're talking about are power plants, if I remember correctly, and their output, I think, can be thought of largely in the "personal responsibility" category. But, yeah, personal responsibility isn't going to solve it all, but neither is politics. There's some mix of both required.

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