A Concerned Scientist @BE@qoto.org

@SourPatchAdult

I hear you. Just didn't know better.

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.

@chrismak

There's a lot going on in the world, but it would be a mistake to pretend like an ever growing pandemic that we know causes brain damage has nothing to do with it. Ever increasing accidental deaths, more and more car accidents, etc. They're all related.

@MicrobialLife

I notice that we've reached a point in our society where people just believe scientists will solve everything. People ask me all of the time "Why haven't scientists solved climate change yet?" or "Why isn't there a pill for COVID yet?"

What's been normalized is that "science" will eternally make your life better and solve all of your problems without you doing anything to change your own life, and we're seeing the downside of that right now.

@Gdac @augieray

Oh absolutely, and I think that's such an important part that's been missed by many. My wife was also thrown into virtual school in March of 2020 and it in no way compares to what my kids are doing now. They're in an online school that's been operating since the 90's and they know exactly what they're doing.

@augieray

As others have stated, online learning has been amazing for my kids. As soon as I explained what we were doing to my dad he was like "Wow, you would have loved that as a kid." If only.

We've gone all in, for different reasons than others, but I've become a complete and total convert of online learning and it's the most unexpected part of this whole journey the last few years for us. My kids are thriving in ways that would not have been possible in brick and mortar.

@naked_techie

I started working from home in 2015 and even without a pandemic I couldn't imagine going back in ever again.

@dmacphee

The simplest explanation here is that he wouldn't pass middle school science and is one of the people who believes that a scientific theory isn't a fact, because if it were, it would be a scientific law. It's unfortunately common, and just goes to show how poorly the populace is educated.

@sb

That's an absolutely fabulous statement and congratulations on convincing your mom to mask up!

@AliceMarshall

NPR is complicit in everything that's happened over the last couple of years. They were quick to downplay COVID and quick to tell their listeners to go back to normal. They ceased to be a reliable news source as far as I'm concerned.

@augieray

There's been anecdotal hints about this in amateur and professional sports over the last couple of years. One of the ones that made the news was a player on the Colorado Avalanche who had a documented history of a couple of prior concussions, had COVID(I want to say in 2020) and then took what did not appear to be a particularly hard or direct hit to the head and ended up spending months recovering. The Avalanche medial team said at the time that they noticed something to the effect of "COVID attacks where you're weakest" and they weren't sure he was going to make it back.

https://twitter.com/peter_baugh/status/1460972240824983564?lang=eu

https://www.markerzone.com/news/index.php?no=65173&s=8

Thankfully he did, but, I think it's absolutely something that needs more attention(as if there weren't a million of those these days).

This study's interesting because it's attempting to put numbers to something I've heard very similar stories about from local high school athletes. Concussions are tricky to begin with and this just adds a layer of complexity on top.

@smoke@mastodon.online

The fact that Corcoran got Hillsdale's curriculum into the K-12 system while in the state DOE has largely gone unreported. I hope now that he's doing the same thing at the University level people realize that it's already being taught to the kids of Florida on a daily basis in some schools, and will be in all of them soon.

@vox_n_thecosmos @augieray @LongCovidPharmD

Actually, I believe it has. I hadn't gotten an update from him in a little while, but he checked in and he'd previously had some success at the bottle's suggested dose, but after we increased it he's found that he feels almost back to normal now. I still worry about whatever damage has been done, after all, he's not young anymore, but this is a major step in the right direction for his quality of life.

@mmalc

Yeah I've been keeping my eye on it for a while now. At one point I really believed China was going to invest heavily into putting them everywhere which I was hoping would lead to more adoption and a lower price point. Obviously didn't happen.

If you do end up splurging for one yourself, keep in mind that from what I understand the bulbs will last ~4000 hours on average. So if you blasted them 10 hours a day you'd be replacing them about once a year.

@mmalc

Love Joey Fox and love that this is at least an option that's being explored, but it just goes to show how far we are from "having the tools" when you see the lengths(and cost) required to do something like this at this stage.

It's a technology that I really hope continues to show effectiveness and matures into a legitimate option for everyone.

@rchusid

This is all really interesting and I've been trying to wrap my head around the evolving science about imprinting and timing, in particular. Much of the science is not my background and I fear I'm slow on the uptake, but I'm trying.

If anyone's interested, here's some articles some of us have been kicking around over the last month or so that deal with the topic:

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

https://www.medpagetoday.com/infectiousdisease/covid19vaccine/102604

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1471490622000485

https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciimmunol.adg7327

@travelhealthdoc

@noyes

@the_etrain@masto.ai

The fact that this scene is largely forgotten by the kids these days is unfortunate. I actually showed it to my 9yo and 11yo about a week ago and they were *hysterically* laughing. Timeless comedy.

@augieray

This has been the hardest lesson of the pandemic, just ahead of "public health is actually not there to protect you at all."

@colorblindcowboy @NPR

Can't ever take NPR seriously again after they told everyone that it was fine to go out and do whatever and people that really believed them, and no one else, went out and died or became disabled.

@noyes @travelhealthdoc

I'm still a little slow with all of the immunology ins and outs but I got there. Thank you for the thoughts, as always!