@steven

The obvious exceptions being those that are policysetters.

@SuperTwaddle

@noyes @SuperTwaddle I'm not really sure there are any leftists setting policy in Canada/US/UK.

@steven @SuperTwaddle

I'm not sure about Canada or the UK, but in the United States, the Democratic Party, which purports to be a left of center affair, campaigned on heavy mitigation... then they threw the gates open and let Omicron rip.

@noyes @steven @SuperTwaddle

In Spain and Portugal not a single party that I'm aware of, anywhere on the political compass is arguing for mitigation. None. In these countries there are several left-wing parties with representation. In Portugal, there's even an old-school communist party, in name and ideology, with representation. Both countries have left wing governments, lead by nominally socialist, but actually social democrat prime ministers.

Finland has a social democrat PM leading a center left coalition. No party with parliamentary representation is arguing for mitigation either.
Only the Finnish Pirate Party actually wants to do something about it. You can place it left of center, but it's essentially a civil libertarian party. And unfortunately it has no representation in parliament.

So, hear it from someone who votes moderate left in countries currently led by left of center parties with plenty of left wing options. Lefties are not interested. They have their heads stuck in the sand just like everybody else.

@carlos @SuperTwaddle @noyes This was meant more as a cultural comment than being about actual policy and politicians.

@steven @SuperTwaddle @noyes

Got it. You'll find a culture of caring for others beyond your immediate circle more on the left than on the right, specially for people who are different.o
But somehow, it's not working here. I don't see left wing ordinary people interested in mitigation either.

@carlos

I don't think Left Wing Politicians understand the threat. Leadership pulled some sleight of hand in terms of long term morbidity, which is expected to be quite serious based upon past performance w/SARS and MERS, even for those that are not disabled.

American Right Wing think tanks are adjusting policy as if they expect unskilled laborers to lose utility in early adulthood. That's a safe bet for someone exposed by middle school.

@SuperTwaddle @steven

@noyes @SuperTwaddle @steven

Most people left or right seem to be in denial. I reckon people on the left will have even more to be sorry about - especially those not rich - as this continues. I'm not optimistic about public health care and disability support staying viable without substancial downgrades with the additional load caused by repeated widespread infection.

@carlos

1)They think that authority figures would repeatedly warn them if the danger was that bad. Unfortunately, Western leadership was unable to handle the crisis due to over-reliance on financially interested entities that misrepresented the both the interval of infection and the capacity of interventions necessary to manage that infection. SARS-CoV-2 infection is not transient, it is chronic, and we lack the background knowledge necessary to eliminate the infection.

@SuperTwaddle @steven

@noyes @SuperTwaddle @steven

Given frequent reinfection in the absence of mitigations, chronic infection doesn't even have to be common for the impact to be tremendous, just by sheer accumulation of damage and repeatedly rolling the dice.

But I've noticed you've been stressing chronic infection as a common occurrence, beyond immunocompromised people.
Do you have pointers to published work on this, or your insights collected somewhere?

@carlos @SuperTwaddle @noyes @steven

We have autopsy data of people who supposedly "cleared" their COVID infection showing it is still in their bodies, just not necessarily where it started. We also have studies showing it moving to pretty much every part of your body.

So let me kind of turn that question on its head. Do we have any evidence of most people fully clearing SARS-CoV-2 from their bodies?

It's early, so perhaps we will but I'm not aware of a study showing most people without COVID anywhere in their body. I think it's much more likely that no one's actually clearing it fully.

What we do know for sure is that it's found in parts of your body where it's theoretically "hiding" from your immune system for at least months after an infection. With an average re-infection period of every 8 months I feel like it's pretty clear people aren't clearing it from their body before adding more, on average.

@BE @SuperTwaddle @noyes @steven

No need to flip the question around. I get that it is extremely hard to have any certainty about the negative (no persistent infection in most people) for a novel virus, We may need to wait decades to really know even if that's the case. And to find out everything even a single infection can do over a lifetime.

And as you said, it is also clear that the impact of an infection easily outlasts the time until the next one, without precautions.

This is all more than good enough reason to avoid infection, including the 1st if you still can.

My problem is that, even though we think like that, most people don't.
So, if there are smoking guns that don't focus on previously immunocompromised people, or people who died with the acute infection I'd really like to know about them.
It may help me convince some people.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-022-05542-y

This study is more than enough for me (specially considering P36 and P42) , but most people will read "died with covid" and "in some patients", and right away paint themselves a picture where it can't happen to them.

@carlos @SuperTwaddle @noyes @steven

There's been quite a bit of research into viral persistence in people with long COVID. Is that the smoking gun? There's, for obvious reason, quite a bit less research into "Person who gets COVID and seems fine two weeks later." You, generally, neither have autopsy evidence available nor do those people generally keep coming in for repeated testing.

Just a sampling:

https://www.bmj.com/content/377/bmj.o1555

https://www.researchsquare.com/article/rs-1379777/v2

https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.06.14.22276401v1.full.pdf

https://www.gavi.org/vaccineswork/could-coronavirus-persist-safe-havens-body

https://reports.mountsinai.org/article/gi2022-_6_evolution-of-antibody-immunity-in-the-bowel

https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fimmu.2022.939989/full

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9057012/

https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.08.07.22278520v1.full

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9106095/

@BE @SuperTwaddle @noyes @steven

Thanks for the links.

Yes, there's now little doubt that persistent infection plays a role in Long Covid.

The odds of experiencing LC (not to mention increased risk of all sorts of other bad outcomes) are much much too high to justify the chill attitude to infection that is prevalent. Particularly considering frequent reinfection. And it looks like it can last arbitrarily long. And relapses on reinfection are common. It is a life ruiner for many people.

There are so many ways in which SARS-CoV-2 could ruin my life that, personally, knowing that I would have a good chance of fully clearing it would not really change my personal risk calculus much. And I don't know that.

Still, "never cleared" is a strong claim to make. If it's true I want to know, and to understand. So I think it's fair to ask for evidence and reasoning. If I can grasp it I will for sure boost it.

@carlos @SuperTwaddle @noyes @steven

You never clear EBV, for example, and it can cause all sorts of issues. It certainly wouldn't be the first virus to hide in places in your body where the immune system has a harder time reaching, so I don't think it's a strong claim at all, personally.

https://www.mdpi.com/1999-4915/15/2/400