Hello COVID cautious and COVID scientific community. I'm often that person who drops scientific papers in threads, but today I can't find what I'm looking for and I'm hoping one of you has it handy.
I lost my mind for a minute and forgot which meeting I was in this morning and in this general Zoom room where a bunch of people were all complaining about how bad their "seasonal allergies" are at the moment, and how all of their spouses are sick and have pneumonia, and their kids all have fevers and "colds and flus" they started talking about adult-onset allergies. I usually tune out all of the complaining about how sick everyone is. It's a weekly thing in this meeting and frankly I just can't deal with it, but when one person mentioned adult-onset allergies, and they *all* started talking about how they're now allergic to this or that and they never have been before, I made the mistake of un-muting and saying the dreaded word....COVID.
After a bunch of "How dare you say COVID. We don't have COVID!" a couple of people were actually interested in whether COVID can cause adult-onset(or even new allergies in kids...one person said their kid's eaten eggs for breakfast for years and now is allergic to eggs). I distinctly remember new allergies being a thing that came up often in 2020-ish, and not as much recently. A quick search through the scientific papers I cite often didn't come up with any hits.
This group is mostly scientists, and so a peer-reviewed article would probably go over better. I could guide them through auto-immune disorders and get there, but a paper specifically about new allergies would be best.
Is this paper out there? Or just a bunch of anecdotal evidence?
I appreciate you all sending me in that direction with your helpful replies yesterday! By the end of the day I put together some "light" reading for the scientists in the group chat to look through. I recognize that I've been around long enough, and have enough scientific pull, that they're going to be reserved in their criticisms, and sure enough, there were a couple of "Do you really believe that everything is COVID during the cold and flu season?" and that's fine.
There were also a couple "I'm going to ask my doctor" or "my pediatrician" about this, and that's good. Will any of their doctors know anything about it or just tell them it's crazy? Could go either way, but I did what I could.
Stay safe out there COVID cautious folks! Seems like everyone else is sick and has no clue that they've endangered their health or the health of their loved ones.
@BE I just think of all the years where each new first semester we just accepted we’d face “freshers’ ‘flu” would be doing the rounds. Somehow I’d keep going until the Christmas break and end up in bed, sometimes for 2 weeks.
Why didn’t we wear masks if we insisted on complying with presenteeism culture?
What a relief to wear an N95 and not suffer random viruses.
As for the deluded, who choose ‘normality’ over health… I just don’t understand that mentality.
Go well.
@BE
It's interesting that they're responding as though you were saying they have covid now, this season, especially since they've apparently been complaining about recurring illness for a while now.
Is it about whether they have covid now or is it about whether their new-onset allergies and frequent cold symptoms could actually be intensifying ongoing LC-related immune system activation?
@BE and no, I don’t actually believe everything out there that’s making people sick as Covid. But I don’t want any of it, I don’t want anyone’s cold or flu, I don’t want Norovirus. I don’t want anyone’s cooties from inside their body inside my body regardless of what it is.
That’s why I keep wearing a mask. It works on all of those airborne things