Avoiding class analysis leads to poor reasoning about cause and effect
When class analysis is absent from discussions about systemic problems, issues like income inequality, access to resources, and power imbalances are often oversimplified or ignored.
posted by dave @ 11:36 PM
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We live in information societies. We are globalists. We have never been more aware, more in touch and better connected.
Are we? Or do we live in a media society where brainwashing is insidious and relentless, and perception is filtered according to the needs and lies of state and corporate power?
posted by dave @ 11:31 PM
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… the struggle of a large group of experts who came together at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic to warn the world about the risk of airborne transmission and the consequences of ignoring it. We alerted the World Health Organization about the potential significance of the airborne transmission of SARS-CoV-2 and the urgent need to control it, but our concerns were dismissed. Here we describe how this happened and the consequences. We hope that by reporting this story we can raise awareness of the importance of interdisciplinary collaboration and the need to be open to new evidence, and to prevent it from happening again. Acknowledgement of an issue, and the emergence of new evidence related to it, is the first necessary step towards finding effective mitigation solutions.
posted by dave @ 10:09 AM
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I presented considered views that were intended to contribute to the scientific discourse. Views that are grounded in evidence, based on my experience conducting research at the NIH and elsewhere. My reward for sharing these views was to be labeled a ‘crank’ and a ‘grifter’ by a small but very vocal community of scientists and COVID commentators on Twitter like Marc Veldhoen and Zeynep Tufekci. I don’t have my own lab. I’m not in receipt of grants and my work on COVID has not benefited my career whatsoever. In fact, it has cost me. I have privately paid for the journal publication fees, and have suffered harm to my reputation because of how this vocal group chose to engage with me, attacking me as a person, rather than engaging with and refuting the science. What started as a small group quickly grew. I know members of this group reached out to other scientists privately to discredit me as an alarmist. They felt that the broad stimulation and hyperactivation of T cells was only valid during 1) severe disease and 2) acutely Little did they know the mechanism of T cell aging and death would behave in an "as above, so below" instance. What I mean is, that if you have a continuous broad stimulation, you have continuous broad turnover of cells. This is how in part people with Long Covid are missing unactivated naive T cells. There is a broad stimulation, which happens acutely, happening chronically as well. So they dismissed my alarm of 'kiss your naive T cells goodbye' when I wrote it in 2020
posted by dave @ 5:24 PM
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When cells die, their contents are released into the surrounding tissue. Parts of the DNA of the cell are also released and can be detected in the bloodstream. That’s what is meant by cell-free DNA (cfDNA). Epigenetic liquid biopsies study the cfDNA and can determine the type of cells that it came from, based on characteristic molecular structures. The authors state “Patients with severe COVID-19 had a massive elevation of circulating cell-free DNA (cfDNA) levels, which originated in lung epithelial cells, cardiomyocytes, vascular endothelial cells and erythroblasts, suggesting increased cell death or turnover in these tissues.”
Cardiomyocytes are the muscle cells of the heart that contract to provide the heartbeat. When a large area of these become damaged, it is called a myocardial infarction, or commonly called a heart attack. This is normally due to either fatty plaques forming in the blood vessels that feed the heart or a clot that enters one of them. Keep that in mind for the part on vascular endothelial cell damage.
Endothelial cells line the inside of tissue. Epithelial cells line the outer surface. Damaged lung epithelium means that the cells that take up oxygen in the air sacs of the lungs (alveoli) which gets diffused into the bloodstream and carbon dioxide to flow into the alveoli no longer function. Erythroblasts are the cells that become red blood cells when mature. The damage to these just these two cell types means that other tissues will be supplied less oxygen, but that is just part of the widespread damage.
The damage to the vascular endothelium is really one of the most critical things to understand about COVID.
…
we will see massive amounts of chronic diseases among people who had COVID infections in the future.
posted by dave @ 9:14 AM
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Your ultimate guide to staying covid-safe.
If you repost or use any part of this for an article, credit with a link. Art by Yuumei.
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Just so you know
Covid is airborne: it is in the exhaled breath of infected people. 2/3 of covid spread comes from pre-symptomatic people or asymptomatic infected people — they show no symptoms. It’s estimated that 30% of all covid cases are asymptomatic. Rapid tests miss 90% of asymptomatic cases.
Vaccination and treatment like Paxlovid are your last lines of defense. Covid-19 is not just a respiratory infection, it is a multi-organ disease; a serious vascular, neurological, immune-system-damaging, sometimes brain-damaging, and randomly disabling disease (CDC: 1 in 5; PHAC: 50%).
It typically shows up with respiratory, flu-like, or viral meningitis symptoms. Post-infection immunity has shortened to 28 days. Anyone infected is at high risk for serious heart problems: it spares no one. After covid infection risk of deadly blood clots is elevated for one year.
Long covid will result from multiple reinfections, as well as any severity of infection. Each reinfection does cumulative and worsening damage and increases long covid risk. There is no treatment for long covid; there is no cure for long covid; there is no prevention for long covid. Everyone of every age and health status can get long covid. Here is what long covid looks like.
There’s no good news coming out of studies on how repeated infections might impact the population in the future. The AMA wants people to know that getting reinfected is “akin to playing Russian roulette.”
posted by dave @ 3:10 PM
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