1. Covid is a physical phenomenon. It's not affected by your hopes or wish that it was over.
2. Covid accesses your cells via ACE2 receptors. No other Coronavirus that’s lethal for humans uses this access modality. You have ACE2 receptors EVERYWHERE: in your brain, along the length and breadth of your blood vessels. Everywhere.
3. No Coronaviruses lethal to humans existed in 2002. In 2023, we have three: SARs, MERs and Covid. Only Covid accesses our cells via ACE2 receptors.
4. Covid is the ONLY Coronavirus that infects humans that has a Furin Cleavage Site (FCS). This explains why Covid is an Olympic champion at sticking to your cells long enough to break through your defences.
5. When you have a "mild" bout of Covid, this is because your immune defences fought valiantly. Covid isn't itself mild. Covid is always a monster. Each time your body encounters Covid it uses immune resources that can't be regenerated and some which can. This means that eventually giving enough Covid in the air, Covid will break through.
6. Children have limited numbers of generic T Cells, which when they encounter Covid work well well to defend against infection. These generic T Cells then which can't be regenerated aren't available to fight future encounters with Covid or other viruses. Immunity is a scarce resource. Children and adults should avoid Covid like the plague.
7. ~60% of Covid infectious people are either pre-asymptomatic or asymptomatic. This means neither you nor they can know they're infectious until it's too late. Bookmark this. Never forget this. I remember the time (17th March 2020) and place (Hotel Kyiv in Kyiv) when I discovered this. Everything flows from this fact. This has not changed, even though the virus has evolved since then.
8. FFP3 / N99 masks stop the physical phenomenon Covid from entering your body.
9. It takes 1-3 virions of Covid to infect you and take off. Those infected with Delta spewed out 144 Billion virions while they were infectious (24 Reasons & 144 Billion Delta Virus Particles To Take Delta VERY Seriously: medium.com/geopolitical-i…). Assume Eris, and todays variants are a lot more profuse. An FFP3 / N99 will prevent every single one of these getting in. If while you're adjusting your mask a few do get in, maybe you'll fight them off more successfully than if 5,000 virions get in. An infection that takes off after only 1-3 virions penetrate your physical defences will be less serious than one that stems from thousands of breaches.
10. If 1 in 10 Covid infections results in Long Covid, how many times do you need to get infected before there's a 0.99 probability of you getting Long Covid? This is a trick question. The risk aggregates. After each infection your immune defences are a little bit weaker. There may be pockets of Covid remaining still in your cells waiting for a boost. For whatever reason, each successive infection is from a worse starting point than the previous one. Be a miser! Save your Corona credits.
11. Covid is by far the most infectious disease known to science.
12. This is from the seminal book "Scapegoats" written long before we let Covid Rip:
"Medieval communities were so afraid of the plague that the word alone was enough to frighten them.
They avoided mentioning it as long as possible and even avoided taking the necessary precautions at the risk of aggravating the effects of the epidemic.
...The entire population shared in this type of blindness.
Their desperate desire to deny the evidence contributed to their search for 'scapegoats'..."
13. Even if you don't feel the effects of your Covid infection, under the bonnet, it has disrupted (permanently) your body. We know this because of work that measures the biochemical abnormalities of those who have had Covid (COVID-19 as a systemic disease: Living with COVID could be harder than we think. Feature presentation from Professor Jeremy Nicholson:
14. Our countries disassembled testing, vaccination, genomic surveillance, wastewater, national surveys, mask mandates,... systems NOT because Covid had suddenly become less lethal. This was done to promote the troll that Covid was done with us. It's not.
When the “meaning” shining through ANY message you're hearing about Covid is “Don’t worry!” question that speaker carefully.
Do they understand that Covid has a Furin Cleavage Site?
Do they know it accesses our cells through our ACE2 receptors?
Have they read, critically, at least some of the half-a-million peer-reviewed scientific papers in the best journals that back-up everything I’ve said here?
A few people have interrogated the data critically on an ongoing basis and have been consistently right in forecasting Covid’s continued evolution and disruption of our lives.
Does this person selling their “Don’t worry about Covid” message (however packaged) have a verifiable track record?
Since that fateful moment on March 17th 2020 when I discovered asymptomatic transmission was highly likely (from reading a peer reviewed journal), I’ve written over a million words in hundreds of published articles.
My track record is available here in reverse order: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/covid-posts-collected-stephen-douglas/
I don’t write much on Covid these days as most people are immune to having their minds changed on whether or not Covid is a nothing burger.
Still, those of us who understand that Covid has a an FCS, accesses our bodies through our ACE2 receptors and now will continue evolving until it had disabled or killed every human it can have a persisting duty to try to warn, even now and again.
What's the minimiser's record? Remember: this isn't a discussion about who played best in a game.
Worth noting too that almost every article you read in legacy media "Both Sides" the scientific evidence.
They'll find a scientist (usually one who's been wrong repeatedly- they said it didn't afflict children; that we'd reach herd immunity; that Covid didn't evolve; ...) who'll contradict THE science as set out in my piece below.
Thing is: there's no two sides to Covid: it's a monster.
Always.
Nor is there "two sides" to how easy it is to prevent transmission: FFP3/N99 mask AND clean air (HEPA filters work perfectly.
If they didn't you wouldn't be reading these words: whatever device you use was made in a factory with air cleaned by HEPA filters. Nothing bad gets through. And good ones cost under €200/$200)."