I just thought this was an Interesting data point.

Australian primary school students have recorded their best ever results in an international maths and science assessment, curbing concerns about lockdowns disrupting learning.

The 2023 Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (Timss), released by the Australian Council for Educational Research (Acer) late on Wednesday, analysed the skills of year 4 and 8 students.

About 14,000 students in Australia participated in the test across 500 diverse schools.

The report found Australian year 4 students, whose first years of schooling occurred doing Covid, ranked equal fifth internationally out of 58 countries, and equal 15th in mathematics.

I wonder if those scores will go up, down, or stay the same in following years? Can we place bets on this sort of crap?

Something to think about now that we are in our 3rd year of record levels of infections of pretty much everything.

(img source)

Children experience weakened immunity and bacterial infections after suffering from long Covid-19 syndrome, a study published in the medical journal Nature has revealed.

Persistent fatigue was the most common symptom in children with long Covid syndrome, while the majority of children often complained about anxiety.

The researchers focused on a type of white blood cell called neutrophils, which plays a crucial role in combating infections, particularly bacterial ones. They discovered that children with long Covid had neutrophils that were functionally impaired.

“For instance, their ability to attack and swallow harmful bacteria such as Staphylococcus was impaired. This might correlate with the rise of multiple bacterial infections that were reported in Western nations among children after the onset of the pandemic," explained Rajeev Jayadevan, chairman, research cell, at the Indian Medical Association’s Kerala wing.

Also there is more evidence that the main long covid symptoms are a result of viral persistance.

And sars-cov-2 spike protein can linger in the brain: New study reveals how lingering spike protein in the brain's borders could explain long-term COVID-19 neurological symptoms and highlight vaccines' protective role.

And neurologic long covid symptoms are disproportionately affects 18-44 year olds.

All of this info has been posted here over the past few years. The warning signs have always been there for all of this. I'm still seeing people blame brain changes in kids on the fucking lockdowns and not the virus that causes brain damage we exposed them all to, repeatedly.

Tbh, I'm not really familiar with this guy beyond the vids on Long Covid he made recently, but I'm glad there's someone high profile out there advocating for masking and whatnot.

Absolutely wild going into another holiday season with 2 or 3 more pandemics on the horizon and people are still ignoring the current one and it's consequences. Pretty sure members of my family got hit last month by the walking pneumonia outbreak currently going around.

• mask
• vax
• neosporin nasal gel
• metformin
• CBD

anything else? I'd include paxlovid but I've heard about paxlovid rebound so idk

Still cute.

Summary: I've been taking metformin for months as protection against long COVID. I still mask everywhere, and I still take other COVID precautions, like nasal sprays, neosporin, air filters, Stoggles glasses, and getting a COVID vaccine. I am at high risk for severe COVID and long COVID, and I still plan to take paxlovid and use CPC mouthwash and nasal sprays if I get a COVID infection.

Why immediate-release metformin when paxlovid exists?

Paxlovid is harder to get outside of the US, and if you don't have health insurance or your health insurance doesn't cover it, it costs a lot.

Metformin is the second most commonly prescribed drug in the world (typically prescribed for type 2 diabetes or weight loss). So, lots of doctors prescribe it, and it is one of the least expensive medications out there.

Also, a paper published to the New England Journal of Medicine earlier this year found that Paxlovid is less effective than previously thought:

The time to sustained alleviation of all signs and symptoms of Covid-19 did not differ significantly between participants who received nirmatrelvir–ritonavir and those who received placebo.

so using both paxlovid and immediate-release metformin at the same time might not be redundant (and they don't interact with each other).

How effective is immediate-release metformin for COVID treatment?

There have been previous papers analyzing metformin's effectiveness for treating COVID, but the most notable study done on metformin in COVID patients (COVID-OUT) had a paper published this last May to Oxford University Press journal Clinical Infectious Diseases: Favorable Antiviral Effect of Metformin on SARS-CoV-2 Viral Load in a Randomized, Placebo-Controlled Clinical Trial of COVID-19:

In the COVID-OUT randomized trial for outpatient coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), metformin reduced the odds of hospitalizations/death through 28 days by 58%, of emergency department visits/hospitalizations/death through 14 days by 42%, and of long COVID through 10 months by 42%.

The mean SARS-CoV-2 viral load was reduced 3.6-fold with metformin relative to placebo [...]. Those who received metformin were less likely to have a detectable viral load than placebo at day or day 10 [...].

Viral rebound, defined as a higher viral load at day 10 than day 5, was less frequent with metformin (3.28%) than placebo (5.95%) [...].

Why immediate-release metformin? What about extended-release metformin?

Extended-release metformin might be ineffective for treating COVID, but we don't know for sure yet.

Conversely, an abandoned randomized trial testing extended-release metformin 1500 mg/d without a dose titration did not report improved SARS-CoV-2 viral clearance at day 7 [20].

They have a whole paragraph explaining the flaws of the failed extended-release metformin COVID study (the "Together Trial"), like randomizing people who were already taking metformin into the placebo or more metformin groups. The failed extended-release metformin/COVID study also had participants of that study start at the target dose of 1500mg/day extended-release metformin from the beginning, rather than starting at a lower dose and gradually increasing (an absolute must for metformin), which surely increased side effects.

Besides the flaws in the failed extended-release metformin/COVID study, immediate-release metformin might be more effective for your immune system:

Immediate-release metformin has higher systemic exposure than extended-release metformin, which may improve antiviral actions, but this is not known [24, 25].

So, immediate-release metformin is the thing that we know works for treating COVID, and there is no clinical evidence yet that extended-release metformin does, though that might change in the future.

There's also recent discussion in r/ZeroCovidCommunity on immediate-release metformin vs. extended-release metformin.

How to get immediate-release metformin and use it for COVID treatment?

How I did it: This last summer, I sent the immediate-release metformin/COVID paper to my endocrinologist and asked them to prescribe me metformin, and I have been taking it ever since. I take extended-release metformin because it has milder GI system effects, but if I get COVID, I will switch to immediate-release metformin for awhile.

Getting a metformin prescription might take time, so if you already have COVID, it's probably too late to consider metformin. There's lots of other reasons to take metformin, like slowing aging/living longer, lowering cancer risk, and lowering dementia and stroke risk, so in theory there's nothing wrong with taking metformin regularly without having type 2 diabetes, rather than starting once you get COVID. Speaking only for myself, I continually take extended-release metformin for its preventative effects, and I do not have type 2 diabetes.

Diabetes is one of the most common diseases for endocrinologists to treat, and metformin is the most common type 2 diabetes medication, so an endocrinologist/endocrine doctor is probably your best shot, if you already have one. Otherwise, you could ask your primary care doctor.

It goes without saying, but you don't have to mention COVID treatment as the reason to be prescribed immediate-release metformin, you could mention slowing aging, lowering cancer risk, or lowering dementia risk as a reason.

There are websites like AgelessRx that are willing to prescribe metformin for $75 to slow aging (that's the option of choice by r/ZeroCovidCommunity if you don't have a doctor who is willing to prescribe). Maybe they would be willing to prescribe immediate-release metformin, specifically.

Starting metformin once you get a COVID infection should be effective if you start within the first week of symptom onset (that's the metric that the study used), as long you were prescribed it in advance so that it's available to you right away.

How much immediate-release metformin to take?

That's a conversation for you to have with your doctor. The important thing, though, is not to take too much metformin. I briefly made that mistake, and it made me develop a taste aversion to one of my previously-favorite foods, and temporarily reduced my appetite so that I stopped eating enough food until the dosage was lowered again. Taking too much metformin per day also shortens your lifespan instead of increasing it, so don't take too much per day.

Who should not take metformin?

Something to know about metformin is that, if you are vitamin B12-deficient or your kidneys don't work well, metformin can give you lactic acidosis.

So if you have any kidney damage or any kidney disease, taking metformin is probably a bad idea.

Avoiding B vitamin deficiency

• Metformin makes you absorb vitamin :b12: less effectively, so if you're not supplementing vitamin B12, you can get a vitamin B12 deficiency long-term.
  • If you're vitamin B12-deficient, taking metformin can cause anemia
  • If you're vitamin B12-deficient, taking metformin can cause lactic acidosis
• Metformin makes you absorb vitamin B9 (folate) less effectively, so if you're not supplementing vitamin B9, you can get a vitamin B9 deficiency long-term.
• Metformin makes you absorb vitamin B6 less effectively, so if you're not supplementing vitamin B6, you can get a vitamin B6 deficiency long-term.
• Metformin makes you absorb vitamin B1 (thiamine) less effectively, so if you're not supplementing vitamin B1, you can get a vitamin B1 deficiency long-term.

In my case, I take a B complex supplement that includes thiamine, B6, folate, and B12. My understanding is that if you supplement B vitamins, you don't need to worry about anemia, lactic acidosis, or other things that metformin + B vitamin deficiencies can cause unless your metformin dosage is too high.

"What else do we forget about the pandemic? We forget how mesmerised we were as nature rebounded, how clean the air was in the absence of industrial scale human activity. We forget that carbon emissions fell at the sort of pace required to avoid cataclysmic climate change. We forget that no-strings cash payments saw child poverty in America plunge to record lows, that the UK slashed homelessness with schemes that found homes for people sleeping on the street.

We forget that there really was a sense of global solidarity, that the reflection demanded by a pandemic opened up spaces for us to consider truly radical and permanent change. Remember build back better? There really was a sense that the coronavirus, as we all knew it then, could be the catalyst for a better word.

It couldn’t last because of capitalism. This isn’t some glib statement, it is literally why such promises could never be fulfilled. Because such promises required redistribution and structural shifts to economies that billionaires don’t want shifting."

💔

People now blame those drops on lockdowns and vaccines.

Our analysis confirms the continued existence of different Americas within the USA. One's life expectancy varies dramatically depending on where one lives, the economic conditions in that location, and one's racial and ethnic identity. This gulf was large at the beginning of the century, only grew larger over the first two decades, and was dramatically exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic. These results underscore the vital need to reduce the massive inequity in longevity in the USA, as well as the benefits of detailed analyses of the interacting drivers of health disparities to fully understand the nature of the problem. Such analyses make targeted action possible—local planning and national prioritisation and resource allocation—to address the root causes of poor health for those most disadvantaged so that all Americans can live long, healthy lives, regardless of where they live and their race, ethnicity, or income.

We won't do shit. Helping communities doesn't generate money for oil companies or weapons manufacturers.

If we don’t want to mitigate the effects of this risk, we need to account for it and describe a plan to win even with such high rates of attrition. I personally don’t believe it’s possible to attrite a significant portion of your organizers each meeting and win, that seems like a dead end.

This is all beyond considering the frankly ghoulish opposite side of the equation. We grudgingly risk traffic accidents so we can organize for a better world. What do we get for risking COVID infections? We refuse to wear masks so we can feel normal? We refuse to clean the air so we don’t have to think about how the authorities are lying to us? Or about how each of us is vulnerable to Long COVID? Is it the snacks? I can’t really imagine what’s on the other side of the equation for the COVID denialists that makes it worth it to refuse to mitigate the risk so fervently.

Vaccinations and boosters are not enough. If it is alienating to require your organization to mask up…why? Is it more alienating than when they find themselves no longer able to work — or much worse, for that matter — after however long of continued unmitigated exposure? We are not a serious working class movement if we are not handling this, and no one is. Whose interests do you serve by refusing to mask and mitigate the spread of COVID? This is the question I have never seen anyone averse to ongoing measures answer. It is certainly not our own!

I got covid 5 months ago and my sleep schedule is still so fucked... My brain and energy are outta whack in so many different ways

Sleepy gang

EDIT: more respectful title.

So my FIL isn't really all that terrible politically-speaking, and was even one of the human trial volunteers for the original COVID vaccines (can't remember which).

However, he did spend much of the larger pandemic years obsessively watching youtube videos by a handful of people claiming to be doctors who would do weekly news updates on stuff like vaccination progress, covid mutations, just general "pandemic content" which also seems to have covered side effects and concerns with the vaccines.

That's to be said, that now if current COVID vaccines are mentioned in any way he'll mention stuff like "heart problems" and "lung damage" and "rolled out too quickly" etc. which comes off (to me) as anti-vax paranoia, but I also don't really know how to properly research this shit myself because I'm not an immunologist!

Of course there's the usual capitalistic bullshit with COVID vaccines as there are with other vaccine programs, such as how the imperial monopolized the vaccine efforts to exploit it for $$$ in the global south (and in turn, created an endless pandemic hellhole). However, in terms of its safety and effectiveness I can't say I buy much of the claims because we've seen how even this botched vaccine rollout correlated with massively reduced hospital admissions and long term COVID effects.

EDIT: I've added a few links I've found while researching this myself in the comments. I hope some of this info is useful to people other than myself, and hopefully I've understood some of it properly. I didn't want to ask a question like this and not do any work on it myself!

Please just wear a mask. For me. For you. For everyone. It's a necessary bit of solidarity.

Miranda's Last Gift

March 21, 2024

She was diagnosed with a brain tumor and then she had surgery for it. It's a very strange article in that Frum uses ~20 times as many words to talk about her dog, Ringo, then he does about the final months of her life and those "colds". It smells like guilt to me.

The pandemic passed. Miranda rented an apartment in New York.

[...]

Through the winter, Miranda had suffered a series of bad colds; getting her on the phone had become hard. I texted her, but unusually for her, no swift answer came. [...] The next morning, February 16, we received the devastating news that Miranda had been found dead in her Brooklyn apartment. Illness overwhelmed her depleted immune system and stopped her heart. She collapsed at about three in the morning. When she was found, Ringo was lying beside her.

In other news she lived in Israel for a while because of course she did. Frum rants about her HMO in the usual right-wing way. US healthcare impacts somebody he loves - so he cares.

When Miranda returned from Israel, she had signed up with the least-expensive HMO she could find in California. She was only 26; how much medicine could she possibly need?

The inexpensive HMO had no intention of allowing access to the right doctor. It insisted on assigning Miranda to its in-house team. That team proposed slicing off the top of Miranda's skull and then groping down to her brain stem. The doctors candidly confessed that the chances of success were meager.

When Danielle protested that she had found a doctor who promised a less invasive technique with a better hope of success, the HMO's chief brain surgeon pooh-poohed her. I could have advised him that patronizing Danielle was unlikely to go well, but he kept at it. Then he addressed her as "dear." The room exploded. "I know why you think this operation cannot be done," Danielle said. "Since this variety of tumor was first identified in [I forget the year, but Danielle knew it], there have been [again, Danielle knew the number] successful operations in the United States. You've performed none of them. Maybe that's why you misdiagnosed the tumor in the first place. The doctor we want is the only one who has even recognized it for what it is."

The HMO never relented. Mercifully, we found an opportunity under the Affordable Care Act to shift Miranda to a different insurer that had the right doctor in its network. Miranda's surgery was scheduled for April 2019 at Stanford University Medical Center. In the meantime, she and Ringo came to live with us in Washington, D.C.

The place I go to for medical care is part of a chain of low income clinics and it's actually good considering the abysmal state of healthcare in the US. Mine keeps sending me texts every few days and has fliers up around town about select days this month where they're giving free flu shots.

This is fine and I appreciate that they do it but nowhere is any mention of Covid! It's like it doesn't exist. But a Covid vaccine is what I really want. I want a flu shot too, but I'm much more worried about spreading Covid or getting long Covid, which terrifies me since I already deal with health issues like what long Covid causes. So I guess I'll have to call and see if they even are giving Covid vaccines at all and if they are also free like the flu shots they're advertising or if I'll have to pay for the vaccine for the virus that's still causing a pandemic no one talks about.

I'm posting this here because I'm not sure which Covid vaccine I should be asking for, and hexbear seems like the only place left that still takes this seriously. I saw in a comment here a little while back about how we should be asking for one vaccine in particular that works better for the more recent variants and making sure we aren't getting an obsolete vaccine. So what should I be asking for when I call to find out if they even offer it during their flu clinic days?

Edit: I just called them and they said no they don't even have any of the Covid vaccine and I'd have to ask my doctor at my next appointment about getting one in the future if I want to get it through the clinic. Fucking useless. Why do a vaccine drive at all if you're not going to include the one that is causing magnitudes more harm than the flu?

“We may not know the exact illness affecting the Macbeth cast, but we do know that Covid is a serious vascular disease requiring extended recovery times,” noted Charles Waltz, founder of Protect the Heart of the Arts:

Reinfections weaken immunity to other pathogens, so without measures like air purification and adequate recovery time, we risk ongoing illness cycles that could impact health and stability across the industry. Clean air and flexible recovery policies are essential to protect the performance community’s long-term health.

Not a single mention of masking though.

Think the nerds will finally revolt if Covid kills Tennant?

Why is this important... because with each of the periods of dominance of a new strain has come a major new wave of cases.

But if or when this phase ends, and Covid starts to dominate again with a variant with H69/V70, it will mean, as always, that it brings another major wave.

Not a lib

Original Link

Board members at Southwest District Health, outside of Boise, questioned the vaccine’s safety during their Oct. 22 meeting and narrowly voted to stop providing the shot in the six counties they serve.

Health departments in Texas, Florida and Michigan that led vaccination campaigns in their communities at the height of the pandemic have also pushed back against the COVID-19 vaccine.

Last year, Texas policymakers banned health departments and other organizations funded by the state government from using funds to promote their vaccination efforts.

The Florida Department of Health issued guidance in September warning Floridians not to get mRNA COVID-19 shots after Joseph Ladapo, the state's surgeon general, recommended people avoid them in 2023.

In Michigan, commissioners in Ottawa County turned down a $900,000 grant for their health department in September. Joe Moss, chair of the commission, said at the time he was “opposed to accepting any COVID grants,” according to the The Holland Sentinel. The revised budget came a year after threats to slash funding sparked local protests.

This is a deeply unserious country.

Maternal COVID-19 infection increases the incidence of neurodevelopmental disorders (NDDs) in offspring, although the underlying mechanisms have not been elucidated. This study demonstrated that COVID-19 infection during pregnancy disrupted the balance of maternal and fetal immune environments, driving alterations in astrocytes, endothelial cells, and excitatory neurons. A risk score was established using 47 unique genes in the single-cell transcriptome of gestational mothers. The high risk score in CD4 proliferating T cell level served as an indicator for increased risk of offspring NDDs. Summary-based Mendelian randomization and phenome-wide association study analyses were conducted to identify the causal association of the transcriptional changes with the increased risk of offspring NDDs. Additionally, 10 drugs were identified as potential therapeutic candidates. Our findings support a model where the maternal COVID-19 infection changed the levels of CD4 proliferating T cells, leading to the alterations of astrocytes, endothelial cells, and excitatory neurons in offspring, contributing to the increased risk of NDDs in these individuals.

Browsing reddit because I hate myself and I come across this post on /r/GenX that describes not being able to recall words. Most of that thread is describing this as a normal part of being in your 50s. It's kinda not! That's not normal, it's a bad thing.

Covid affects the brain. Pretty badly! Even mild Covid is linked to brain damage. That hasn't stopped happening, there keeps being more research confirming it.

Anyways, wear a mask, stay safe, keep your comrades safe.

"We are actively dealing with problems remote learning caused. A whole generation of kids is further behind than they were tracking to be behaviorally, mathematically, and in reading scores."

Gee I wonder what would do that, is it three+ years of unmitigated exposure to a virus that causes brain damage? No, the problem is they stayed home, which makes you developmentally challenged, as we all know. Oh, you don't want to get COVID? Then stay home.

It's because Covid is going away, right? Herd immunity is working?

The World Health Organization (WHO) today published a new report on tuberculosis revealing that approximately 8.2 million people were newly diagnosed with TB in 2023 – the highest number recorded since WHO began global TB monitoring in 1995. This represents a notable increase from 7.5 million reported in 2022, placing TB again as the leading infectious disease killer in 2023, surpassing COVID-19

There is plenty of evidence covid attacks the immune system, and reactivated TB is common with people who have AIDS. Could all just be a wierd coincidence and TB just does that sometimes.

Related: TB cases in Scotland rise by 40% in 'largest annual increase' observed to date

MaskTogetherAmerica on Instagram: "“I am a children librarian. If I get sick, I can’t be in the library for the children. I don’t want to get sick or get anyone sick.” Behind the mask is Librarian Anna @partypossumbeads 💗 Over Anna’s KN95 is a beaded cover she made for herself. Super cool, isn’t it? 📸 Julie #MaskTogetherAmerica meeting wonderful people at @newyorkcomiccon"

Obviously, I would recommend sanitizing the heck out of that between uses. Pretty awesome though!

I found a tutorial on making your own.

https://youtu.be/vH-q5ptBYJs

Oh, they have an Etsy shop.

PartyPossumBeads

Masked costume ideas

https://www.instagram.com/reel/DBmpcMYiu8H/

I don’t really leave the house that often, mostly to walk the dog, but I don’t then cuz it’s a huge open air space.

I do on the bus because of how confined it is and how many people use/touch it, but besides that I have no idea.

Do you always have to wear a mask in these places? Or just when there is a covid spike?
How do you even know when there is a covid spike for that matter?