@mark-ungrin.bsky.social
Parent. Interdisciplinary biomedical researcher. Hardline scientist. PhD (Medical Biophysics, Cellular & Molecular Biology). Faculty. New platforms and real-world impact, emphasis on scientific rigour, reproducibility and efficiency. Diverse interests.
It's #LongCovidAwarenessDay.
#longCOVID is about justice - workers' rights, equity, disability, the environment (add up the carbon footprint of the hospital days!), fighting misinfo and pseudoscience.
If you care about any of those, you care about stopping COVID.
#polisky #cdnpoli #scisky #medsky
And etc, etc, and more etc.
So many people haven't put two and two together and realized that a virus that infects the lining of your bloodstream can break *everything*.
Thanks for being open about this and helping raise the profile of long COVID.
One thing a lot of people aren't aware of is how much bad COVID policy is driven by a medical establishment lurching deeper and deeper into pseudoscience.
They protected Wakefield for a decade. Rigour is not a priority.
#LongCovidAwarenessDay is a good day to remember that, just as Wakefield was a member of the medical establishment that protected him and his anti-vax pseudoscience for over a decade, the misinformation driving the spread of COVID and #longCOVID is also manufactured by medical insiders.
It's amazing how consistently spineless all the cosplay patriots turned out to be when the time came to stand up to authority, and it wasn't just about harassing minorities anymore.
Digital‑rights advocates warn that tying government‑issued ID to everyday browsing could usher in unprecedented levels of state and corporate surveillance.
www.bbc.com/audio/play/p...
This is a critical point, particularly as "misinformation" is more complex than is widely recognized. It's fashionable to kick down and blame the uneducated as both cause and carrier - ignoring the role of establishment figures in creating and spreading false claims that get trained into LLMs.
Self regulation is a privilege, not an entitlement.
When that privilege is routinely abused to cover up misconduct, negligence, greed for power, and harm to patients - and the evidence is all right there for any journalists who care to look - then it needs to be taken away.
Use it or lose it.
That may upset the tone police.
Fine. Actions > words.
Medical managers kicked experts out of the room in a 2020 power grab and winged COVID policy on knowledge outdated since 1934, wasting an enormous number of lives.
Trustworthy medical associations imposed accountability for that.
I.e. none.
It's buried, because the single most important rule in medicine is that 👉MDs with any level of influence never face accountability👈. Wakefield, Macchiarini, Koren, no level of evil is enough to overcome this. At best, outside forces may impose it, and trigger performative dismay.
But never justice.
They aren't blowing off steam, they're showing you who they really are.
There are good people in medicine. Also ego-driven sociopaths who are only helping you because it's a way to keep score.
They get promoted.
These students (1995) run the profession now.
www.amjmedsci.org/article/S000...
If I ever saw a clinician of any stripe, trainee or not, making fun of me as a patient on social media, I would rededicate the rest of my life to ruining the rest of theirs.
There's that old line that 90% of Russian history is: "and then, things got worse".
The equivalent for the last century of history in the Middle East is: "and then, the Americans made things worse".
I have nothing to add here. Yes, it’s that bad.
It wasn't a "Military Academy"—it was a reform school.
And that isn't an army uniform—it's a costume from a community theater production of "The Nutcracker."
"These are stories of what it is like to be a young person living with Long Covid, created in
collaboration with those who have experienced it.
They are based on 72 young people's accounts generated through interviews with researchers."
#LongCovid
www.lshtm.ac.uk/media/97536
I don’t think this shit will work but i never want to hear about free speech from any trumpers or anti anti trumpers ever again, fuck off forever bsky.app/profile/cram...
Exactly this. 🎯
Re the Hormuz, not saying I'm an expert on the sitch, but are we really too proud to try historically vetted measures like sacrificing a high ranking member of the royal family to propitiate the sea god
Uh oh. The "woke is ruining science" (aka Epstein science bros) will be unhappy with this!
It’s gonna be a pretty solid weekend if social media is flooded with clips of Laura Loomer getting her ass handed to her in-person by Indian journalists. Shout-out to Rajdeep Sardesai for kicking off the festivities.
That's funny, I could have sworn he said something about not needing Royal Navy vessels because the war was already won.
You broke it Don, you fix it.
1/
I remember trying to explain to a doctor that I was not "anxious": I was a journalist in South Africa just before the fall of apartheid, "you wouldn't do that if you suffered from anxiety".
It seemed both a ridiculous & forlorn statement, the reason for saying it, even more so -
#LongCOVID
The incorrect messaging on COVID is key to leading us to this point in time, where many fell into the trap of listening to antivaxxer misinformation. We never had the correct mask advice and we are still being told to only wash hands for a predominantly airborne virus. The idea we should be 🧵
It's a huge issue as control over medical policy has fallen victim to turf wars and nasty political battles over which group of insiders gets to launder their opinions into guidance.
It's so bad they're defining *having expertise* as a conflict of interest, as a ploy to limit who can participate.
Meanwhile when there's a TB exposure in Canadian hospitals, infection control redefines "exposure" as requiring a ludicrously high bar of proximity and time, contact traces very few people, announces that shows their policies work, and reinforces sloppy IPC records only showing cases in that group!
Are you connected with the groups working on reversing the denial of mammography many women are facing? You may find some good allies there.
Thanks!
The kind of advocacy you are doing is our best hope for pulling the culture of institutional medicine back from the brink. It's collapsing into circular reasoning that only accepts evidence "filtered" by influential insiders, and rejects even the basics of scientific rigour and integrity.
Hearing that Dr Martin will be made Health Minister if she wins. With the control Choosing Wisely has already grabbed over Canadian health guidance, it will be really important to get her to commit to listening to voices outside the bubble of medical power politics and empire-building.
If you only read one section of the SARS Commission's report on the infection control establishment's mismanagement of SARS-CoV-1, start with Ch. 8 ("It's Not About the Mask").
It even highlighted how out of date their 3-foot rule was - twenty years ago (bottom of the 3rd page).
Banality of evil.