If you think the #COVID19 pandemic is done and ever-evolving variants pose no significant threat, consider these two realities, writes contributing editor Andrew Nikiforuk.
“We are told by leaders that we are the future. But when it comes to the ongoing pandemic, our present is being stolen right in front of our eyes.”
Incredible speech by Violet Affleck who warned about the ongoing dangers of COVID & Long Covid, & advocated for masks and clean air at the UN today!
SC senator resigns after starting treatment for #LongCovid and then receiving an Alzheimer's diagnosis. "Doctors INSTEAD determined that Nutt had neurodegenerative disorder". Instead? Early-onset Alzheimer's (before 65 Years old) used to be rare, but it will not be anymore.
Canada is on the verge of adopting a national standard requiring N95s in healthcare—and your voice can help make it happen.
This is a thread about how I may not be living and surviving for much longer, thanks to Gen AI. Please read next posts... 🧵
Wow. Lenacapavir, a twice-yearly shot that prevents HIV spread was just approved by the FDA.
The problem? Due to government cuts to Medicaid, PEPFAR, and Global Fund, it's unlikely this game-changing drug will reach the many people who need it most in the US and globally.
Join the fight against Gen AI by supporting our #MutualAid fund to support poor workers.
$10/year webmail accounts
Upcoming @itch.io charity bundle with games and books.
Or just donate! ❤️
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While many in the Global North have had the privilege of using online communities to raise awareness & to advocate around #LongCOVID, these digital tools are much less accessible in economically disadvantaged countries like 🇰🇪 Kenya -
globalizationandhealth.biomedcentral.com/articles/10....
As it stands in 2025, socialists and communists are excluding disabled people from their praxis.
a woman just trying to get home gets shot
What a cool thing to see. Thanks for sharing
![ast fall, children in China were coming down with respiratory illnesses earlier and in greater numbers than usual.
Ditto for respiratory syncytial virus
(RSV) infections in the US and elsewhere in 2021 and 2022. And the current winter sea-
son doesn't appear to be much differ-
Medical News website
ent as far as higher-
than-usual case numbers, according to CDC surveillance data.
The surging case numbers and their out-of-whack timing have fueled an ongoing debate about how the COVID-19 pandemic contributed to rates of other infectious dis-eases. No one yet knows for sure.
"Right now, this is phenomenology," Wolfgang Leitner, PhD, chief of the Innate Immunity Section at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, told JAMA in an interview. "People are assuming a lot about the mechanism."
Much of the discussion has centered around immunity debt and immunity theft, terms born of the pandemic and not found in textbooks.
The former generally refers to the reduced spread of other pathogens because of nonpharmaceutical interventions (NPls) imposed to curb the spread of SARS-CoV-2, such as school closures and mask mandates. In early January of this year, a PubMed search for immunity debt resulted in only 22 hits, the earliest reference published online by French researchers in May 2021.
"The lack of immune stimulation due to the reduced circulation of microbial agents and to the related reduced vaccine uptake induced an 'immunity debt' [that] could have negative consequences when the pandemic is under control and NPls are lifted," the authors predicted.
Indeed, Chinese authorities have attributed the increase in influenzalike illnesses in their country to the lifting of COVID-19 restrictions and the circulation of known pathogens such as influenza and Mycoplasma pneumoniae, not some new
JAMA February 6, 2024 Volume 331, Number 5 infectious agent, according to a November 22, 2023, statement from the World Health Organization.
And as Leitner pointed out, echoing…](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:dycdnwnidnhy44h44flfdxfb/bafkreic3woyzk737b3grl253g2mhg3wa6ayjqets3hece4jogszkdzx3cm)
![It's unlikely that immunity debt, or immunity gap, as some prefer to call it, completely explains recent surges in respiratory infection, Leitner acknowledged. "Re-duction in immune status is contributing to rebound, but I don't think it's the whole story," he said.
Population vs Personal Immunity
When it comes to protecting against viral infections, people can't have their cake and eat it, too.
"In 2020, we needed lockdowns absolutely desperately," epidemiologist William Hanage, PhD, associate director of the Center for Communicable Disease Dynamics at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, emphasized in an interview.
He takes issue with those who suggest
"that we would have been able to somehow come up with an optimal solution that would have both minimized the pandemic and these consequences for other infections."
That notion, he says, "is utterly, utterly
false."
The effects on other infectious diseases of implementing and then lifting
COVID-19 mitigation measures are not at all surprising, Hanage noted
"Do you expect fewer infections in this season to end up leading to more infections next season? Yeah," he said. "That's the way it works. The interventions that were put in place and were extremely effective in bringing [COVID-19] surges under control also stopped other things. It's basic infectious disease epidemiology."
Just don't call it immunity debt, Hanage urged. "I dislike the term. It suggests you've been sort of profligate, that you have not been taking care of your immunological finances. Immunity gap. I think, is a less-loaded term."
There's precedent for the concept. Although immunity gap and immunity debt hadn't yet been coined at the time, a dip in respiratory infections due to social distancing followed by a rebound when people resumed normal activities occurred in France nearly 30 years ago, Leitner pointed out.
During a Paris public transport workers strike that began on November 30, 1995, many people in the region-including children who nor…](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:dycdnwnidnhy44h44flfdxfb/bafkreigc6gwpzxmbsnw2k3fuzn5ask65k2fcdfo5jtmrvysjvwj47yaotm)
Nor does immunity debt explain the rise in cases of other respiratory illnesses from TB to Mycoplasma. There is a better explanation. Namely, #ImmunityTheft jamanetwork.com/journals/jam...
If you want to show solidarity with disabled please, please mask up (ideally an N95 or better).
Public health is being gutted. Medicaid is on the chopping block. Fascism is here & fascists always target the disabled.
By masking you help protect yourself & us.
It’s a powerful form of resistance.
Tear gas can cause long-term health consequences by making people more susceptible to contracting respiratory illnesses, including COVID.
The chemical agent can also hurt people inside their homes if it seeps into residential neighborhoods. What you need to know (published 2020):
Babies suffer LC-
poor appetite, trouble sleeping, wet cough, dry cough & stuffy nose for infants/toddlers, & daytime tiredness/sleepiness/low energy & dry cough for preschool-aged children @organicbotanic.bsky.social @elhopkins.bsky.social @njbbari3.bsky.social
jamanetwork.com/journals/jam...
SOS! the volunteers on 'Madleen' have been kidnapped by Israeli forces.
Yasemin Acar is a German citizen.
Pressure the foreign ministries and help us keep Yasemin safe!
W: auswaertiges-amt.de/en/visa-serv...
IG : @auswaertigesamt
FB : @Auswärtiges Amt
X : GermanyDiplo
#alleyesonMadleen
"My name is Greta Thunberg and I am from Sweden. If you see this video, we have been intercepted and kidnapped in international waters by the Israeli occupational forces, or forces that support Israel."
Greetings! A large immigration operation and subsequent protest in Paramount, CA has led to a large amount of gas and “less lethal” munitions. Situation ongoing. Will update as I can.
Remembering this trans man for Pride. Mexican Revolutionary Amelio Robles Ávila, who threatened to shoot anyone who misgendered him and said "he did not want to die without being known as a man,” lived his life as a man after transitioning. One of Zapata’s top commanders.
We have always been here.
Please share and give if you can
Respirator masks come in all shapes and styles, free download issue 9 for this image + more great masking resources with workable links, from @thewhn.bsky.social kids zone magazine at whn.global/KidsZone , and fond a respirator mask that u like
A prominent First Nations leader is warning Premier Doug Ford to expect “fierce resistance” to his Bill 5 fast-tracking mines and infrastructure projects in response to U.S. President Donald Trump’s tariffs.
"In the same way COVID-conscious celebrate each chain of transmission broken, climate scientists recognize that each deg of warming we avoid will be a victory. It’s time for everyone who cares about the latter to engage with the people and the political commitments that make the former possible."
Mask 😷 the working class because we have no national health care, c19 never went away, and they won't tell us what's coming next.
Unmask 👀 the Proud Boys bc we need to know who they are so we can ostracize them like you're supposed to with Nzi fucks.
Good read on one of many vile things Joe Biden did as president. Hell is not hot enough for him imo.
“The world cannot silently just watch while this humanitarian crisis is happening & this siege is also, of course, a continuation of many, many decades of illegal occupation.”
Zeteo contributor Greta Thunberg explains how Israel bombed a Gaza Aid ship w/ drones w/ humanitarian volunteers on board.
Some so-called leftists also mocked disabled people who still took protections like masking, because to their minds, Covid was ‘over’ because they had been vaccinated. And their refusal to advocate for wfh is part of this pathological desire for normal.
