Really excellent report! You cover all the significant bases. I've been saying much the same things for the last three years and been termed an alarmist or a "covid maximalist.". Back in 2020 when it became clear it was pan-species event and highly mutagenic to boot, I was telling friends in social media that this virus had the capability to bring down our civilization. It didn't. But the mutations will keep coming; there's a huge Zoonotic pool. And eventually we may see variants swapping RNA with other viruses in patients with coinfections. It's far from over. BTW for me personally it's far from over- I'm in my third year of dealing with lingering damage from my original infection in March,/April of 2020.
Thanks for sharing, Michael. Sorry to hear you have residual effects from covid, its a sobering reminder of the long tail of after effects people face.
I don't consider myself either a covid "hawk" or "dove," but a "realist" somewhere in the middle. I think the initial masking, social distancing and testing we did in 2020-2021 made sense at the time, but as we failed to contain the epidemic -> pandemic (which may never have been possible given the R0 and respiratory spread), it necessarily had to shift into adaptation and living with it via vaccines, therapies, etc. I don't pretend this is perfect for everyone, and some people will sadly be left behind.
I'm hopeful that with future research we will unravel the mysteries of Long Covid. Most likely, it is either a constellation of divergent presentations or several distinct post-infection syndromes, and may be multifactorial. Hopefully we will learn to better diagnose, treat, and understand it. I suffered with some signs of Long Covid after my first infection fall 2020. These largely abated after vaccination in 2021. Whether there was a psychological factor (following vaccination, society began to open up again and I left the house more), an immune system boost in clearing residual virus, or both, we'll never know.
And as I plead in the article, my greatest hope is we LEARN from our (many) mistakes during covid-19 so there is less suffering the next time around
Really excellent report! You cover all the significant bases. I've been saying much the same things for the last three years and been termed an alarmist or a "covid maximalist.". Back in 2020 when it became clear it was pan-species event and highly mutagenic to boot, I was telling friends in social media that this virus had the capability to bring down our civilization. It didn't. But the mutations will keep coming; there's a huge Zoonotic pool. And eventually we may see variants swapping RNA with other viruses in patients with coinfections. It's far from over. BTW for me personally it's far from over- I'm in my third year of dealing with lingering damage from my original infection in March,/April of 2020.
Thanks for sharing, Michael. Sorry to hear you have residual effects from covid, its a sobering reminder of the long tail of after effects people face.
I don't consider myself either a covid "hawk" or "dove," but a "realist" somewhere in the middle. I think the initial masking, social distancing and testing we did in 2020-2021 made sense at the time, but as we failed to contain the epidemic -> pandemic (which may never have been possible given the R0 and respiratory spread), it necessarily had to shift into adaptation and living with it via vaccines, therapies, etc. I don't pretend this is perfect for everyone, and some people will sadly be left behind.
I'm hopeful that with future research we will unravel the mysteries of Long Covid. Most likely, it is either a constellation of divergent presentations or several distinct post-infection syndromes, and may be multifactorial. Hopefully we will learn to better diagnose, treat, and understand it. I suffered with some signs of Long Covid after my first infection fall 2020. These largely abated after vaccination in 2021. Whether there was a psychological factor (following vaccination, society began to open up again and I left the house more), an immune system boost in clearing residual virus, or both, we'll never know.
And as I plead in the article, my greatest hope is we LEARN from our (many) mistakes during covid-19 so there is less suffering the next time around