Flu/Covid refresh.

Finally we're starting to get some confirmation of the obvious: social media is our enemies' propaganda tool.

Hard to know what this means. But I’ve said it many times that were already under attack using a disinformation campaign into our social media that has caused Americans to hate each other, mistrust science, willfully die from a preventable disease, and express support for Russia instead of the President. That’s been many more people than those that died on September 11. Many many more, and we don’t care because Trump told us it would magically be gone by spring, etc. Idiot.

Enemies just changed tactic now that we take our shoes off to fly. Attack our media and gain control of our nation.

Well then, just don’t drink the waste water. 

can we extend that to tribalism/politics?
because if we can...

That should make you happy in a poetic justice kinda way, eh ?

 Steely_D wrote:
can we extend that to tribalism/politics?
because if we can...

I despair at the internet spreading the ludicrous concept that every single one of the people in healthcare and research and pharmacology are All In It Together. Seriously? Think about that for a second. You’ve likely met a jerk doctor or nurse - but you’ve also met a jerk car mechanic or bus driver. It’s not the whole profession, in an organized and malevolent union designed to screw you and your family over. Understanding disease and treatment takes time - especially in the face of unintentional and intentional misinformation.

Those of you old enough might remember the horrible period in the mid 80s where we started to recognize that there was something going on - a disease where people got weird skin cancers (Kaposi’s Sarcoma) or usually benign versions of tuberculosis (avium). And it killed them - frequently young otherwise generally health people: hemophiliacs, gay men, Haitians (!?), and IV drug users. What ties them together? Some said it was God’s vengeance, whatever that means.

Eventually, we named it GRID and then AIDS. And it was a death sentence, full stop. But that didn’t prevent people from trying anything to “cure it.” And I don’t blame them at all. 

It took a while, but meds were tried, failed, tried, failed, tried, and then succeeded in lifting the death sentence part of the diagnosis. This is the nature of how things work, and - although there was a shameful amount of politics involved that slowed things - eventually the story of HIV infection became quite different than at the beginning.

I think that’s a very useful template for what’s happening with Long Covid: chaotic identification because of different presentations. Then, clunky attempts at prevention and treatment. Wild stabs at Laetrile-like treatments since “Big Pharma” is an easy to blame baddie, and by identifying an enemy it relieves some of the hopelessness. And, slowly, a unified theory of what we’re dealing with and the best way(s) to address it. Paxlovid is a start.

I despair at the internet spreading the ludicrous concept that every single one of the people in healthcare and research and pharmacology are All In It Together. Seriously? Think about that for a second. You’ve likely met a jerk doctor or nurse - but you’ve also met a jerk car mechanic or bus driver. It’s not the whole profession, in an organized and malevolent union designed to screw you and your family over. Understanding disease and treatment takes time - especially in the face of unintentional and intentional misinformation.

Those of you old enough might remember the horrible period in the mid 80s where we started to recognize that there was something going on - a disease where people got weird skin cancers (Kaposi’s Sarcoma) or usually benign versions of tuberculosis (avium). And it killed them - frequently young otherwise generally health people: hemophiliacs, gay men, Haitians (!?), and IV drug users. What ties them together? Some said it was God’s vengeance, whatever that means.

Eventually, we named it GRID and then AIDS. And it was a death sentence, full stop. But that didn’t prevent people from trying anything to “cure it.” And I don’t blame them at all. 

It took a while, but meds were tried, failed, tried, failed, tried, and then succeeded in lifting the death sentence part of the diagnosis. This is the nature of how things work, and - although there was a shameful amount of politics involved that slowed things - eventually the story of HIV infection became quite different than at the beginning.

I think that’s a very useful template for what’s happening with Long Covid: chaotic identification because of different presentations. Then, clunky attempts at prevention and treatment. Wild stabs at Laetrile-like treatments since “Big Pharma” is an easy to blame baddie, and by identifying an enemy it relieves some of the hopelessness. And, slowly, a unified theory of what we’re dealing with and the best way(s) to address it. Paxlovid is a start.

I despair at the internet spreading the ludicrous concept that every single one of the people in healthcare and research and pharmacology are All In It Together. Seriously? Think about that for a second. You’ve likely met a jerk doctor or nurse - but you’ve also met a jerk car mechanic or bus driver. It’s not the whole profession, in an organized and malevolent union designed to screw you and your family over. Understanding disease and treatment takes time - especially in the face of unintentional and intentional misinformation.