Covid, Long Covid, and Boiling Frogs
I have become a bit concerned at the lack of concern around Covid and particularly Long Covid. Most people I talk to don’t seem to be aware of the long term risks individually and societally around contracting Covid on a regular basis. (This seems to be the official plan going forward.) This lack of awareness could be for any number of reasons: arrogance, apathy, or futility.
It’s understandable. I feel much better reading about the low low death rate than I do about the blood clots and brain damage. I’ve put off writing this because like everyone else I’m tired of thinking about it. Also my shoulder hasn’t been letting me use a desk so I’m typing this on my phone.
Here’s our map.
Most of the map should be self explanatory and uncontroversial. I decided to connect Long Covid to death because higher death rates have been noted among long haulers. Suicide is also an issue.
There is one reinforcing feedback loop and one balancing feedback loop.
Covid has proven the herd immunity strategy to be counterproductive at best. More Covid cases mean more new variants which can evade existing immunity and become more transmissible. Reinfections seem to only be coming faster as time passes.
R1 more Covid cases cause more variants which have so far led to increased transmissibility and reinfection which causes more Covid cases and so on. This could be counted as two positive feedback loops but I consider both to be different means to the same end. Luckily so far new variants have not been significantly more severe so far.
There seems to be a potential for an endless spiral of increasingly transmissible disease, rising disability, and ongoing death all of which is enough to be concerning long term but none of which seems to be concerning enough to warrant short term behavior modification. A recent Fortune article has speculated that the 1 billion mark of Long Covid is only a few years away.
We’re like a bunch of frogs in a bath that gets warmer and warmer. At least they don’t have to wear a mask.
There is also a balancing feedback loop.
B1 vulnerable people infected with Covid are the most likely to die. More vulnerable people means more death which means less vulnerable people. This phenomenon has been used intentionally or not as a means of downplaying Covid as it is not as concerning for healthy people.
There are two ways we can interpret this talking point. One is that it simply and accurately acknowledges that Covid ending someone’s life 5 years early is not as tragic as ending someone’s life 50 years early. The other interpretation is that “vulnerable people” have become the new “useless eaters” as labeled by the Third Reich. Their deaths don’t really matter because their quality of life was poor, or their contribution to society was insufficient to justify their existence. Actively exterminating them is appalling of course. Passively letting Covid kill them off is merely unfortunate.
Disregarding ethical concerns there is a practical issue. As you can see Covid is creating new vulnerable people as well as killing them off. Covid causes immune damage, diabetes, brain damage, myocarditis, dysautonomia, blood clots/pulmonary embolism, strokes, CFS, digestive issues etc. The idea of mapping all of this is absurd. The point is immune damage and many of the others listed will make the next Covid infection harder to survive, not to mention permanently alter your life’s trajectory. A society shot through with weakened immune systems and a rapidly evolving virus is a bad combination. It could even empower other illnesses currently considered to be inconsequential.
We are being told Covid is no big deal because it only kills weak people. We are also (much more quietly) being told that each new bout of Covid has a significant chance to turn you into a dreaded weak person.
It’s tempting to just say “RIP to your organs but I’m different.” After all, a healthy person probably won’t have significant long term effects from a single Covid infection. But you can’t know until it’s too late, and just because you came out fine the first time doesn’t mean you’ll be fine every time. Data on Long Covid probability and duration seems to be all over the map, which makes it hard to assess risks. I’ve seen numbers from 5% to 30% chance to develop Long Covid per infection. Sometimes higher.
You don’t have to get Long Covid to be affected by Long Covid. We live in a society. As teachers and nurses become unable to work or decide to leave their profession there will be consequences. It feels ironic that our society ostensibly obsessed with productivity is resigned to allow waves of physical disability and brain damage wash over its working people all for the sake of preserving that productivity. The US which is desperately hoping to fend off the rise of China as a global competitor is only accelerating the inevitable.
There are plenty of reasons for media to downplay long Covid. First and foremost people don’t want to hear it. It’s upsetting. Online discussion can become very vitriolic on this issue (even more than usual). It could also be because the bad president is gone so everything’s fine now. And if it’s not, it must mean nothing can be done anyway. The more conspiratorial explanation is that the ruling class doesn’t want to highlight the consequences of its categorical failure in an issue it had up until very recently been patting itself on the back for. The only reason I care is I need an explanation for the dissonance between my reading of Covid and the mainstream public consensus on it.
I’m not a total pessimist. I’ve given up on a benign endemic phase in any meaningful way, but new vaccines, preventative nasal sprays, more convenient testing, and accessible medications could be on the horizon. I’ve even seen something about virus killing lasers. None are close enough to change my habits in the short term. Being disabled in America was a rough life before Covid to say the least. I don’t see it getting better anytime soon.
Once again the concern is not “getting Covid” the concern is living in a society where you and everyone you know gets Covid on a regular basis, accumulating and subsequently killing off disabled people all the time.
On a societal level there are plenty of ways to reduce the spread of Covid from mask mandates to indoor air filtration standards. The death toll of Covid justifies a wartime level mobilization of resources. Investing in air filtration, ventilation, and CO2 monitors for public spaces is not an unreasonable demand. Where is the big HEPA lobby? Have we lost the ability to build anything that doesn’t kill people?
Class sizes should have already been reduced for academic benefits, but they should also be reduced for improved social distancing to prevent students and teachers from missing time, infecting their households, accumulating disability, and occasionally dying.
There is a wide spectrum of possibility between let it rip and zero Covid. The federal government has formed a bipartisan consensus to never do any of it. It’s largely up to individuals to look out for themselves as best they can.
It seems getting Covid is unavoidable at some point, but it would be foolish to get it when you can avoid it. Wear a mask. Rig up or buy an air filter if applicable. Hang out with friends outside. These are reasonable precautions. Years on you won’t regret getting Covid two times instead of ten.
