Andrew Longhurst 🇵🇸🇱🇧
@a_longhurst
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Political economist & health policy researcher. Health care delivery, finance, wait times, primary care. PhD cand @GeogSFU . Research Associate @CCPA_BC
Pacific Northwest, Canada
Joined June 2014
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Pinned Tweet
“In recent conflicts, such indirect deaths range from 3 to 15x the number of direct deaths…it is not implausible to estimate that up to 186 ,000 or even more deaths could be attributable to the current conflict in Gaza.”
This is a genocide
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We have a variant BA.2 probably as transmissible as measles & officials have decided to drop testing & protections. Booster immunity is waning. No 4th dose campaign coming. Delta/Omicron waves show us there’s no “wall of immunity”. I can’t see a spring/summer that isn’t a mess.
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How on earth did wearing masks that prevent infection and transmission of multisystem disease suddenly become about “comfort levels” and “personal choice”?
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Smart people are convincing themselves that this virus is now benign. I get it. We all want the pandemic to wrap up happily ever after. But it’s just not the case.
Polio was “mild” for some, debilitating for others.
Covid isn’t a cold. It’s a vascular & neurotropic disease.
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Society has left my toddler behind. He can't exercise 'personal choice' to get a vax that isn't available. He can't 'choose' to wear a respirator. We're told re/infection is no biggie. Have these ppl read the science? It's a horror show of brain damage & vascular dysfunction.
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Anyone else thinking about what constant reinfection, organ damage/decline, Long Covid, and reduced life expectancy means for themselves & their family, and society’s future? (And yes I want to be optimistic about next-gen vaccines & treatments…but this is a hell of a virus.)
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Are you noticing that everyone seems to have a chronic (or acute) cough now? Everywhere I go (and I don’t go may places).
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I don’t think I would have ever been able to construct a dystopian reality as disturbing as the current one.
A zombie-like virus that invades the brain & blood vessels—that we know how to prevent but governments & corporations have convinced populations that it’s the cold. WTAF
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Who is ready to start building intentional covid and monkeypox free communities?
Because apparently we can’t rely on governments and public health agencies to work towards disease control and elimination. You know, something we achieved over the last 150 years.
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A study of 346 previously healthy COVID-19 survivors finds that 73% had cardiac signs and symptoms more than 3 months after infection, and 57% still had them at nearly 1 year.
And this, my friends, is why masking is smart, low-burden protection.
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Many people still think infection is advantageous and provides durable immunity. This is a failure of public health communication. It’s really concerning.
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Where did the idea that pathogens inherently evolve to become benign like the common cold come from?
Did anyone say this shit about the ‘mild’ acute symptoms of polio? Or HIV?
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SARS-CoV-2 causes endothelial damage (blood vessel lining). This leads to arteriosclerosis & cardiovascular disease.
In 5-10 yrs, going to be a lot of angry folks who want a refund on the “covid-just-a-cold” lie they were sold by politicians & public health officials.
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Mass infection to achieve ‘herd immunity’ didn’t work in December and January, so let’s give it another go in April 2022.
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No one is calling for lockdowns. I’m tired of the straw-man response from officials.
We’re calling for highly effective, low-burden, low-cost measures that prevent covid spread & protect our health system:
✅universal masking
✅testing & surveillance
✅open windows & clean air
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The crazy thing is we could probably end the pandemic with universal indoor masking, rapid tests, and indoor air quality standards. But apparently masking is just too hard for some people.
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There was never any "lockdown" anywhere in Canada. Please stop using this language.
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Living with indoor masking seems a pretty small annoyance if it means living a society where we aren’t witnessing constant death, disability, and illness among loved ones. Having timely access to health care is also pretty important in my view.
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The narrative that those “anxious” about covid can make a “personal choice” to wear a mask/respirator for protection gaslights the millions of parents with under fives in daycare where there is no masking at all. There’s literally no personal choice-ing our way out of infection.
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A “cold” that causes blood clots, and that we’re going to get 4-6x year. Right.
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Sars2 and multisystem damage
Acute hepatitis
Monkeypox
Meningitis
Polio
It’s only year 3 since sars2 emerged. If you don’t think any of this is connected, you’re not asking the right questions (and I hope you’re not in a biomedical field 🤣)
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Any other parents out there having a hard think about what’s in store this fall/winter with twin pandemics raging and trying to keep little ones in daycare or kids in school safe?
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Lockdowns cause hepatitis in previously healthy kids? Have we lost our ability to use logic and common sense?
Countries like Israel are connecting the dots: many do not have signs of (previous) infection other than C19––a vascular disease known to cause organ inflammation.
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Pfizer is acknowledging that sars2 causes immune dysregulation (wonder why there’s been unusually high rates of viral & bacterial infections last two years?)
Pretty big news I’d say. Will any brave journalist in BC/Canada cover the story?
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Yes, we do need to bring back masks in medical settings
“The duty of care doesn’t land on patients. It’s the clinicians’ job to ensure patients don’t pick up an unintended infection. Patients have a right to safety in health care facilities.”
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Wearing masks is social solidarity with health care workers.
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Raise your hand if you have immunocrompromised people in your life that could be killed by libertarian “public health” policies & and the end of indoor mask mandates.
✋
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Get ready folks. Actuaries everywhere are going to be recommending much larger contribution increases so long-term disability plans remain solvent. This is just the beginning. Covid is a multi-system disease.
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“When CBC tried to establish how many children had died from flu in Ontario, three different provincial agencies refused to provide figures.”
And let the record show why the feds are right to demand a national health data framework with accountability.
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Fascinating/deeply disturbing that the most important study that shatters the herd immunity delusion (repeat rounds of infection risk organ damage, hospitalization, death) has received no media coverage. Is it b/c most western govs are doing nothing to prevent it (& encouraging)?
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Washing hands doesn’t prevent sars2 infection. Not getting covid 2+ years into a pandemic with the most infectious virus in human history is all about privilege & not having kids than about one’s cunning ability to avoid this virus by…hand washing. 🙃
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I’m still searching for the literature on how and why sars2 will become ‘milder’ with each reinfection. I keep coming up short.
All that comes up is lit on Long Covid and multisystem damage.
And yet that’s the headline that
@CBCNews
runs with. Very irresponsible journalism.
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Three Omicron waves and it’s not even August!
How’s that herd immunity coming along?
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One of the most re/infected countries — England — saw a 48% increase in hospitalizations in one week.
Let me get this straight. Canadian officials think this isn’t coming here — or they don’t care?
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Journalists who do not mention long covid or vascular and neurologic involvement from even ‘mild’ infection are not practising ethical journalism
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Mask “recommendations” aren’t going to get us through fall/winter.
Just like seatbelt “recommendations” won’t keep people alive.
Just like minimum wage “recommendations” won’t protect workers from exploitation.
We have government to lead & we need more than recommendations.
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I naively thought in early 2020 if we discovered long-term damage from this novel SARS2 we would immediately take prevention more seriously.
But we see the inverse now: the more we learn about multisystem/organ damage and decline, the less we do as a society to prevent it.
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This is a mass disabling event. All b/c we were afraid of some hits to GDP to pay working ppl to stay home. The disability tsunami will far outstrip the upfront public spending we need right now. ~30% Long Covid of infected adults will be massive hit to economies.
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With the end of Public Health as we know it, I am pretty certain that even when life expectancy declines in Canadian provinces (as we are seeing in US), we can expect no effort to reduce covid disease burden.
We’re losing decades of progress, without even a public discussion.
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It’s almost like we’ve had changes to immune systems at a population level.
What could possibly have changed in the last three years?
Tuberculosis, syphilis, whooping cough, mumps and measles: Doctors alarmed at rise of ‘retro’ diseases | The Star
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Ottawa Hospital opened up operating rooms to a private group of surgeons on Saturdays.
Why is a public hospital w/ unused OR time allowing profit-making in its OR?
What are the terms of the deal with the surgeons? Is
@OntariosDoctors
supportive?
#ONpoli
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How did an obsession about severity make us forget the basic math of exponential growth?
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Masking is necessary until world is vaxxed & stop new variants every 3 mos &/or until we have better vaccines that prevent infection/spread. If we want to prevent healthcare collapse & mass disability/death, masks needed until we eliminate local transmission. Covid isn’t endemic.
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Say severe hepatitis in kids grows. Can provinces provide this care if 100s/month get it & even 50 need liver transplants per month?
Again, thought experiment...what if we start seeing more severe cases 3-6 mos out from massive wave of Omicron infections?
What's the plan?
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Politicians and the rich are very well aware of the seriousness of sars2 infection. They are creating an environment where they are absolutely not treating it like a cold. At the same time working people and families are told we don’t need mitigations. It’s a vascular disease.
Everyone at the World Economic Forum annual meeting — including journalists and participants — has to take a PCR test upon arrival. If you don’t take a test, the chip in your ID badge is deactivated. If you test positive for Covid the badge is also deactivated.
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Gosh there seems an unspoken agreement among mainstream media outlets that thou shalt not raise the issue of WHY labour shortages, service cancellations, business closures, and supply chain disruptions.
Shhh. Don't discuss covid and ongoing rounds of reinfection & disability.
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I never ever thought we’d see governments normalizing cancelled pediatric surgeries and 10+ hour ER waits. Especially when prevention of this unfolding catastrophe is within reach.
#BringBackMasks
#COVIDIsAirborne
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Can you imagine a future where 1 in five people are disabled by covid with debilitating symptoms and then we’re dealing with the catastrophic effects of runaway climate change? That’s the kind of hellscape future that we seem to be okaying right now. Some scary shit.
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A large US health care investment advisory firm is putting together a prospectus for its clients (investors) about potential large-scale for-profit health care delivery opportunities in western Canada.
I can’t share where this intel comes from, but it’s credible. I’m worried.
In a newly uncovered video, Danielle Smith lays out her detailed plan to sell off “any of the hundred hospitals” that are part of our public healthcare system.
Not only does she want Albertans to pay to see a doctor, she wants to privatize hospitals too.
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US labour market data showing 6% out of labour force due to covid illness or caregiving. If this is steady and increasing (more reinfections = more Long Covid), why would this not be the major cause of recession? That’s huge.
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“11 out of the 12 children were infected with the coronavirus in the last year”
What could possibly be the cause? We just don’t know. 🤦♂️
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Okay but seriously, is anyone studying the role of McKinsey & the consultocracy in manufacturing and spreading pseudoscientific ideas that align with a privatized vision of public health policy?
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On the current trajectory society will fall apart. It won’t happen in one big bang, but the emotional, physical and institutional toll (including health system unravelling) of constant sickness, death, and disability is hugely corrosive to a functioning society.
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Make no mistake, today’s decision to remove universal hospital masking will increase transmission and covid disease burden — compromising efforts to improve timely access to scheduled and emergency care.
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There’s a reason the premiers are engaged in a major PR campaign to blame the feds on health funding: it distracts from provinces’ mismanagement of the ongoing pandemic and health system collapse.
#VaccinePlus
now. Provinces need to be held accountable.
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Could someone please explain how wearing a mask is “so disruptive” to society? Apparently that was said today by a certain top BC official.
I think healthcare/school/workplace shortages/closures, hospitalization, death & Long Covid are actually disruptive.
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That sinking feeling that the most pessimistic predictions about the relationship between uncontrolled climate change and infectious disease were, in fact, quite conservative.
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The anti-vaxxers will say it’s vaccines
Public Health will say its immunity debt (or ignore it altogether)
I say we should be concerned about never getting off the covid reinfection rollercoaster
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You know what’s divisive? Officials ending public health protections that literally help keep people alive and prevent
#LongCovid
disability.
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They only care about your labour, not your health.
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We’re in a big covid wave
Universal masking is a no-brainer to protect health care
Staff sick days causing B.C. ER closures during heat wave: health minister
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Why these two East Vancouver residents are distributing thousands of N95 masks for free
Organizers behind Masks4EastVan says their initiative is in response to a lack of public health measures
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At hospital, while taking off my respirator, patient adjacent, behind curtain had covid. Learned by overhearing staff
You risk c19 infection to get health care in BC. Getting health care shouldn’t put you at risk of a vascular & neurologic disease. Wonder why system is stressed?
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Don’t tell me you’re fiscally conservative but oppose indoor masks—because abandoning proven low-cost, low-burden public health measures is likely the most costly policy failure in the history of Canadian public health care.
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How are parents w/ under 5s keeping it together? Officials tasked with protecting kids are championing the end of *public health* measures that help prevent infection: masks & testing. We hear of families each wk getting covid from daycare. Don't make our lives more stressful.
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“COVID-19 is another respiratory illness we must pay attention to and use the tools we have learned.”
Nope.
It’s a vascular & neurotropic disease masquerading as a respiratory illness. Reinfection = cumulative risk of heart attack, stroke, Long Covid.
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Without universal masks in hospitals as we go into a big covid surge (& no immunity to the newest variants)—plus flu, RSV, strep circulating—there’s no question that health care access will deteriorate further.
It’s predictable & predicted when science is abandoned for ideology.
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“Everybody talked during COVID about wanting to get herd immunity but what we’ve gotten instead is a herd immune deficit,” said
@SKGandhiMD
. “COVID hurts our immune systems and it’s causing children to get sicker than they should.”
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Either strep A has changed or the host has changed
It’s the latter
We are going into year 3 of unmitigated mass re/infection of novel sars2 that is known to infect & persist in tonsils, & cause immune dysfunction
Let’s not live in denial
NEW: Aggressive, often deadly form of strep hits record-high case numbers in Canada.
In Ontario, 6 children have died from invasive Group A strep since October.
Reporting by
@LaurenPelley
& me 👇🏻
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Anyone else have that sinking feeling that doesn’t go away?
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They’re doing it for measles too!
They won’t say: clean the air or wear a mask
Measles is the most transmissible airborne virus known
But just wash your hands!
No we’re not ready and B.C. is not planning any vaccine and clean air blitz
Equipping every childcare and school classroom with HVAC upgrades and HEPA units is something that would cost the province a fraction of the health care costs & lost productivity
It’s never too late
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Everyone should be demanding answers from officials why they aren’t mandating masks indoors.
If you care about kids’ access to specialized acute care, then you should be demanding that we do the bare minimum to slow viral transmission.
#BringBackMasks
#KidsFirst
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Invasive Group A strep deaths and infections set records
We’ve been told that if covid caused immune damage we’d surely see opportunistic infections on the rise
Well
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Many people who thought themselves not at-risk will soon realize they are immunocompromised. Living with chronic conditions & fatigue changes your outlook.
It will begin to shift the political economy of public health and pandemic response.
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Novavax should very likely be the default vaccine. Not the mRNA
Long-term protection of 95% at 10 months is remarkable. The authors note this may be higher due to non-reporting of asymptomatic or mild infections, but this is in line with prior studies showing durable protection with Novavax.
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Please someone write about how the billionaire class & politicians are doing everything to prevent sars2 infection at Davos
HEPA, ventilation, co2 monitoring, PCR testing, etc but tell the plebs we must learn to live with reinfection of this vascular disease.
Parallel universes
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Let’s send Conrad Black to work as a frontline long-term care aide. We’ll see if he thinks it’s overblown.
Conrad Black: Fear of COVID-19 is overblown, it's time to get the economy moving again
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Covid disease burden will continue unabated as a new generation of physicians are being fed nonsense by UBC:
Magic 3-ft rule of sars2 transmission
Only spread via droplets
N95s no more effective than surgical masks based on debunked study
A place or higher learning? Nope
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Has anyone seen or heard from Public Health officials in this country? Do they still work for us?
Serious questions
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Media needs to smarten up. Much ink was spilled talking about “mild” omicron—based on exactly no evidence—when they should have been educating the public about how exponential growth works. And that a much more infectious variant (even if less severe) is a much bigger threat.
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Maybe I’ll be proven wrong with the trajectory of monkeypox. Hope so. But with young kids infected it’s looking like more than “close contact” at work here and more reports of rapid spread. We’re going to see two uncontrolled pandemics rage simultaneously. Buckle up capitalism.
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If we wanted the Ontario CMOH to be a mouthpiece of the Ford government, we could just ask government to send a spokesperson. We don’t need the most senior public health official acting as a politician.
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How are these clowns still trumpeting “hybrid immunity” when we’re seeing a massive summer covid wave only months from the last one, months from the one before it, months from the prior…
*There is no durable immunity when we give this virus so much room to transmit and evolve*
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“Young people are obviously not really supposed to die of heart attack. They’re not really supposed to have heart attacks at all,” Dr. Susan Cheng.
Covid-19 is a multi-system, inflammatory vascular and neurologic disease
Best way to prevent harm? Avoid getting it
Since COVID, more young people are dying of heart attacks. Here's what we know
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Why are mainstream news outlets not running stories on the links between unmitigated climate change and the emergence of new disease epidemics?
People need to know things are going to get worse, not better, unless we make big changes.
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Covid can cause immune dysregulation which in turn can make people susceptible to opportunistic infection. This isn’t a controversial idea. There is growing evidence suggesting this.
Time for Public Health officials to get with the science & communicate it
4 B.C. children under 10 dead from invasive strep infections since mid-December, officials say
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There is a reason why vaccine uptake was high in the twentieth century.
Families witnessed the horrors of infectious diseases that killed and maimed. Disease that became vaccine-preventable. Memories were passed through generations.
Humans have survived because of science.
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Pay attention folks.
@trishgreenhalgh
is a highly respected researcher.
She’s calling out BC’s PHO for downplaying monkeypox. This is not a “mild” virus.
#bcpoli
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Bring back masks. Save our public health care system.
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It’s astonishing to me that a new Nature study gets published showing increased risk of death, hospitalization, stroke and heart attack with reinfection but not a peep from officials.
As a result, public has little awareness about the accumulating research on reinfection risk.
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Unfortunately this is a very problematic article and should likely be retracted based on what we do know already about the risks of reinfection—and the fact that this virus continues to rapidly evolve. One interviewee is consistently wrong about this virus but was platformed.
It's clear you can catch
#COVID
again and again. What's more hazy is just how often you can get infected with SARS-CoV-2 — and whether future bouts of this virus will always feel milder than your first run-in.
My latest:
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Despite attempts to change case definitions to downplay COVID’s ongoing impact, we’re seeing more hospitalizations & longer stays than a year ago
We are a sicker population
No wonder hospitals are overwhelmed
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I’ll say it again: low-burden measures like universal masking can mean the difference between getting emergency care for a stroke—or paralysis or death because our health system has collapsed.
Public health measures help protect health care access for everyone.
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The institutional malaise and denial we’re seeing in the non-response to BA5 (and largely to monkeypox) will not serve anyone well. Officials need to wake up and rise to the challenge—or pass the baton to new leadership.
#vaccineplus
strategy needed urgently.
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Hundreds of hospitalized pts every month due to covid. Yes, still. Our hospitals are collapsing.
Why not reduce covid disease burden on the health system including worker sickness?
Reduce spread. Bring back masks in health care. Set IAQ standards. Test.
Fill vacant positions or close Surrey Memorial Hospital ER to new patients, another letter says. Medical Staff Association says current situation leaves patients 'in jeopardy.'
via
@cbcnews
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It's "seasonal" alright
Covid-19 is for every season -- a multi-system inflammatory vascular and neurologic disease that masquerades as a respiratory infection
Number hospitalized with COVID-19 in B.C. hits highest level since March
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Covid led to a significant increase in child & teen diabetes.
Say it louder for the back or the room:
Covid is a vascular & systemic inflammatory disease.
Reinfecting kids over & over again is dangerous public health policy.
🚨 Child & Teen type 1 diabetes
there was a 14% rise in the rate during the first year of the pandemic, compared to before Covid in the second year of Covid, the rate was up about 27% on pre-pandemic levels.
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