the mellow tigger's musings

Please keep wearing your N95 mask out there in the world, when you're around other people.

Because SARS-CoV-2 infection causes blood clots which can damage any organ in the body, and because SARS-CoV-2 can directly infect so many tissues, it therefore produces a wide variety of illness. It causes all sorts of problems that were possible even before this virus showed up, so it's hard to isolate the signal of what this specific virus is doing to humanity when contrasted against other potential factors. It infects the organs that have immune privilege: the brain, eyes, and testicles. Even though there is some evidence that people are newly catching COVID less frequently than before, the lower incidence doesn't matter if these infections are permanent because of the immune privilege and other methods of persistence, staying in multiple reservoirs.

Long COVID is real and increasing. It's real in adults, it's real in children, and it maybe affects as many as 6 million children in the USA. SARS-CoV-2 is known to cause a long list of damages like: heart damage, anemia, liver injury, spleen enlargement, kidney and intestine damage, POTS, brain fog, and other autonomic dysfunctions, plus the well known pneumonia, plus the well-known heart attacks and strokes, plus the immune system damage.

It makes me sad to learn the stories of real people whose families are affected by problems that I know to be associated with SARS-CoV-2 infection. No matter how many times you've had COVID before, it's worthwhile to not get COVID again. I still wear my mask around other people. Please, be safe out there.

And, if you're noticing symptoms, maybe try one of the locations in this list to see if someone can help you test for specific issues and find reasonable actions to take in response.

I haven't written much about SARS-CoV-2 this year. It's still out there, despite the television news not really mentioning much of anything any more. Today, I wanted to share some tidbits that are interesting or worrying, while simultaneously avoiding my Doom Bingo 2025 topics. I'm also avoiding a lot of old 2022 studies that showed persistent infection in the brain and various kinds of physical damage in the brain after infection. I tried to keep these links a lot more "fresh" and recent.

The good news? There is some.

Sorry, that's a lot of information, even after I deleted half a dozen articles that I included on the first draft. :(

I still mask around other people. No matter how many times you've had COVID, it's better not to get it even one more time. Stay safe out there.

An important overview paper about SARS-CoV-2 was published from The Medical Journal Of Australia online yesterday. It cites a lot of other papers, summarizing what's known about some of the issues I've been warning about here for a while. It focuses on things like immune dysregulation and viral persistence. This article has a long title with a bit of hope in it: "Towards a cure for long COVID: the strengthening case for persistently replicating SARS-CoV-2 as a driver of post-acute sequelae of COVID-19". Note, however, that it doesn't mention virus in neurons as another (non-curable) method of persistence. It only mentions the 2 methods of persistence (gut, and bone marrow/immune system) as potentially curable paths of persistence.

As always, I encourage everyone to keep masking. I do it myself every time I'm around other people.

I've decided to do something different in 2025. I know that even when restricting my doom-and-gloom posts to Moody Monday, that's still a lot of negativity that nobody needs in trying times. So I'm going to try transforming it into something almost "fun" for next year.

Near the end of 2024, I intend to post my Doom Bingo 2025 card. I will have each square with a topic that I expect to appear in 2025 as "Something Bad That Happens". I might even include some links for why I predict it will appear in the course of the year. During the year, however, I will not post about that topic. Really! Instead, as evidence piles up, I'll keep a folder of news clippings that I can use in December 2025 to determine if I "win" the bingo card for that year.

Now, I may post tangent topics, like helpful things to do to prepare for the troubles. I won't, however, post warnings any more. The time for warnings is over. Either my sense of trends is right or wrong. A Bingo game might make even bad news seem less traumatic. If nothing else, it'll keep this blog a little more like it used to be in the old days, focused more on interesting things to learn or do, or the fun intersection between many topics.

So, stay tuned. My planned Doom Bingo 2025 card will show up here soon. :) Finally, some relief from the stressful topics.