#i was having symptoms that were like covid and i still have some long term but mild symptoms that just never completely went away

[infiniteglitterfall]

know someone who enjoys horror stories? share this one! it's true!

hahahahahahahahahaha aarrggghhhhhhhhhh 3,000,000 deaths due to COVID-19 last year. Globally. Three million. Case rates higher than 90% of the rest of the pandemic. The reason people are still worried about COVID is because it has a way of quietly fucking up your body. And the risk is cumulative.

I'm going to say that again: the risk is cumulative.

It's not just that a lot of people get bad long-term effects from it. One in seven or so? Enough that it's kind of the Russian Roulette of diseases. It's also that the more times you get it, the higher that risk becomes. Like if each time you survived Russian Roulette, the empty chamber was removed from the gun entirely. The worst part is that, psychologically, we have the absolute opposite reaction. If we survive something with no ill effects, we assume it's pretty safe. It is really, really hard to override that sense of, "Ok, well, I got it and now I probably have a lot of immunity and also it wasn't that bad." It is not a respiratory disease. Airborne, yes. Respiratory disease, no: not a cold, not a flu, not RSV.

Like measles (or maybe chickenpox?), it starts with respiratory symptoms. And then it moves to other parts of your body. It seems to target the lungs, the digestive system, the heart, and the brain the most.

It also hits the immune system really hard - a lot of people are suddenly more susceptible to completely unrelated viruses. People get brain fog, migraines, forget things they used to know.

(I really, really hate that it can cross the blood-brain barrier. NOTHING SHOULD EVER CROSS THE BLOOD-BRAIN BARRIER IT IS THERE FOR A REASON.) Anecdotal examples of this shit are horrifying. I've seen people talk about coworkers who've had COVID five or more times, and now their work... just often doesn't make sense? They send emails that say things like, "Sorry, I didn't mean Los Angeles, I meant Los Angeles."

Or they insist they've never heard of some project that they were actually in charge of a year or two before.

Or their work is just kind of falling apart, and they don't seem to be aware of it.

People talk about how they don't want to get the person in trouble, so their team just works around it. Or they describe neighbors and relatives who had COVID repeatedly, were nearly hospitalized, talked about how incredibly sick they felt at the time... and now swear they've only had it once and it wasn't bad, they barely even noticed it.

(As someone who lived with severe dissociation for most of my life, this is a genuinely terrifying idea to me. I've already spent my whole life being like, "but what if I told them that already? but what if I did do that? what if that did happen to me and I just don't remember?") One of its known effects in the brain is to increase impulsivity and risk-taking, which is real fucking convenient honestly. What a fantastic fucking mutation. So happy for it on that one. Yes, please make it seem less important to wear a mask and get vaccinated. I'm not screaming internally at all now.

I saw a tweet from someone last year whose family hadn't had COVID yet, who were still masking in public, including school.

She said that her son was no kind of an athlete. Solidly bottom middle of the pack in gym.

And suddenly, this year, he was absolutely blowing past all the other kids who had to run the mile. He wasn't running any faster. His times weren't fantastic or anything. It's just that the rest of the kids were worse than him now. For some reason. I think about that a lot. (Like my incredibly active six-year-old getting a cold, and suddenly developing post-viral asthma that looked like pneumonia.

He went back to school the day before yesterday, after being home for a month and using preventative inhalers for almost week.

He told me that it was GREAT - except that he couldn't run as much at recess, because he immediately got really tired. Like how I went outside with him to do some yard work and felt like my body couldn't figure out how to increase breathing and heart rate.

I wasn't physically out of breath, but I felt like I was out of breath. That COVID feeling people describe, of "I'm not getting enough air." Except that I didn't have that problem when I had COVID.) Some people don't observe any long (or medium) term side effects after they have it.

But researchers have found viral reservoirs of COVID-19 in everyone they've studied who had it.

It just seems to hang out, dormant, for... well, longer than we've had an opportunity to observe it, so far.

(I definitely watched that literal horror movie. I think that's an entire genre. The alien dormant under ice in the Arctic.)

(oh hey I don't like that either!!!!!!!!!) All of which is to explain why we should still care about avoiding it, and how it manages to still cause excess deaths. Measuring excess deaths has been a standard tool in public health for a long time.

We know how many people usually die from all different causes, every year. So we can tell if, for example, deaths from heart disease have gone way up in the past three years, and look for reasons. Those are excess deaths: deaths that, four years ago, would not have happened. During the pandemic, excess death rates have been a really important tool. For all sorts of reasons. Like, sometimes people die from COVID without ever getting tested, and the official cause is listed as something else because nobody knows they had COVID. But also, people are dying from cardiovascular illness much younger now.

People are having strokes and heart attacks younger, and more often, than they did before the pandemic started. COVID causes a lot of problems. And some of those problems kill people. And some of them make it easier for other things to kill us. Lung damage from COVID leading to lungs collapsing, or to pneumonia, or to a pulmonary embolism, for example. The Economist built a machine-learning model with a 95% confidence interval that gauges excess death statistics around the world, to tell them what the true toll of the ongoing COVID pandemic has been so far.

Total excess deaths globally in 2023: Three million.

3,000,000.

Official COVID-19 deaths globally so far: Seven million. 7,000,000. Total excess deaths during COVID so far: Thirty-five point two million. 35,200,000.

Five times as many.

That's bad. I don't like that at all. I'm glad last year was less than a tenth of that. I'm not particularly confident about that continuing, though, because last year we started a period of really high COVID transmission. Case rates higher than 90% of the rest of the pandemic. Here's their data, and charts you can play with, and links to detailed information on how they did all of this:

Here's a non-paywalled link to it:

https://archive.vn/2024.01.26-012536/https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/coronavirus-excess-deaths-estimates

Oh: here's a link to where you can buy comfy, effective N95 masks in all sizes:

Those ones are about a buck each after shipping - about $30 for a box of 30. They also have sample packs for a dollar, so you can try a couple of different sizes and styles.

You can wear an N95 mask for about 40 total hours before the effectiveness really drops, so that's like a dollar for a week of wear.

They're also family-owned and have cat-shaped masks and I really love them. These ones are cuter and in a much wider range of colors, prints, and styles, but they're also more expensive; they range from $1.80 to $3 for a mask. ($18-$30 for a box of ten.)

[inthedayswhenlandswerefew]

Where Will All The Martyrs Go [Chapter 9: Some Days He Feels Like Dying]

A/N: Below are your guesses...let's see how you did!!! 🥰😘

Series summary: In the midst of the zombie apocalypse, both you and Aemond (and your respective travel companions) find yourselves headed for the West Coast. It’s the 2024 version of the Oregon Trail, but with less dysentery and more undead antagonists. Watch out for snakes! 😉🐍

Series warnings: Language, sexual content (18+ readers only), violence, bodily injury, med school Aemond, character deaths, nature, drinking, smoking, drugs, Adventures With Aegon™️, pregnancy and childbirth, the U.S. Navy, road trip vibes.

Series title is a lyric from: “Letterbomb” by Green Day.

Chapter title is a lyric from: “Extraordinary Girl” by Green Day.

Word count: 8.3k

💜 All my writing can be found HERE! 💜

Let me know if you’d like to be added to the taglist 🥰

Let’s go back to the beginning of the end of the world.

On the big-screen tv in the Liberty Center at Saratoga Springs, Wolf Blitzer is saying: “We are receiving confirmation of additional outbreaks of the so-called Florida Fever, the first cases of which here in the U.S. were reported in Miami a little over one week ago. Concern is now growing nationally, especially as the modes of transmission, symptoms, and treatment options remain unclear. Let’s go across the country to Natasha Chen for the latest information. Natasha?”

“Hi, Wolf. I’m here outside the UC San Diego Medical Center where early this morning, two individuals suspected to be suffering from the illness were admitted. I’ve been informed by hospital staff that both patients are currently in stable condition, but there is still so much confusion and conflicting information regarding this ‘Florida Fever,’ and of course that uncertainty is leading to fear, rumors, and honestly a bit of hysteria. Even how to refer to the sickness is controversial, with no official name having been decided upon by scientists. Cases in Australia are known as Ragepox, the U.K. has dubbed it the 21st Century Sweat after a mysterious disease from the 1500s, and Russia is calling it the Ukrainian Flu while Ukraine has opted for the Russian Red Rot, inspired by the skin lesions that some patients experience.”

“Can you tell us what we do know, Natasha? Are doctors classifying this illness as a virus, or as a bacterial infection more akin to tuberculosis or meningitis?”

“At this time, what I’m hearing is that doctors are fairly certain it’s a virus, as patients do not seem to respond to antibiotics when they’ve been explored as a potential treatment. But there’s truly very little information at this early stage, and I think we’re all being reminded of those first days of the Covid-19 pandemic, when no one really knew how to best to avoid contracting the virus or what the long-term effects would be both nationally and globally.”

“There are absolutely some similarities, Natasha, which I’m sure is contributing to the unease surrounding the situation. What precautions are doctors currently recommending?”

“Wolf, doctors are urging the public not to panic, and to exercise common sense measures like avoiding crowded spaces, sanitizing surfaces, and staying home if they’re feeling unwell. Suspected cases of the illness should be reported to primary physicians or local hospitals. Typical symptoms appear to include headaches, fever, gastrointestinal upset, skin discoloration and blistering, and unusual bleeding, as well as behavioral changes, particularly disorientation, aggression, and even violence in some patients…”

“That ain’t what it is,” Rio says. He jabs his index finger at the tv from where he sits on the couch beside you. “Snowflake wasn’t sick, he was dead. He was motherfucking dead, flatline, code blue, crossed the rainbow bridge, he was gone. He was dead and then he woke back up, and he wasn’t a person anymore. He was…something else.”

“Dumbass, people don’t come back from the dead,” Mike says from the ping pong table. People are milling around pretending to play pool, darts, chess, poker, Monopoly, Uno, Parcheesi, but really you’re all here for the same reason. You want to know what’s happening.

Rio turns to you. “Wasn’t Snowflake dead?”

“He definitely seemed dead,” you reply, knees tucked to your chest and still watching the tv. Wolf Blitzer’s voice is calm, but his pale blue eyes have a manic sort of light to them, too large and too rattled.

“Man, fuck Florida,” says Desmond, a utilitiesman born and raised Trenton, New Jersey. “Nothing but psychos and alligators. Saw them off of Georgia and just let them float away.”

“What was that?” Tyler replies combatively. He’s from a trailer park in Tallahassee.

“Ty, why do you care? You’d be fine. You’re already up here. You can stay.”

“They’re lying,” Rio mutters, meaning Wolf and Natasha on CNN. “When the corpsmen called the hospital, they said to be prepared to restrain Snowflake and that he might try to bite us. Why aren’t they warning people about that?!”

Kayleigh, a steelworker from Oklahoma City, looses a frenetic sort of laugh. “Because there’s no non-panic-inducing way to say: Hey, go buy some duct tape and bungee cords to tie up your loved ones, because they might try to fucking eat you.”

Rio doesn’t frown often, but he is now; he slips his phone out of the pocket of his camo pants and types out a WhatsApp message to Sophie. You only know her from photos and quick hellos via video chat, a sweet diminutive woman with white-blonde hair and blue eyes that seem to fill up half her face, as fragile as Rio is overwhelming. She likes baking and romance novels and elephants; whenever Rio finds elephant-themed souveners, he ships them home to Oregon for her, refrigerator magnets and wallets and scarves and snow globes. Sophie wears a lot of long flowing skirts and hand-knit sweaters, and offers strange suggestions when she and Rio discuss baby names: Sage, Fox, Laurel, Coral, Juniper, Karma, Rune, Otter. Otter?! Rio had exclaimed. Babe, if you name our kid Otter, even I’M gonna have to bully them.

“I’m telling Sophie to stay with my parents,” Rio says to you. “They’ve gotten super weird with all the off-the-grid stuff, but they have years’ worth of supplies and grow most of their own food now, and they’re thirty miles from the nearest town. And no one knows how to defend themselves like doomsday preppers.”

“Good idea,” you reply, watching the tv. Now Wolf Blitzer is talking about tornadoes in the Midwest, and you could almost believe the world is normal again.

A few days later all major social media platforms begin censoring content related to the so-called Florida Fever, and then the internet goes down completely, and then the power turns off and on and off again, and finally quits like a car driven to its last mile. The combat units are moved out of Saratoga Springs—never to be heard from again—and the construction projects paused indefinitely, and one of the master-at-arms that Rio is friends with (Rio has a lot of friends, surely you aren’t so remarkable) relays information that he shouldn’t: tales of planned missions, impossible plagues, overrun cities, innumerable deserters in every branch of the U.S. military.

“Hey,” Rio whispers, shaking you awake one night, moonlight streaming through the windows and the pops of distant gunfire you aren’t supposed to ask about. “If I leave, will you come with me?”

It’s a big commitment; it could be a lifetime. You fear he might just be trying not to hurt your feelings. “I don’t want to slow you down.”

“No, you don’t get it,” Rio says. “I’m not leaving without you. Are you going to Oregon by choice, or should I tie you up and throw you in the back of the Humvee?”

~~~~~~~~~~

It’s a young one, maybe a teenager, little buds for horns and only weighing a few hundred pounds. This is good; if it was any heavier, Cregan and Rio wouldn’t be able to drag it back to the ranch. You’re still in Red Desert, Wyoming, and the bison are grazing just off I-80, an asphalt artery that cuts through an endless steppe of sand-colored rocks and tall grass. They gaze lazily in your direction with bulbous dark eyes, perpetually chewing, not terribly intelligent. The Colt pistols of the men who found you at the RV had been loaded with 9mm bullets, the same caliber your Berettas take; there weren’t many, but enough to fill both of your clips, something that feels like winning the lottery. You are lying on the rocky, dusty soil and lining up the shot. If you miss, the herd will scatter, and you’ll watch dinner vanish beneath a blue sky—pale like Aemond’s eye, a weak shallow blue—and rough white scars of cirrostratus clouds.

“Feels kind of wrong to kill a baby,” you murmur. Daeron, Luke, Baela, Helaena, and Ice are back at the house. Aemond, Rio, Cregan, Rhaena, and Aegon are here on the ground with you; Aegon insisted upon being brought along, and Rio agreed to carry him. Aegon had never seen American bison outside of the Oregon Trail computer game, those pixelated brown blobs migrating across the screen no more material than unicorns or faeries or basilisks.

“If the baby didn’t want to get killed, it shouldn’t be made of steak,” Aegon points out. He’s on a lot of Vicodin, the only narcotic Aemond could find back in Ogallala, Nebraska.

“No pressure, Chips,” Rio says, chewing on a long blade of little bluestem grass. “If you miss we’re just going to have to eat each other like the Donner Party.”

Aegon wrinkles his nose in confusion. “The what?”

“She won’t miss,” Aemond says, and Rio snickers to himself and gives you a quick wink that no one else notices.

“I don’t think one 9mm bullet will do it,” Cregan mutters. “Cows got thick skulls, I figure bison are the same way. You’ll have to hit it a few times, and before it can take off and disappear on us.”

Aemond casts him a patronizing glance. “And you’ve killed a lot of cows?”

“Oh yeah. Worked in a slaughterhouse for a while before I got hired by the power company. Hated it, went home and could still smell the blood and brains on myself no matter how many times I showered. Couldn’t get out of there fast enough.”

Aemond looks like he regrets asking. Rhaena frowns worriedly at the bison. “Will they charge if someone shoots at them?”

Cregan shrugs. “Probably not.”

“Probably?!”

You squeeze the trigger five times in quick succession, hit the calf thrice, tiny puffs of scarlet mist that spring from its woolly head. It flops over as the rest of the herd jolts into a gallop, kicking up dust and fleeing across the steppe.

“Yes!” Rio booms as everyone applauds. “We’re in business! We’re having ribeyes tonight! Cregan, my good sir, I take mine medium rare.”

“You’re getting well done,” Aemond tells him. “Everyone is. Just in case the bison has parasites.”

Rio groans. “You’re ruining my life, man.” Then he and Cregan trot over to grab the baby bison, each of them taking one of its back hooves.

“So,” Aegon says dreamily. “Now that Rio is preoccupied, who would like to assist me in returning my disgusting, debilitated body to the ranch? Anyone? Anyone?”

Rhaena turns to you. “When we have more bullets, could you give me shooting lessons?”

“Sure,” you reply, a bit startled. “Really? You’re interested?”

“Well…” Rhaena hesitates. “Baela’s always been the brave one. At home, at school, when we were shopping, even when restaurants would mess up my order, Baela would do the talking and make sure I was alright…and I would literally hide behind her waiting for her to solve all my problems. And now…with the baby, with Jace…it’s been really different being the one to help her for a change, and I don’t think I’m very good at it yet. But Baela deserves to have people to lean on, just like I’ve always had her. And…when I stabbed that guy in the RV…I kind of liked it.” She titters nervously when she sees the shock on your face. “No, not like that! Not the killing part, or the gushing blood, that was all super gross. But the fact that I helped protect Baela and Luke? The fact that I wasn’t useless in that situation? That was a good feeling. Baela is clever, and she’s courageous and caring and funny, and she’s always been better than me at everything, and I never minded because she…she was like my own personal superhero, you know? But now I feel like I need to start learning how to do things myself so I can help her. Even if Baela is still better at everything, and probably always will be.”

Aegon grins toothily and pushes his neon green plastic sunglasses up the bridge of his nose. “I know how you feel. It’s pretty impossible to look heroic next to Aemond.”

“Stop,” Aemond says, but he’s smiling, and a bloom of bashful pink blood appears in his cheeks.

“You already took over the driving,” you tell Rhaena encouragingly. “That was a big help.”

“Yeah,” Rhaena replies, a bit pensive. “Let’s hope I can keep that going.” Between the gas Aemond found in Ogallala and what was siphoned from the would-be attackers’ GMC Yukon, you got enough fuel in the Tahoe to take it halfway across Wyoming; but now the gauge is not just at but venturing below the E, and it can’t have more than five or ten miles left. That might not even get you to the next ranch, let alone a proper town. You need a working vehicle. There are nearly a thousand miles between here and Odessa, Oregon.

Aegon is pawing at Aemond like a cat. “Come on, hero. Help me up.”

~~~~~~~~~~

“This is why we’re friends,” Rio tells you as he shovels forkfuls of bison steak into his mouth, juice dribbling down his chin. Cregan gutted the bison and butchered it, then you helped him cook the steaks—not very uniform in size and shape, yet no one is complaining—on a pan heated in the woodstove. You fed the fire with books you found in the house, mostly religious in nature. “You convince me not to commit suicide when we’re stranded on a transmission tower, you share your Cheddar Whales, you’re good at shooting things…”

“How did you two become friends?” Baela asks. You are all arranged around the dining room table; there are just enough chairs for everyone. Ice lies beneath it mauling on bison bones that Cregan set aside for her. The room is illuminated by flashlights. Baela looks great: in good spirits, glowing, alert, wearing a loose cotton dress that Helaena found in an upstairs closet for her. Baela napped most of the day, something she rarely allows herself to indulge in, and the benefits are evident.

Rio says nonchalantly: “I talked to everybody and she barely talked at all. So of course I had to investigate and figure out what that was about. Turns out she’s kind of cool. You know the Wheel of Fortune game at arcades where there’s like a hundred little lights in a circle you have to press the button when the one that says Spin Zone lights up? She’s a freak, she can hit it almost every time. Can’t sink a basketball or sing karaoke to save her life, but you know, we all have flaws.”

Aegon looks up from his map, which he is scrutinizing as he eats his bison steak. “Do you realize that if we could just stop at gas stations like back when everything was normal, we’d be in Odessa or the Bay Area in fifteen hours? Literally less than one day. Fucking unreal. And yet here we are trapped in yee-haw country, freaky giant animals, no civilization but Jesus billboards everywhere, hell on earth.” He holds up a palm. “No offense, Cregan. You’re okay.”

Cregan smiles mildly. “None taken, Fried Foot. You know you’re a little well done yourself these days.”

“That’s ableist,” Aegon replies.

“We’ll find gas tomorrow,” Aemond says. He sounds confident because he has to; he’s not allowed to panic, to give up. He’s seated at the head of the table like a patriarch. His steak is the smallest and the most ragged. He wouldn’t accept any of the others.

You ask Baela: “Have you decided what to name the baby?”

“Kind of.” She rests both hands on her belly, a globe like a full moon. Helaena glances over at Baela, frowning and preoccupied. “If it’s a boy, I’m going to name it after Jace. We had already picked out Theodore…and Teddy for short, isn’t that cute? But now…I’d want him to have that connection to his father. The baby won’t have any pictures of him, or videos, or memories, or papers he wrote in school, or ties or rings or cufflinks, or…anything. But he could have Jace’s name.”

The rest of you nod, eyes downcast and feeling terribly sorry for her. “I really like that idea,” Luke says quietly.

Now Baela is thinking, her gaze traveling around the room as she chews on a cube of streak. “I’m not sure what I’d call a girl. Maybe something naturey like Violet, Rosemary, Ivy, Indigo, Fern…”

“You should name it Otter,” you say, and you and Rio erupt into raucous laughter. Aemond smiles as he watches you.

Baela is grinning uncertainly, trying not to be insensitive. Perhaps people named their kids stuff like Otter where you came from. “Um, sorry, what?!”

“That was one of the baby names on Sophie’s list,” Rio clarifies. “I vetoed it. Or at least…I think she agreed to cross it off…? Oh my God, imagine I finally get to Odessa only to find out my firstborn child has been named Otter.”

“You’d have to turn right back around,” you say. “Total abandonment would be the only honorable choice. We’d have to start over someplace else. I’ve heard Texas is nice.”

Aegon snorts. “You can’t live in Texas. They don’t even have legal weed there.”

Rhaena squints at him. “I don’t really think that’s a concern anymore, Aegon.”

Aegon smacks his forehead theatrically. “Oh no, I forgot about the apocalypse again!”

“So Cregan,” Baela says. “You were planning to vote for Trump.”

Everyone at the table groans. “No politics,” Aemond says.

“They’re all dead now, so it doesn’t matter,” Rhaena adds. “Biden, Kamala, that insane Kennedy brain worm dude, Trump…”

Aegon says: “If I was a zombie, I wouldn’t eat Trump.”

“I just found that interesting,” Baela continues, looking at Cregan like she’s expecting him to explain himself. Rhaena and Luke exchange a nervous glance. Daeron reaches under the table to pet Ice; you can hear her tail thumping cheerfully against the hardwood floor.

“I was a Trump voter, yeah,” Cregan replies between bites of steak. Aemond is studying him uneasily, but Cregan’s baritone voice is calm. “That doesn’t mean I approved of a lot of the things he did and said. I’m not a monster, I don’t believe in mocking people or all that January 6th stuff. But he was good for the economy. Back when Trump was president, groceries were more affordable, and houses were cheaper, and more companies were hiring. If I had tried to move out of my parents’ place in 2023 instead of 2019, there’s no way I could have done it. And I really needed to get out of there. A lot of people feel that they don’t have the luxury of voting for the nicest candidate, or the candidate they agree with on social issues. Something abstract like climate change isn’t even on the radar. They have to vote for their basic necessities.”

You and Rio understand what he means, you’ve both met plenty of people with the same perspective; everybody else seems shellshocked.

“But I don’t want y’all to think that I’m…” Cregan looks around the table, his eyes catching—interestingly—on Helaena, who observes him with a fully present attentiveness that you’ve learned is rare for her. “You know, like a sexist or a racist or that I hate foreigners or anything. Because I’ve never felt that way, and now I’m very happy to have found you guys, and I respect the hell out of you. And I want to be allowed to stay.”

“You can stay, Cregan,” Helaena reassures him.

“Yeah,” Rio says. “Especially since we’d probably starve without you.”

Cregan beams, clearly grateful, and there are chuckles and the tension breaks; and Baela is placidly skating her palm over the arc of her belly, and now that you’ve eaten all you can, Rio is spearing the remaining chunks of your steak with his fork and gobbling them down. He doesn’t ask before he does this; he knows you don’t mind. You’ve never understood why he’s given you so much over the past nearly five years. You are eternally offering him atonement.

Suddenly, Baela asks you: “What would you name a baby girl?”

You have to think about this before you answer. “Well, if you’re looking for something related to plants…I had a friend when I was growing up named Briar, and I always thought that was pretty.”

“Briar,” Baela echoes, intrigued.

“It means bramble, like a thorny shrub where blackberries grow. I remember her telling me that her mama wanted it to be a reminder that people go through rough patches and that life gets hard sometimes, but you have to keep going, and eventually you’ll find your way out.”

“Briar,” Baela repeats. “Yeah, that’s kind of neat. I’ll add it to the list!”

“And you’d have the same first initial,” Rhaena says. “Baela and Briar. Isn’t that adorable?”

Baela smiles. “And a few Rs thrown in there too. For Rhaena.”

Rio turns to Aegon. “Hey Honey Bun, if you had to name your kid after a plant, what would you name it?”

Aegon says without hesitation: “Marijuana.”

Now it’s an hour later, and Aemond is examining Aegon’s burned leg on the living room floor, Helaena holding a flashlight and you and Rio standing by for moral support. Underneath the bandages is a wasteland of red, weeping flesh…and yet there are spots where the skin seems to be hardening into white islands of scar tissue. Rhaena and Luke are keeping watch by the windows, Baela is passed out in one of the bedrooms, Cregan is showing Daeron how to put his wavy blonde hair up in a man bun.

Aemond points to a blackish patch on the top of Aegon’s foot, only a few inches from his ankle. “I have to debride this part here,” he says like an apology.

Aegon is afraid to ask. “What does debride mean?”

“It means I have to cut it out.”

“Cut it?!”

“It’s getting infected. I have to remove it or it will spread to the rest of the foot and you could get sepsis. I might even have to amputate the whole leg.”

“Okay, cut the dead stuff off,” Aegon swiftly agrees.

Aemond doesn’t have any more injectable morphine. He gives Aegon as much Vicodin as he dares and then begins working, carving away layers of dark disease with his scalpel and scrubbing the area with disinfectant. Aegon clutches your hand, squeezing so hard it feels like your bones might crunch, shrapnel-like splinters of marrow-stained organic glass beneath your skin. Rio has Aegon’s pink Sony Walkman—once owned by Ava—and takes one earbud while giving Aegon the other. They sing along to Sean Paul songs together, laughing as tears stream down Aegon’s sunburned cheeks:

“Well, woman, the way the time cold, I wanna be keepin’ you warm

I got the right temperature fi shelter you from the storm

Oh Lord, gal, I got the right tactics to turn you on

And girl, I wanna be the papa, you can be the mom…”

Now you’re curled up in bed, your arms crossed over your belly as you struggle to fall asleep. Aemond comes to bed late now; each night he waits until Baela is sleeping and then teaches Rhaena about childbirth and recovery: what to expect, what could go wrong. She is a good student, borrowing Helaena’s spider notebook to take notes and asking detailed questions. She wants to know everything she can so she can help when Baela goes into labor.

At last, the bedroom door opens. Out in the living room you can hear Rio asking: “Do you have Wagon Wheel? I love that song.”

Aegon scoffs. “No, of course I don’t have Wagon Wheel. Shut up and listen to your Enrique Iglesias.”

“You are so racist, man…”

Aemond sees that you’re in agony, rummages around in his medical kit, and gives you an oval-shaped white pill to wash down with the can of orange Sunkist on the nightstand; Helaena found a case of it in the pantry. “Why didn’t you tell me it was this bad?”

“I didn’t want to take any Vicodin from Aegon or Baela. They’ll need it more than me.”

“Your pain is as real as anyone else’s.” Aemond’s weight shifts the mattress as he crawls into bed beside you, his arm settling protectively around your waist, his hand covering yours where it rests on your lower belly. “If the Tahoe runs out of gas, will you be okay to walk tomorrow?”

“Don’t worry about me. I had three periods during basic training, I honestly thought I might die. After that I can power through just about anything.”

“I’ve noticed.” You feel the soft smile on Aemond’s lips as he kisses your temple. “Do you want quiet, or do you want to talk?”

“Talking would be a nice distraction.”

Aemond wastes no time. “Do you like kids?”

“Well, since birth control doesn’t exist anymore, I’d hope everybody does.”

Again, he is smiling; you can hear it in his voice. “Okay, but do you intend to have your own?”

“Yeah, I always envisioned myself having kids. I wanted a normal family and figured I’d have to make one myself, DIY it, you know? I don’t think the plan has changed. Gotta repopulate the earth somehow.”

“I wouldn’t try to sway your decision one way or the other. It’s a burden you should only have to endure if you actively choose it. But if you want to have children one day, I’d help you.”

You giggle in the dim orange glow of a single flashlight. “How self-sacrificial.”

“No,” Aemond says, laughing. “Not like, the making them. I mean, I’d help with that too, that aspect would be fun. But I was talking about the delivery, and recovery, and taking care of a newborn. I don’t know everything, but I know a lot. I could help you get through it. So that’s an option I want you to be aware of, if…you know.” Now he pauses. “If you trust me.”

“I trust you.”

“Sometimes I don’t know if you should,” Aemond murmurs; or at least that’s what you think he says as you lose consciousness, plummeting into sleep as if falling from a great height.

~~~~~~~~~~

The Tahoe runs out of gas just east of Tipton—not a city, not a town, just a collection of service roads linking sprawling ranches to I-80, the only continuous route across southern Wyoming—and Rhaena guides the SUV as it coasts to a halt on the shoulder of the highway. You hike about a mile to the nearest ranch house: Luke carrying the siphoning hose and empty gas can in case you can find fuel, Rio carrying Aegon on his back, Baela walking slowly and with great effort, Ice panting as she lopes across the dusty earth. You can’t spot any cattle or horses behind the endless strings of barbed wire fencing. Perhaps they are in a different pasture, or escaped or were stolen, or died of thirst without being tended to, or were consumed by a wandering hoard of zombies, never sleeping and always hungry. The house at the end of the dirt driveway is modest, old, and painted white. The front door is open; the screen door bangs in the wind.

“Rock Springs is the next real town,” Aegon says when Rio drops him to the ground, reading his map.

“And how far is that?” Rio asks.

Aegon deflates. “About fifty miles.”

“Great,” Rhaena says. “What’s the plan, to fly there?”

“Yeah, start flapping your wings, little bird. You’re light enough, you can make it.”

“No car in the driveway,” you tell Aemond. “Nobody home, maybe?”

He’s scrutinizing the house, his blue eye narrow. “Maybe.”

A thought occurs to Aegon. “Do you think ranchers have golf clubs?” he asks hopefully.

“No,” Aemond snaps. Rio is now on the front porch and pounding the butt of his unloaded Remington shotgun against the doorframe to see if anyone appears. Daeron is nocking one of his makeshift arrows as he trots around the perimeter with his compound bow.

Luke, peering through his binoculars, points to a large cylindrical aluminum structure about a hundred yards from the house, by a small red barn. “What’s that thing?”

“It’s a grain bin,” Cregan says. “Full of feed for cattle.” Ice whimpers at his feet, and he twirls his axe in his large, calloused hands. “Are we clearing the house or not? Something’s in there.”

“We are,” Aemond answers tonelessly. “Luke, Rhaena, stay out here with Aegon and watch for trouble. Daeron, you too.”

“Got it.”

“Baela—”

“Can I go inside?” she asks. “Please, Aemond. I’m so sick of sitting around feeling useless and exhausted. I want to help. I want to do something, I’m going insane.”

“Fine,” Aemond agrees. “It should be an easy one.”

It is easy, but it’s not pleasant. The house smells like dark, sickening decay. In the living room are the skeletal remains of two bodies, both children judging by the size; the maroon-stained bones are notched with indents from gnashing teeth. Cregan shadows Helaena as she searches through closets and drawers. She takes no clothing—it would have absorbed the stench of death—but fills her burlap messenger bag with matches, lighters, batteries, pills. She gives you a bottle of Advil before you can ask her for it.

“Thanks,” you say, a bit startled, as you tuck it away in your backpack.

It is not until Ice leads you to the final room, the bedroom at the rear of the house, that you hear the familiar, blood-chilling hissing and moaning of a zombie. It is in the closet, and emerges one limb at a time: one arm and then another, one leg long like a spider’s, streaked with a thick soup of rotting organs that spills from a gaping hole in her belly like the mouth of a mineshaft. Something has happened to its other leg; it is missing, and the corpse that was once a thirties-something woman—a soccer mom, perhaps, with a minivan and propensity to make meatloaf and fish sticks—drags itself across the fawn-colored carpet towards you, slow and pathetic. Ice growls and barks. Rio raises his Remington.

“Wait,” Baela says. Her hammer is in her right hand. “Can I do it?”

“Of course, be my guest,” Rio says; though you can tell he’s slightly disappointed. He loves clubbing things.

Baela approaches the yowling zombie—jaws snapping, claws swiping—and grimaces down at it, this one of millions of monsters that ended the world, that killed Jace and stole all the rest of her life from her too, all those normal things she was supposed to have, all those strings of fate that the plague cut through like a razor and sent floating aimlessly out into the void of the universe. Then with a scream, Baela swings her hammer and a catastrophic impact crater appears in the side of the zombie’s skull, and it crumples to the floor, its mindless brains spilling out onto the carpet.

“Nothing good?” Aegon asks when you reappear in the driveway, popping a Vicodin into his mouth.

“No,” Aemond replies grimly. “No gas, no bullets, no food, nothing to drink.”

“I knew it would be lean pickings once we got out here,” Cregan says, and Aemond looks like he could kill him.

“Well, fortunately, Luke might have some good news for us,” Aegon says with a grin.

Aemond perks up. “Really? What?”

“I saw a truck out there,” Luke says, using his binoculars to gesture to the grain bin. “It’s parked between the barn and the grain thing, I can just see the very front of it sticking out. And if there’s a truck, there might be gas.”

Aemond ruffles Luke’s fluffy dark hair. “Good job, kid.” And Luke lights up like how cities used to look at night, back when the power was on: Washington D.C., Key West, Corpus Christi, Chinhae. Rio stoops down so Aegon can hop on his back, and all of you trek together across the field.

“Nothing,” Cregan announces as he squeezes the little pump on the siphoning hose after opening the gas cap of the ancient Chevy Silverado and threading the hose inside. “Not a drop.”

“Fucking fantastic,” Aegon sighs from where he’s slumped on the ground. His eyes are glazed; he’s pretty stoned. He gazes pitifully up at you; you pat his shoulder sympathetically. You and Rio have already checked the barn, dilapidated but perfectly devoid of zombies. The roof has caved in; one of the two front doors are missing. “What now?!”

“We can go back to the interstate and walk until we find the next ranch,” you say, looking absentmindedly at the grain bin. It’s much larger up close, and rusty in spots. A ladder runs up one side to allow access to the roof. Ice isn’t whining or nudging anyone’s hands, but she’s sniffing the air as if she’s detected something interesting, unfamiliar.

“Yeah,” Luke replies miserably. “We can walk another five or ten miles and then maybe find a safe place to spend the night.”

Rhaena shades her eyes as she peers up at the sky. “It’s past noon already. Maybe we should just stay here.”

Rio barks out a sardonic laugh. “In a house with no supplies and that reeks of dead people?”

“Cregan, go kill us something to eat,” Aegon commands.

He chuckles in his deep, gruff voice. “It’s Miss Chips who is good at the killing, I’m just the authority on butchering at the moment.”

Aemond is watching Ice, his forehead furrowed. “What’s she doing?”

Cregan whistles. “Hey, princess, you okay?” Ice ignores him, still sniffing, her grey ears straight up in the air. Then it appears from behind the barn: a tiny brown creature, a baby bear.

“Aww, it’s so fuzzy!” Aegon squeals, stretching his arm out to pet it. Rio yanks him away; everyone else is backing up towards the grain bin. A second bear cub has now arrived, padding clumsily along, large cartoonish eyes and a little pink tongue poking out from its muzzle.

“Don’t touch them!” Aemond shouts to everyone. “Get away from them! If there are cubs, there’s probably—”

And around the barn comes the mother, a grizzly bear of 400 pounds. She bares her teeth and snarls, saliva dripping in long gluey strings. Ice is barking viciously; Aegon is shrieking and scrambling onto Rio’s back.

“Baela!” Aemond says because she’s closest to him, urging her towards the ladder of the grain bin. She gets the idea and begins climbing. Then Aemond reaches for you. “Come on, you next!”

“Rhaena, go,” you say instead, and she clambers up the ladder after Baela. Cregan is brandishing his axe; Rio has his Remington in his hands, Aegon still clinging to his back like a baby opossum to its mother. Now Helaena is climbing up the ladder, and Daeron nocks an arrow. You whip one of your M9s out of its holster, aim for the bear’s head, and pull the trigger.

Your bullet hits its skull, Daeron’s arrow pierces its chest; and the mother bear does not die but roars and rises up onto her back feet—taller than Rio, taller than Cregan—and then drops back down and charges towards you and the grain bin. Cregan blocks the way, swinging his axe. The bear reluctantly pauses, testing him with swipes of her claws that he evades. Rio is just a few steps behind Cregan, waving his Remington around hostilely. Aegon is screaming and holding on for dear life.

“Don’t shoot!” Cregan yells. “9mm isn’t big enough, you’ll just make her more angry!”

Aemond finally gets a grip on your wrist and drags you to the ladder. You obey and climb until your feet are several rungs off the ground, then you turn to see what’s going on below. Aemond, Luke, and Daeron are at the bottom of the ladder, their backs to you. Cregan is still wielding his axe.

“Fuck off, Mama Bear!” he bellows, standing as tall as possible and swinging his axe above his head. Rio follows Cregan’s lead and holds his Remington aloft. Ice is barking; the baby bears are fleeing in terror. Aegon is sobbing hysterically and saying he’s going to die. “You don’t want us and we don’t want you! Go on! Go get your babies! I’ll put this blade right between your eyes if you don’t change your stupid mind right quick!”

The bear pounds the earth with her front feet and growls, a beastly subterranean rumble, but she seems to be losing her nerve. The rungs of the ladder creak and groan; you see rust like blood-hued moss around the bolts.

“Get out of here!” Cregan shouts. “Go, you hairy old bitch! Go back to your babies!”

The bear glances back to see her cubs vanish behind the barn. Her mouth is open and panting, spittle gleaming on her pointed teeth; her black eyes are uncertain. As you hold onto the ladder with one hand, you have your M9 aimed at the bear’s left eye, just in case. Aemond is watching Cregan; on his scarred face a sharp severity, fascination and resentment and fear.

“Go on,” Cregan says firmly. “Leave us alone. You belong in the mountains, not down here. Go eat something that’s already dead, a nice easy dinner. You don’t want us. We’ll fight you.”

The grizzly bear shakes her head—flopping ears, shaggy fur filthy with dust and pieces of grass—and whirls, lumbering off to find her cubs. When she rounds the barn, Cregan waits a few long, tense, silent minutes and then turns to the grain bin.

“Alright y’all, we oughta hurry up and leave. I don’t think she’ll come back, but she might.”

From the top of the ladder, approximately forty feet off the ground, Baela begins to laugh. “Did that really just happen?! That was insane! Cregan, buddy, you can vote for whoever you want to. You and I are cool forever.”

He smiles up at her, wincing in the bright afternoon light. “I’m very glad to hear it, ma’am.”

Rio sets Aegon down on the ground and stretches his back; it must be hurting him. Aemond is taking your hand and helping you off the ladder, and you are reminded of the transmission tower where he found you in Catawissa, Pennsylvania, one of those middle-of-nowhere places like Tipton, Wyoming. As Helaena climbs down, you go to Rio and—with as much force as you can manage—knead the small of his back with the heel of your hand like you know helps him.

“You okay?”

He sighs loudly, relieved. “Yeah, I’ll be fine. Oh, wow, that’s good. Harder…oh yeah…”

There is a snapping sound, metal squealing as it breaks, and by the time you turn to look she’s already falling: her cotton dress billowing around her, her arms wheeling helplessly. It happens too quickly for her to scream—for her to understand what is going on and what it means—but there is a stunned gasp and then she hits the ground, and you hear a muffled crunch of bone—skull?? spine??—and she is completely, unnaturally still as she lies on her back, no pain, no words, nothing.

“Baela!” Rhaena shrieks, and she rushes down the ladder and runs to her sister. You are all gathering around Baela, petrified to move her—to make it worse—but pleading for her to wake up, examining her with terrified eyes. Baela’s own eyes, dark and glassy and serene, are open only a sliver like obsidian crescent moons. Aemond is asking Helaena for a flashlight and then prying them wide, checking Baela’s pupils.

“There’s no reflex,” he says numbly.

“What does that mean?!” Rhaena cries. “Aemond? Aemond?!”

“She’s…she’s…” He’s in denial; he’s in shock. He’s feeling for a pulse on her carotid, he’s digging his fingernails into her forearm to try to get her to respond to pain.

“Aemond?” you say softly.

“She’s gone,” he tells you, like he doesn’t believe it, like he’s waiting to wake up.

“The baby,” Rhaena says. “Try to save the baby.” And then, when Aemond doesn’t immediately understand, she grabs his backpack and begins ripping it off so he can get the medical kit inside. “The baby, Aemond!”

Now he knows what he has to do. He pulls the scalpel out of his kit as Rhaena moves Baela’s sundress to expose her belly. She was wearing biker shorts beneath, lavender, cute, something you might have picked out in a store. In less than a minute they will be soaked with blood. Cregan leads Daeron away, and he’s telling him that they need to keep watch in case the grizzly bear returns, but you think it is an act of mercy more than anything else. Ice goes with them. Helaena, her face pale and grave, is shining the flashlight on Baela’s belly, just beneath her navel.

“Aegon?” Aemond says.

“What? What do you need?”

“I need people to help hold open the incision once I make it. I have to be able to see the amniotic sac so I can cut the membrane without harming the baby.”

“I get it, I’m here, I’ll help.”

Aemond presses the blade of the scalpel to Baela’s skin and draws a semicircle from the top of one hip to the other. There is blood, but it is slow-moving and thick and dark; it is the blood of a dead woman, not a living one. Immediately, Aegon hooks his fingers under layers of fat, skin, and muscle, and opens the wound as much as he can. You and Rio reach in too, and you do this without thinking, without allowing yourself to feel the horror of it until the work is done.

“I can’t see,” Aemond is murmuring. Rhaena gets another flashlight and helps Helaena illuminate the area. Luke is on his knees with both hands clamped over his mouth, his eyes glistening with dread and disbelief. Aemond is slicing, pausing to probe around with his fingers, cutting again. Then his arm plunges into Baela’s abdomen up to his elbow and, with some difficulty, pulls out the gore-covered baby by its feet, a girl, large and limp and silent.

Rhaena sobs, equal parts grief and joy, a smile appearing on her face. “Is she okay? Aemond? Is she…why isn’t she crying? Aemond?!”

Rio yanks off his shirt and uses it to wipe blood and gelatinous clumps away from the baby’s eyes, mouth, and nostrils. Then Aemond takes the shirt and wraps the baby in it, warming her, rubbing her lifeless little limbs. When she does not stir, Aemond lays her on the earth and begins CPR: compressions with two fingers on her tiny heart, two breaths down the airway she’s never used. There are no sounds except his efforts. There is no crying when the baby wakes, because she never does.

Enough, you are thinking, as if from very far away: an island in the Indian Ocean, the Appalachian mountains in eastern Kentucky. Enough, enough, enough.

Aemond stops trying to revive the baby. He picks her up and holds her against him, and no one says anything. There is only the barrenness of the Wyoming steppe, an anemic blue sky, tall dry grass that bows in the breeze, black vultures that are landing atop the barn and the grain bin.

Aegon jolts out of his paralysis and reaches for his brother with bloodied hands. “Aemond, hey, Aemond, listen to me, it wasn’t your fault. Okay? Are you listening? Aemond, man, you did everything you could. You gave them a chance. You didn’t give up.”

But Aemond doesn’t respond; he only kneels there beside Baela’s butchered body, her dead baby girl in his arms.

~~~~~~~~~~

“Alys?” he calls, seeing that she never came back to bed. He is lying on his stomach, tangled in red sheets damp with sweat. It’s hot, too hot, and there is no humming of the air conditioning. When Aemond picks up his iPhone from the nightstand, it’s still plugged in but only at 87% battery. The power must have gone out.

He gets up, rubs the damp skin by his temple—headache, dehydration—and lifts open the nearest window. It’s odd: there is shouting, distant and indistinct, like the sound of a carnival or a concert. There are car alarms too, and sirens, and horns blaring, all too far away for him to see. It must be because of the power outage, traffic signals thrown into chaos, neighbors relaying the latest information back and forth. That’s the only logical explanation.

“Alys?” Aemond says again, groggy but with increasing curiosity, concern, guilt.

She started to feel sick last night, a pulsing in her skull and chills and powerful nausea. The possibility of it being the so-called Florida Fever barely registered in his mind. Alys gets migraines, and tofu is a migraine trigger, and he took her to a Thai restaurant (maybe he should have known better) and the curry Alys ordered ended up having tofu in it, and by the time she paid the check (as Alys always did) she was swallowing an Imitrex from the box in her snakeskin purse. She said she was going to lie down in the guest bedroom for a while so she wouldn’t wake him if she spent the next few hours dashing to and from the bathroom, a likely outcome, and if he was honest with himself about it, Aemond would admit he was relieved.

He shuffles to the bedroom door—black boxers, bare feet, century-old hardwood floors—and opens it. Now he can hear thudding, like someone tenderizing meat with a mallet. “Alys? Baby, you feeling okay?” There is no answer, only that rhythmic hammering. He realizes that it is coming from the guest bedroom, a door at the end of a long hallway still fuzzy through his half-awake eyes.

It had never felt right, but it had felt good: good in the body when she touched him, good in the soul when she told him he did something right. But lately—especially here, in the vast creaking historic house she shares with her husband and her children, who are presently sailing in Cape Cod—Aemond cannot shake the feeling that this entanglement is a surrender rather than an aspiration, something he fell into and now rests at the bottom of like a swimming pool or the sea, the cold weight of it threatening to pour into his lungs and drown him.

“Alys?” Aemond says, now with profound and inexplicable dread. Outside an ambulance or police car zooms by, sirens blaring. The pounding on the door of the guest bedroom grows faster.

I want to go home, Aemond thinks suddenly. At home, in the Federal-style townhouse his parents rented for him (Criston picked it out, a safe and quiet neighborhood in Beacon Hill, and Viserys paid), Daeron is visiting from California and watching golf tournaments with Aegon on the living room couch, pretending to be interested when Aegon describes the different types of clubs. Helaena, pursuing an Entomology PhD, is researching the Mediterranean mantis, clicking around on her MacBook Pro from the garden in the backyard. Jace and Luke live there too, and so Baela and Rhaena have all but officially moved in, keeping their apartment in Seaport only to have somewhere to retreat to when the Targaryen chaos becomes too much…and so the baby can have its own room. Baela bought a crib, a changing table, a rocking chair, a dresser, and about a million unisex onesies, mostly space-themed. Baela is studying Aeronautics and Astronautics, after all. Maybe one day she’ll work for NASA and fly rockets to the moon.

The door is rattling on its hinges. Aemond’s hand closes around the knob. On the other side is something terrible, and he knows this. But he cannot just leave her. Aemond is not someone who abandons people; he is not someone who turns away from responsibilities.

He opens the door of the guest bedroom, and immediately she is staggering towards him, limp dripping hair and naked like she was interrupted mid-shower: blood bubbling from her gaping mouth and the whites of teeth peeking through the crimson, necrotic skin hanging in strips from her fingers, eyes misty like steam on a mirror.

“Alys, stop! Alys! What’s wrong with you?!”

She’s alive but she’s dead. She’s yowling and clawing at him, but her flesh is the rotting swampland of a corpse. He’s pushing her away; his palms sink into her, places he once noticed and then fantasized about and then at last—euphorically, ashamedly—touched, held, borrowed but never kept. She’s trying to bite him. She’s trying to kill him. None of this is possible, and yet it’s true.

Aemond flings her away, and the woman who was once Alys stumbles backwards and down the staircase, sick wet thumps all the way to the ground floor, bones splitting through dissolving grey skin, organs sloshing around until they spill out. He can hear her still hissing, flailing, trying to get up again.

Without thinking—slipping seamlessly into what he learned during his psych rotation is called automatic action—Aemond races down the steps and grabs her by the skull, cracks it against the antique hardwood floor she once extoled the value of as he fucked her on it: shipped east from Oregon and laid in 1912, the year the Titanic sank. When she lurches up to try to bite him, he slams her head against the floor again and again until she is still.

Then Aemond kneels there alone for a long time, sirens shrieking outside, far-off strangers screaming for help, putrid black blood clotting on his hands.

[covid-safer-hotties]

also preserved on our archive

By Erica Sloan

These days, it’s tempting to compare COVID-19 with the common cold or flu. It can similarly leave you with a nasty cough, fever, sore throat—the full works of respiratory symptoms. And it’s also become a part of the societal fabric, perhaps something you’ve resigned yourself to catching at least a few times in your life (even if you haven’t already). But let’s not forget: SARS-CoV-2 (the virus responsible for COVID) is still relatively new, and researchers are actively investigating the toll of reinfection on the body. While there are still a lot of unknowns, one thing seems to be increasingly true: Getting COVID again and again is a good deal riskier than repeat hits of its seasonal counterparts.

It turns out, SARS-CoV-2 is more nefarious than these other contagious bugs, and our immune response to it, often larger and longer-lasting. COVID has a better ability to camouflage itself in the body, “and it has the keys to the kingdom in the sense that it can unlock any cell and get in,” says Esther Melamed, PhD, an assistant professor in the department of neurology at Dell Medical School, University of Texas Austin, and the research director of the Post-COVID-19 program at UT Health Austin. That’s because SARS-CoV-2 binds to ACE2 receptors, which exist in cells all over your body, from your heart to your gut to your brain. (By contrast, cold and flu viruses replicate mostly in your respiratory tract.)

It only follows that a bigger threat can trigger an outsize immune response. In some people, the body’s reaction to COVID can turn into a “cytokine storm,” Dr. Melamed tells SELF, which is characterized by an excessive release of inflammatory proteins that can wreak havoc on multiple organ systems—not a common scenario for your garden-variety cold or flu. But even a “mild” case of COVID can throw your immune system into a tizzy as it works to quickly shore up your defenses. And each reinfection is a fresh opportunity for the virus to win the battle.

While you develop some immunity after a COVID infection, it doesn’t just grow with each additional hit. You might be thinking, “Aren’t I more protected against COVID and less likely to have a serious case after having been infected?” Part of that is true, to an extent. In the first couple years after COVID burst onto the scene, reinfections were generally (though not always) milder than a person’s initial bout of the virus. “The way we understand classic immunology is that your body will say to a virus [it’s seen before], ‘Oh, I know how to deal with you, and I’m now going to deal with you in a better way the second time around,’” says Ziyad Al-Aly, PhD, a clinical epidemiologist at Washington University in St. Louis School of Medicine and the chief of research and development at the Veterans Affairs St. Louis Health Care System.

But any encounter with COVID can also cause your immune system to “go awry or develop some form of dysfunction,” Dr. Al-Aly tells SELF. Specifically, “immune imprinting” can happen, where, upon a second (or third or fourth) exposure to the virus, your immune cells launch the same response as they did for the initial infection, in turn blocking or limiting the development of new antibodies necessary to fight off the current variant that’s stirring up trouble. So, “when you get hit an [additional] time, your immune system may not behave classically,” Dr. Al-Aly says, and could struggle with mounting a good defense.

Pair that dip in immune efficiency with the fact that your antibody levels also wane with time post-infection, and it’s easy to see how another hit can rock your body in a new way. Indeed, the more time that passes after any given COVID infection, the less of a “competitive advantage” you’ll have against any future one, Richard Moffitt, PhD, an associate professor at Emory University, in Atlanta, tells SELF. His research found that, while people who got sick initially during the delta phase were less likely to get reinfected during the first omicron wave (as compared to folks who were infected in a prior period), that benefit leveled off with following omicron variants.

There’s also the fact that no matter how your immune system has responded to a prior strain (or strains!) of the virus, it could react differently to a new mutation. “We tend to think of COVID as one homogeneous thing, but it’s really not,” Dr. Al-Aly says. So even if your body successfully thwarted one of these intruders in the past, there’s no guarantee it’ll do the same for another, now or in the future, he says.

Getting COVID again and again is especially risky if it previously made you very ill. Dr. Moffitt’s study above also found that the “severity of your first infection is very predictive of the severity of a reinfection,” he says. Meaning, you’re more likely to have a severe case of COVID—for instance, requiring hospitalization or intensive care, such as ventilation—when reinfected if you had a rough go of it the first time around.

It’s possible that some folks are more prone to an off-kilter immune response to the virus, which could then happen consistently with reinfections. The antibodies created in people who’ve had severe cases “may not function as well as those in folks who’ve had mild infections or were able to fight the virus off,” Dr. Melamed says. Though researchers don’t fully understand why, some people’s immune systems are also more likely to overreact to COVID (remember the cytokine storm?), which can cause serious symptoms—like fluid in the lungs and shortness of breath—whenever they’re infected.

Being over the age of 65, having a chronic illness or other medical condition, and lacking access to health care have all been shown to spike your risk of serious outcomes with a COVID infection, whether it’s your first or fifth fight with the virus.

But you’re not home free if you’ve only had, say, a brief fever or cough with COVID in the past; Dr. Moffitt points out that a small subset of people in his research who had minor reactions with their initial infection went on to be hospitalized with a repeat hit. The probability of that might be lower, but it’s still a possibility, he says.

Even if you’ve only had “mild” cases, each reinfection strains your body, upping your chances of developing long COVID. A 2022 study led by Dr. Al-Aly found that COVID reinfections also increase your risk of complications across the board, regardless of whether you recovered just fine in the past or got vaccinated. In particular, it showed that reinfection raises the likelihood that you’ll need hospitalization; have heart or lung problems; or experience, among other possible issues, GI, neurological, mental health, or musculoskeletal symptoms. “We use the term ‘cumulative effects,’” Dr. Al-Aly says, “so, multiple hits accrue and then leave the body more vulnerable to all the potential long-term health effects of COVID.”

That doesn’t mean your experience of a second (or third or fourth) infection will necessarily be worse, in and of itself, than what you felt during a prior case. But with each new hit, a fresh batch of the virus seeps into your system, where, even if you have a mild case, it has another chance to trigger any of the longer-term complications above. While the likelihood of getting long COVID (a constellation of symptoms lingering for three months or longer post-infection) is likely greatest after initial infection, “The bottom line is, people are still getting diagnosed with long COVID after reinfection,” Dr. Moffitt says.

Researchers don’t totally know why one person might deal with lasting health effects over another, but it seems that, in some folks, the immune system misfires, generating not only antibodies to attack the virus but also autoantibodies that go after the body’s own healthy cells, Dr. Al-Aly says. This may be one reason why COVID has been linked to the onset of autoimmune conditions like psoriasis and rheumatoid arthritis.

A different hypothesis suggests that pieces of the virus could linger in the body, even after a person has seemingly “recovered” (reminder that SARS-CoV-2 is scarily good at weaseling its way into all sorts of cells). “Maybe the first time, your immune system was able to fully clear it, but the second time, it found a way to hang around,” Dr. Al-Aly posits. And a third theory involves your gut microbiome, the community of microbes in your GI tract, including beneficial bacteria. It’s conceivable that “when we get sick with COVID, these bacteria do, too, and perhaps they recover [on initial infection], but not on the second or third hit,” he says, throwing off your balance of good-to-bad gut bugs (which can impact your health in all sorts of ways).

Another unnerving possibility: The shock to your system triggered by COVID may “wake up” a latent (a.k.a. dormant) virus or two lurking in your body, Dr. Melamed says. We all carry anywhere from eight to 12 of these undetected bugs at a time—things like Epstein-Barr, varicella-zoster (which causes chickenpox and shingles), and herpes simplex. And research suggests their reactivation could be a contributing factor in long COVID. Separately, the systemic inflammation often created by COVID may spark the onset of high blood pressure and increased clotting (which can up your risk of stroke and pulmonary embolism), as well as type 2 diabetes, Dr. Melamed says.

There’s no guarantee that any given COVID infection snowballs into something debilitating, but each hit is like another round of Russian roulette, Dr. Al-Aly says. From a sheer numbers standpoint, the more times you play a game with the possibility of a negative outcome, the greater your chances are of that bad result occurring. And because every COVID case has at least some potential to leave you very ill or dealing with a host of persistent symptoms, why take the risk any more times than you need to?

Bottom line: You should do your best to avoid COVID reinfection and bolster your defenses against the virus. At this stage of the pandemic’s progression, it’s not realistic to suggest you can avoid any exposure to the virus, given that societal protections against its spread have been rolled back. But what you should do is take some common-sense precautions, which can help you avoid any contagious respiratory virus. (A cold or the flu may not pose as many potential health risks as COVID, but being sick is still not fun!)

It’s a good idea to wear a mask when you’re in a crowded environment (especially indoors), choose well-ventilated or outdoor spaces for group hangouts, and test for COVID if you have cold or flu-like symptoms, Dr. Al-Aly says. If you do get infected, talk to your doctor about whether your personal risk of a severe case is enough to qualify for a Paxlovid prescription (which you need to take within the first five days of symptoms for it to be effective).

The other important thing you should do is get the updated COVID vaccine (the 2024-2025 formula was recently approved and released). Unlike getting reinfected, the vaccine triggers “a very targeted immune response…because it’s [made with] a specific tiny part of the virus,” Dr. Melamed says. Meaning, you get the immune benefit of a little exposure without the potential of your whole system going haywire. Getting the current shot also ensures you restore any protection that has waned since you received a prior jab and that you have an effective shield against the dominant circulating strains. Plus, research shows that being vaccinated doesn’t just lower your chances of catching the virus; it also reduces your risk of having a severe case or winding up with long COVID if you do get it.

So, too, can the deceivingly simple act of keeping up with healthy habits—like exercising regularly, eating nutritious foods, and clocking quality sleep. Maintaining this kind of lifestyle can help you stave off other health issues that could increase your risk of harm from COVID, Harlan Krumholz, PhD, a cardiologist at Yale University and founder of the Yale Center for Outcomes Research and Evaluation (CORE), tells SELF. “Given that we will be repetitively exposed to the virus, the best investments we can make are in our baseline health,” he says.

Doing any (or all!) of the above is a big act of compassion for yourself, the people you love, and your greater community. “For the average person, it’s like, ‘Oh, COVID is gone,’ but they’re just not seeing the impact,” Dr. Al-Aly says, noting the invisibility of long COVID symptoms like disorienting brain fog and crushing fatigue. The truth is, in plenty of people, just one more infection could be the difference between living their best life and facing a devastating chronic condition.

[cleo-fox]

The “When Are You Updating?” Ask

I should say up front that this isn’t in response to anything I received. This topic came up in a Discord server that I’m in and another friend of mine got a similar ask shortly after.

I’ve alluded to the fact that this Tumblr isn’t my first account and that I’ve written for other fandoms previously. What I haven’t talked about is why I’m taking an extended hiatus from that fandom or why the majority of my work in this one has been one shots.

Historically, I’ve been a long fic writer. On my other pen name, I posted a long fic that had a fairly decent following in that particular corner of fandom. I’m a slow writer under normal circumstances but when the pandemic hit, I started having more trouble writing and my updates slowed a lot. I worked in a public facing role and the stress I was experiencing was unlike anything I’d ever dealt with before. About a year into the pandemic, I got pregnant.

To sum it up: I was pregnant, which put me at a higher risk for developing complications from Covid. I was working in a public facing role, which increased my risk of catching Covid and had the added factor of people being aggressive about not complying with mask mandates. Because of my pregnancy, I was not able to take critical medications, which then negatively affected my focus and energy levels. I was dealing with other chronic illnesses that were exacerbated or changed by pregnancy, as well as the physical symptoms of pregnancy itself. Then there was also the delivery, which had complications, as well as adjusting to life with a newborn and then going back to work.

I was upfront about all of this. I said that my fics weren’t abandoned, but that I didn’t know when the next update would be because I was dealing with a lot.

I still got asks asking why hadn’t I updated yet.

I knew that these asks came from a good, well-intentioned place. I loved that people were so excited about my writing that they wanted to read more. I loved that they cared so deeply about my characters. I didn’t want to sound ungrateful for their enthusiasm or their support, nor did I want to initiate a pile on with a snarky reply or make someone feel bad for asking a genuine question. I often struggled with how to word my replies, to find a way to be grateful for their enthusiasm while also reiterating that I had a lot on my plate and that I would write more someday, but that I didn’t know when someday was.

It didn’t seem to matter, though. No matter how many times I said the same thing, the asks still kept coming. The worst ones were the ones that scolded me for taking so long because the sender didn’t know how long they would be in this fandom or the ones that included the phrase “I know you had a baby but…” Those hurt. Those made me feel like people saw me as a content creation machine and not like a person.

Eventually, this started to negatively impact my desire to interact with that community, as well as my desire to write that story. When you log in and you know that there’s a good chance your inbox is going to have one of those notes, it’s hard to feel enthusiastic about logging in at all.

So I decided that I needed to take a break. I still check that pen name every so often and I still intend to finish those other fics, but I need some time. This pen name was created out of a desire to give myself the space to write on my own terms, and I’m grateful for all the people here who have let me do that.

And honestly? If you want a writer to update, it is far, far more effective to talk about what you love about their fic. There are so many times when I’ve been pulled out of a writing slump by a comment or reblog where someone talked about what they enjoyed about my fic. That kind of engagement is more motivating than a request for an update could ever be.

There’s that one post going around with the compilation of crazy AO3 author’s notes—the ones that are like “sorry this chapter is a day late, I spent the night in federal prison lmao.” It’s a great post and I love that there are people like that. I admire people who can create art despite their circumstances. But for every writer like that, there’s someone like me who’s going through some shit and doesn’t have the time or energy to write the same way that she does when things are going okay. I wish people would remember that.

TLDR: be kind.

[indigochromatic]

Do you or did you have maladaptive daydreaming prior to DID? If you still have it, how does it affect your DID today? (Thank you if you answer this!)

Great question--best answer I've got is...kinda? So, we think of maladaptive daydreaming as specifically the disordered version of immersive daydreaming (which is how the term was initially coined, fwiw, here's a quick link to an interview about it). Where it's not just about compelling and immersive daydreams (that maybe sometimes you choose to pursue instead of other hobbies), but specifically when they're causing you distress or dysfunction in your daily life, when you feel "stuck" in them or like you can't function without them, etc.

Under that definition, no, we (well, L) didn't have maladaptive daydreaming prior to system stuff starting up for us in 2020. Immersive daydreaming, arguably yes, but it was more like...having a mental "wall of library books" that you could always grab something from if you were bored in a train ride or something, or use to plot out a novel idea. After the beginning of 2020, though, when system stuff and also our more severe other dissociative symptoms plus physical health shit (long COVID sucks) started happening, yeah, it'd be reasonable to say we have maladaptive daydreaming--but, crucially, we kinda actually don't even agree with the label (for ourselves), because for us, the daydreaming feels directly related to...how we process most of our emotional issues and trauma backlog stuff? Yeah, sometimes the daydreaming 'gets in the way' of our daily life, but less in the sense of "maladaptive behavioral addiction" and more in the sense that, yeah, having a cast on your broken leg sure does get in the way of normal physical activity...because your leg's broken, and the cast is protecting it and helping it heal. A lot of our daydream narratives and headspace interactions fall into roughly two categories: "rest/recovery/in-system quality time", which is basically exactly what it says on the tin, (lots of helping each other emotionally regulate and recover from both daily struggles and long-term burnout), and "emotionally-charged, important-feeling narratives that usually end up (in retrospect) to have a lot of thematic relevance to some kind of Shit We're Working Through", which serve as a way to identify some of those issues and internalized narratives we wouldn't have otherwise recognized, and also to...process them, essentially by kinda "living through" the internal narrative about them? It's intense, but it's also practically the single most therapeutic thing we've come across so far. Hope that answers your question, Anon, lmk if you're curious about something I didn't cover! -S

[moodr1ng]

i feel very uncomfortable tbh w how often my therapist asks if any of my alters have been active recently and, when i usually say no, asks why i think that is (i have explained it multiple times atp). as i explained, frequent alter activity and near-constant coconsciousness was a thing in my system for only a period of around 2016 to 2020. early on that was the years where i was in long term hospitalization and was very mentally unwell, and 2016-2017 was a year where my system had multiple splits in a very short period due to extra trauma related to my dad. after that i suddenly went from a year and a half of 24/7 hospitalization to going to a very demanding and elitist art school while not having any mental health care whatsoever for 2 years. and soon after that i moved out on my own (and experienced some difficulties there as well as a couple more traumatizing experiences), and after that was the start of covid, and a very emotionally difficult breakup with our partner system at the time. and even at THIS point, the only alters who were very active all the time were the alters who had relationships with that other system, rez and caravage, and an issue within the relationship was that caravage struggled to remain in front and would often go inactive/into periods of dormancy despite his clear desire to be more present. like, those two were only still there so much bc they were fronting on purpose to maintain their relationships and often relied on me to use positive triggers to get them in front. after those breakups which they both took quite hard they kinda both stopped showing up, which i believe would have likely happened sooner if it hadnt been for their relationships motivating them to keep fronting.

like.. ive been conscious of my did symptoms since i was 13 and likely exhibited them from a much earlier age. but even if you only take the years in which i was conscious of them - in 14 years of being able to keep track of did symptoms, there was only a period of like, 4 years were alters were constantly around, and towards the end they were struggling to keep doing that.

so its quite frustrating that my therapist appears so confused and curious about this, bc this is like.. as far as i can tell the norm for me? this high activity of alters was caused by specific factors in my life and it just so happened that i started therapy w this doctor during the tail end of that. but it seems like he just wont stop wondering about it and its making me insecure that hes considering walking back my diagnosis bc alters dont present much anymore even tho thats fucking normallll they show up when theyre needed not all the time!!

[queenofzan]

had a wild experience with my doctor visit yesterday

So my GP is a man I actually followed from the last clinic he was at, where I had been getting care for like. Nine years. I still go there for like, gynecology, because there is a nurse/midwife there whom I would die for, but I only have to see her like every five years or whatever. I had in fact only seen Dr. Brown twice before I followed him to the other clinic lmao, but both of those experiences were like. Honestly excellent. I think he was the first doctor I ever saw who spontaneously asked for my pronouns before I was out or started T, like. This was part of his introduction to a new patient was giving his name and pronouns and then asking mine, bc the paperwork didn't. Wild shit.

He was also the doctor I saw when it had been five weeks and I still had COVID symptoms, and he was very nice and wrote a letter that I should not have needed for my shitty ableist program.

Like, I've seen several other doctors at that clinic, but never really liked any of them that much? I didn't really click with Mom's doctor, and I was not about to start seeing the doctor who doesn't listen to her unless I'm in the room, even if she does seem to like me.

Anyway, like, this is a doctor I really like, for many reasons. The only reason I initially didn't see him again after the first time was because I was like, a male doctor? Who sees men on purpose? But like. Gaining more weight and getting more visibly trans it's like. Yes I would actually like the large man who did not bring up my weight or make weird remarks about my gender, and somehow immediately diagnosed my migraines as allergies and was correct, thank you.

But this visit on Thursday, there was a student doctor with him, and she was the one to do the first part of my visit, and like. Jesus H Christ it's night and day with these people. She didn't ask very many questions OR listen to my whole explanation, regurgitated textbook information that I KNOW was textbook information because I did research on my symptoms and the treatments for it before I even made the appointment, and was just like. Recommending lifestyle interventions like eating around acidic foods. Which I've been doing...for ten years....Not helpful. But she was still going to give me the meds I figured I needed, so like, I was going to just zone out and deal with it.

At the end Dr. Brown stepped in again and was like, hey here's some information (confirming my suspicions) that was, IMO, clearly drawn from actually listening to me, and also, here's a fun fact about testosterone and the medication we're giving you, the t has a protective effect against the negative side effects! So hopefully you will have an even better outcome than most people.

And like I said, I've seen him like. Three times. Only once did we go over my family history, and I don't think Mom's probable GERD was included then. But I said I'd been dealing with heartburn for a while, and Dr. Brown was like, "How long did you say you'd been dealing with this?" (I didn't say specifically; she didn't ask) and then was like, yeah, you're probably going to end up on this medication long-term, just shoot me a message via mychart and we can schedule an endoscopy so we can keep an eye on any potential side effects moving forward, no need to come back in, just keep taking them.

This was like the five minutes at the end of the visit! And it demonstrated so much better listening and understanding of his patient!

Anyway. Nothing like having a "typical" medical experience to make you appreciate how good your doctor that you specifically followed to a new practice is.

[ashleywool]

This is what I mean when I say "nothing is weird in New York."

That said, the phrases "boa constrictor" and "Upper West Side apartment" should not ever exist together in the same sentence.

On an unrelated note, I had a lot of bloodwork done recently. My blood pressure has been hovering around 90/60 for most of my adult life, and now it's in the hypertension zone, my triglycerides and fasting blood glucose are way higher than it makes sense for a non-diabetic who's never been overweight, and my cortisol levels are astronomical in ways that can't just be chalked up to being autistic or living in a world where boa constrictors randomly show up in NYC kitchen sinks.

Soooo, based on those things and a lot of other things, I think I have Cushing's disease and I think the culprit is a pituitary tumor.

Just feel like I should put that in writing somewhere. If I'm wrong, I'm sure there will be education in there worthy of sharing, and if I'm right, then I'll be gloating about it for the rest of my life.

Because it will be the second time in the last two years I've successfully diagnosed myself with something obscure and uncommon that doctors would later confirm to be accurate.

The first time was when I was experiencing cytokine storms after recovering from COVID in late 2022--my vitals were back to normal, but every time I stopped taking prednisone, my nervous system was gaslighting me into feeling like I still had symptoms. That usually only happens with cases far more severe than mine (mine was awful, but not hospitalization-awful, thank you Pfizer), but guess which population has a tendency towards abnormal immune responses? I felt like a conspiracy theorist when I suggested this to my PCP but she was like "that totally makes sense, try one more round of prednisone, that should do it," and IT DID.

Ever since then, if I'm looking up symptoms or conditions, I tag "and autism" onto the search terms. Which kinda sucks sometimes. Because research has suggested there IS a correlation between autism and pituitary abnormalities too, and I am interested in digging deeper into it...

But even in non-clinical sources, people always write these things as if they never think autistic people are actually going to read them. It's always "if you're a parent or caregiver and you observe this," and never "if you're an autistic person and you experience this." It's got the same energy as the research I've done about food intolerances in cats--Tex has had some gastrointestinal issues recently, but he can't TELL me what he's feeling or speculate about the source of his symptoms or do research on his own. I think the world is starting to understand that autistic people are not cats, but sometimes I wish the healthcare sector would catch up faster.

Anyway. Uh.

WHO IS KEEPING A FREAKING BOA CONSTRICTOR ON THE ISLAND OF MANHATTAN I HAVE SO MANY QUESTIONS AND ALL OF THEM ARE "WHY"

[savage-rhi]

Hi hun, I haven't seen you around much and I know things have been super rough lately but I hope you're doing ok ✨

@vodkafolie Hey, hon 💙 Lot's been happening over here in my neck of the woods (literally, lmao). I'm gonna info dump.

I've been doing odd jobs to keep me afloat.

I got selected for another mental health program. The person running it is a well-known psychologist. I applied for this back in late December. Didn't think I'd get in since there were 1800+ candidates going for it, and I'm 1 out of 32 that made the cut. If the sample group of clients I get for the next 8 weeks goes smooth, I'll have a full-time remote job by Summer. I'm not putting my eggs all in one basket, though. I'm still looking for regular work.

The business proposal with the mental health app picked back up. We are supposed to meet sometime next week to discuss further if we're gonna move forward and what the partnership might look like.

I'm speed running through one of my graduate classes and going at a snails pace in the other. The technical jargon is burning me out, but my grades are good.

My college advisor and profs want me to attend summer term for the program, but alas *opens wallet and watches moth fly out* I've been going back and forth with them on how unless they're gonna cover for me, I can't do it until I have stable employment.

I'm meeting a long covid specialist. My secondary PCP discovered I may have undiagnosed POTS, and this fungal blood infection I had in my body last Summer (late August, early September) might be making a comeback. Some symptoms have returned. I'm not surprised. That's how I got it in the first place last year cause of immunity issues post-covid. I had to go on a strict diet for almost 3 months, take some nasty as shit medication, and I lost over 50 pounds. Hindsight, the weight loss was good for me, but if I have to do that again I'm gonna be bones by the end of it this time around.

With all the parasites, fungus's and other nasty shit I've caught and lived through, I'm either gonna be super human immune to everything and my blood will be the universal cure for all horrible shit, or one day I'm gonna be patient zero for something god awful. I've made peace with either option 😂

I got a vendor spot at a convention that's happening in less than a week. I've been prepping for that and hoping I make some money.

I'm taking a break on some of my long fics and writing requests, bbbuuuuttttttt...I also had a batshit crazy idea for a Luis Serra fic, and I'm balls deep invested. It's the only thing keeping me from a full writers block right now.

It's been...a lot, but oddly enough I'm happier than I was. I'm worn out, tired, and still stressed about money, but I'm not depressed like I was. Things are getting better in some ways. I'm trying to self-care the best I can, and reign in the ambition so my body has a chance to recoup.

Thanks for coming to my TedTalk 💙🫂😂 I hope you've been doing well hon! I've been re-reading some of your work as of late too. It's been fun for me!

[ukrfeminism]

Women and children were among the worst affected by the Covid pandemic and many youngsters saw their childhood “blighted”, an inquiry has heard.

On day two of the Scottish Covid Inquiry on Wednesday, organisations including Long Covid Kids Scotland and Scottish Women’s Rights Organisations – an umbrella term for a number of bodies – gave opening statements to chairman Lord Brailsford.

Andrew Webster KC, representing Long Covid Kids Scotland, told the panel of the hardships faced by children with long Covid.

He said: “The children of Scotland should be able to thrive and look forward to a positive future.

“Long Covid the long-term illness caused by Covid-19 has blighted that prospect for too many.

“For too many, long Covid presents a seemingly insurmountable obstacle to an engaged, fulfilling and productive life.

“The inquiry is embarked upon its listening project, let’s be heard.

“In an adult world, the voice of children is too often ignored, disregarded or belittled.

“I ask all of us in this room here today to pause and think back – did we hear the voice of children in the decision making on masking, school mitigation, examinations or immunisation?

“Or is our recollection that children were simply told how it was going to be?

“For reasons I find unfathomable, we have been precluded by the inquiry from allowing the voice of a child to be heard in these opening statements.”

Mr Webster then read a statement from an anonymous child suffering from long Covid symptoms.

Quoting the child, he said: “Many months ago, we all became ill with coronavirus, and very soon we became very ill, some of us became seriously ill and had to stay in hospital.

“Our symptoms looked a bit different to the ones that grown-ups seemed to get and our parents didn’t always know what was wrong with us straight away.

“Coronavirus doesn’t only affect children like you, many of our parents got it too, so we had to stay at home and try to look after each other, but many of us got worse and needed extra help from doctors.

“Our parents were often scared. It seems like a long time ago that we felt well, and could do some of the fun things we like to do.

“We’re still at home and we’re still unwell. Many of us are still in bed a lot of the time. It can be boring, annoying, frustrating and tiring and we miss our friends. We miss feeling well.

“Our parents are working together to get us some help and that’s why we’re telling you our story.

“We want to feel better again, and when we asked when we will feel better, nobody can tell us when that might be. It’s making us sad.”

He concluded by asking if the long-term effects of long Covid in children are considered by the Scottish Government.

Deirdre Domingo, of Scottish Women’s Rights Organisations, told the inquiry that the idea that the pandemic affected everyone equally should be “firmly dispelled”.

She said women, particularly from black and minority ethnicities, were far more affected when compared to the wider population.

Ms Domingo said a key area of concern was the rise in domestic violence, sexual abuse and rape.

She said stay at home measures “overlooked that for many people, home was not the safest place to be”.

She added: “One of the consequences of the imposition of lockdown and isolation rules was a rise in domestic abuse and violence.

“As explained by Scottish Women’s Aid in their written submissions to the Equalities and Human Rights Committee of Scottish Parliament, anxiety about coronavirus, frustrations related to quarantine, economic uncertainty due to a loss of jobs, harmful consumption of alcohol or other stresses, do not cause domestic abuse.

“Domestic abuse is a pattern of behaviour that instils fear and is used by abusers to maintain control.

“Measures taken to address the pandemic including lockdowns, early release of prisoners, closure of schools, working from home, reduction in the work of courts, and closure of some services and transition of others to remote provision provide additional tools for abusers to exercise that control and they remove the opportunities for women to seek help.”

She added that women have been “hit the hardest” and said there has been a “recognised rollback on women’s equality and rights” since the pandemic.

Claire Mitchell KC, representing Scottish Covid Bereaved, told the inquiry that the hearing presents an opportunity for “real change and accountability”.

The inquiry continues.

[miya2006]

Weird family, but it works. And I love them!

The heat was bad, it felt as if they were filming on the sun and the stage lights definitely weren't helping the case. Boyd has been feeling ill the past couple of days but hasn't had any symptoms. Not even towards Covid, he is just sick and tired. 

The days on set felt longer and longer, and the weird glances from his co-workers grew by the hour. It wasn’t like Boyd to stumble over his lines or his own feet. He could see, compared to when he was in The sandman. He couldn’t see with the glasses of the Corinthian but now he can. 

People have asked him if everything is okay, but he always says yes. He doesn't need anyone to worry, he doesn’t want anyone to worry. Worry means that people would actually care and look after him. 

He doesn’t want to waste anyone’s time or energy. He is 41 years old, he should be able to take care of himself right?

Well turns out he can’t, not until it becomes painfully aware just how sick he is. It was a normal day at set and Boyd still felt as bad as before. He was dizzy, nauseous and felt like his entire body was just some lump of exhaustion. He tried to keep everything under wraps but it didn’t last long. Timothy must have sensed something was wrong so he had cornered Boyd in his trailer, his worry over Boyd becoming too much.

He had noticed what the others probably hadn’t. He has seen the slight shiver Boyd had, and it hadn’t gone away even after Boyd got some warm clothes to wear. Timothy likes Boyd, he is a great actor and Timothy is over the moon that they got Boyd to play Clement.

He walked into Boyd’s trailer without warning, more chance of Boyd not being able to hide it again. Timothy has tried a couple of times to talk to Boyd but everytime he always denies anything is wrong and just smiles at him and tells him not to worry. This time he won’t be able to.

He walked in and noticed Boyd on the couch, his head in his hands and a bucket by his side. He could see a slight shake in his body as if he was cold. Boyd jumped when the door suddenly closed with a bang, looking up at Timothy with a confused look.

“You okay, Boydo?” He asked, he knew the answer but he had decided to give Boyd one chance before he put his foot down and told Boyd to just let them in a bit or he might get worse in terms of sickness and his general mental health. 

Timothy always sees mental health as something important to talk about, and he didn’t need to spend a long time with Boyd to see that there was something hiding between the surface. Something many wouldn’t see unless they had experienced bad mental health themselves. And he had a suspicion that Boyd had pushed himself too hard and his body became sick from the lack of rest.

“Not really..” Timothy walked over and felt Boyd’s forehead, noticing the small amount of throw up in the bucket as well.

“You’re burning up, Kiddo.” He said as he ran his fingers through Boyd’s hair. Making a last minute decision he texted Vivian and asked if she could bring his backpack from his trailer.

“Alright, so here’s what we are going to do. You sit here and relax for a bit while I pick up some of your stuff and then we will meet up with Vivian and go home. You will be joining me and Vivian at our place, my wife and other kids are not here right now so the house will be quiet and calm.” He said, Boyd understood by the stern voice that he didn’t really have much room to protest. Not that he would anyways, he can’t really help but look at  Timothy as a brother figure but in times like these where he takes care of Boyd, he goes from brother to father. 

“Ok” Came the small voice from the couch. Seeing and hearing how bad Boyd was feeling he hurried with picking up some stuff from the little wardrobe as well as the book he had seen Boyd reading earlier this week. As well as some toiletries like his toothbrush if he felt strong enough at some point to brush his teeth. 

Once finished he walked over to Boyd and put his arm around his waist in case he wasn’t steady enough to stand on his own. Together they slowly walked outside the trailer and met with Vivian. She took one single look at Boyd before she fondly but concerned shook her head a bit before flanking him between her and her father as they walked to the car. 

Timothy got in the front seat, though he did so after a small argument over who was going to sit in the back with Boyd. Neither wanting him to sit alone in the back but neither of them wanting to leave his side if anything were to happen.

Vivian didn’t mind, she had talked to her father about her worries over Boyd in the last couple of days. Even if Timothy hadn’t gone into his trailer, she would find a way to get Boyd with them anyways. She likes Boyd, he doesn’t act like she only got the part because of her dad. He is like her brother, he teases her and messes up her hair and makes her laugh when there is nothing for her to do on set so she won’t get bored.

They lived about a 20 minute drive away from the set, and Vivian could feel her worry build more and more when she saw how the traffic was getting heavy. Lucky for them it seems the traffic came behind them rather in front of them.

Boyd leaned his head on Vivian’s shoulder, too tired to hold his head up. Making a rash decision she took out Boyd’s seatbelt and moved him so he could lay down a bit. With his head in her lap, she started to run her hands through his hair, hoping it would bring him some comfort. 

Despite the pain in his head, Boyd opened his eyes slightly and smiled up at her. No word said, just an understanding look meeting a thankful one. Timothy smiled to himself when he looked in the rearview mirror and noticed what Vivian had decided.

With the feeling of her fingers running through his hair, it didn’t take Boyd long before he fell asleep. And not long before they arrived at their house either. Neither wanted to wake Boyd, he looked peaceful for once. The past couple of weeks he has seemed bothered by something as well as restless. Never seeming to be able to keep still in one place. 

A lot of people on set were worried, all of them could see something wasn’t right. But no one dared to confront him about it, unsure of how he would react. Timothy couldn’t help but think about how far it could have gone if he hadn’t lost his patience. 

He is undoubtedly happy he lost his patience when he did. He does not for the life of him want to think about what would have happened if he hadn’t. How sick could Boyd have gotten? Would he be able to get home safe? Or would he be able to get home at all?

Shaking his head, he stood up and opened the door on the other side of Vivian. Leaning over to pick Boyd up bridal style and making sure he was able to rest his head in Timothy’s neck rather than leaning it backwards with no support.

Vivian ran ahead to open the door downstairs before continuing into the guest bedroom closest to them and found some blankets before laying them out on the couch.

Timothy placed Boyd down while Vivian went to get the bags from the car. 

He looked down at Boyd, suddenly being hit with what they had missed for days. The dark circles under his eyes, the almost constant frown when he thought people weren’t looking. He ran his hand through Boyd’s slightly sweaty hair when it fell down in his face. 

Timothy is fully aware of what Boyd look at him. Like he is a family member, a brother or sometimes - like now- a father. And Timothy finds that he does not mind. Not one bit. 

Vivian walked up to her room after a little while of them sitting in silence once she was back. Timothy didn’t leave, he didn’t want Boyd to wake up alone in a place he hadn’t even been in before.

The outside grew darker and he grew hungry. Texting Vivian to come down to keep an eye on Boyd, when she had sat down he nodded to himself and went ahead with some dinner. Figuring Boyd probably wouldn’t feel up to much he made some basic pasta with vegetables. A standard favorite and expectation whenever someone in the house got sick.

When he walked back out with the food he couldn’t help but smile. Boyd has woken up and is hugging Vivian while she is rubbing his back and hugging back just as tight as he does.

He placed the food down and gave the kids each their bowl. Before turning on the tv on low volume. Once they had eaten, he checked Boyd’s forehead again. Luckily almost no fever, his sweating had gone away yet the shaking was still there. 

Together they moved Boyd up into the room closest to the master bedroom so Timothy could keep an eye on him in case something happens. 

And it did come in handy, in the middle of the night Timothy sat upright in bed in a matter of seconds. His brain took a second to figure out what was going on, once he understood he launched himself out of bed and ran into the room Boyd was occupying, Vivian right behind him. 

The screaming died down and crying filled the room, and he pulled a bit on Boyd so he was leaning into his chest and holding him close he gently rocked him.

“It’s okay, let it out. It’s okay, darling.” He whispered into the darkness, his eyes scanning the room trying to find Vivian. Almost as if she had read his thoughts she had stood up; 

“I’m going downstairs to get him some water. I’ll come into your room with it.” She said before taking her leave. Slowly Boyd made a clear movement and a little nudge at Timothy. 

Together they stood up slowly, Boyd taking some shaky steps as they walked across the hall. Getting under the covers, Boyd hid his face in Timothy’s chest. Vivian came in as well and climbed in on the other side of Boyd leaning her head on his arm.

Silence overtook the room as he drank a bit of the water. Timothy sent him a small comforting look, not pushing but concerned about what just happened in the room not even 5 meters away from where they are now. 

“Do you want to talk about it?” Timothy asked, his mind jumping from idea to idea over what it could be. 

“It was about David..” Just that sentence alone made Timothy’s heart break. He knew how close they were, he has listened to several stories about him and he has seen how many times he has worked with Boyd. And he has always had a suspicion that David views Boyd the same way he does. 

Vivan must have felt somewhat the same, as she cuddled closer before kissing Boyd on the forehead. 

“I’ll leave you two for the night. "Sleep well.” She said, sending a glance over to Timothy. Wanting to check that he would be alright, giving her a nod, she smiled and took her leave for the night.  

Timothy didn’t know what to say, or if he even knew what the right thing to say is. So he pulled Boyd closer and whispered;

“It’s okay. You lost someone very dear to you. It’s normal even though it has been many years since. You’re still human, Boyd. And if you have another nightmare tonight, I’ll be here. So get comfortable because you wont leave this room and be on your own after this.” Timothy counted it as a victory when Boyd smiled. 

“I don’t feel that sick anymore. No need to throw up, just a small headache.” 

“That’s good, I think you slept off most of it and the food certainly helped. This role of yours for the new project seems to take more of a toll on you than you realize.” He said, but they both knew that a conversation like that would be happening soon enough.

“Yeah..” Was all Boyd said before silence overtook yet again. Timothy kept up the movement of running his fingers through Boyd’s hair and it didn’t take long before he could feel Boyd’s breathing slowing down before it evened out and his body relaxed. 

TImothy pulled him closer before succumbing to the sleepiness as well.

The rest of the night went without incident, both the resident of the room slept safe and sound as did the one resident a bit further down the hall.

Can be found on AO3 as well: https://archiveofourown.org/works/51200383

[tetsunabouquet]

(I’m already half-way through writing Basic Instict chapter 8, with a bit of luck I’ll post it tonight but I just want to get this off of my chest)

I kind of want to post a rant. Like, ever read an article that seriously pisses you off? I read this one from the New York Post about how a lot of young women are turning their backs against birth control, and it really left a sour taste in my mouth.

It’s one thing to talk about the negative side effects, but its another thing to ignore the positive effects when talking about it. Birth control does so much more then protection and helping against acne, it can also be used to help women who’s menstrual symptoms are re-occuringly worse then average. Like women who are intensly sick during their periods, or become emotionally unstable. 

In my family, emotional unstability is a common issue amongst the women. I nearly committed suicide after Bambi’s mom got shot one time, and that is why I have been described birth control years ago. I am not the first in my family to have been described some form of hormone treatment. My grandma suffered from extreme emotional insability during her meno pauze and even attempted murder once because of it.  Yet, the critical crowd isn’t actually acknowledging that ‘natural’ hormones, aren’t always the right thing for women either and this is very important because negative bias exists. If people frame it like the effects of birth control are, other then acne, bad for women, then less and less people are inclined to take it.  Other then the fact this is influencing young girls their personal choice, chances are, the more birth control becomes exclusive hormone treatment for the women who need it, the likelier the pharmaceutical industry will demand a higher price for these pills.  People like to complain about the government, but the pharmaceutical industry is genuinely just as shady. If Covid didn’t taught the healthy crowd anything, I’d advice you to look into the stories of people with rare conditions who pay thousands for their medication. Not because it’s so god damn expensive to produce, but because the pharmaceutical industry knows these people are desperate, especially if its in the case of parents taking care of their extremely ill kid who’ll die without it. That’s normal bussiness in the pharmaceutical industry, and I genuinely wished that people started talking about improving side effects of medication and negatives about the pharmaceutical industry itself. THAT is helpful to anyone.

Because right now, articles like these only play into one specific trend I’ve noticed over and over again: Science denialism.  The doctor they talked with in that article has written a book about the negative effects of birth control and they advertised it in the article too. Obviously, she wants to sell her book and won’t talk about the negative effects of ‘natural’ hormones because it doesn’t fits her agenda. She’s far from the only one. You can spot proffesionals wanting to sell a book or program, everywhere in places where science denialism is running rampant. For example, the body positivity community on TikTok. The number of studies saying obesity is unhealthy still outnumber all the ones about things like the obesity paradox, and people who’ve investigated studies linked by fat acceptance activists have actually revealed they often twist the few positive studies to begin with. Like one they used, did track if people lost weight over the course of years but the study wasn’t about intentional weight loss and none of the people in the group were actually mentioned to have tried to lose weight.  A lot of these are still their early thirties or younger, and don’t have any health issues YET. This fits the pattern of the girls questioned in this article, but also the conspiracy theories about Covid: Most of these science critical people are below the age of 50 and don’t suffer from long-term health issues so far, with social media giving them an easy time to spread their ideas and criticism.

It’s worrying to me, because other then a chunk of these people could endanger their health or worse, die from their science denialism, it makes the future seem scary. The more science denialism takes over, the more diseases and health issues will rise on top of the rise of babies when our planet is already overcrowded. That one woman in the article stating she is now tracking her cycle instead made me cringe so hard. Did no one at school tell her that such a method doesn’t work? Just how poor is the sex education in the US, considering a lot of these people also still believe in abstinence. How many of you are actually aware science has predicted pandemics are going to be likelier then ever because of how overcrowded the planet is becoming as there are still so many diseases we can catch from the animal kingdom and living closer and closer to wild animals due to the little space on our planet means the chances of contracting one gets higher.  Aids, ebola, Covid, its all just the start, and having more babies because of science denialism is only going to make this likelihood worse then it currently is.  I don’t want to die in the next pandemic because some random girls were too worried about the decrease in their sexual desire. Fuck that shit. 

[covid-safer-hotties]

Living with Long COVID: What it’s Like to be Diagnosed with the Debilitating Disease - Published Sept 3, 2024

By: Nicole Pajer

Even mild cases of COVID-19 are linked to potential long-term repercussions — some of them deadly serious

Chrissy Bernal has caught COVID-19 three times, most recently in ­October 2023. “My symptoms were always pretty mild,” she says. But after her third round of the virus, she ­developed extreme allergies to foods she used to eat all the time: oats, dairy, gluten, sesame seeds and peanuts.

“I literally have some level of anaphylaxis every single day,” she says. In May, Bernal, 46, a public relations professional in Houston, went into anaphylactic shock during a virtual meeting. “I had to inject myself with an Epi while everyone watched in horror on Zoom,” she says.

Natalie Nichols, 53, has been struggling with debilitating asthma and severe food allergies since she first caught COVID more than three years ago. “Last fall, I spent ­two-and-a-half months confined to bed, ­motionless, because moving, including holding a cellphone, made me too short of breath,” she says.

She’s also experienced brain fog, high blood pressure, hyper­glycemia, fatigue and gastrointestinal symptoms. Nichols, the founder of a nonprofit in Nacogdoches, Texas, recently underwent surgery to repair joint damage caused by COVID-induced inflammation.

Lorraine W., of Clarence Center, New York, was looking forward to an active retirement when she was diagnosed with COVID in March 2020. “I’ve never returned to my pre-COVID self,” says Lorraine, 65.

She’s on medication to treat small blood vessel damage to her heart and continues to battle a lingering cough, fatigue and breathlessness, as well as kidney disease. Neurological changes have made her legs unsteady when she walks, requiring her to use balance poles. “None of these conditions were present before COVID,” Lorraine says.

In June, the National Academies of ­Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine released a comprehensive definition of long COVID: “an infection-­associated chronic condition that occurs after COVID-19 infection and is present for at least three months as a continuous, relapsing and remitting, or progressive disease state that affects one or more organ systems.” According to that definition, 18 million Americans have experienced long COVID; currently, more than 1 in 20 of us are living with its symptoms. Researchers have begun to link long-term COVID with another recent phenomenon: our shrinking life expectancy.

The disease we’re forgetting COVID doesn’t seem that scary anymore. More than 98 percent of the U.S. population has some degree of immunity — from vaccination, prior infection or both — and Paxlovid and other medications are available to counteract acute symptoms. For many of us, contracting COVID is like having a bad ­upper respiratory infection.

But “COVID isn’t gone,” says Ryan Hurt, M.D., director of the Long COVID Research and Clinical Program at the Mayo Clinic. The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that COVID still kills at least 1,000 people every week around the globe — but “we only have data from about 40 countries,” says Maria Van Kerkhove, M.D., director of WHO’s Department of Epidemic and Pandemic Preparedness and Prevention.

Older adults and those with preexisting conditions remain among the most at-risk populations for severe, acute COVID. ­People 65 and older accounted for 63 percent of COVID-related hospitalizations and 88 percent of in-hospital deaths during the first seven months of 2023, according to CDC data.

Although the dangers of acute COVID ­infection may have ebbed for many, the ­reality of long COVID is coming into view. Of those who contracted COVID-19 within the past four years, 10 to 20 percent have experienced long COVID.

“With every new case of acute COVID [the initial phase of infection when diagnosed or symptoms first appear], there is risk for developing long COVID,” says Caitlin McAuley, D.O., a family physician at the Keck COVID Recovery Clinic in Los Angeles. She’s had patients who developed long COVID fully recover, get reinfected several times with no lingering effects, then develop another case that leads to a new bout of long COVID. She’s also seen patients who got COVID twice with no lingering effects, and the third time they ended up with prolonged symptoms.

“We still have a number of individuals who had the first wave of COVID who are suffering from long COVID symptoms now, several of them many years out,” says Jerrold Kaplan, M.D., medical director of the COVID Rehabilitation and Recovery Program at Gaylord Specialty Healthcare in New York.

Having escaped long COVID previously doesn’t mean you won’t face it in the future. Indeed, some research has suggested that catching multiple COVID-19 strains puts you at increased risk. A study published in 2022 found that reinfection can increase the risk of complications in major organ systems, and these risks persist at least six months beyond the initial infection.

We don’t yet know the true impact of catching COVID. “Many chronic disease processes, such as cardiovascular disease, dementia and cancer, take years to develop. And whether acute COVID-19 puts people at risk for some of these issues? Time will tell,” Hurt says. What doctors do know is that patients are flocking to their offices complaining of symptoms they never had before COVID.

Is long COVID boosting our death rate? In July, COVID accounted for less than 1 ­percent of all deaths in the U.S. Life expectancy in the U.S. is 77.5 years, reflecting an uptick over the past two years but still lower than prepandemic levels. Many factors contribute to that statistic, but it’s clear that the long-term effects of COVID have played a role.

For example, a study in the journal Nature Medicine found that those hospitalized with COVID had a 29 percent greater risk of death in the three years after their infection.

“But what was also alarming is that in people who weren’t hospitalized, there was also an increased risk of a variety of medical issues,” says John Baratta, founder and codirector of the COVID Recovery Clinic at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Even patients who’d had mild bouts of COVID-19 had an increased risk of respiratory, cardiovascular, metabolic and neurological issues lingering for three years after the initial infection. Long COVID patients had a significantly increased risk of severe health issues affecting the brain, lungs and heart.

We have long known that an acute case of COVID can compromise heart health: Compared with those who didn’t contract COVID, people who caught the virus were 81 percent more likely to die of a cardiovascular complication in the ensuing three weeks, according to a study of 160,000 patients published by the European Society of Cardiology. But the risk lingers long after the symptoms abate. Those who caught the virus were five times more likely to die from cardiovascular disease as long as 18 months after infection, the same study found. Heart disease deaths, which had been on a downward trend for decades, began to spike in 2020 and remained high through 2022, the last year for which data is available.

Stroke, blood clots in the legs leading to clots in the lungs, abnormal heart rhythm (arrhythmia) and inflammation of the heart are among the challenges COVID poses, says Mohanakrishnan Sathyamoorthy, M.D., professor and chair of internal medicine at the Burnett School of Medicine in Fort Worth, Texas. In long COVID, this collection of cardiovascular disruptions can present as postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome (POTS), in which patients’ heart rates increase abnormally when they go from sitting or ­lying down to standing up.

One theory to explain COVID’s long-term effect on the heart — and the body in general — centers on inflammation. “Every time you get infected with COVID, there is a possible increased risk of long COVID, and some cardiac disorders can occur — especially if you have a history of heart disease, including stroke, heart disease and heart attacks,” says Pragna Patel, M.D., senior adviser for long COVID at the CDC. All of these problems can be exacerbated by the virus entering coronary tissue and triggering inflammatory responses that can damage the heart.

Researchers say COVID may also alter the gut microbiome, a primary controller of inflammation, thereby triggering the immune system to rev up the condition. “There is no single agreed-upon mechanism that’s causing the issues,” Baratta says. “An individual may have multiple factors going on in their body, and not everyone will have the same underlying mechanism causing their symptoms,” which increases the complexity of both research and treatment.

One factor that seems to matter: vaccination status. “Several studies show that vaccination can decrease the risk of developing long COVID,” Patel says. Vaccination rates tend to increase with age, with people 75 and older being the most well vaccinated — hence the most well protected from long COVID, Patel theorizes. That may explain why long COVID most commonly affects people ages 35 to 64; the risk seems to drop for those 65-plus, according to CDC data.

From long covid diagnosis to treatment No single test can determine whether a ­person has long COVID. Doctors typically diagnose long COVID by reviewing the ­patient’s health history and current symptoms and trying to rule out other causes. A positive COVID test is not required, as someone could have been infected without knowing it, then experience strange symptoms later, Patel says.

Though there are many ongoing clinical trials on long COVID, there is no umbrella treatment. Primary care physicians address what they can, then call in specialists — such as a cardiologist to handle arrhythmia or a therapist to treat anxiety — for more targeted care. There are long COVID centers around the country where teams of professionals work to help patients through their unique symptoms.

“Because the effects of COVID are so wide throughout the body and mind, there will not be a single treatment for all long COVID issues,” Baratta says. “This is ­going to be treated by many different types of providers and specialists, and it will be treated, often, symptom by symptom.”

Long COVID is recognized as a disability under the Americans with Disabilities Act if it substantially limits one or more major life activities. About 200 symptoms fall ­under that umbrella, Patel says. Here are some of the conditions we’re learning can linger months and, in some cases, years beyond an acute COVID infection. If these or other health changes seem familiar, consult your primary care physician.

1. Extreme fatigue It’s common to experience fatigue when your body is busy fighting off an illness. But some people still struggle with fatigue long after their initial COVID infection. In fact, a lack of energy is the number one symptom reported by long COVID patients. In some, this can be diagnosed as chronic fatigue syndrome, which has been on the rise since the start of the pandemic, Baratta says. He defines this as “a disabling level of fatigue that severely limits daily activities.”

This lingering fatigue may be due to limited production of energy within the muscles caused by damage to the mitochondria from a COVID infection. It can happen to anyone — no matter their level of fitness before infection. “I’ve treated patients who have been triathletes and now may only be able to do 15 or 20 minutes of exercise a day, when they’re used to running and swimming miles at a time,” Kaplan says.

He recommends starting slow and pacing yourself with everything you do around the house, “doing shorter intervals several times throughout the day, rather than trying to do everything at once.” Whether it gets better depends on the individual. Some people’s symptoms clear, and some people may battle them indefinitely.

2. Shortness of breath An analysis of chest CT scans from 144 patients ages 27 to 80 found that more than one-third of people hospitalized with a previous COVID infection had lung scarring and thickening two years after coming into contact with the virus. Even patients with milder cases who walked away without scarring can experience changes in their breathing.

“Some research shows that people ­after COVID start to take shorter, shallower breaths,” Baratta says. “This essentially causes a type of hyperventilation they are doing without even recognizing it, not getting good fresh air deep into the lungs, and [this] can lead to shortness of breath.” ​

Doctors have found success using respiratory exercises to help patients relearn slow, deep breathing.

3. Cognitive changes Difficulty concentrating, spaciness and forgetfulness are just a few of the brain challenges COVID can bring on. These can last for weeks or months or — in some with long COVID — become an everyday occurrence that lasts indefinitely. COVID may linger in a person’s gut long after an infection, altering their microbiome and hindering the body’s ability to produce serotonin, leading to cognitive disturbances.

COVID may also disrupt the blood-brain barrier, allowing chemicals or molecules in the rest of the body to enter the brain blood circulation and potentially lead to brain fog, Baratta says.

One study found that 30 days after testing positive for COVID-19, people were at greater risk for cognitive decline, as well as for mental health disorders including anxiety, depression and stress. Another study found inflammation in the brains of people with mild to moderate COVID-19 was similar to the effects of seven years of aging. Doctors are leading neurologically affected patients through cognitive rehabilitation exercises that show promise in reducing symptoms.

4. Depression and anxiety “Mood-related disorders are one of the top five issues that happen to people after COVID,” Baratta says. There may be a direct relationship between the virus’s effect on the brain and mood issues. A 2021 review of eight studies found that 12 weeks after a COVID infection, 11 to 28 ­percent of people had depression symptoms, and 3 to 12 percent of those individuals reported their symptoms as severe. If you’re feeling more stressed or down after catching COVID, tell your primary care physician, who can refer you to a therapist. Or visit the American Psychological Association’s search tool at locator.apa.org to find a qualified therapist in your area.

5. Sleep disturbances Nearly 40 percent of people with long COVID have reported major changes to their sleep patterns. One study looked at 1,056 COVID-19 patients who did not have a severe enough infection to require hospitalization. Of that population, 76.1 percent reported having insomnia and 22.8 percent severe insomnia. Sleep ­apnea may also appear post-COVID, another way the disease affects the respiratory system.

Talk to your doctor if you’re having sleep issues. A CPAP (continuous positive airway pressure) machine can help with sleep ­apnea. Lifestyle habits that prioritize healthy sleep, such as keeping consistent sleep and wake times and avoiding large meals before bed, may also help. “Post-COVID sleep has literally been a nightmare! We saw a 23 percent increase in sleeping-pill prescription during and post-COVID,” says Michael Breus, a clinical psychologist and clinical sleep specialist in Los Angeles.

6. Digestive upset Diarrhea, constipation, abdominal pain, bloating and gas: These symptoms of irritable bowel syndrome can be by-products of an encounter with COVID. A survey of 729 COVID survivors found that 29 percent experienced at least one new chronic GI symptom six months after their infection. “There is evidence that parts of the COVID virus linger in the GI tract for many months after the initial illness, and it’s been suggested that the presence of these ongoing viral fragments causes dysfunction or problems with the GI tract, leading to mostly symptoms of diarrhea and gastric distress and discomfort,” Baratta says.

Talk to your doctor about any new digestive symptoms or seek help from a gastro­enterologist. You can keep a food journal and note if your condition flares after eating certain foods. Try cutting out those foods, then reintroducing them one by one to see what you react to, Kaplan advises.

7. New or worsened allergies Some people who develop COVID experience allergies they never had before. One study found the risk of ­developing allergic diseases, such as asthma and allergic rhinitis, rose significantly within the first 30 days after a COVID diagnosis. This may be because one’s immune system stays hypervigilant after fighting the virus, McAuley says.

In severe cases, like Chrissy Bernal’s, this can lead to mast cell activation syndrome (MCAS), a disease that can behave like a series of severe allergies: The body’s cells become hypersensitive, causing strong ­reactions to everything from food and pollen to even a hot shower or exercise. Antihistamines and other medications may help, so talk to your doctor if you experience skin itching, a rapid pulse, wheezing or gastro­intestinal symptoms.

8. Pain Some COVID survivors battle chronic pain, everything from aching joints to testicular pain. There is a higher risk of inflammatory arthritis, and women are at higher risk than men. One review of studies estimated that 10 percent of people who contracted COVID experienced musculo­skeletal pain at some point during the first year after infection.

Reducing stress, eating a healthy diet and exercising may ease some post-COVID ­discomfort. Massage therapy, movement therapy, acupuncture and over-the-counter pain medications may also offer relief. Your doctor can refer you to a specialist, such as a rheumatologist, who can help manage symptoms including joint pain.

Fast-moving research means new hope If your symptoms last after a bout of COVID, start with your primary care physician, who can help treat your symptoms or refer you to a specialist. Despite previous dismissals, long COVID is more recognized these days, Patel says, and the CDC is doing its part to educate both patients and providers. And initiatives such as the National Institutes of Health’s Recover program are researching treatment options.

“In a year, things will look different, because research is moving so quickly,” says Sara F. Martin, M.D., medical director of the Adult Post-Acute COVID Clinic at Vanderbilt University Medical Center. The CDC, for instance, is funding a series of clinical trials that the NIH has in the works. This new information, Martin says, may guide doctors, including herself, who treat long COVID ­patients to better ease their symptoms.

[scarsmispronouncedgong]

For me, it was the breathing issues. My first major COVID infection was November 2022, and it was so bad that I couldn't sing.

This was akin to having my kidneys and liver removed without anaesthetic in terms of how badly it hurt. I thought for a couple weeks that I was never going to be able to sing again because the breath control I'd learned over the prior decade and some change, and the singing voice I'd fostered for the prior 3-ish decades, was just gone. You might as well have cut off my feet and fingers for how much I felt like I was missing a part of myself.

My second major infection I'm still not sure was COVID, but I suspect it might have been. Around September of 2023, my spouse had caught something while going out and about shopping for our household, went to the ER for it, was tested and came back negative for COVID (I would later find out that false negatives for COVID were extremely common during that time, which is why I still consider this a probable COVID infection). I wound up having to do the same a couple days later because I couldn't catch my breath at all just from sitting in my chair and existing. Tests came back negative, but they noticed that my oxygen saturation would dip alarmingly low if I fell asleep at all, so they sent me home with oxygen. I'm still on it now, in mid-2024.

So yeah, I'd have to say that the breathing issues were/are the worst symptom to me, and that's including the fact that I can't drink most sodas or stand the smell of hot water for long because the smell and taste is identical to the smell, and accompanying taste in your mouth, of burning carpet.

[funnuraba]

I had to write down all my supplements recently for a specialist appointment, so I figured I'd share my list of stuff that helps with my personal ME/CFS/Long Covid case.

The main things that have pulled me back into the high end of Moderate are LDN and beta blockers. I'm sure I'd still be 99.99% bedbound without that. I'm about 97% bedbound now, but I can do things in bed that aren't lying down with ear plugs and an eye mask, flinching in pain every time an airplane goes by overhead. I can write a little bit! Play video games! Chew my food without my heart rate going up to 140! Beyond the prescription stuff, though, here's the rest:

Lumbrokinase 150mg: Blood thinner to deal with clotting that causes lots of trouble with ME. Some people with ME report actual chunky blood--yeah, just like antivaxxers were reporting as a side effect of The Jab. Some of them may have been telling the truth, except it was the virus itself causing the trouble. They might even be right about the timeline--remember how the main safeguard when we got our first dose was standing 6 feet apart in closed spaces with cloth masks on? I didn't buy that even then; I figured the cloth masks were doing all the work (and they weren't doing much at all, and that's why I'm fucked now 🥲). Yeah, I'm betting plenty of people got infected when they got vaxxed.

Anyway, the problem with Nattokinase is that natto is made from fermented soybeans, and tons of people who get Long Covid also get MCAS, which causes tons of new allergies. And soy is a big one. More than a few people have reported getting permanently worse from Nattokinase.

Cetirizine 20mg: Antihistamine for MCAS. Taken twice a day for a while host of problems including itching.

Famotidine 40mg: For GERD; ME and MCAS are also gut issues and often comorbid with GERD and gastroparesis.

Cromolyn Sodium, who knows how much: Antihistamine taken as a nasal spray when needed, because my sinuses swell up all the time now and prevent me from breathing.

Magnesium Complex 200mg: For interrupted and unrefreshing sleep (huge problem in ME). It also helps with my Restless Leg, which was a huge problem for several years--I think actually predating Covid in my case, but RLS can also be caused by a Covid infection.

These are their own little pack:

Berberine 1200mg: This mimics many effects of Metformin, which is known to help a lot with Covid infections and the after effects. However, it can damage your gut health when taken regularly, so the source I found said to take with the following two, plus taurine, which I'm avoiding because I have enough B6 from other sources (see below).

Vitamin B12 1000mcg: The berberine causes B12 deficiency, and you can't fuck yourself up by taking too much like you can with B6.

Black Seed Oil 1000mg: this is to counteract the cooling effect berberine has on your gut.

Recently I had to ration my berberine a little until a new bottle got here, and I started to wake up dehydrated multiple times in the night, which was a huge problem before I started my supplements. That's now vanished again, so I can definitely say the berberine is worth it for that! (I think it's primarily a POTS symptom.)

PROBIOTIC:

A probiotic. I don't know if the brand matters, but a specialist just recommended Smidge Sensitive and holy Jeezus that stuff is expensive. I've been taking Nature's Bounty.

IMMUNE SYSTEM: These are both to help your body shake new Covid infections less long term damage, and for the existing Long Covid. There's some major, uh, let's say friction in the community about whether "viral persistence" is the root of the issue or not, and I don't know what's going on there and am unaffiliated, please do not kill me, but it's definitely best to be taking these before you discover you're infected! I assume they could also help the body fight a reactivated EBV, which is supposedly the cause of many ME cases?

Quercetin 1000mg

Zinc 50mg: A lower dose is recommended, but I already bought a big ol' bottle; can cause mild bruising at this level.

Vitamin C 1000mg

Grape Seed Extract 200mg: My source on this is a doctor from the Long Covid community on Twitter so idk if it does anything, but it doesn't seem to be hurting. It's supposed to have good antiviral properties. You have to make sure you get grape seed extract, not just grape; the brand I use is Solaray Vital Extracts.

AMINO ACIDS:

Acetyl L-Carnitine 4500 mg: I think this has been one of the biggest ones for me. I was on 3000 for a while, but when I went up to 4500 I really started to feel more mental energy than I had in a while. 6000 a day gave me some negative side effects... unfortunately I've already forgotten what they were due to the brain damage 😑. I'm definitely less exhausted by complicated thinking, processing music and a video game at once, turning thoughts into typing, other things like that.

NADH 10mg: I don't know if this is doing anything, honestly, but some people swear by it.

N-Acetylcysteine 500mg: 600mg daily was just recommended to me by an ME specialist. I guess I've gotta get a second bottle.

Luteolin 100mg: Again, I was already taking this, and just had it recommended by a specialist in a 500mg dose.

I honestly forget what these do:

Turmeric 1000mg: I think this is for general inflammation?

HURT/DID NOTHING:

NAG (different from NAC and NADH): stopped when the bottle ran out and haven't noticed a difference

Nattokinase: See Lumbrokinase

B-Complex/Taurine: I discovered these can lead to B6 toxicity, which makes neuropathy much worse! This also applies to a lot of electrolyte supplements, including the frequently recommended Liquid IV. I stopped those, and that new form of neuropathy that felt like raindrops on my skin also vanished, so hopefully not too much damage was done in the couple months I was taking them.

Loratidine twice daily: This is part of the highly recommended duo that a lot of ME patients find. It's an antihistamine that helps calm down MCAS, which is hugely comorbid with ME. However, it turns out it can damage your gut over time! This Twitter thread gives a few alternatives that are less anticholinergic, or not anticholinergic at all. I went with Cetirizine, and after a couple of months on Loratidine, I can say that my gut issues from the past few years have come back somewhat, after calming down for a short time. (That may also be the berberine.) Hoping they'll give me a break once more.

COQ-10: This is also frequently recommended, but I don't know why, because it raises your heart rate, which is extremely dangerous for people with ME!

Colloidal Silver: To be clear, I never tried this because I was already familiar with its reputation, but I've had to discard more than one Long Covid infographic/listicle for including it. Do not touch this stuff or anything homeopathic! It's a waste of money.

[mrrosedoodler]

Howdy Everybody

It's been awhile. I apologize for my massive absence from Tumblr, Twitch, Youtube and socials in general. So much has happened since my last stream that I need to get everybody caught up to speed.

There's massive changes coming as well, and unfortunately, streams and videos are getting the biggest out of all of them. I'll talk about Twitch and Youtube in their own separate posts here, but for now I want to focus on my absence and why it took me so long to come back.

Here's the TL;DR at the start here:

I had to go to the hospital in April because I was showing symptoms of a stroke.

Thankfully, it wasn't a stroke, but I was kept so the doctors could figure out what might've happened to cause those symptoms.

The neurologist said that the symptoms I showed could've been the result of the stress I was under, the aftermath of the COVID strain I caught back in February amplifying my anxiety, autistic burnout/shutdown, or a mixture of those three.

Since then, I've gotten proper meds to deal with my anxiety, gotten therapy, changed up my diet, and have found my true calling in career terms.

Here's the full explanation (Under Read More):

In summary, this kinda started at the beginning of the year. First, a close family member of mine had a medical emergency in January. Then, in February, I caught COVID and was basically knocked out for two months. In March I tried to bounce back, but was still exhausted and sick.

Now we get to the real meat and potatoes. April. April is where things just hit the fan. I had an unbelievable amount of stress on me at the time. I won't go into too much detail since I don't want to trauma dump on here, but to put things into perspective; I was getting stress headaches incredibly often and was sick about 75% of the time I woke up.

Aaand now we're at the thing that caused me to fully stop. The hospital visit. I had to have a family member run me to the ER because my face drooped and I was out of it, and we thought that I was having a stroke. Got there, got through testing, and it turned out I was clear of anything that should have caused that. No palsy, no stroke, and nothing wrong with my brain that would have caused that.

Came to find out from the neurologist that upon reviewing my test results throughout the past few days, there were three things that might have happened to cause this.

The stress, of course. The doctor said that sometimes the body might react in the way it did when put under large amounts of stress.

COVID. Apparently they've found that COVID can get into your brain, and it tends to amplify mental health symptoms. And wouldn't you know it, my anxiety had been beginning to ramp up over time ever since I caught that newer strain in February. Not even knowing CBT and proper coping mechanisms could help me stop it on my own after that.

Autistic Burnout/Shutdown. The neurologist said that this could have also been the issue, considering I'm autistic. Which, in all honesty, made complete sense to me.

We also reviewed my diet and what could have been contributing to my stress there, what might have gotten my brain overloaded to such a degree, and where to go from there.

As of right now, I've gotten my emergency medication for my anxiety and I've been working to better my diet and mental health. I've also been trying to cut back on stress, rework myself, and find a proper job to have while I'm working on writing things out for some original projects of mine.

I've since found that any job that tends to associate with customer service, high amounts of stress, and people pleasing of any kind seems to not exactly be my speed. I've noticed I kinda tend to overdo it to the point of disregarding my own health and safety in order to ensure the people are content. . . Which is a yikes. Thus, I've been trying to see if I can get a job at the local libraries around me instead while I write things.

But yeah, that's the gist of it. I'd like to apologize for all of this, as I've been gone far longer than I had hoped to have been while trying to figure all of this out. Thankfully, now that I'm back, we can redirect and rebuild here!

Stay tuned for more updates on the state of my Twitch and Youtube; I'll be posting updates on those soon.

For now, make sure you guys are taking time to self-care! Eat, drink, and sleep properly, friendos! And don't worry, from now on, I'll also be taking that advice.