THE legacy of covid is very long indeed, if you believe the sources with vested interests who propagate the myth. In the perpetual pursuit of panic, long-dead stories are resuscitated (suggesting that we did not panic sufficiently first time round) and new symptoms are added to the elasticated list of symptoms that ‘may’ be indicative of long covid.
An article earlier this year in Bloomberg UK was titled ‘How Covid Quietly Rewires the Brain’. My spirits initially lifted on reading that as I momentarily thought the powers that be in the world of science had finally realised that the ‘pandemic’ years, with their propaganda, false information, enforced imprisonment and ‘saving the NHS’ had driven many people insane.
But on closer inspection the article was referring to alleged findings in 2022 related to some unexplained deaths which, inevitably, were linked to covid-19. The people who, tragically and unexpectedly, died had traces of covid-19 virus in their lungs and some abnormalities in their brainstems where the respiratory centre, which controls breathing, is located.
The original study, titled ‘Microvascular Injury in the Brains of Patients with Covid-19’ and published in 2022 in the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) explained how the authors came to their conclusions, linking earlier covid-19 infection to the brainstem abnormalities. While covid-19 was evident in the lungs, it was not observed, even after polymerase chain reaction (PCR) testing.
Given the propensity for false positive results based on PCR testing for covid-19, one might be forgiven for assuming that the case was closed against covid-19 as a cause of the brainstem abnormalities. Forgiven, perhaps, but wrong according to the authors of the NEJM article. Instead of taking the lack of evidence for the presence of covid-19 in the brainstem tissue, the authors concluded: ‘It is possible that the virus was cleared by the time of death or that viral copy numbers were below the level of detection by our assays.’
Of course, that must be the explanation. If you cannot think of an explanation for a counter-narrative observation, just make one up. Why the story of unexplained deaths from 2022 should resurface now is not clear, other than to stoke the fires of fear about covid-19 and long covid. It is also notable that the vaccination status of those who had died suddenly was not reported.
New symptom on the long covid block
A new candidate for inclusion in the long covid lexicon was linked to a recent issue of Global Health NOW and reported in CIDRAPwhere it was headlined ‘Eye symptoms may signal higher-severity long COVID’. The original report comes from Clinical Ophthalmology but what passes here for ‘ocular symptoms’ turns out to be no more than a selection of self-reported and common complaints including blurred vision, dry eyes and floaters. Even the authors admit that these may reflect anything from tired eyes to neurological effects.
There is no clinical verification, no diagnoses, no evidence of actual eye disease, just subjective reports. Moreover, there is no diagnosis of long covid: that is also self-reported. The authors refer to retinal damage and inflammation, but these are not actually demonstrated in the cohort at all. As for vaccination, it is conveniently dealt with by excluding any participants who report having post-vaccination syndrome.
Vaccination status is neither analysed nor reported, leaving an obvious confounder conveniently unexamined. And there is no comparison of eye symptoms between participants reporting post vaccination syndrome and those not reporting it. This might have yielded some useful information but, as that information may have cast a poor light on the covid vaccinations, I think we can guess the reason.
RFK Jr takes a stand
A man whose mere existence gets the vaccine-obsessed hordes of the public health bodies in the United States frothing at the mouth has struck a blow for common sense. United States Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F Kennedy Jr initially delayed and is now blocking the publication of a Centers for Disease Control report which, if the purported content is anything to go by, will merely perpetuate the propagation of lies about the effectiveness of the covid-19 vaccines.
The report allegedly shows how ‘the vaccines reduced hospitalizations and emergency department visits among healthy adults by about half this past winter’, so the anxiety of the public health lobby is understandable. But RFK clearly understands the truth about the covid-19 vaccines; they were not effective, may well have exacerbated the covid-19 problem and have some well-established, in some cases fatal, adverse side-effects.
It seems, also, that the general public in the United States are realising the potential harms of the covid-19 vaccines. People are increasingly requesting infusions with unvaccinated blood. But vaccination status of blood donors is not recorded, leading to delays in receiving infusions. Perhaps another job for RFK. And, while he is at it, I wonder if his spotlight will eventually be shone on the problem of long covid.
