Coronavirus Week 74B: How long a long haul?

That header question is the focus of Ed Yong's latest in The Atlantic. He also talks about just what symptoms may, or may not, define it; how much, or how little, many doctors may actually know, or claim they know; and how much patients have taken the reins into their own hands.

Related to that is why? He says two hypotheses, which aren't necessarily mutually exclusive, have some solid support. One is that COVID is still symptomatic at a low and ongoing level. The other is that it's provoked an ongoing autoimmune disorder response.

 

Given multiple recent arrests in Hawaii, this TNR piece on the wild west of vaccination card fraud is interesting. Most of the fakes won't pass muster with real people, but, more important to the story, outside of Hawaii quarantining itself, most people checking these things don't really care and don't have an eyeball, so rather than pay $250, in crypto, natch, why not just Photoshop your own?  And, ignore the counterfeiters who keep insisting that "they" will tighten the belt soon.

COVID denialists/minimalists wanting to try to citizens' arrest a principal telling them their kid needed to  quarantine (at the same time, in a district with no mask mandate), or ripping a mask off a teacher in class (here in Tex-ass, natch) are why I reject leftist COVID conspiracy claims just as readily as those of wingnuts. The dad who led the would-be citizens' arrest was himself later arrested.

In wingnut states and areas, more and more people are ODing on ivermectin rather than just getting vaccinated.

More than 4,000 people died in Texas last month, in part due to Strangeabbott.

Ditto on the 45 school districts (and counting) having to shut down.

Speaking of? Socratic Gadfly goes coronavirus-snarky with "Who Killed Cock Robin" COVID version.

Delta is also hammering the Texas construction industry. (The Monthly doesn't ask, though, if the number of Ill Eagles is part of vax hesitancy among workers.)

Meanwhile, Rolling Stone's report about scads of people OD'ing in Oklahoma on ivermectin is reportedly full of shit, starting with the fact that the doctor-story source hadn't worked at the main hospital in question for two months, per the hospital. Drew Holden has the details; unfortunately, as a semi-wingnut, or full-on, he may be overzealous in who he's dunking on, or on extending the dunking beyond this particular story. (He did retweet Dylan Matthews noting that winger media do the same stupidity, but will probably fall back on "RTs ≠ endorsements.") See my own opening tweet in a three-tweet thread noting that Holden's actual dunk-value is narrower than he paints it, and concluding with the essentially fraudulent nature of the "go-to" ivermectin study, and calling on Holden to retweet. 

The full story about how that study is essentially fraudulent itself needs a careful reading. Wingnuts-of-wingnuts like Dark Webber Bret Weinstein have been leaders in ivermectin peddling. And, like some leftists, but from a different angle, he hints at conspiracy behind the push for vaccines if ivermectin means "there shouldn't be vaccines we're administering," because ivermectin renders them irrelevant.

That said, I suspect Holden will actually do no such retweeting. Yes, he has written for the New York Times before, and the Washington Post. But also for Fox. And National Review.

I might still cut him slack there.

But, the Federalist? Bridge too far, at least in the abstract, for my credibility.