Mar 24

I Said

Long COVID is neither as common nor as severe as initially feared.

Who said this a long time ago? Me. Who was right? Me. Funny, keeps happening.

That many (like assclown Ian Welsh) claimed Long Covid would end civilization was FUCKING LUDICROUS.

One study of patients in an Israeli health network looked at the incidence of 70 commonly reported long COVID symptoms in 150,000 patients. The researchers found that patients who’d been infected were more likely than people in a control group to suffer for extended periods from certain symptoms, in particular loss of taste and smell, concentration and memory problems, difficulty breathing, weakness, hair loss, palpitations, and chest pain. But the difference between the infected and controls largely disappeared by the end of the first year, and to the extent that they remained, they affected a relatively small number of patients. For instance, 407 of the COVID patients reported having persistent concentration and memory problems at the end of the first year, while 276 of the controls also did. That meant that for every 10,000 people, only about 13 had cognitive difficulties that were attributable specifically to COVID

Yeah, that’s about what I’d expect from a fairly standard coronavirus like SARS-COV-2. I know it makes the Covidians angry. That said, Long Covid is indeed real, but it doesn’t worry me because it’s not at all common and Long Covid is often misattributed. Hint: just because someone got Covid and they later had problems doesn’t mean Covid was causative. For instance an acquaintance got Covid and later was diagnosed with prostate cancer. Did Covid cause the cancer? Probably the fuck not.

Often, Covidian logic is as atrocious as that of the anti-vaxxers. Sadly enough.

Mar 24

Psi

That’s the Psion 5! I had one of those and loved it. Having a real keyboard is so much better than touchscreen. Vastly better. I can’t believe we’ve completely abandoned those for touch bullshit.

Mar 24

Red Queens

You can tell the inflation numbers are fake or useless by how many people have been running to stand still for the past two decades.

Mar 23

Preserve

And then that man will often tell absurd lies about how nothing has really changed in an effort to preserve the sad and ridiculous status quo.

Mar 23

MBA Demand

I told y’all MBA types would start demanding a return to the office despite it being demonstrably very much less productive.

This was just inevitable. If MBA types actually cared about productivity, they would’ve behaved much differently even before work from home.

Mar 23

C Civ

Wasn’t Long Covid supposed to have ended civilization by now? I can swear I still see some civilization around here.

Mar 23

Imagine

When people say landlords need to be abolished who are they supposed to be replaced with?

One of the most difficult parts of changing a system is that most often people literally cannot imagine how else it could possibly function. This can also be seen by all the confident pronouncements about how universal health care is “impossible” despite it working just fine in dozens and dozens of other countries.

This seems a pretty severe yet common human limitation.