Annette King

Covid aware retired librarian. Reduce transmission. Here to learn from experts.

[Cat Herding Science Nerd @catladyactivist]

Genuinely, the most horrifying aspect of my husband's cancer journey has been the complete lack of any masking in oncology unless it is required for the healthcare worker's safety (BCG infusions, certain chemo drugs). Then it's right off the second they're done.

[Michael | APC Injury @michaelmoran]

The science does not support that the pandemic is over, nor that repeat infection is benign. The evidence is vast, consistent, and only points the other way.

There is no shortage of data - only a refusal to reconcile with it.

[Dr. Sean Mullen @drseanmullen]

And maybe that’s the part I find most impressive.

Not that SARS-CoV-2 disappeared.

It didn’t.

Not that Long COVID disappeared.

It didn’t.

We disappeared them culturally.

We changed the vocabulary until the crisis sounded historical.

Changed the surveillance until the danger became harder to see.

Changed the expectations until repeated infection became background noise.

Changed the social contract until protecting one another started sounding unreasonable.

And somehow

somehow…

we made millions of people experiencing the consequences feel like they were the strange ones for noticing.

That takes talent.

Truly.

You’ve got to hand it to them.

Well played, fuckers.

The virus is still here.

[Dr. Sean Mullen @drseanmullen]

You’ve got to hand it to them.

They changed the language.
Changed the guidance.
Changed the metrics.
Changed the dashboards.
Changed what counted.
Changed what we counted.

Spent months arguing droplets while the virus rode the fucking air.

Then eventually

Oh.

Ventilation.
Filtration.
Aerosols.
Indoor air.

Who knew.

They declared emergencies over and people heard:

Disease over.

They retired dashboards.
Relaxed reporting.
Stopped testing.
Stopped counting as carefully.

Then pointed at the numbers we stopped collecting and said:

See?

Better.

They took a systemic problem and privatized it.

Your mask.
Your vaccine.
Your test.
Your risk.
Your kid.
Your elderly parent.
Your immunocompromised neighbor.

Your problem.

A virus transmitted between human beings became a matter of personal responsibility.

Amazing trick.

They watched vaccine confidence erode.

Watched misinformation metastasize.

Watched people go from lining up for vaccines to treating basic immunology like a fucking personality test.

They taught a generation that infection is inevitable.

That repeated infection is normal.

That protecting other people is neurotic.

That staying home sick is unreasonable.

That wanting clean indoor air is somehow more radical than breathing sewage through a HEPA filter would be.

They turned “living with COVID” into pretending COVID had stopped living with us.

Meanwhile:

People still get COVID.

People still get hospitalized.

People still die.

People still develop Long COVID.

Kids develop it.

Healthy adults develop it.

Workers leave the workforce because of it.

NIH keeps spending hundreds of millions studying it.

The Department of Defense studies it because chronic post-COVID illness can affect military readiness.

Read that again.

We can’t talk about COVID at Thanksgiving without somebody rolling their eyes,

but the fucking Pentagon is worried about what it does to readiness.

That is where we are.

COVID became something that “happened.”

A historical period.

An aesthetic.

Zoom school.
Sourdough.
Tiger King.
Masks.
Lockdowns.

Remember COVID?

Yeah.

I remember polio too.

Still wouldn’t lick the fucking iron lung.

We performed perhaps the greatest linguistic disappearing act of the pandemic:

We ended the emergency,

and somehow convinced ourselves

we ended the disease.

The virus didn’t sign the memo.

SARS-CoV-2 did not attend the press conference.

It did not agree to the new terminology.

It did not care that everybody was exhausted.

It did not care that prevention became politically inconvenient.

It did not care that the economy wanted 2019 back.

It just kept infecting people.

And perhaps the most astonishing part is how thoroughly we normalized the contradiction.

We’ll spend billions studying Long COVID

while acting embarrassed to say “COVID.”

We’ll fund biomedical research into post-viral disability

while designing schools, workplaces, hospitals, restaurants and public buildings as though airborne infectious disease is somebody else’s problem.

We’ll tell disabled people:

We believe you.

And then build society around maximizing opportunities to create more of them.

We’ll tell parents they’re free to send sick children into classrooms.

Tell workers they’re free to come to work infected.

Tell everyone else they’re free to breathe the same air.

Freedom everywhere.

Except freedom from preventable exposure.

Six and a half years.

And where is the reckoning?

Where is the investigation into what we learned?

Where is the massive clean-air infrastructure program?

Where are the ventilation standards people can actually see?

Where is paid sick leave worthy of an airborne pandemic?

Where is the cultural norm that says:

If you’re infectious,

don’t fucking infect other people?

Instead we got amnesia.

We got euphemisms.

We got “summer flu.”

“Something going around.”

“Just a cold.”

“Mystery illness.”

Anything except the word that might remind us we made choices.

[tern @1goodtern]

Them: There's no evidence covid infection affects kids ability to learn!

You: What about these thousands of respectable studies done across multiple countries that have been reproduced and peer reviewed?

Them: No! Not that evidence!

[tern @1goodtern]

What are the three most important things that doctors need to know about Covid infections?

I would say:
Each covid infection you get increases your risk of serious health issues.

Covid transmits primarily through the air.

Covid is not over.

And n95+/ffp2+ masks work to reduce risk of transmission.

[tern @1goodtern]

Articles and studies detailing the long lasting after effects of covid infections have been published in:

Nature Medicine, The Lancet, The Lancet Infectious Diseases, The Lancet Respiratory Medicine, The Lancet Psychiatry, The Lancet Neurology, The Lancet Child & Adolescent Health, The Lancet Healthy Longevity, The New England Journal of Medicine, JAMA, JAMA Internal Medicine, JAMA Neurology, JAMA Psychiatry, JAMA Pediatrics, JAMA Cardiology, JAMA Network Open, BMJ, BMJ Medicine, Annals of Internal Medicine, PLOS Medicine, eClinicalMedicine, eBioMedicine, Science, Science Translational Medicine, Science Advances, Cell, Cell Host & Microbe, Immunity, Nature, Nature Communications, Nature Neuroscience, Nature Cardiovascular Research, Nature Immunology, Nature Aging, Nature Mental Health, Nature Microbiology, European Heart Journal, Circulation, Circulation Research, Journal of the American College of Cardiology, European Respiratory Journal, American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine, Thorax, Brain, Neurology, Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery & Psychiatry, Alzheimer's & Dementia, Kidney International, Journal of the American Society of Nephrology, Clinical Infectious Diseases, Journal of Infectious Diseases, Emerging Infectious Diseases, Clinical Microbiology and Infection, Diabetes Care, Gut, Gastroenterology, Blood, Arthritis & Rheumatology, Rheumatology, Pediatrics, Pediatric Research, Obstetrics & Gynecology, British Journal of Sports Medicine, Journal of Clinical Investigation, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, and Scientific Reports.

This is not quackery.
It's not low quality.
It's not junk science.
It's not debated.

It's detailed, exhaustive, thoroughly researched science:
Covid infections increase your risk of a vast range of health problems.

Vaccinations do not prevent that increase in risk.
Having had Covid before does not prevent that increase in risk.

The only thing that prevents the increase in risk is to *not catch Covid*.

There's a wave now, so mask up.

[Vipin M. Vashishtha @vipintukur]

The devastating human cost of #LongCOVID

➡️ A deeply sobering report from the #Netherlands reveals that four people with severe LongCOVID died by euthanasia in 2025, while in another six cases, Long COVID contributed to the decision.

➡️ With an estimated 400,000 people living with LongCOVID in the Netherlands, many experience symptoms severe enough to prevent them from working or enjoying ordinary daily life. 1/

[Keith @keetmuise]

"you spend so much time worrying about COVID when anything could take you out. Cancer, ALS, MS, heart attack. The stress you're causing yourself worrying about it is causing you more harm, creating inflammation in your tissues. It's not good"

My reply: Yeah you're right, but I don't spend my time worrying about it I spend it trying to warn people about it and trying to get policy makers to change policies that would work to protect the public. Funny you would bring up Cancer, ALS, MS, heart attacks, all of which are being linked to Covid infections, so I guess I am thinking about those as well. When HIV and AIDS first emerged it took advocacy to get policies such as glove wearing, blood screening, instrument sanitation, needle disposal, education programs etc to be standard procedures, all of which I have no doubt you have benefited from in one way or another in your life. It took 60 years of steady advocacy and education to get smoking removed from public spaces, yet another thing that was done by advocates. So while i appreciate your concern for my physical and mental health, my biggest worry is that people like you, who I know are very intelligent and educated, think Covid is nothing to worry about. Here is almost 500,000 publications that convince me that advocating for safety from this virus is needed and worth risking some grey hairs. https://t.co/3gpZHaaY6u

[Michael R Scoma MD @DrMichaelScoma]

We Have Misunderstood Long COVID

Long COVID is best understood as a disorder of interconnected biologic regulation. Immune, autonomic, vascular, metabolic and neural dysfunction interact, allowing disturbances in one system to propagate across a physiologic network.

[Michael R Scoma MD @DrMichaelScoma]

A generation of young, previously healthy people are deteriorating with severe acquired brain dysfunction. Labeling this as “brain fog” erases severity, obscures biology, and delays recognition of true neurologic injury characterized by neurovascular and metabolic derangements.

[Hiroshi Yasuda (保田浩志) @Yash25571056]

According to a translated Russian article,
"cognitive deficits resulting from COVID-19 arise from a multifaceted interplay, including the virus's direct neurotropic effects, the emergence of neuroinflammation characterized by microglial and astrogliosis activation, disruption of the blood-brain barrier, and cerebrovascular complications.
Additionally, systemic neuroendocrine alterations - including dysfunctions of the autonomic nervous system, hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis, and monoamine metabolism - as well as diminished glymphatic clearance, are significant in the pathogenesis and are intricately associated with neuropsychiatric symptoms, thereby perpetuating the pathological processes.
The notable molecular similarities with the early stages of neurodegenerative diseases suggest a potential risk for long-term acceleration of neurodegenerative processes in individuals experiencing post-COVID syndrome."

We are not dying earlier, our brains are aging faster.

'Molecular and systemic mechanisms of cognitive impairment associated with coronavirus infection'
https://t.co/B9FR2iYDvD

[Jim the hermit @SleepyJim0]

Just chill you can rely on your Govt.
They’ve had 40+ years warning on climate change, they have plans in hand.
They wouldn’t just let COVID rip without knowing the long term impacts.
They know all about fascism, they’ve got safeguards to stop that from happening again.
#Relax
/s

[tern @1goodtern]

Footnote:

You may be interested to know that public health bodies explicitly link the words 'causes' and 'increases the risk'.

This is what covid does:
It increases the risk.
It CAUSES.

[tern @1goodtern]

"After a set and a half, I just couldn't feel well and was dizzy and seeing spots and couldn't recover"

""This was abnormal a little bit"

Not abnormal for Covid. No.

[Jim the hermit @SleepyJim0]

I think I might have timed it perfectly to have had a bit of a life and yet be there to see the total collapse of Western Civilisation.
My commiserations to Millenials, Gen-Z and the poor little buggers born after them.

[Keith @keetmuise]

"Covid is mild".... Zero publications to prove it.

"Covid is dangerous".... 492,027 publications to prove it.

There is no debate.

https://t.co/0vBU7PuwPf

[Annette King @Annette81510697]

@Jessica_Jans4 @caprellid @PacoOnPause Absolutely a d******* of the highest order.

[Jim the hermit @SleepyJim0]

COVID rates are rising in the UK.
The schools go back in a week.
Nobody is going to advise teachers or HCWs to mask.
Absenteeism will soar, the hospitals will be in a mess.
And this is how it has to be when our politicians, public health and media are all covering up a pandemic.

[Mike Hoerger, PhD MSCR MBA @michael_hoerger]

In context, here is the PMC Version of the COVlD map. We did not shift to the new CDC #Bluewashing system.

Home page: https://t.co/nEvQooVMke
Interactive map: https://t.co/UWEE14GaVh
https://t.co/NziXqRQedu