🚨 Belgium is facing a major long-term sick crisis.
Latest Riziv figures (end 2025): 576,643 long-term sick in the private sector + self-employed.
Add civil servants (medical/illness pensions): estimates around 87,000 or more!
Total estimate: 650,000 – 670,000+ people out of the workforce for over a year(= 12-14%)
Tens of thousands of them are dealing with Long COVID (a significant and growing group, often misdiagnosed as burnout or other psychosocial issues).
Record numbers, still rising, driven by burnout, depression, musculoskeletal problems & post-COVID.
Among the highest in Europe.
Time for real solutions instead of just handing out benefits!!
#LongTermSick #LongCOVID #Belgium
For thirty years of my career studying this, I considered the #AMOC tipping risk a high impact but low probability risk for the future of humanity.
Recently I've changed my mind.
Here I explain why. ⬇️
https://t.co/DfLsJ5ezCb
📢 if you are coming to Ukraine PLEASE bring a Starlink Mini, used or new, all we need is the dish and power cable, no power brick or stand needed, roughly the size of A4 paper and as thick as a deck of cards it can fit in hand luggage.
PLEASE, it's urgent, and desperate ❗️❗️❗️
Japan: "COVID-19 still kills over 30,000 a year, even 3 years since the infectious disease was downgraded to the level of seasonal influenza"
🔹36,000 COVID deaths in 2024
🔹38,000 COVID deaths in 2023
COVID-19 was 8th cause of death in Japan, 2023-2024
https://t.co/Swtba0v1Yd
🇳🇿New Zealand COVID weekly update: 7 June 2026
1 June to 7 June 2026:
🔹New cases: 172 (-0.5%)
🔹Deaths: (data removed from dashboard)
19 May to 25 May 2026:
🔸Hospitalisations: 26 (-31.5%)
Source: https://t.co/oLRhD8lNj6
Die bisher beste Long Covid Studie wurde nun veröffentlicht, mit überraschenden Ergebnissen die neue Therapieansätze ermöglichen. Vereinfacht gesagt: Long Covid wird (in den untersuchten Bereichen) von Autoantikörpern im Blut verursacht, die dann sehr wichtige Teile des Gehirns angreifen und eigentlich alle Symptome erklärbar machen.
Wichtige Erkenntnis: Long Covid Patienten dürfen keinesfalls Blut spenden denn es scheint übertragbar zu sein über jene Autoantikörper im Blut!
Toller Artikel, verständlich geschrieben:
https://t.co/GDxqontAb1
VON DER LEYEN: We propose, for the first time, to ban from entry into the European Union anyone who has served in Russian armed forces since the beginning of the war.
Europe stays off-limits for anyone who has participated in the invasion of Ukraine. As simple as that.
The science behind the weird Atlantic 'cold blob' explained (in under 15 minutes). It's the only part of the planet which hasn't warmed in the last hundred years, but cooled! And it's a bad sign. #AMOC
https://t.co/3MvXfXtwtI
Many cancers once deemed incurable can now be prevented or treated successfully.
And with our Beating Cancer Plan, we are pushing for more.
Because that's what our fight against cancer is all about.
Turning hope into reality ↓
https://t.co/FkQldp0rmL
I know I've said this many times before on this platform, but the moment I learned anosmia was a symptom of Covid-19 was the moment I decided I was going to do everything possible to avoid getting it. I knew anosmia was an early prodromal symptom of Parkinson's Disease.
Association of Acute-Phase IL-6 and SAA with Cardiovascular Events and Mortality Six Years After COVID-19 Infection: An Observational Cohort Study
😡I hate to say this, but I warned you: 6 YEARS!!
➡️European observational cohort study followed 97 PCR-confirmed COVID-19 survivors for six years,
➡️Acute-phase serum IL-6 (cytokine) and serum amyloid A (SAA) were measured during initial infection,
➡️14.4 % reached the composite endpoint (arrhythmia, myocardial infarction, or all-cause mortality),
➡️Patients with events had markedly higher acute IL-6 and SAA levels (p < 0.01), even after adjustment for age, sex, obesity, hypertension, diabetes, and prior CVD,
➡️IL-6 most strongly predicted mortality, and SAA showed the strongest link to myocardial infarction and the composite endpoint,
➡️Both biomarkers independently forecasted long-term risk, reflecting complementary inflammatory pathways (systemic vs. vascular/atherothrombotic),
➡️Limitations: small sample, single time-point measurement, observational design (no causality), no non-COVID controls,
‼️But still, higher acute-phase IL-6 and SAA levels during a COVID-19 infection were powerful, independent predictors of cardiovascular events and death, EVEN SIX YEARS LATER!
The severity of that initial inflammatory storm can permanently mark survivors for fatal heart disease, not taking direct SarsCoV2 impact into account.
SARSCoV2 doesn’t simply “pass” for everyone. In a significant subset of people, the acute immune response plants a silent, time-delayed cardiovascular time-bomb that can remain hidden for years, precisely the insidious mechanism behind one form of long-COVID.
COVID-19 is not transient. It leaves a measurable, durable risk.
‼️Colleagues…..connect the dots, even years later, SARSCoV2= CV RISK FACTOR
Let me remind you, the science is unequivocal:
• Each reinfection reloads the inflammatory or direct viral impact that predicts fatal heart disease years down the line.
• Vaccination is, outside NPI’s, the closest thing we have to a safety catch, it measurably reduces long-term cardiovascular risk even after breakthrough infection.
Fewer infections, timely vaccination and NPI’s remain the most effective ways to protect your heart over the next decade.
#AvoidSars2 #AvoidReinfections #YouOnlyHaveOneHeart #CleanAir
https://t.co/I3WLWJQtCJ