The Long Covid Sessions Podcast

Longest running Podcast on #LongCovid. In depth interviews with the world’s leading doctors and scientists trying to work on the pandemic’s long tail.

[chantzy @chantz_y]

From the new @OECD report on Long Covid.

The projected GDP loss from the condition places it among the most economically significant chronic conditions in OECD and EU member countries

[Farrukh @implausibleblog]

Zack Polanski, "When I studied history at school. Tudors, Romans, a bit of WWII. I don't remember talking about empire or colonisation"

Historian William Dalrymple, "It is possible to do at A'Levels modules on the British empire, but very few people do them"

"Which means most British people are entirely ignorant for what is for better or worse the most important thing Britain ever did"

"Britain drew it's empire, completely changed the face of the world over the course of 300-400 years"

"Not only did they change it within a local European context, but they completely upended flows of global trade and eco-systems which had existed for millinia"

"For most of history, India and China dominated the world economy, and Europe was an add-on"

"They were producing about 70% of the world's GDP, that's still the case in the 18th century"

"When we're looking at the world today, China already the world's number two economy, and India about to be number three overtaking Japan and Germany"

"What we're seeing is a reversal of the trading system to a pr colonial period - it's taken 80 years since the British left India"

"We're seeing the world recover form this brief blip where Europe smashed its way around the globe moving populations and natural resources around, looting some places, bringing wealth to Europe"

"If you look at the big National Trust country houses, if it's a big palladian house, the sort you'd see in a Jane Austin Sunday night drama"

"If it's on the east coast of the country, quite probably it was built by the East India company money, in other words the looting of India"

"If it's on the west coast, near Liverpool or Bristol, it's more likely to be slave money, from the Caribbean"

"These two sources of wealth brought capital into Britain, and cotton into Britain, which was then milled in the industrial revolution, which gave the seed capital for Britain to accelerate massively through the industrial revolution"

"Which catapulted England from an upper middle position in Europe"

"It transforms Britain and the world"

"But what gives us great prosperity often detracted from the prosperity of the looted countries, or countries that have been plundered for enslaved people"

"And it remains a strange quirk of our history system that we learn more about the wives of Henry VIII, than we do about the entirely looting of India, or the Caribbean slave trade"

"Two crucial moments in Britain's and the world's history"

"The reason we don't learn it, is because when the British empire ended, it became something people stopped talking about"

"By the time you get to Monty Python in the 1970s or late 60s, the Empire is a joke"

[Ihtesham Ali @ihtesham2005]

Jennifer Doudna won the Nobel Prize for gene editing and went on Bloomberg to say the chatbots everyone is betting on cannot innovate at all. Every promise Silicon Valley is making about AI curing disease just hit the one person qualified to check it.

She has spent her whole career inside the actual frontier of curing disease.

So when she talks about what AI can and cannot do in biology, she is not guessing. She is reporting from inside the lab.

Her words were blunt. She is not seeing chatbots innovate. They summarize data. They write reports. They do not come up with a brand new idea nobody has ever had.

Then the interviewer pushed. So you're saying AI can't innovate?

Doudna did not flinch. She does not know if it can't. She just does not see it doing it right now.

This lands harder when you remember who is making the opposite case. Sam Altman says AI will eliminate disease within five years. Larry Ellison says AI will cure cancer in a 48 hour window.

An OpenAI executive even floated that the company should get a cut of sales on any drug discovered through ChatGPT. Doudna answered that in two words. Good luck.

Even the cancer specialists Altman is selling to keep warning that cancer is not one disease but hundreds, each needing its own cure, and that compute does not skip the years of lab work.

Her reason is simpler. Biology is hard. You cannot simulate your way to an understanding of the human body.

The people promising cures are the ones selling the tool.

The person who actually won a Nobel building them is telling you it has not happened yet.

Source: Bloomberg Originals

Watch the full video on their official channel.

[Warren Togami @wtogami]

Long COVID capillary damage is real. Here are my damaged capillaries. For comparison these small and straight capillaries were photographed by me testing the capillaroscope on the healthy clinic staff.

[Billy Hanlon @bhanlon15]

The Guardian: Lives are being ruined by undiagnosed hypermobility and lack of treatment

Despite clear evidence, the NHS never suggested testing for comorbidities like postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome (POTS) or mast cell activation syndrome (MCAS)
https://t.co/FkI3J1zAjh

[The Long Covid Sessions Podcast @SessionsTlc]

@theory_sync @Relishh_ 4 hundred

[Ryan Hisner @LongDesertTrain]

Confirmed again, for a fourth time: the greatest anti-dementia treatment ever discovered is the Shingles vaccine.

[Harry Spoelstra @HarrySpoelstra]

The long-term cardiovascular risks of SARSCoV2 infection and reinfections

Your heart is under silent, cumulative attack from SARSCoV2, and every reinfection can reload/worsen the damage.

Here a personal recap of 10 important studies from the last 2 years showing exactly how this virus and its reinfections can/may shape (and shorten) your cardiovascular future.

Evidence is clear, long-term, and growing.

Print and show your Cardiologist.

Let’s connect the dots…

1. Immunothrombosis multi-omics study:
3 months after hospitalisation, long COVID patients still have blood biologically “clot-ready” with persistent endothelial activation and prothrombotic signalling.
https://t.co/9yj7zVbgxO

2. IL-6 & SAA 6-year study:
Higher acute-phase IL-6 and SAA levels independently predict cardiovascular events and death up to 6 years later, the initial inflammatory storm leaves a lasting CV mark.
https://t.co/Vk7FvK9fQc

3. MIS-C long-term outcomes:
Up to 4.5 years later, MIS-C raises cardiovascular disease risk 14× and hypertension 9× in children, with risks still accumulating.
https://t.co/itRENsOlOS

4. Viruses & cardiac disease review:
SARS-CoV-2 stands out for direct cardiomyocyte invasion + explosive damage + relentless accumulation of risk with every reinfection.
https://t.co/fOX07JNW2o

5. Mayo PET long COVID study:
Persistent cerebral hypometabolism in fatigue/PEM patients still detectable up to 2 years post-infection.
https://t.co/puvllNfghC

6. Reinfection CV outcomes summary:
Reinfections worsen cumulative heart damage, arrhythmias, thrombosis, stroke risk and long COVID cardiovascular symptoms.
https://t.co/B3q7DzyxCZ

7. Youth reinfection & long COVID study:
Reinfection roughly doubles PASC risk, with myocarditis up to 3.6× higher, heart disease ~2× higher and increased thromboembolism.
https://t.co/aqN3VV0kMX

8. Mild infection + reinfection risk:
Even mild cases trigger lasting endothelial damage and prothrombotic state (1.5–2× long-term CV risk), each reinfection compounds the burden.
https://t.co/SvPzOBSOx1

9 Mitochondrial dysfunction in long COVID:
Persistent mitochondrial dysfunction and suppressed oxidative phosphorylation remain in long COVID, pointing to durable multi-organ impact.
https://t.co/98MbV19R9r

10. Cumulative reinfection impact on future CV health:
Reinfection stacks additional damage on prior endothelial injury and inflammation, increasing lifetime risk of heart failure, arrhythmias, thrombosis and accelerated cardiovascular disease.
https://t.co/aqN3VV0kMX

11. Extra, my earlier general reminder post on this exact theme: https://t.co/o3QT12nIG4

‼️Overall convergence across the studies:
Immunothrombosis, acute inflammation markers, direct invasion, endothelial damage, and mitochondrial issues create lasting CV vulnerability that reinfections can keep reloading. #L0ngC0vid

The pattern is very clear.

Fewer infections = lower lifetime cardiovascular risk.

You only have one heart.

Protect it!
#AvoidSars2 #AvoidReinfections #CleanAir #VaccineUpdated

[SARS‑CoV‑2 (COVID-19) @COVID19_disease]

🚨 BREAKTHROUGH: Scientists Develop Plant-Based Antiviral Chewing Gum That Neutralizes Over 95% of Flu and Herpes Viruses in Saliva

Building on earlier ACE2-based gum that cut SARS-CoV-2 in saliva by over 95% and is now in trials, the new gum targets a wider range of pathogens.

[William Dalrymple @DalrympleWill]

One for @bbclaurak who asked on air "Why would Israel lie?"
A leak has revealed the IDF actually has a programme to train its people in the “fundamentals of psychological warfare, propaganda, deception, legitimacy and public diplomacy." https://t.co/yW2WeZakYA

[jasper nathaniel @infinite_jaz]

We regret suggesting that international law is a matter of opinion

[William Dalrymple @DalrympleWill]

Find time to read this quite astonishingly good piece by
@ArwaM Mahdawi. Brilliant on our government's appalling moral confusion over Gaza

"Why is Hasan Piker ‘not conducive to the public good’? Because on Gaza, we punish the witness, not the crime"

https://t.co/lxF64weMUN

[Hamza Yusuf @Hamza_a96]

Emily Thornberry has today said the government has let down the Palestinian people, and allowed Israel to act with impunity.

The audacity.

Here she is in October 2023 refusing to condemn Israel cutting off power and supplies to Gaza.

Don’t let these people rewrite history.

[William Dalrymple @DalrympleWill]

I can’t see you how you can possibly avoid using the term ethnic cleansing, without losing your last remaining shreds of integrity as a journalist, Adam.

Lebanon's internal displacement rate is now 22.6 percent — more than one in five of its people. Over 1.2 million people, including 350,000 children, have been forced from their homes, with the IDF launching more than 1,840 attacks on Lebanon since March 2, killing more than 1,497 people and injuring more than 4,639.

Moreover, the language used by Israel Katz to describe his aims in Southern Lebanon is extraordinarily explicit and self-incriminating. He has confirmed that Israel's military would establish a permanent "security zone" inside Lebanon up to the Litani River, that hundreds of thousands of displaced residents would be "completely prevented" from returning, and that "all the houses in the villages adjacent to the border in Lebanon will be demolished in accordance with the Rafah and Beit Hanoun model in Gaza."

The targeting of civilians for displacement specifically identified by their religion (Shia), combined with the destruction of their homes to prevent return, combined with the explicit statement that they will not be permitted to return — these are precisely the elements that international law identifies as forcible transfer and ethnic cleansing. Human Rights Watch has said that "the displacement of the Shia population looks less like a temporary military necessity and more like a move to permanently displace the civilian population based on their religion."

Its not complex, Adam. You just haven't got the balls to say it straight, and that failure makes your reportage worse than worthless. It makes it morally bankrupt.

[Rima Hassan @RimaHas]

La Palestine révèle tout, sur tout le monde.

[Adam Smith @adamndsmith]

Amazing how Tucker Carlson, of all people, can succinctly sum up what happened with Jeremy Corbyn in a way that the media and political class here will still ardently deny

[William Dalrymple @DalrympleWill]

"Four Newspapers May Have Breached Regulator’s Code Over Media Hit Job on Southbank Chair
‘Truth itself is being crushed.’"
https://t.co/5m0Ysy8pkL

[Sangita Myska @SangitaMyska]

At a live event for @zeteo_news with @mehdirhasan the actor Riz Ahmed says British Secret services tried to recruit him three times as an intelligence officer. The final time, the offer came from a senior BBC Executive (who he doesn’t name) …

[Barry Hunt @BarryHunt008]

We're still persisting with the myth that pre-pandemic R0 is still relevant

Even though we're now immunocompromised by Covid

We ignore the fact that RVI hospitalization has doubled

We ignore the fact that Covid targets endothelial cells as does ANDV

[The Long Covid Sessions Podcast @SessionsTlc]

@1goodtern Its too late - the incubation period makes almost impossible to contact trace. Let’s just hope it doesn’t mutate.