Mel

TV Promo Producer/Editor. #BeCuriousNotJudgmental

[Mel @Melsta17]

@AaronBaileyArt Totally. Proven experience with complex time travel shows AND successfully managing a beloved long-running franchise in a way that was universally praised? Doesn't get more perfect! He did an incredible job with all the character work on Nikita too. He's brilliant.

[tern @1goodtern]

This rebuttal is brilliant, detailed, compassionate, intelligent, science based, and thorough.
The precise opposite of the statement she's replying to.

Please read, share, share, and then share. And also share:

[Manuel Ruiz @manruipa]

‼️⚠️Please read this until the end.

A widely shared article has presented a deeply misleading view of Long COVID, suggesting once again that cognitive behavioral therapy, exercise, and “mind-body” approaches may be the uncomfortable truth patients refuse to accept.

This needs to be challenged.

Not because the nervous system does not matter.
Not because psychological support cannot help.
But because confusing support with cure, physiology with psychology, and heterogeneity with “it might be in your head” is exactly how medicine has harmed post-infectious patients for decades.

There are articles about Long COVID that look like science journalism, but in reality they repackage, in modern language, a very old idea: if we do not fully understand a disease, maybe the problem is in the patient’s mind.

And that is not science. That is repeating history.

The article begins with a striking sentence:

“There isn’t a single approved pharmaceutical treatment, not even a test to verify the presence of the illness.”

This may sound forceful, but it is a very misleading way of presenting the problem.

The fact that there is still no drug specifically approved for Long COVID, or a single diagnostic test, does not mean that “nothing has been found.” It means that we are dealing with a heterogeneous disease, probably with several biological subgroups, and that medicine has not yet converted those findings into validated clinical tools.

“No single diagnostic biomarker” is not the same as “no biology.”

In just a few years, immunological, vascular, neurological, endocrine, and metabolic abnormalities have been described in subgroups of Long COVID patients: autonomic dysfunction, herpesvirus reactivations such as EBV/HHV-6, alterations in the cortisol axis, autoantibodies against GPCR receptors — including adrenergic and muscarinic receptors — persistent viral antigens, endothelial damage, muscle abnormalities after exertion, mitochondrial dysfunction, persistent inflammation, and differential immune changes.

Is everything settled? No.

Does that mean it is psychological? Also no.

Science does not work like that. Multiple sclerosis did not stop existing before we had MRI. Many autoimmune diseases do not show up in routine blood tests. If a complete blood count, a basic biochemistry panel, or an X-ray comes back “normal, normal, normal,” that does not prove the absence of disease. It only proves that you are looking with inadequate tools.

One of the article’s most serious mistakes is this: it confuses the absence of a simple clinical test with the absence of organic disease.

And that mistake has caused harm for decades.

The article also says:

“Almost $2 billion and half a decade of international effort have yielded little more than hypotheses about micro blood clots and spike proteins and mitochondrial dysfunction.”

No. That is not correct.

A hypothesis is a provisional explanation. But when you compare patients and controls and find significant differences in muscle tissue, metabolism, response to exertion, immune biomarkers, viral antigens, autoantibodies, or vascular dysfunction, you are no longer talking about “little more than hypotheses.” You are talking about lines of biomedical evidence that still need to be organized, replicated, stratified, and translated into treatments.

That is not scientific failure. That is research into a complex and new disease.

🔵Continued in the next post.👇🏻
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[BMORE Reeta @theNFLchick]

Remember people said this was a hoax?

[Shanaz @z_shanaz]

Jensen giving a motivational speech at a recent high school graduation - love listening to him!

[Jenni @hashjenni]

How the H-E-L-L did the United States sink so low that a 34x convicted felon can steal $1.776 Billion from We The People and give it to other convicted criminals he released from jail?

[Caroline Orr Bueno, Ph.D @RVAwonk]

(?!!) The European Center for Disease Prevention and Control says people can spread hantavirus to others *before* they start showing symptoms, which directly contradicts everything we’re being told in the US right now.

[Mel @Melsta17]

@DiamonDie @elysekiera Thanks so much for this, I really appreciate it!

[Mel @Melsta17]

@DiamonDie @elysekiera Are you able to share any specifics on this? 🙏 Like which ones can cause issues etc?

[Isaac Saul @Ike_Saul]

We are in deep, deep trouble.

A reader wrote in to me this week saying that they wouldn't read my Trump corruption story because ChatGPT "fact-checked the piece" and informed them most of it was false.

Among other things, ChatGPT told them that there is no Iran war, Jared Kushner is not a negotiator in the war, Qatar never offered Trump a $400 million plane, George Santos wasn't pardoned, the NYTimes did not report on Syrian billionaires lobbying Trump for sanctions relief, Trump never launched a meme coin, and World Liberty Financial (the Trump family crypto firm) doesn't exist.

Of course, all of these things ARE real, do exist, and are happening right now. Apparently, the reader copy and pasted the text of my story into ChatGPT, and without the links ChatGPT couldn't confirm any of it. Once the reader sent ChatGPT the link to the story, it ended up concluding all the facts were correct.

How many people simply don't know how to use AI and are offloading all their thinking? It's a terrifying thought. And a totally new frontier of reality to navigate.

[reb @rebmasel]

Carroll, now a bright spot on our Moon, because four people, who traveled farther from Earth than any human in the 4.5-billion-year history of Earth has ever been, loved someone so much, they carried her the whole way there.

[Putrino Lab @PutrinoLab]

As usual, @julierehmeyer manages to capture things so beautifully here as she reflects on the loss of her dear friend with #MECFS. The feelings and thoughts so perfectly expressed in this piece by Julie are familiar to so many in the community: so many
https://t.co/QcoLbNNkqu
1/

[Daractenus @Daractenus]

For the record, the president of the United States is now simultaneously claiming that he has won the war, is currently winning the war, needs help to win the war, and needs no help to win the war. All to destroy the nuclear program he claims to have already destroyed last year.

[Mel @Melsta17]

@metaplexmovies One of the absolute best of the best, with a series finale that left viewers & critics utterly shell shocked. Can't recommend it highly enough.

A friend's favourite show was Breaking Bad & she laughed at me when I said The Shield was better. After watching, she agreed :)

[Scott Barber @thescottbarber]

Honestly who in the US is okay with this?

[Mel @Melsta17]

This 👇 And I'm surprised more people aren't talking about Vicarious Trauma. #ThePitt has been crafting a textbook case of it with Robby. Emotional detachment, social withdrawal, changed worldview. Last season pushed him way out of his window of tolerance & he hasn't recovered.

[maggie! ☻ @BARANAVITCH]

i never TRULY grasped how little empathy the general public has for the fact that mental illness tends to make you a nightmare of a human being until i joined the pitt fandom and witnessed how some people on here talk about these characters

[Truthstream Media @truthstreamnews]

“We stole all your knowledge and art, and now we’re gonna put a meter on it and sell it back to you. You’re welcome.”

[jessica ❤️ @JessBakesCakes]

I simply don’t have words

[No Lie with Brian Tyler Cohen @NoLieWithBTC]

Remember when they defunded food for hungry children a few months ago?