If your health has seen a sudden/rapid decline in the past couple of years:

[Rounded Apathy]

tl;dr - it might be/have been COVID.

If this helps even a single person despite the potential shitstorm it may set off, it'll be worth it.
I am expecting it'd be more a lack of knowledge leading to its unbelievability than hostility, but who knows. I don't have the spoons right now to write about everything I'd want to, but this zine is a great place to start and has a TON of excellent footnotes, which are linked to below the zine itself. It can get a bit technical but is generally reader-friendly; if technical is your thing, I'd also recommend this other one which can be downloaded free or by donation to the artist

Full disclaimer I have zero vested interests; my only desire, after my body being changed by my infection, is to spread truth and foster knowledge in others to help push back against the systemic bullshit that has led many of us to be here; the systems that exploit our labour for profit and our bodies for science, or ignore our ailments; misdiagnose us, enact malpractice; politicians who care nothing more than for getting elected and will say anything to that end, etc. Governments, hospitals, companies; every institution, allowing us to get sick and get sicker in perpetuity, because it's too much money or effort to keep us healthy or alive without suffering more than we already are.

My health has been worse since my one and only (known) infection; I have constant though mildly disabling long covid and suspect it has fucked some of my other body's systems (fun fact: it's an endothelial disease - that means your blood vessels, ie. it can wreck any organ! Even your brain!) and I know and know of plenty of others in similar or much worse-faring boats. YouTube's Dianna Corwen aka Physics Girl is an extreme, unfortunate example. ME/CFS is often described - including by users here, as I have seen, as a "living death", a hell they would wish on no person.

Here's the last nugget: a library of nearly half a million scientific papers on the disease, which are still being published to this day. Type in whatever condition you might have been dealing with since the start of the pandemic and you're sure to find a bunch written on the correlation.
Knowledge is power; governments are well aware of the scale and severity of this issue, just as they were with HIV before patient activists and advocates demanded they properly help people living and dying (horribly, not the way we'd all like to) with the disease and AIDS. It's fucking rough out there with absolutely no institutional protection or semblance of public health remaining, but the one probably most accessible thing you can do to protect yourself/reduce your risk - get a well-fitting respirator (N95/equivalent or better).

Anyway, that's all for now; depending on how response to this thread goes I may or may not monitor it, but I am more than happy to help anyone figure shit out they might be dealing with if it might be helpful. I have my own library of papers/studies/resources etc. I'd gladly share on request.
Wishing you a safe/r, healthy/ier, happy/ier year ahead

 

[anemicamoeba]

Very important info. I would stress the following:

1. COVID damages the brains of EVERYONE who gets it. People with mild/asymptomatic infections scored an average of 3 IQ points lower after their first infection. In people with severe infections and long COVID that number is higher. It's also cumulative, and doesn't improve much if at all over time, so if you want to calculate your loss do three for your first infection and add one for every subsequent infection. The whole world is getting fucked by this.

2. One form of long COVID that is not talked about nearly enough is sudden worsening of pre-existing conditions. This happens a lot with mental health conditions, so if your depression or anxiety suddenly got drastically worse for no reason, and you had a COVID infection previous to that you may well have a form of long COVID. (Btw It can take months for long COVID to show up, and asymptomatic infections can lead to long COVID, so obviously this is very difficult to track).

3. It also increases your cancer risk so that's fun