Mentioning Long Covid symptoms to people can set off a series of other stories from people with similar symptoms. It’s out there, but we don’t want to talk about it. This is from Nikki S’s thread, a founding member of Long Covid Support in the UK: “I was at a get-together
Continue readingAuthor: Marie Snyder
A Puff of Absurdity: A Song for the Season
Hellscape Neverland (from Deborah Holloway – I added the bridge and re-worked the final verse) Sirens wail, are you listening?Family tears, they are glisteningThe ERs are crammed The wards are all jammedThis is SARS2 hellscape neverland. Gone away, are the safe daysHere to stay, are the sick daysTo cough and to wheezeSARS2
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: Covid Defences Matching Game
Match statements from friends, family, colleagues, bosses, and/or random strangers with “opinions,” to defence mechanism! Dr. Mike Hoerger, a clinical health psychologist in the US, noted several psychological defence mechanisms being used to downplay the risk of Covid. This is his entire thread, well worth saving here for future reference.
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: Pirola’s Dominating – Cool, Cool, Cool, Cool, Cool
Does everyone else picture Andy Samberg when they read about Pirola too?? Isn’t everyone reading about the hot new variant, Pirola (BA.2.86/JN.1), these days?? The concern with Pirola is that it’s so different from the other strains that it’s unrecognizable to our immune system, and it’s as if we’ve never been vaccinated.
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: You Had One Job! On IPACs Refusal to Prevent or Control Infection
The Infection Prevention and Control (IPAC) of Canada is a registered charity making some questionable decisions recently. They promote themselves as, “Focussing on infection prevention and control in the community and in healthcare facilities.” Their mission is “to advance infection prevention and control by advocating for our members and providing
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: On Lookers and Thinkers
Can we teach how to think and problem solve our way out of a total collapse? I’m curious why some people are facing it all head on, reading the news and studies and watching the clips about Covid, climate and so many conflicts. I wonder if I’m one of the
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: On Hearing Others
Louis Cozolino’s beautifully written book on neuroscience has an explanation near the end about our necessary interconnectedness. Communication from one body part to anther happens when messages throughout our body are transmitted by neurons, but the transmission doesn’t happen inside the neurons but between them, in the synaptic gap that separates the
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: Mini-Study on ND vs NT Use of Masks
Abstract: An online survey was conducted to compare the rate of masks wearing behaviour between neurotypical and neurodiverse populations. A greater number of neurodiverse participants reported always wearing a mask. Introduction: The impetus for this study came from a post by Lucy (2023) who asked why “neuro atypical” people are so
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: Canadian Excess Deaths Report
Tara Moriarty wrote a compelling thread a couple weeks ago. I’ve never teared up from reading stats before. For anyone who doesn’t know her, Moriarty’s an Associate Professor at the University of Toronto, and she and a small team of experts voluntarily create Covid stats each fortnight, posted at Canadian Covid-19 Hazard
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: There’s Money in Prevention
The insurance companies and finance mags are still openly discussing the problems with ongoing Covid, even if schools and hospitals aren’t. Illness affects the bottom line! Don’t be surprised if you try to get insurance and they ask a lot of questions about whether you’ve had Covid, how many times, how
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: The Priest, the Consultant, the Journalist, and the Epidemiologist
How do we proceed when we still don’t really understand Covid? Researchers have found over 200 symptoms associated with Covid, and no organ untouched by it. A recent review article stated the problem, “The mechanisms of Long Covid are unclear. Leading hypotheses include alteration of the immune system, the persistence
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: A Disaster Groundhog Day
A few decades ago I watched a video in a class about a Black female musician answering the question how to stop all the racism and sexism in songs at a time when Eminem was using the “N” word liberally. She said she doesn’t waste her efforts on stopping others:
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: The One with the Apocalypse
I recently watched a few things, back to back, to distract me from the news. One was openly apocalyptical, as so much is these days. Is it a trend, or is the output the same, but I just never gravitated to it so much?? I’ve also noticed a rise in
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: Art to Guide the Masses
Can sitcoms save the day? Back in the 80s, there was a very funny show about a detective agency, Moonlighting. It was a take on the classic enemies-to-lovers trope with a very prim and efficient Maddie Hayes up against the fly-by-the-seat-of-his-pants David Addison. Of course the two fall in love. In
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: The Daycare Years
Many of our ideas of virus transmission haven’t changed in decades, for better and worse. Almost 30 years ago, I ran a daycare out of my home for a little over three years. I wanted to have more time with my kids while they were small, but I also financially needed to
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: It’s Still Not a Cold
Stats Canada just posted a report on Long Covid. They highlight that the risk of long term symptoms is cumulative, increasing with the number of Covid infections. By three or more infections, 38% of people – more than a third of people – report long term symptoms. They also report that
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: Living in a Nightmare
“Many describe living in a sort of waking, powerless nightmare where an obvious catastrophe is unfolding but society just blithely ignores it.” That’s from this Guardian article from May 2022 that could have been written today, and possibly needs to be written every day to wake us up: “People have
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: The Danger Posed by Covid is Indeed Being Underestimated
Covid updates from Ontario and Germany were in the news yesterday. But first, check out this graphic of tips for staying healthy over the holidays from the Canadian Covid-19 Hazard Index, one of the most amazing grassroots organizations we’ve got in Canada that actually tracks and reports on current levels
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: Just Safe Stories
Will re-branding Covid help people start acting to protect themselves from it? Maybe we need an ad campaign to kick-start public health. Outside of judicial rulings and before marketing, we had religious leaders to remind us to the best ways to survive, and before that we had stories passed down
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: Too Poor to Live, But Not Too Well to Die
In March 2024, Canadians with mental health problems who haven’t found significant relief from their condition will be able to get Medical Assistance in Dying (MAiD). As I wrote recently of the mental health crisis, “We no longer lock people up in asylums; instead, we give them less than they
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