“Before we get started, does anyone want to get out?”
Captain America
TRIGGER WARNING: For anyone suffering some lingering effects of a COVID infection, please don’t freak out and start calling me names. This post is directed at an examination of the lies and ridiculous “science” that the government continues to try to shove down our throats. I’m not saying you’re really not feeling what you’re feeling. I’m saying if we really want to “follow the science” then let’s do that, shall we? So no, I’m not a stupid, selfish, science-denying, grandma-killing/junior-killing/ultra-maga/hater/nazi/racist/insert-latest-epithet-here. I’m just a guy who presents the data as it is known and asks if some “expert” or talking head could please explain how the data doesn’t quite support, and in fact is often diametrically opposed to the narrative of our overlords. Good? Good.
First let’s look at this “study” published by the CDC on May 27, 2022 in their house journal the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR). As I have mentioned before, the MMWR is basically a dumpster fire of garbage “science” produced and published by the CDC, conveniently most of which supports the narrative of our overlords. The problem is most of what they publish wouldn’t be considered “science” by a high school freshman chemistry teacher. Having said that, let’s see what this report had to tell us.
Since the US government believes (and they’re not wrong) that many Americans are both illiterate and innumerate, they always come up with really cool graphics to convey their propaganda which the masses gobble up and then actually believe they “know” something. Case in point:
Cool graphic. All you need to know is in the big orange letters; 1 in 5 adults who had COVID-19 have “Long COVID”!!! And this isn’t happening in COVID “patients” or even COVID “victims”, no it’s in “COVID SURVIVORS”. So if you weren’t scared enough of catching a cold to accept an experimental vaccine with absolutely unknowable adverse effects, and now we know of almost zero efficacy (hey remember “95% effective”? good times), maybe you’ll now be scared enough of the latest in a long line of boogeymen (COVID, Delta, Omicron, BA1, BA2, now “Long COVID”) to vax up. Except that’s not what it says. It says that 1 in 5 adults have a health condition that MIGHT be related to COVID. That’s a pretty big little detail to overlook. And the “science” our trusted doctors at the CDC used to come up with this figure makes your third grade kid’s solar system diorama look like something created by Galileo (say, didn’t he go to prison for challenging what everyone “knew” at the time?).
Anyway, I won’t bore you with the details but this whole exercise is crap on a cracker. The groups the CDC compared were not actually comparable, they did not adjust for age, sex, racial makeup, obesity, socio-economic strata, etc. Hell, they didn’t even account for vaccination status (I wonder why). And they looked at people who were reporting symptoms as short as four weeks after infection. The sample size was stupidly weak, and there was no accounting for the fact that people who are more sick tend to visit the doctor than those less ill. Still, the CDC wants you to believe that some 20% of adult Americans are suffering some form of “Long COVID”. Bullocks!!! Interestingly, in the UK, they report a population wide incidence of “Long COVID” of 2.8%. How EXACTLY does America suffer “Long COVID” SEVEN TIMES more often than the Brits? Maybe it’s the same magic that had “90%” of COVID deaths here occurring in the stupid unvaxxed (with no actual data being presented) while in the UK 70-90% of hospitalizations and deaths were in the fully vaxxed and often boosted (actual data provided). Or maybe there’s another answer, whatever. Hey look, MONKEYPOX!!
Also, the authors state “Among all patients aged ≥18 years, 38.2% of case-patients and 16.0% of controls experienced at least one incident condition…This finding translates to one in five COVID-19 survivors…experiencing an incident condition that might be attributable to previous COVID-19.” They never explain the math and I’m not sure how “38.2%” becomes 20% (“one in five”) but it appears they just subtracted the 16% of “controls” (people who did not have COVID but reported “at least one incident condition”) from the 38.2% who did have COVID and came up with about 20%. Because that’s how science works. I guess.
Now let’s take a quick look at another paper published on May 24, 2022 in which the authors actually conducted real scientific tests and collected real scientific data. No, this study was not published by “Donald Trump Daily” or the “QAnon Chronicles” but by the National Institutes of Health. Sorry to all you true believers.
Here’s what they did: “All participants underwent evaluations at the enrollment visit, including past medical history, a full review of systems, and physical examination.” They did pretty much every objective test known to G-d and man.
Here’s what they found (my bolding for emphasis): We found minimal to no associations between results of diagnostic testing and presence of PASC [postacute sequelae of SARS-CoV-2 infection] (Figure 1, B). The distance walked in 6 minutes, an abnormal pulmonary function test result, or an abnormal echocardiogram were not significantly associated with the presence of PASC (Figure 1, B) or the presence of persistent cardiopulmonary symptoms (dyspnea, chest pain, cough, palpitations), neurologic symptoms (concentration impairment, memory impairment, headache, parosmia, paresthesia), or fatigue (Figure 2 of Supplement 2). Laboratory biomarkers of inflammation (C-reactive protein, D-dimer) and organ-specific tissue damage (pro–B-type natriuretic peptide, troponin I, neurofilament light chain, estimated glomerular filtration rate) were also not significantly associated with PASC or with persistent fatigue, cardiopulmonary symptoms, or neurologic symptoms (Figure 1, B; Figure 2 of Supplement 2)…Extensive diagnostic evaluation revealed no specific cause of reported symptoms in most cases…Exploratory studies found no evidence of persistent viral infection, autoimmunity, or abnormal immune activation in participants with PASC.”
So there was no actual SCIENCE AND DATA to substantiate the presence of some kind of “Long COVID”. The ONLY THINGS found to correlate to the report of some kind of condition stemming from COVID infection were (don’t shoot the messenger) “Of the potential pre–COVID-19 risk factors…only female gender and self-reported history of anxiety disorder were significantly associated with increased risk for PASC.
In case you’re interested in what tests were conducted: “They found “Plasma levels of C-reactive protein, D-dimer, and biomarkers of cardiac injury or dysfunction (troponin I, pro–B-type natriuretic peptide) and of brain injury (neurofilament light chain) also did not differ significantly between groups (Table 3). Results of laboratory measurements assessing renal, hepatic, and hematopoietic function did not reveal clinically relevant differences between groups (Table 1 of Supplement 2)…The prevalence of antinuclear antibodies, rheumatoid factor, and anticardiolipin antibodies did not differ significantly between groups (Table 3). No participant in either group who tested positive for an autoantibody had any clinical or laboratory findings compatible with systemic lupus erythematosus, polymyositis, rheumatoid arthritis, or thrombotic events…Abnormal findings on transthoracic echocardiography were found in 17% of participants in the COVID-19 group versus 18% in the control group (Table 3)…No significant differences were detected between groups in plasma levels of macrophage inflammatory protein-1β, interferon-γ, tumor necrosis factor-α, programmed cell death ligand-1, interferon γ–induced protein 10, interleukin-2 receptor α, interleukin-1β, interleukin-6, interleukin-8, RANTES (regulated on activation, normal T cell expressed and secreted), and CD40 (Figure 4 of Supplement 2).” As I said, a pretty extensive battery of tests.
Now nobody is saying that “Long COVID” doesn’t exist, but it seems a bit odd that the CDC, which has insisted we “follow the science” produces a paper claiming some 20% of “COVID survivors” have “Long COVID” with absolutely no science to support it while at the same time, another paper which actually did conduct testing with scientific rigor finds no actual justification for “Long COVID”. It seems the CDC might be trafficking in what might be called “misinformation. Go figure.
And speaking of “misinformation”, there was a study out of France last year which basically showed the same thing; there was no physical, scientific justification for “Long COVID”. Of course the “fact-checkers” jumped all over that one with a headline reading “Fact Check-‘Long COVID’ is not fake, quoted French study did not say it does not exist”, and to be sure, the authors don’t claim that. But what they do say (actually reported in the “fact-checker” piece) is “It turned out that when modelling simultaneously the belief of having had COVID-19 with serology results [testing for antibodies], belief was more strongly associated with persistent symptoms than serology.”
Anyway, once again, I’m not saying “Long COVID” doesn’t exist. If you’re experiencing some long-term symptoms then it is absolutely real to you. I’m saying pay attention to the lies and garbage “science” we are continuously fed by our overlords. They are liars and idiots all.
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