COVID, the disease that keeps on giving.
I had COVID back in April last year. There are three days between the first image and the last one. Yoda-transition in three days
OMG, I felt like *brown fecal matter*. The pain I felt in my joints and skin was unbearable.
Joa got sick at the same time, and one year later, he still struggles with some neurological damage and suffers from a severely reduced sense of taste and smell.
I still have lingering fatigue, and I find that I often lose words and have a hard time remembering stuff. Also, an autoimmune illness (AS) suddenly flared up.
Of course, I cannot *prove* that the coronavirus caused this autoimmune condition to suddenly flare up, but as we know that many viral diseases can act as triggers, which makes me a bit suspicious of the timing. Now I have that stuff and have to live with it for the rest of my life.
The point is that we cannot only look at the COVID death statistics to assess the damage it is doing.
People who survive after a time in a respirator might have life-long struggles with their lungs and heart. People who were less affected, such as I, still can have lingering symptoms for years to come, and perhaps for the rest of their lives.
Please, if you get the chance, vaccinate! Do not risk the virus if you can prevent it. The virus is serious business.
Several people I know have died of the virus. Three of them were under 40 years of age.
Due to the comments this post has received from people shouting "ANECDOTAL EVIDENCE". The story above is a genuine story and here is the science behind it.
Some links to examples papers can be found below. Some of the links are articles with internal linking to specific scientific papers.
Also, if you think that facts, and facts alone, will away people's standpoints you should read up more on the science of communication. If facts alone mattered, we would have no climate change issues, the corona crisis would be no crisis, and Trump would never have been celebrated.
You have to give a narrative, and often make it personal, to reach people. That narrative needs to be rooted in science, which the above story is.
Also, I clearly state that I am in no position to *prove* that COVID resulted in autoimmune disease, but there is evidence supporting that this could well be the case. Nobody can ever price that their particular case is triggered by a certain environmental trigger, but statistical analysis of groups give an indication of what is possible. In my case, I am HLA-B27 positive, there is indeed a high likelihood that a severe viral infection could trigger a flare.
Links between COVID and autoimmune disease:
The link between infections and autoimmune disease:
I'm a PhD level biologist.
Ps. For everyone who has an issue with my make-up in the first image - I didn't know I was sick when I took that pic. It's the only image I have of myself a day before I got ill so the only one I can use for comparison. I have the same amount of makeup on pic 2&3. Still, I think it is possible to see the deterioration between the images. On the last pic I could not walk anymore.
The point of the post isn't my personal makeup or my illnesses, but to make a point that death numbers isn't the only number we need to take into consideration when estimating the damage COVID is doing. I was lucky. Think of everyone who come out of respirators with permanent lung damage. It's not only a matter of life and death, but also about the suffering COVID causes that can go way beyond your COVID recovery.
I hope I made myself clear.
