Dödligt virus från Kina orsakar panik (SARS-CoV-2, COVID-19)

I’ve been getting questions about long covid and my standard answer has been that I don’t think it’s any different from post-viral syndrome, a condition that affects some people after a viral infection but that almost always clears up within a few months. I’ve been generally sceptical of claims of long covid as some distinct entity for a couple of reasons.

Firstly, let’s briefly take stock of the current situation, with the benefit of 8 months of experience:
● Mortality impacts from COVID-19 are now known to be within the envelope of previous
recent significant respiratory seasons (e.g. 2000, 2015, 2018)

● Current pressure on hospital and ICU beds is comparable to previous winters.

● Lockdown has not previously been employed as a strategy in pandemic management, in
fact, it was ruled out in 2019 WHO and Irish pandemic guidelines, and as expected, it has
proven a poor mitigator of morbidity and mortality (fig. 1).

● “Test and trace” becomes overwhelmed and loses effectiveness after a virus has
substantially entered a population (up until 2019 it was not recommended by the WHO for
this very reason)

Tactical testing may still have a role e.g. for workers and residents in key
environments such as nursing homes etc, ideally using dependable antigen testing rather
than PCR. We believe that the virus is on its way to being endemic, and recommend that
testing be reorganised and focussed in conjunction with clinical case evaluation, as per
pre-existing WHO and Irish pandemic guidelines.

Now that dentists have reopened their doors, they’re having patients show up with a nasty set of symptoms, which the doctors have dubbed “mask mouth.”

The new oral hygiene issue — caused by, you guessed it, wearing a mask all the time to prevent the spread of the coronavirus — is leading to all kinds of dental disasters like decaying teeth, receding gum lines and seriously sour breath.