I posted elsewhere about RFK Jr’s interview on CNN last night. Here’s a transcript of what he had to say about COVID:
I really hate that man.
Don’t trust that science, trust this science! Don’t trust the experts unless it’s our experts! And don’t trust even them! In fact, don’t trust everybody, fuck it, just do whatever you want to do, we’re all gonna die one day anyway, right? YOLO!
Who does think is doing the science?
This one really sticks with me. They fucking were looking at the science. It just happened to be very inconvenient for Trump because he didn’t like what the science and experts were saying because he was more concerned about the short term impact on him versus the million plus that would eventually die because of his fragile ego.
Does he think that things like mask mandates, lockdowns, social distancing, and so on were done just for funsies? That the choices that scientists recommended made were done in a vacuum? No, of course not. This was a novel disease at the time and there were so many things that were not known, so all that they could fall back on was … science.
The experts didn’t get it all right, more was learned, discoveries were made, advice and recommendations changed. That’s what happens. That’s how it’s supposed to work. It can be an aggravating, slow, and iterative process, but that’s how it is. If you knew everything, you wouldn’t need to study it.
I think he thinks it was a means of “controlling” the population and imposing authoritarian (by which he means “liberal”) rule over “free white men”… Also, he thinks THAT is eugenics, not him hand-wringing over autistic people…
Exactly. That’s ACTUALLY science not whatever “do your own research” is…
Quick summary, if your BP is a little low. This’ll fix that!
I’m afraid we’re gonna see a lot more takes like this one from 2020:
Where can we find a wolf to save us from the tyranny of the vocal minority?
This was just approved. Modern has two options for this fall but only for 65 and older, under 65 you need a condition.
My asthma and heart disease should do it for me but I’m not sure about my wife, she has thyroid issues, really bad arthritis and, much like a lot of us, including me, she’s a little overweight. Shouldn’t be a problem.
Now we just have to decide which vaccine, the new moderna, the old moderna, or the novavax.
So at least we won’t have to go to Canada.
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapediatrics/fullarticle/2834486
JAMA Pediatrics Patient Page
May 27, 2025
Long COVID happens when a child continues to have symptoms lasting at least 3 months after a SARS-CoV-2 infection.
Some children have COVID-19 symptoms that do not go away, while others might feel better but later develop new symptoms. Sometimes, symptoms can come and go. Long COVID can affect any child, even if they had mild or no symptoms when they had COVID-19.
Long COVID is common, affecting up to 10% to 20% of children with a history of COVID-19. With almost 6 million US children potentially affected, this is higher than the number of children with asthma, the most common chronic health problem in children.
The departing CDC official, Lakshmi Panagiotakopoulos, a pediatric infectious disease expert, was a co-leader of a working group on COVID-19 vaccines who advised experts on the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP). She informed her ACIP colleagues of her resignation in an email on Tuesday.
“My career in public health and vaccinology started with a deep-seated desire to help the most vulnerable members of our population, and that is not something I am able to continue doing in this role,” Panagiotakopoulos wrote.
Driving out the folks who are actually knowledgeable and competent continues apace. Facts are notoriously difficult to hold to a political ideology.
Researchers from the NIH-funded RECOVER-Pediatrics Consortium analyzed data from over 1000 children aged 0-5 years, comparing those with a history of SARS-CoV-2 infection to uninfected peers.
The study found that 14% of infected infants and toddlers and 15% of infected preschoolers had probable long COVID, similar to rates in teens and school-aged children.
For infants and toddlers, the most strongly associated and prolonged symptoms associated with a history of COVID-19 infection were poor appetite, trouble sleeping, wet and dry cough, and stuffy nose. In preschool-aged children, daytime tiredness, and dry cough were prominent. Teens and school-aged children are more likely to have memory trouble, lightheadedness, and other neurologic issues.
The findings may challenge the assumptions of clinicians that very young children are less affected by long COVID, held in part because this population often cannot describe what they are experiencing.
Many COVID patients needed 9 months to regain baseline well-being, study suggests | CIDRAP
… COVID-positive participants reported compromised mental well-being for up to 9 months after infection. Physical well-being returned after 3 months, but up to 20% of patients continued experiencing suboptimal overall [health-related quality of life (HRQoL)] 1 year post-infection.
Four distinct well-being classes emerged at all study timepoints: optimal overall, poor mental, poor physical, and poor overall HRQoL. COVID-19 patients were more likely to return to the optimal HRQoL class than COVID-negative respondents. Notably, participants in the poor physical HRQoL and poor overall HRQoL classes had much more severe acute COVID-19 symptoms, higher rates of underlying conditions, and more symptoms at baseline.
Among those in the poor overall HRQoL category, 42.4% reported that they had long COVID at final follow-up, versus 24.2% among those in the poor physical HRQoL class, 17.8% in the poor mental HRQoL class, and 9.7% in the optimal class. …
It hadn’t been very long after D and I had rec’d the very first vaccination and booster when we came down with the plague. Our symptoms were mild, his even more so. Acetaminophen was V helpful, as it had been while going thru the shots’ side effects. Still, frequent or constant pain in my joints and some muscle groups, esp the ones who’d been bothering me before covid; the lack of energy (forced to pause on the staircases’ landings, having to stop & lean against a wall halfway to/from the kitchen); and the intellectual issues ground me down. The 1st two were so tiresome they made me crabby, and sometimes weepy, but the last often terrified me.
My mind felt tired.
I didn’t want to think about stuff, which is What I Do. I’d beg D to put on nonsensical cartoons, so I wouldn’t hafta think about what was on the screen.
Composing a brief reply to simple emails from friends, usually such fun, was drudgery, a chore I’d put off doing as long as I could. I’d try to answer them quickly, whenever I’d find my energy levels were approaching semi-normal.
Common fucking words in everyday parlance (frying pan, air conditioner, notebook) were still evading me several times a day after 6 months, and I was so scared. That probably finally ended after damn near 7 mos.
I am my head. I’ve sort of dissociated from this body since childhood; like Sherlock, I view it as a brain-container, simply a means of getting my mind to different places. My mind is all I am, so that fear was profound.
What were your experiences with and recovering from the plague, dearest Elsewherians?
First time I got it back in August ‘22 sucked pretty bad. I was out of commission for about a week, and it took another 2 weeks to start testing negative. I lost my sense of smell and didn’t regain it back for another month. My lungs sucked for a long time afterward.
The second time was in August ‘24. I had been feeling crappy for a few days before testing positive. Once that happened, I immediately got a prescription for Paxlovid (well, after 2 hours unsuccessfully trying to go through my local urgent care, pharmacy, and eventually going with Teladoc to get it.) It worked phenomenally well with me feeling mostly normal within a couple days. The only lingering problem was the metal mouth from the Paxlovid which went away about a day after taking it.
As a side note, I’ve been getting vaxed every year since they were available in 2021. I don’t fuck around with that.
When i finally got it, i had only mild symptoms and recovered pretty quickly. However, worth noting that i had had 3 shots and regularly chugging elderberry by then. It’s quite literally a game of Russian roulette.
I had it once, in spring 2023. Pretty bad symptoms so my doc agreed to paxlovid. I got the bad metal mouth, but it also reduce the symptoms greatly and quickly. Never did lose taste or smell, but i did have an auditory hallucination for a few days (oddly enough, it sounded exactly like a distant lawn mower).
I was sluggish mentally and physically for a month or so. I remember planting tomato seedlings one day, feeling woozy, and just giving up, collapsing onto my back and looking up into the sky for half an hour or so. That was a month or so after taking paxlovid.
I gradually got back to full strength after that, so I seem to have escaped long term effects. And yet, I’ve just lately had an oddly metallic taste in my mouth, for the past couple of weeks, and can’t help but wonder if long covid can spring up that much later. It really is a weird, insidious illness.
Just another study Junior’s goons will have to find a way to discredit. May just defund the universities that sponsored it… Of course, I guess these are “not healthy” people, so they just need to eat pure foods to fix it.
No worries, I am sure Junior and his merry band of idiots will take care of this…
Fortunately, the variant does not appear to cause more severe disease, and current vaccines are expected to remain effective against it.
Get your booster, if you can!
