Conversation #67  A Twenty Minute COVID Rant, Extended Dance Version April 29, 2023
Channel: The Grace and Paul Pottscast
Date: 23/05/2023

COVID-19 is the third-leading cause of death in the United States. We're doing nothing to stop it, but be sure to follow the CDC's recommendation to never eat raw cookie dough! We're not even stopping COVID transmission in health care settings, leading to ever more health care-acquired infections, as our COVID-damaged immune systems are exposed to infections again and again.

The infections may get milder, but milder infections are more likely to lead to long COVID. We're learning more about the constellation of related illnesses, and the news isn't good; many survivors of the 1918 influenza pandemic suffered similar long-term sequelae, but this is not widely understood.

Meanwhile, our pharmaceutical interventions are more and more limited to a vaccine technology that has failed to remain effective. It usually takes years to get a vaccine right, so we shouldn't be surprised by this. But letting COVID-19 rip allows it to mutate rapidly, almost guaranteeing that vaccine development won't keep up.

Grace and I talk about the shift to our contemporary culture in which sick children going to school, and sick parents going to work, has been completely normalized. But it wasn't always like this, and doesn't need to be in the future. This is personal to us, as Grace recounts the story of our son with asthma, and his old-school pediatrician who knew that constant respiratory illnesses didn't actually _help_ kids with asthma, and that the immune system isn't a muscle.

We wander off-topic and talk about various other things going on in our home and garden, including how we feed our family of nine and how Paul makes chili. We cover the status of our fried appliances.

Finally, after many digressions, we discuss the challenge of exercise and long COVID --- why the fatigue and exercise intolerance associated with the condition aren't simply due to deconditioning, and why exercise often hinders, not helps, recovery.

The blog post for this show, with a link to the MP3 file, a link to the podcast feed, and any additional show notes, can be found here: https://thepottshouse.org/pottscasts/gapp/blog/2023_index.html#conversation-67-a-twenty-minute-covid-rant-extended-dance-version-april-29-2023