America Has Finally Decided to Start Trying to Fight Long COVID... But Not Really.

With a Billion dollars to spend, the US is trying to solve every problem with the same tool. Putting persistent COVID under the microscope with Paxlovid and Novavax.

Hi everyone, hope you’re all doing well.

Since folks are going to ask, no, I do not know if my Twitter will be unsuspended because of the changes. I’m not expecting anything but the person who was behind the COVID misinformation rule has been removed, and honestly, we’re better for it.

Free speech is not free if it is intended to bring harm to a specific racial/gender/etc+ group and I hope Elon will continue to not allow hate speech but having a rule that can be so easily manipulated to stifle actual safety information is more dangerous than a troll peddling misinformation because it’s coming from an official source.

But having official sources giving out bad safety information seems to be the only consistent thing about the pandemic. More on that in a moment…

After listening to everyone’s feedback, instead of writing one large article, I’m going to write a series of smaller articles covering each issue, and hopefully, that helps folks.

In the meantime, I cannot express how important your likes, comments, and shares are… My last article had a staggering 53% open rate.

That is just an incredible number to see and I am so grateful to everyone.

If that number translates into likes, comments, and shares then we will actually start to see some shifts on the issues we want to see change as these articles are taken even more seriously on the basis of the response from you, the reader.

If you are joining us for the first time… I previously wrote a very large and comprehensive article on the risk of Long COVID which delves into the various elements of COVID and Long COVID to better understand risk.

Written nine months ago, the theories I presented had not yet been confirmed and almost every single one has been verified now… I hope more people can use that information to keep themselves safe. That also means I am going to speak to things here extremely specifically as they were covered in my earlier article.

Now, I’ve said before there is a light appearing at the end of this dark tunnel….

But what the government is currently planning is not that.

America officially joins the fight against Long COVID, well, sorta…

A billion-dollar program was started to study Long COVID and to test treatments…
Sounds good, right?

Not so fast.

The program is run by the NIH and is called “Recover.”
Their tagline is “Researching COVID to enhance recovery.”

Their list of leadership has an impressive background that grants it a very official-looking status, all things that should make the public feel that it’s in the right hands.

But as you glance through the website the minimizing starts by prioritizing symptoms that are on the lesser end of Long COVID … They say 200+ but avoid the more severe.

Make no mistake one of the 200+ symptoms of Long COVID is actually death.

Then it takes another minimizing turn when it prioritizes the use of the term PASC.

As I covered in my previous article, PASC is a term used by minimizers to limit who can claim Long COVID among other things… Of course, scientists just trying to use the right terms use it but you’re never going to hear someone say they have “PASC.” This term originated in the UK and was used to limit those without a positive test from gaining government benefits on the basis that they did not have an acute phase, even though we know asymptomatic COVID can cause it.

Many first breakthrough infections after mRNA would have been asymptomatic too.

https://www.ama-assn.org/delivering-care/public-health/what-doctors-wish-patients-knew-about-breakthrough-covid-infections

The problem with this idea though is that the risk of Long COVID is not significantly reduced. At best, the estimated reduction is 15% and that’s a margin of error when you’re dealing with two large subsets of people. So, these people would get infected and regulators could argue they never actually had COVID and we saw that happen.

I don’t actually know if this is still an issue in the UK, but, whenever you see someone say they are “patient-led” and use the term “PASC” instead of “Long COVID”, a term created by patients, then you know they are already lying to you and Recover has significant messaging dedicated to how they are working with patients.

But, even the document announcing the formation of Recover seems to prioritize rebranding Long COVID as PASC over pretty much everything else.

In this case, they likely want to strip the word “COVID” from the name of the disease in our nomenclature, and this changes how people think of it, minimizing the risk.

Now, this whole thing is a political strategy called a “smokescreen.”

It’s the most common strategy that the Neoliberal politicians who maintain a razor-thin majority of the Democratic party will employ.

I had written some articles in early 2021 talking about how I thought Biden was going to use these tactics to appear like he was doing more than he actually is. Like when he says he’s going to free people in Federal Prison for Marijuana and it turns out that very few people were actually going to benefit from it, but it made a great headline.

As we approach the US elections it’s important to point out that my theory was that Neoliberals, these are corporate politicians who focus on austerity and tax cuts as a method of growth (spoilers it only grows private investor’s bank accounts), don’t actually want to govern and their goal is to appear like they are doing enough so that they won’t lose primaries but not actually stay in power so “everything will stay the same” which is a direct quote from Biden’s primary campaign.

Basically, they split the WH and Congress by letting Repubs take power in Congress, and then they can blame Republican unwillingness like they are doing with vaccines. While Republican Senators recently asked Biden to do project warp speed 2.0 for nasal vaccines and yet Democrats regularly blame Republicans for vaccine funding.

Make no mistake, Biden is sitting on a reconciliation bill but if either house of Congress splits then he never has to use it and it will likely go unused… wasted.

I could write whole books on this and probably will, but for now, just vote.

Even though Democrats are doing a terrible job, especially with COVID, if we don’t keep Democrats in power then we have no position to argue from because we will never get enough Republican votes for anything. So, nothing can happen at all without Dems first being in power… So, Vote Democrat or you can skip this advice.

Then we replace the Corporate Dems in primaries and that starts the day after the Election, but that’s a story for a different time. I will explain it in great detail when the time comes but for now… What the heck are we even talking about here?

Well, the Recover program has chosen its first product to test for Long COVID.

Now, if you’ve been a part of the Long COVID community this whole time, which they claim they value the experience of, you already know where this is going. The plan is to test a 15-day trial of Paxlovid on folks with Long COVID. The concept here is that they think that it might help with ‘persistent virus’ or, in this case…

Persistent COVID.

And we already know this won’t work on the scale we need it to.

But there are a hundred articles right now all discussing that Paxlovid might be a cure or treatment for Long COVID which is an official source misleading the public.

This will lead to even less concern and greater normalization of COVID infections.

It is possible that it might help with some cases of persistent COVID and it’s even possible that a 15-day course during infection might prevent it from taking root.

But it is unlikely that a 15-day course of it will be enough to clear out persistent virus months after infection when it has effectively taken root. You simply can’t have an antiviral be that pervasive in your body without damage and consequences. One of these drugs already limits your liver’s ability to process the other drug, so as an emergency prophylactic it can be effective but it shouldn’t be popped like Tylenol.

https://www.yalemedicine.org/news/13-things-to-know-paxlovid-covid-19

So, as far as long-term planning goes, even if this works… If they plan on folks getting repeated infections that means they’re constantly rebuilding that persistent virus and this isn’t a product folks should be taking on a regular basis.

What is persistent virus?

Persistent virus is when your body has an infection which includes the virus spawning billions of virions very quickly… Yes, it’s spawning billions of itself all over your body and some of them come out… different or mutated.

While your body does develop, in most cases, some short-term immunity to the exact variant that infected you, the next variant you will encounter exists because it gained immune escape to the antibodies created by its previous versions. The S1 mutations exist for the purpose of immune evasion though it’s not really intentional.

Keep in mind, there are now over 500 Omicron sublineages. So, anyone fighting for the strength of natural immunity needs to realize that after your one infection there are 499+ other variants that can still take you out.

Because of this mechanism, when you are infected, SARS2 will inevitably spawn a mutated variant that will evade your immune system. This variant might not be more fit, it is unlikely to start a new acute infection, and it is unlikely to be more infectious though all of those can still happen as we’ve seen many times.

That is to say, mutations are a lot more common than even the 500 Omicron designations imply, those are just the ones that were able to spread. These persistent variants are often unique to the person and can hide out in parts of your body creating syncytium which is by its nature a degenerative process to your cells.

Basically, the very nature of having COVID in your body deteriorates it.

So, tackling persistent COVID is really a top priority.

But whatever the NIH is doing with Recover is not really that, at least not yet.

Essentially, they are our top minds and they seem to be underestimating how actually infected our bodies get during a COVID infection. It feels like they are just putting every shaped block into the square hole, but this is a Pfizer-shaped block.

What really should bother everyone is that they aren’t starting with the giant list of easily available supplemental products that have already been tested and shown to help with COVID and Long COVID. It’s possible, even likely, that Paxlovid used in conjunction with the right probiotics might be extremely beneficial.

But alone, we are likely to see the same viral rebound we see in normal treatment.

In my earlier article, I explained how I rid myself of my minor Long COVID symptoms, primarily digestive but almost certainly linked to persistent virus and damaged gut bacteria… We now know COVID attacks and kills our gut bacteria just like it does our regular cells.

A lot of folks have seen me share advice to use probiotics as a COVID prophylactic and treatment, this is because many folks underestimate how keeping your immune system functional really starts in your gut biome, and once that isn’t regulated properly, the other parts of your immune system begin to fail.

We even have data supporting that gut bacteria is a driver of COVID’s severity. “Bolstering of beneficial gut species depleted in COVID-19 could serve as a novel avenue to mitigate severe disease, underscoring the importance of managing patients’ gut microbiota during and after COVID-19.”

This is generally true whenever you are recovering from any infection, all healing starts with repairing your gut bacteria, and that can’t happen until we deal with the persistent virus because the gut is a key potential viral reservoir. So, Paxlovid followed by probiotics might be effective and prevent a viral rebound but I doubt they’ll test it.

It’s fair to be concerned that this looks like slow walking and with a billion dollars to spend you’d think they could start testing on more than one product or even multiple studies at once. People are suffering right now and we are nowhere near close to helping those who are most in need.

How long will it take to start the next studies and the ones after that?

I keep a list of supplements that have clinical data supporting their use against COVID and while they are sort of effective at fighting persistent virus, it’s not totally effective but they are readily available and have a low-risk profile so we try them. As soon as something better comes along… I’ll suggest that… and that time is right now.

Here’s that light I mentioned earlier…

Novavax should be an excellent treatment for Persistent COVID.

Novavax claimed their vaccine will fight all variants, data supports it works against all current Omicron variants, and that includes the random variant unique to you.

There is ample data showing that Novavax works against all variants, this is likely because the removal of the furin cleavage site allows your immune system to develop immunity to the S2 proteins that your immune system would normally ignore.

It’s likely slightly more complicated than that, as things are, but that will do for now.

Studies have demonstrated this is possible by targeting specific antibodies that can be used for Pan-variant vaccines. While it’s unclear if Nova uses this exact mechanism they demonstrated something extremely similar during the FDA approval hearing.

The simple fact is that chasing S1 mutations is becoming messier by the day, the chart below this shows the current state of Omicron variants. It changes very fast.

Trying to guess which variant will become dominant to prepare a vaccine for next year… Well, you might as well just put it on the wall and throw a dart at it.

And while more and more articles are starting to actually speak to how dire the situation is regarding past immunity and treatments no longer being effective all of these variants have a few important facts about them that are quickly forgotten.

All of this data tracks mutations to the S1 part of the spike protein which is the part that the virus uses to invade our cells and COVID has a really exceptional mechanism to consistently mutate this part of it to get past our natural immunity.

Keep in mind, it doesn’t do it intelligently, it just makes so many so fast that inevitably the sloppy nature of it all leads to advanced immune evasions. Those simply did better and the more fit mutations generally affect qualities that allow COVID to infect.

But the S2 is relatively consistent in every SARS2 variant, SARS1, MERS, and a handful of coronaviruses… The S2 has been artificially mutated in testing and it creates a nonviable virion, I lost my source on that with my Twitter, but I’ll get it.

So, while the S2 could mutate … It does not have a natural mechanism to mutate this part of itself while still staying viable. Meaning it would no longer be COVID at all.

That also means that all those random variants likely have the same S2 and that means when Novavax says it “fights every variant” that likely means it will be the perfect treatment for Persistent COVID.

https://novavax.widen.net/s/mglcdfdk6w/novavax-vrbpac-28jun2022

There is a lot of media saying that Novavax is only for this group or that group, and that is simply not true…

Novavax is a vaccine everyone should get even if you had mRNA.

It’s a stage 2 Pan-variant vaccine that should in any sane world, be replacing mRNA as our primary vaccine. It’s looking more and more like getting three shots in the proper timeline is enough to crate mucosal immunity and that means it is likely sterilizing.

I will explain why this happens in my next article, but the benefits of Nova are many.

I personally noticed a huge increase in my energy, focus, and mood after my second shot. My wife even recently noted that I had much more energy though that might also be a cross-effect of being off the soul-sucking Twitter for a few days, lol.

Anecdotally, many folks have said they saw an improvement in their symptoms both from Novavax and from the Nitric Oxide spray, for different reasons.

But none of this is a “cure” for Long COVID… This is one symptom, Persistent COVID. Though, that does overlap with a lot of other symptoms and is critical for any recovery from COVID. It might help but it won’t fix POTS, ME/CFS, the physical damage COVID does to your body… or the 197+ other symptoms and more importantly, it is not a replacement for not getting infected at all.

The only way to prevent Long COVID is to not get infected with COVID.

Many of our available prophylactics are billed as being powerful enough to make a COVID infection safe as if they want to tame the virus, and then charge us to walk it around the block twice a year… Very much what they are doing, and a ridiculous idea.

There is no part of this story that goes “and then you get infected with COVID” and that is still a good idea… not with these tools, and the simple truth is that while we do need a treatment protocol for Long COVID, what we really need is an investment in ME/CFS because we are getting nowhere and it is by far the worst of all of this.

We’re not prioritizing the people suffering the most.

And that’s a problem…

The people suffering ME/CFS are being ignored and it’s really where we should be starting especially since those are likely tied to blood clots and various cellular dysfunction... We will likely discover that all the fatigue we see is the same or a similar disease but ME/CFS sufferers simply have the most extreme symptoms.

Until they start working on ME/CFS or POTS or any neurological disorder that is springing up then it’s all just another Smokescreen from the most official source promoting bad safety data to convince you that something is happening but really it only exists to prevent you from actually doing something that might change things.

Because at the end of the day, they do not want things to change.

And they literally campaigned on it.

…

That’s it, follow, like, and share. I’ll be announcing a discord and twitch channel soon.

And please, subscribe if you haven’t… My next article is covering Mucosal Immunity.

*Disclosure* I do not work for Novavax nor have I received any benefit to share this information with you other than knowing more people are protected from COVID.