A Personal Message on Covid-19

I was surprised recently that someone close to me likely had Covid-19 again less than 3 months after her previous infection. She didn’t take a test for it either time, but the symptoms suggested it wasn’t the flu. Fever, headache, lethargy, loss of smell, but no sneezing or phlegm. As the initial symptoms didn’t put her in bed, sick, we didn’t take it too seriously. But this second infection has lingered, and created recurring lethargy and insomnia, while also bringing back some old health problems. That encouraged me to look into the latest information on Covid-19. What I found concerned me. I am sharing about it here for the same reasons I did so in the past. Since looking into it more closely in 2021, I have thought that the policy orthodoxy on Covid-19 has been counterproductive. Additionally, I have been concerned that most commentators in the environmental field are aligned with the orthodoxy and thereby turning many people away from the environmental cause. Thirdly, pandemics have often played a key role in societal breakdowns and transformations in the past, and so the risks of the Covid-19 pandemic, and future ones, is within my field of analysis and comment. Looking back, one sad aspect of speaking out over the last four years has been that many people assumed that questioning the orthodoxy means caring less about this disease, or public health in general. Such prejudice was produced by Big Pharma and their supporters in politics, the medical establishment, and mass media. In sharing on Covid-19 now, I don’t expect to have much influence, but if some of you, my readers, take the following ideas seriously enough to check them out for yourself, then at least a few of you might benefit. 

My past essays on the topic were always well referenced, and I provided links to credible sources, such as official data sets or peer-reviewed papers. I wanted to be as factual and precise as possible, and avoid the misleading spin from various commentators. This post will not be like that. I write not to influence agendas but to nudge those of you who follow my blog to act to be healthier than you might otherwise be… that’s if you look into the information for yourself and agree. You could use an AI chatbot to check some of my statements that will follow and look for relevant data. I think if we don’t do our own checking then we don’t convince ourselves enough to change behaviours. 

Anyway, here goes, with my personal message on Covid-19…

Unfortunately there are now mini-waves of Covid-19 every few months. In this new situation, having had Covid-19 even just 2 months ago isn’t guaranteeing protection from a new variant. Unfortunately, “vaccination” doesn’t make a difference to that, which I’ll come back to in a moment.

More bad news is that moderate initial symptoms, like lethargy and sore throat for a few days, aren’t an indicator of reduced danger from this disease. That is because each re-infection does some damage to our internal systems, including various organs, the cardiovascular system, and the immune system. That is because, unlike influenza, the Covid-19 virus can infect a variety of different cells throughout the body. The damage it can do is even as unusual and systemic as reducing the flexibility of arteries, so that blood pressure waves sent by the heart might damage our organs. The myriad ways lasting damage can occur makes Covid-19 worse than influenza, which doesn’t spread as much inside our bodies. That’s not to downplay the dangers from the flu, which can kill vulnerable people and might also mutate into something more virulent, but to identify the particular mechanisms of damage from the Covid virus.

Some hidden bad news is that the orthodox responses, which are hardly used anymore, wouldn’t work even if revived. For instance, vaccination doesn’t stop the problem of rapid reinfection, as even the latest boosters aren’t designed for the very latest variants. That’s before we even consider side effects, whether the documented short term ones or the more theoretical long term ones (about which there is an unacceptable lack of transparency). The studies that claim the vaccinations reduce severity do not look at long term effects, which is relevant as a narrowed immune response due to vaccinations might not help in the face of rapid reinfections. Another example of the ineffectiveness of the orthodox approach to Covid-19 is that surgical masks offer little protection, especially when lose fitting, and so create a false sense of protection which can lead to more reckless behaviours (although well-fitting N95 are useful). Meanwhile, there is now a range of research showing that lockdowns and social distancing likely did more harm than good. Such studies might be debated, but they can’t be dismissed if one is being serious, not dogmatic – and you can easily look for peer reviewed studies via google scholar or with the help of an AI chatbot.

There are collective responses at both organisation and community levels that could help reduce the spread and the impact. I wrote about them over 2 years ago in an essay on alternative approaches to combat the virus. Sadly, ignorance is high, and it was made worse by the poor science, profiteering, and confused moralising, which dominated the early Covid-19 years. 

With this disappointing situation in the public sphere, I realise that our personal responses are key. That brings me to a desire to clarify and share my own responses – the main ones I will list for you now.

• avoid busy enclosed spaces (especially if without HEPA air filters or significant ventilation)
• prioritise general health and nutrition (more than before), including losing any excess weight
• take Vitamin D, C, Zinc and Lysine supplements, especially outside of warm sunny situations or seasons 
• take prophylactic drugs (with proven antiviral effects) before entering busy enclosed spaces, and soon after (although I am uncertain of post-exposure utility) 
• hum when in busy enclosed spaces and soon after (as it stimulates blood flow to mucosa and thus supports immune defence against infection – yes, strange, but there are scientific studies on it!)
• treat even mild symptoms seriously (such as a sore throat) by resting, isolating, and taking the key supplements mentioned above, key immune-boosting herbs (eg sambiloto, garlic or echinacea), gargling with a mouthwash containing cetylpyridinium (clinically proven to kill the virus), and taking anti-viral drugs (such as IVM)
• if experiencing post-viral symptoms like lethargy, neurological pain, and brain fog, then consider a 5-day low calorie fast, along with nattokinase supplements (it reduces inflammation from microclots), and (not at the same time), consider an intravenous Vitamin C treatment. All these definitely contributed to my recovery from the Long Covid symptoms of chronic fatigue in the past.
• provide this information to friends and family, especially if they live with you, along with a recommendation they consider how to change lifestyle and even job, to reduce future exposure of themselves and their family. 

I feel fortunate to live in the rural tropics. That means I don’t need to be in busy enclosed spaces very often, while still having a social life and professional life. In addition, I don’t need to face a season where the population has lowered immunity, due to lack of sun, cold nasal passages, and time in poorly ventilated spaces. In addition, my friends and loved ones who live here are similarly blessed and so I do not need to worry as much for them as I do for those back in the UK. However, I live in a place that welcomes millions of visitors from around the world every year, so we are a node for the transmission of new variants. I could reduce my risk from future variants by living somewhere without so many incomers. So if I was only concerned with this issue of damage from Covid-19 reinfections, I would probably move to a location less exposed. However, we all need to balance our different interests, and, at present, I am staying put.

Many of you who live in urban situations will not want to move due to the threat of constant reinfections. I think that makes it more relevant to engage in policy advocacy on collective risk. I’ve explained the kind of policies that could help at organisational and societal levels in an essay from 2023. That smarter approach necessarily means dropping the failed orthodoxy, on the one hand, and avoiding the rejectionist disinterest in collective responses, on the other.

No matter our personal living situations, or the success or not of any advocacy on these matters, we must face the reality that we will be getting more infections and fevers than we did before Covid-19 arrived in the world. So beyond our efforts to reduce personal and collective risk, there is also a better way to respond to being sick in future. In my case, my attitude to fevers has completely changed. Now, when I think that one is about to start, I prepare some spiritual lectures and audio books to listen to, put my notebook by the bed, and place my guitar close by. That’s because fevers produce altered states that can be insightful, even transformative. The first song I wrote by myself was during my first bout of Covid-19 in July 2021, during a really high fever. “Something’s Needling Me” was dark comedy rock, written as part of my protest at the shaming of scientific discussion and policy scrutiny. Discovering song writing during my delirium actually changed my life, and I’ve written dozens of songs since. I called my first band Sambiloto, after the herb I was taking to reduce my fever. I have previously written about the role of my fever after a dog bite, in helping me to write the song “Always One”, which I released with my folk band, the Barefoot Stars. 

There is something else to face from this latest information about the persistence and damage from Covid-19. It is that the damage from reinfections might reduce our capabilities sooner than anticipated and end our lives sooner than anticipated. If we recognise that, it can be an intensifying perspective, where we ask ourselves: are we living the way we want to? Anything that reminds us that life is finite, and we never know when our time will come, can have a powerful impact on how we live our lives – typically more from the heart and with more presence. 

Perhaps we could have avoided this worrying situation with Covid-19 if the policies had not been so poor and profit-driven. I still think the ideas in my essay from 2023 are valid to try. Sadly most of the analysts who are alert to the dangers are wedded to the idea we can vaccinate our way out of the situation. One expert who is not so blinkered is Dr Philip McMillan, and I recommend you follow him on Youtube. 

Looking ahead, and collectively, I wonder where the disease, society, and humanity are headed. “Seroprevalence has shown that this is not the plague” was a line in my song “Something’s Needling Me.” I still think the infection fatality rate didn’t justify what was being done at the time. I worried that non-sterilising jabs might increase mutations and narrow immune responses to them. Those concerns came from top epidemiologists and are now backed by some research findings. However, in terms of years of life lost, years of healthy life lost, and the effect on society, I now realise that the disease might become even worse than the plague in the long run. I say that not because of current virulence, but because of how there might soon be near-constant reinfections, with ongoing internal damage, leading to a situation of widespread morbidity and mortality from myriad causes that have one underlying driver: SARS-Cov-2. A worse situation might even occur if one of the mutations became more virulent – something being predicted by a handful of scientists (and which I am not capable of dismissing or accepting). 

What might be the implications of constant reinfections leading to mass morbidity and increased mortality from various diseases? Back in 2022, when I was finishing the book Breaking Together, we had some evidence already that this might be the case, and so I included it in a discussion about the risk of societal collapse. Obviously the disease could accelerate the declines being experienced in many societies over the last decade. If many people are not able to work like they once did, this will affect economic performance, at the very least. The UK, amongst other countries, have reported that chronic illness has been affecting GDP. It seems that those places where infections spread more, and where the people are more susceptible, will be more affected economically. Therefore we might wonder if this is now a factor in the assessments of international investors. We might even wonder if this is a secret reason for lax immigration policies in some countries, if elites anticipate workforce morbidity. 

If you are surprised about anything in this post, please explore it further with your favoured AI. If you don’t like AI due to the corporate demands for energy and global megalomania, amongst other concerns, I recommend using Deepseek. Next week, I’ll write about why. And if you are annoyed at anything I wrote above, either by taking the disease too seriously or by not deferring to the orthodoxy on it, then I’d ask you to see the benefit in us all developing and sharing our personal views on public health. If you aren’t willing or capable of checking mainstream claims, narratives, and policies, then any annoyance you feel towards those of us who do analyse them, might be your inner authoritarian voice – the one who doesn’t like being reminded that it is a choice not to enquire any deeper. Conversely, some attach to an identity of the invincible rebel, thereby seeing any information about a general threat as a psy-op, or just giving in to fear. Neither approach involves being curious to what might be happening, and how to look after yourself and others in response. It is why I think ‘critical wisdom’ is so important to cultivate in these challenging times, and wrote a whole chapter about it (free to listen to here). 

As the future of this disease and the impact of related policies on economy and society are all part of the metacrisis, we will discuss it during one of our meetings next year. In addition, members of the MMI can discuss the topic already within the community Telegram group.