Mask wearing

 Covid and mask-wearing are still uncomfortable issues for some and they should not be. I was at a meeting and one participant was wearing a mask. When I went over to talk to them before the meeting, they apologized for wearing their mask. I said to them, ‘Why are you apologizing for wearing a mask? If you need to wear the mask, that is your right and no one here will be upset at you for wearing a mask.”

COVID has not gone away. At a recent workshop I attended, one speaker said that more people will die of COVID in 2022 than died of COVID in 2021. In our approach to this Pandemic, we have become complacent. We need to continue to be vigilant and watchful and when asked to take the next shot; we need to take it. My age group is at significant risk and we need to be very careful if we hope to see the year to the end without illness.

Brain Fog after COVID

In the last few days, I have talked to a number of people who have had COVID or knew people who had COVID. One of the symptoms they talked about was what they described as "Brain Fog." When I asked what that was, they said, they felt confused and unable to think clearly enough to make decisions both minor and major ones. One person I talked to said it took them about 7 months before they felt they were back to normal.

"Brain Fog" is a real thing according to a new study, reported by Sky News

 Here are some quotes from the story.

Patients who overcome severe COVID infections suffer a cognitive impairment which is the equivalent of losing 10 IQ points say the team of scientists from the University of Cambridge and Imperial College London.

Their findings suggest that the effects of the coronavirus infection are still detectable more than six months after the illness, that cognitive recovery is gradual at best, and that it may even impact people who only had mild cases.

What are the signs of impairment?

The survivors scored particularly poorly on verbal analogical reasoning tasks, a result the researchers say supports the commonly-reported problem of difficulty finding words.

"They also showed slower processing speeds, which aligns with previous observations post COVID-19 of decreased brain glucose consumption within the frontoparietal network of the brain, responsible for attention, complex problem-solving and working memory, among other functions."

Professor David Menon from the University of Cambridge, the study's senior author, said: "Cognitive impairment is common to a wide range of neurological disorders, including dementia, and even routine ageing, but the patterns we saw – the cognitive 'fingerprint' of COVID-19 – was distinct from all of these."

Prof Menon added: "We followed some patients up as late as ten months after their acute infection, so we're able to see a very slow improvement.

Anti-Vaccers

 I met an anti-vaccer for the first time and listened to why he was against getting a vaccine. None of his arguments made any sense but had enough plausibility to make some sense. He was a strong believer in his position and could not be swayed by any other view.

Some of the things he believed had a ring of truth.

1. He believed that the government could not be trusted to tell the truth, and I agree with him on that. It is always in the best interests of those in power to hide facts that would hurt their chances of staying in power.

2. He believed that the reason for the push to vaccinate is driven by the profit motive of the pharmaceutical industry and that the politicians were being bribed by this industry to push for mandatory vaccinations. While it is true that the main driver of any corporation must be making a profit there is no proof that the politicians are in the pocket of this or any other industry.

3. He said that vaccinations were not tested properly and that everyone knows that you should wait for at least seven years before you mass vaccinate people because there is not enough information on long-term or even short-term side effects from being vaccinated. This may be true, in an ideal system, but all of the vaccines were tested by the agencies whose job it is to protect us from bad vaccines.

4. He believed that the vaccines were given to the older generation because the government wants to get rid of the Boomers, because of the big cost of the boomers to the government because of pensions and health care costs. This is not true, as many Boomers are working well into retirement and are paying taxes and have accumulated wealth to see them through their retirement years.

5. He said that he knew many people personally that had adverse reactions to the vaccine. He told me of people he knew that had suffered from strokes after taking the vaccine, and of a person who died, after taking the vaccine and of a person who had become blind after taking the vaccine. I said I had not read or saw any reports of these kinds of reactions, and his response was that the press was not reporting the stories. He asked me what should I believe, the government and the press, which I do not trust, or the evidence of my own eyes and experience.  

We talked a while more and I found out some more information about the examples he gave me about the adverse response. The person who had the stroke after the vaccine had the stroke a month later, the person who died, was very sick prior to getting the vaccine, and the person who was blinded by the vaccine was a friend of a friend of a friend of a friend who he had never met. 

I was amazed by the strength of his convictions and when we parted he said, "I want to be vaccinated, but I am extremely scared of the side effects and I do not want to get something I  cannot be sure will harm me." The problem he has and that we have in convincing him is that he will twist the facts to suit his own version of the truth. My question is, do I continue to present him and those who believe like he does, with the truth or do I quit hitting my head against the wall and leave them alone?