During the pandemic, I started following Twitter a bit…. In the beginning, I followed @michaelmina_lab
This was after hearing him on TWIV (podcast, find at microbe.tv.twiv or wherever you listen) He was discussing rapid antigen tests. I started following the TWIV team too and added in a few epidemiologists, clinicians, and others who seemed to understand how to study the pandemic.
I use rapid tests on everyone that comes into the house or office. Are they perfect? No, but they decrease my chance of getting infected or transmitting SARS-COV2 to another patient.
But another thing happened that I am just starting to grapple with. Things that were part of my daily working knowledge were unbelievable to the people around me. Some people started to think I was predicting the future. Others thought I was being extreme and unreasonable. Others waited till something I’d mentioned showed up in the NY Times to believe it…. But I was just listening. And scrolling through Twitter.
I got quieter. I started to think, if I have this information, it’s available. If you don’t have it you don’t want it. I withdrew, I stopped writing about it, I stopped talking about it.
Fast forward… I started reading things over and over again. People started sending me articles I’d read months ago. COVID causes long covid. COVID causes brain and heart problems. Rapid tests are useful for detecting infectiousness…. I wasn’t learning as much because I’d seen it before. Why was I still reading it?
I kept reading these same things over. And then it hit me. If I am still trying to grapple with this information, which I understand, have seen clinically, have been studying for several years now, maybe the people who don’t know it, do want to know.. Maybe the information and it isn’t getting to them. So here it is, the beginning of a blog on COVID things, long COVID things, and even a little self-indulgent opining.
