12 January

Covid, using Freddie as a guide. Freddie in 1984, and in 1991, immediately before his death. Medical experts suggest Freddie probably caught HIV in 1982, which corresponds also with a flu-like illness he had in that year. Until 1986-7, he looked completely normal. I’ve posted before that HIV takes 8-10 years to turn into AIDS and kill people. His illness matches that almost exactly, had a mild flu, then years of nothing. Then his entire body collapsed in a handful of years, about 9 years later. In those 9 years HIV, which took up residence in his organs, gradually destroyed his immune system. This is one of the theories scientists studying Covid have about how it works. It’s often mild because its mechanism is to suppress the immune system enough to allow it to set up reservoirs in your body, in multiple organs. It’s actually a bad sign that people don’t get very sick, it means their immune system has been sidelined (its job is to fight the virus, and that should make you feel sick). Vaccines will also help you have mild symptoms, by fighting the virus. But the real danger there is that (as some researchers think) they may actually be helping the virus form those reservoirs, by taming your immune response to prevent severe illness (the people who die of Covid die because their own immune system sets off a storm of inflammation). Once the reservoirs are there, the virus may then use the next few years to gradually destroy your immune system. This is happening scarily faster with Covid, than HIV/AIDS, we’re already seeing mass illness with other infections, from immune damage. Avoid infection, I only bother with this shit because I care about people. Wear a mask. Avoid crowds and unventilated rooms. As one senior researcher said, and pardon the language but it’s a measure of how worried they are - this virus is a ’cunt’.