a degenerative disease¶

Obviously I'm not ready to call PASC a degenerative disease. It's simply too new: we know it can last for over a year after infection, but we don't know if the multitude of systems injured in the process can eventually heal, or if they continue to get worse over time. We don't know if some systems degenerate while others heal. We don't know if that hypothetical degeneration would be as common as the total cases of PASC, or a relatively rare outcome, while most heal. We don't know if repeated infections increase the odds of degeneration. What we do know is that the initial damage does happen, that it's a really common result of infection, and that it lasts for quite a while.

We also know that PASC is associated with some of the same biomarkers as degenerative diseases like the amyloid plaques of Alzheimer's. Most crucially, we shouldn't need conclusive evidence that SARS-CoV-2 infection leads to degenerative disease to want to avoid that risk. This is a massively infectious virus. Letting it run rampant is playing with very dangerous numbers. Even with a flat 20% chance of each infection leading to PASC, and a 1% chance of PASC becoming degenerative, that would still be a massive number of people newly developing a severe condition. Conservatively, 600,000 new cases each year, which is more than Alzheimer's. We don't need to know if this will happen for sure. We have enough evidence to want to avoid this at all costs.

There is literally no argument against Zero COVID other than "I have no empathy and no fear."