The Road goes ever on and on ... Day 185 (685)

There's some new and disturbing--at least to me--news on long covid. Breathlessness is a common symptom of long covid patients. Findings from a pilot study of 36 patients suggest covid may cause microscopic damage to lungs, damage that is not detected in routine tests. In other words, the efficiency of the lungs ain't what it used to be. The pilot study looked at three groups. One was patients diagnosed with long covid who had normal CT scans of their lings. Some of these patients had had long covid for a year. A second group was patients who had been hospitalized with covid over three months earlier. Finally, there was a healthy control group. Patients inhaled xenon gas while undergoing an MRI. Even when all other tests were normal, long covid patients showed "significantly impaired gas transfer" from their lungs to their bloodstream. I'm concerned enough about what my asthma does to my lung function; this on top of that would not be pretty.

Some people talk about exposing themselves to Omicron to add a layer of natural immunity. This is not a good idea. It might be easier just to let Stealth Omicron or BA.2 find you. Early results peg it as being 1.5 times more transmissible than Omicron or BA.1. There are 127 cases of BA.2 known nationwide. It's been found in half the states. So if you've missed out on Omicron, maybe its evil cousin will get you.

As part of a protest against vaccine mandates, convoys of truckers are heading to Ottawa from as far away as British Columbia. Police estimate that 1,000 to 2,000 people will attend the demonstration. It may be that Canadians are too nice for demonstrations of the magnitude they had in Europe; if I remember correctly, one protest there had 40,000 participants. Americans Elon Musk, Donald Trump Jr., and Joe Rogan have voiced their support for the Ottawa protest. The Canadian Trucking Alliance said in a statement that it "strongly disapproves" of protests on public roadways, highways, and bridges.

Many public events were canceled or scaled back in 2020 and 2021. Many of those same events are happening in 2022 though there are some differences from 2019 and earlier. The Winter Olympics are a go in Beijing though without public ticket sales and with American announcers working from studios in Connecticutt. Carnival 2022 has been canceled in Rio de Janeiro. Some social events typically held at the time of the Super Bowl have been canceled, but the game itself will go on as ever. Mardi Gras parades and floats are back In 2021, houses rather than floats were decorated. Still on are the National Cherry Blossom Festival, South by Southwest, and the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival held in the California desert.

The Olympics are, of the events listed above, of the longest duration and widest participation. How they turn out may say a lot about where the coronavirus leads us on its road to endemicity. The Games will take place in a bubble with everyone within that bubble tested daily as well as upon arrival at the airport. Friday, 29 of the 736 athletes and team officials who arrived tested positive. Other athletes and officials are delaying arrival because they tested positive before their departure from home. Before those people would be admitted to the Games, they must show negative test results on four consecutive days and then spend a fifth, buffer day. Those tests could present a bit of a problem, though. They have to be PCR tests, which can return positive results for weeks after someone stops being contagious. Teams affected by coronavirus so far include the US men's bobsled and skeleton team, the Norwegian cross country ski team, the German skeleton team, and the Russian bobsled and figure skating teams. The daily covid test results may be more interesting this year than the event results are.