Long-Hauler

I was reading an article about Covid long-haulers. These are people who get Covid and get over it, only to continue to have symptoms for months afterward. 

What caught my eye was the description of the symptoms. The article mentioned loss of smell, ringing in the ears, brain fog, heart problems, and severe fatigue, among other symptoms.

"Holy smokes," I muttered. "I've got all those symptoms."

• Loss of smell: check. All my frozen dinners taste the same.
• Ringing in the ears: check. It's called tinnitus and I've had it for half my life.
• Brain fog: check. Ask anyone who knows me—I'm always in a fog.
  
• Heart problems: check. I've been hospitalized several times for atrial fibrillation, a dangerous heart arrhythmia.
• Severe fatigue: check. I take naps every chance I get.

Apparently, I've had Covid for long before it became fashionable to have Covid. And I didn't know it.

I am not making light of people with Covid. But nowadays, most people in the hospital with Covid have done it to themselves. The article said that 90% of hospitalized Covid patients are not vaxxed and 98% of Covid patients are either not vaxxed or not boosted. 

Anti-vaxxers aren't necessarily stupid. They're just ignorant and arrogant.

Why ignorant? Because they have chosen not to get educated on what Covid is, how it works, and how vaccines work. They prefer to believe anonymous sources on the Internet. Or they believe sources that are not anonymous but are also not medically trained. They'll believe a neighbor or the pastor at their church before they'll believe scientists who have worked with vaccines for thirty years.

Why arrogant? Because they think they're smarter than all the world's doctors, medical institutions, the CDC, and the WHO. They think they know better than all the world's real experts. 

Some people think that the vaccine injects a "tracking chip" into their body. As an electrical engineer for many years, I can tell you that there is no "tracking chip" that can fit through the inside of a syringe.

"But they inject tracking chips into dogs," people will retort. No, they don't. A vet can put an ID chip into a dog. It's a medical procedure. The ID chip is about the size of a grain of rice. Due to its small size, when reading the chip the vet must hold the scanner about an inch from the chip, which is under the dog's skin. The chips are not GPS units, they can only provide the vet with a number. The number goes into a database, along with the owner's contact info. The owner of the dog must keep his contact info up-to-date in order for the vet to be able to contact him.

But you can get a GPS for your dog. It's a fairly large thing that attaches to a dog's collar and transmits its location to a mobile phone. Why is it large? Because the GPS electronics are much larger than the ID chip, and it also has a battery and an antenna.

My message to anti-vaxxers is: don't get your panties in a twist. You'll die one day anyway. Nothing is 100% certain except for death. You can get a flu shot and still get influenza. You can get a Covid shot and still get Covid. That happens to people who are immunocompromised. That means their immune systems have some kind of defect that doesn't allow their immune systems to fully function. It's common in elderly people. When you're old, nothing in your body works as good as it once did.

Follow your doctor's advice. Be very skeptical of medical advice on the Internet. And try to have a nice day.