• in short, turns out Ivermectin is almost certainly not as useful a as Eric Weinstein’s been saying

Yikes, pretty damning
- The combination of poor strategic choices, unwillingness to tackle inequalities, and an uncoordinated system created a toxic cocktail which allowed the pandemic to turn into a catastrophic human crisis," according to the panel.
COVID-19 has now claimed more than 3.3 million lives, obliterated trillions of dollars in production and worsened inequalities around the world.
- "Our message is simple and clear: The current system failed to protect us from the COVID-19 pandemic"
- "The panel is also urging the formation of a Global Health Threats Council and a system for outbreak surveillance that is based on full transparency. And individual countries must also do more now, the report said, to prepare for the next crisis."

From reddit:
- ELI5: IL-6 is a ubiquitous pro-inflammatory cytokine that has been one of the darlings of inflammatory research for a long time across many domains from cancer, aging, and autoimmune disorders to psychiatry and (relevant) infectious disease. For this reason many researchers will recognize it by name even if they're not immunologists. I bet a buncha folks reading this said to themselves "Oh IL-6, I remember that from grad school/undergrad/med school".

The basic idea wrt to infectious disease is that a hyper-inflammatory state in response to the pathogen is at least correlated (and possibly causally linked to) mortality. The story goes that some people's immune systems completely freak out due to encountering covid (or influenza, see: Spanish flu) and massively over-react which leads to a bunch of bad things that all interact: high fever, increased alveolar permeability leading to respiratory failure, DIC, multisystem organ failure. When you administer corticosteroids you actually suppress the immune system a little bit and lower the odds of developing this cascade of fuckery. IL-6 is a key intermediary in immune response so its not surprising to see it implicated here.

• Author seems to be closely connected to medical profession.
• Contracted covid at the start of the year and has since been measuring his antibody levels with the help of Philippine General Hospital.
• IgM antibody - indicates new infection.
• IgG infection - indicates previous infection.
• Upshot of the post - antibody levels dropped sharply in September - 16% month on month. 50% decrease from May - this shows immunity is not long-term-guaranteed.
• Interestingly though they shot back up in an October 20 test by 47%. Specialists he consulted agreed it was probably as a result of re exposure.
• TLDR: Antibodies decline over time, can rise when exposed to virus again.

• "The disease occasionally sends people’s immune system into a frenzy, wreaking havoc on their internal organs"
• "A March study found that 7 to 20 percent of sick patients showed heart damage associated with COVID-19."
• "Research from Italy found that roughly nine in 10 hospitalized patients said they still had symptoms after two months"
• "long-haulers” suffer from a diabolical grab bag of symptoms, including chronic fatigue, shortness of breath, unrelenting fevers, gastrointestinal problems, lost sense of smell, hallucinations, short-term-memory loss, bulging veins, bruising, gynecological problems, and an erratic heartbeat"
• "For men in their 30s, like me, about 1.2 percent of COVID-19 infections result in hospitalization".
• "a guy my age has one-in-100 chance of developing a long-term illness after contracting COVID-19"
• "We know that hepatitis C leads to liver cancer, we know that human papillomavirus leads to cervical cancer, we know that HIV leads to certain cancers,"
• " wouldn’t want my pandemic plan to be Let’s have hundreds of thousands of young people with lifelong illnesses"
• "Herd immunity is an inoperable plan, teetering on a false assumption of elderly-cocooning, which encourages young people to play craps with the long-term health of their internal organs. The choice is yours. You can listen to the scientists. Or you can roll the dice with your guts"

• Very detailed. Allows you to finally be data-driven when considering whether or not to partake in activities. Gives you "This is a roughly 60-in-a-million (0.006%) chance of getting COVID from this activity with these people. Doing this activity once would use up 30% of your risk allocation for one week."

• Relevant to earlier reports re: antibodies fading over time.
• Posit: 1% of antibodies are neutralizing antibodies. These are more important than other antibodies