Links: Science!

[sonia]

Starting with stories related to science, and ending with some Covid-related links. Scientists are starting to catch up with what people were reporting all along about Covid and other chronic infections.

2023 Analytical Laboratory Finalists at Analog Magazine. I haven't read these yet, and I might get back to them.

debunking the conquest narrative by
Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg engages with the story of the conquest of the Holy Land from an archaeological research perspective.

BIBLE SPOILER ALERT: Eventually, the Israelites make it to the Holy Land, wage war and kill a lot of people, as commanded. They take the land– as God had told them to.
[...]
Israelite conquest?
Didn't actually happen.

Can You Hear a Meteor? by Marc Lailanilla. This is so cool! Turns out people were correctly reporting their experience all along.

Death, Lonely Death by Doug Muir. A paean to Voyager 1. ETA: And all is not yet lost. These NASA scientists and programmers are amazing!

Tackling long-haul diseases by Allison Guy.

“Long covid looks exactly, and I mean exactly, like chronic Lyme.”
Michal “Mikki” Tal, MIT immunoengineer

Scientists Have Proven That Severe COVID-19 Is a Thrombotic Disease by São Paolo Research Foundation.

In the study, the researchers found that endothelial injury tended to precede two common processes in cases of respiratory distress: significant alveolar-capillary membrane leakage, and intra-alveolar accumulation of fibrin (associated with blood clotting and wound healing).

Long Covid ‘brain fog’ may be due to leaky blood-brain barrier, study finds by Nicola Davis.

Campbell said the results were not a surprise as disruptions to proteins involved in clotting could go hand in hand with disruption to cells that lined blood vessels. “The whole concept that a lot of these neurological conditions, including brain fog, could be treated by simply regulating the integrity of the blood-brain barrier is really exciting,” he said.

And, bearing witness. Testimonials of the Collectively Abandoned. A Letter to Our Anarchist, Socialist, and Radical Leftist Comrades.

This zine aims to give a voice to the people, forced into continued 'COVIDing'. By describing day to day situations, concrete problems that might arise, we hope to show what living under these conditions can look and feel like. We hope that this illustrates our demand, as expressed in our previous zine, for a radical left that keeps taking this horrendous disease seriously and is willing to protect ourselves and our comrades.

Comments

[silveradept]

The piece about the conquest narrative is fascinating and thank you for it, R. Danya Ruttenberg is always an engaging scholar and wrestles with these things well. And with footnotes.

The MIT piece is very good about the steps that are being taken and the project underway, but I feel like the narrative that's introducing the researcher and the project has a not-very-much buried component to it that is essentially "it took a mass disabling event that hit men and medical professionals before the people who were suffering from long-haul diseases and symptoms were taken seriously and research dollars and effort was dedicated to them, rather than being dismissed as crazy women whose issues were all in their heads." Which is a truth about a lot of things that primarily affect women or that don't show up on tests easily.

[sonia]

Glad you enjoyed them!

Yeah, it's heartbreaking and enraging how the people with ME/CFS were being mostly ignored until now. They tried to ignore people with Long Covid for a while too, but not only were men & medical professionals more affected, like you said, but I think also the sheer number of people made them harder to ignore.

If it doesn't show up on tests, they need better tests! I'm fascinated by the leaky blood/brain barrier research. I wonder if the brain fog I get from fragrances is related to that.

[silveradept]

There was a lot of trying to ignore the problems or downplay or minimize them. Which certainly does no favors for those who actually have to deal with those issues on a daily basis. The sheer numbers probably did help at least some.

Better tests would certainly be useful, but to develop better tests, they have to believe it's real and can be tested for, and that seems to be the biggest hurdle to get over.