A BOMBSHELL STUDY SHOWS A SECOND COVID INFECTION DOUBLED DEATHS IN OLDER PATIENTS, regardless of vaccination status, and more than tripled hospitalizations for a group of 40,947 covid victims with an average age of 60.12 years.
The study is especially relevant because 93% of U.S. covid deaths have been citizens 50 years and older, and because covid cases are expected to rise dramatically due to highly infectious new variants, spreading at a time when mask usage and vaccination is sparse, during a holiday season with greatly increasing travel and family gatherings.
[ Wait, good news bulletin: Moderna stated Monday that its new bivalent vaccine showed some “robust” activity against BQ.1.1 in a small-group study, and superior activity against BA4/5. I’d played a hunch and switched to Moderna from Pfizer for my latest shot a month ago. Glad I did. Worth going out of your way for! OK, back to the bad news. . . ]
“Death Hazard Ratio” 2.17 Times First Case
Hospitalizations more than tripled (HR=3.32, 95% CI 3.13-3.51) for those who suffered covid a second time. They averaged 60.12 years of age; were 86.68% male, 13.32 % female; and 63.95% White, 27.31% Black, and 8.74% Other.
[ That Hazard Ratio (HR) score of 3.32 means a hospitalization rate of 3.32 times the hospitalization rate for the first infection, or 3.32 second-time hospitalizations for every first-time covid hospitalization. Confidence Interval (CI) means 95 out of 100 reruns of sampling and calculating the data will result in values between 3.13 and 3.51. For simplicity, we’ll only use hazard ratios from here on. ]
The second-case covid victims had a Death Hazard Ratio (HR) score of 2.17, meaning 2.17 times the death rate of the first infection, or 2.17 second-infection deaths for every first-covid death.
Harsher Outcomes Every Infection
In every health outcome measured, patients suffered more with each repeat of covid infection—first to second, second to third, etc. The largest increases in bad outcomes came from the first to second infection, which means that many people of all ages who have unknowingly had covid with no or few symptoms may be in for an unexpected whooping from their second case.
“During the past few months,” stated senior study author Dr. Ziyad Al-Aly in a news release written by Kristina Sauerwein, a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter from the Los Angeles Times, “there’s been an air of invincibility among people who have had COVID-19 or their vaccinations and boosters—and especially among people who have had an infection and also received vaccines.
“Some people started referring to these individuals as having a sort of super-immunity to the virus,” Al Aly continued.
“Without ambiguity,” Al-Aly stated, “our research showed that getting an infection a second, third or fourth time contributes to additional health risks in the acute phase, meaning the first 30 days after infection, and in the months beyond, meaning the long COVID phase.”
Dr. Al-Aly is a clinical epidemiologist at the Washington University School of Medicine, a global leader in academic medicine, with 2,700 faculty and the fourth-largest National Institutes of Health (NIH) research funding portfolio among U.S. medical schools.
No Matter What, 2nd Covid’s Worse Than The First
To be perfectly clear, the study states “Previous exposure to the virus may be expected to hypothetically reduce risk of reinfection and its severity. However, SARS-CoV-2 is mutating rapidly and new variants and subvariants are replacing older ones every few months.
“Evidence suggests that the reinfection risk is especially higher with the Omicron variant, which was shown to have a marked ability to evade immunity from previous infection.”
[ And now we have the BQs and XBBs, which are even better at evading immunity. ]
“Our results expand this evidence base,” the study continued, “and show that in people who get reinfected, reinfection (compared to no reinfection) further increases risk in both the acute and post-acute phases and that this was evident even among fully vaccinated people,” [emphasis added], “suggesting that even combined (a hybrid of) natural immunity (from previous infection) and vaccine-induced immunity does not abrogate the risk of adverse health effects after reinfection.”
So everybody’s at risk, and that risk increases with every infection.
“Excess Burdens” In Large Numbers
Although the study was published in Nature Medicine November 10, the authors issued a warning. [ For several reasons, I suppose. The study population does not match the U.S. population, for instance, and the study is retrospective rather than a clinical one, which is impossible for a group of 5.8 million ]
The study’s authors stressed that their analyses should NOT “be interpreted as an examination of the risks of adverse health outcomes after a second infection compared to risks incurred after a first infection.”
However, they went on to state “we provide evidence that reinfection contributes to additional health risks beyond those incurred in the first infection including all-cause mortality, hospitalization and sequelae in a broad array of organ systems. [ “sequelae” means “conditions or diseases that follow another.” ]
In addition to all-cause mortality and hospitalization, the systems studied were cardiovascular, coagulation & hematological, diabetes, fatigue, gastrointestinal, kidney, mental health, musculoskeletal, neurological, and pulmonary.
After covid reinfection, “excess burdens” seem vast in every category. “Excess burdens” are the economic and human costs of poor health, which in this case is covid reinfection, certainly deadly for seniors, because the average age of the infected group was 60.
So the authors seem to be saying that because of scientific study strictures they can’t come out and state things officially, but they have the evidence and they show us the numbers, as if to turn their heads and mutter, “but just look at all those fucking corpses.”
930,000 Dead Americans
That’s my take, anyway. Because I’m over 50, and 93% of U.S. covid deaths have been citizens 50 years and older. That’s 930,000 corpses, and I’m really pissed off that it’s still happening, and I blame Donald Trump and the Trumpublicans for lying about covid from the very start, promoting covid at almost every possible turn, and using the pandemic for their billionaire bosses to double their fortunes at our expense, raising prices greedily and gobbling up our money—and then blaming Democrats for the inflation Trumpublicans and billionaires caused and greatly profited from, and still do!
I blame the Republican senators who refused Joe Biden’s request for $20-some-odd billion to prepare the nation for a fall and winter health crisis. First they delayed, then said maybe $10 billion, then delayed some more, forcing Biden to transfer some money from elsewhere for the bare minimum of preparation, and now we’ve got flu booming, RSV booming, and three nasty new covids on the loose—and we’re not ready the way we could and should be.
And once again, we seniors are going to suffer the most for it.
[ Takes. Deep. Breath. ]
Like Alien
The VA / Washington University School of Medicine study paints a picture of covid ravaging bodies without cease, preventing a full healing after each infection, returning a second or third time to whittle away more of every major system.
With a cold or a flu you can get full function back; in many cases, covid does not let you heal.
After its first infection, subsequent bouts of covid hollow out mind and physique in stages, carving them out like a river running through a canyon, wearing down the rock and leaving a big empty space where once was a person.
Covid is like slowed-down Alien acid that keeps eating away the body’s major systems—starting with mental health and chewing through every area of the body.
From the first infection to the second and the third, the study shows a cumulative decline in every single one of the human body’s systems, each showing higher levels of accumulated damage with every covid visit.
Like Terminator and Termites
Because Covid does not relent. Like Terminator, it does not rest, it does not sleep, it keeps hunting you down and eating your insides like a million million million tiny termites—invisible termites that build colonies in your major organs and branch out into every foot of the 100,000 miles of blood vessels every human adult has (kids have 60,000 miles).
By owning your bloodstream, covid particles own you, and they just keep eating away and replicating at the rate of one million more covid virus particles for every human tissue cell they penetrate and turn into a xerox machine.
Yes, when one covid particle infects one human tissue cell, it turns that cell into a factory that produces a million more covid particles. Some produce less, some produce more, as many as two million.
And then a million go out into your bloodstream to infect a million more cells. so one covid particle turns into a million, that million turns into a million million, and so on. The numbers get astronomical, beyond human comprehension. Munch, munch, munch.
All you need to start that process is one whiff of covid up your nose.
The only way we can escape it Is to come up with some kind of a breakthrough vaccine better than what we've been using because now we're always chasing it, and can’t keep up. The Pfizer and Moderna vaccines are wondrous, but they’re tailored to specific strains of Covid, and by the time we get vaccines out a new strain has appeared—just like now when the new vaccines are tailored for the BA4/5 version that’s getting wiped out by the BQ and XBB versions, which are much more infectious. (We’re a bit lucky with the new Moderna.)
“Burden of Disease”
OK, so much for descriptions, let’s look at the numbers! These all concern “burden of disease,” which is a number representing the human and economic cost of poor health. That focuses on the person who’s ill, including quality and quantity of life, but Not Including pain & suffering of the patient or family & friends, or care given by family & friends. [ summarized from evidencenetwork.ca < https://evidencenetwork.ca/burden-of-disease-what-it-means-and-why-it-matters/ > ]
What’s important is that the “burden” numbers have been equally assigned by the Veterans Administration to all 5.8 million people in the study, and that the differences in the numbers accurately count the damage covid does in the number “excess burden,” which I also call the “covid penalty.”
The study details covid’s effect in 10 medical areas. The largest numerical increase in excess burden/covid penalty was in mental health, which for people with only one infection compared to non-infected people increased from 185 to 233, for a covid penalty of 48. Pulmonary increased from 49 to 92, a penalty of 43. Neurologic was third with 36, Gastrointestinal 34.
For two infections compared with none, mental health again had the largest number, zooming from 185 for non-infected to 350, a covid penalty of 165. Gastrointestinal was second with 147, pulmonary scored 118, and neurologic 101.
Mental health came in second for three or more infection patients, led by gastrointestinal, which jumped from 123 for non-infected to 367, a penalty of 244. Mental health deteriorated from a burden of 185 for non-infected all the way to 412, a 227-point covid penalty—certainly understandable given the third infection’s massive penalties in every other category. Cardiovascular and neurologic scored 175 and 172 respectively.
Covid Penalty Numbers, Higher = Worse
Without number-crunching too much [ I just got these ], the covid penalty increases for a second infection seem much worse than the penalty for the first infection (the higher the rise, the worse for the patient).
[ OK, I added the overall two-case burden with Gain 0–->2 = showing the covid penalty increase from non-infected to twice-infected: ]
Cardiovascular 80–->149, up 86% [first infection up 53%] Gain 0–->2 = 52–->149
Coagulation and Hematologic 50–->91, up 82% [first infection up 61%] Gain 0–->2 = 31–->91
Diabetes 37–->56, up 51% [first infection up 37%] Gain 0–->2 = 27–->56
Fatigue 87–->146, up 68% [first infection up 43%] Gain 0–->2 = 61–->146
Gastrointestinal 157–->270, up 72% [first infection up 28%] Gain 0–->2 = 123–->270
Kidney 43–->89, up 107% [first infection up 39%] Gain 0–->2 = 31–->89
Mental Health 233–->350, up 50% [first infection up 26%] Gain 0–->2 = 185–->350
Musculoskeletal 87–->107, up 23% [first infection up 23%] Gain 0–->2 = 71–->107
Neurologic 184–->249, up 35% [first infection up 24%] Gain 0–->2 = 148–->249
Pulmonary 92–->167, up 82% [first infection up 88%] Gain 0–->2 = 49–->167
Bottom line: Covid damage is severe, cumulative, and the second infection does greater damage than the first, piled on top of the first-infection damage. No wonder it’s killing seniors—it’s pushing them way over the edge with severe damage everywhere.
Younger people might want to consider how they want to spend the rest of their lives. A first covid infection is practically a free pass compared to the second—which could lock you in to a miserable life if it’s Long Covid. Ask most any senior and they’ll agree that “Youth is wasted on the young.” They would almost all give a lot to be able to just walk down the street the way they used to. I sure would! My advice: Don’t get old too fast. Get a shot and wear a mask.
Words for Vax-Deniers, Anti-Maskers, Trolls
You can try to haggle, question, or dispute what I'm saying, but this VA study’s numbers, which include people in their 20s to 90s—despite the fact that the study’s not perfect in every way—show the damage is happening, the damage stays, the damage from even a single repeat is large, and the damage may last the rest of your life, which may only be as long as your third or fourth case, if you survive the second.
But if you want to take a chance for the freedom of being disabled for the rest of your life, go! Go ahead, don't get vaccinated. Don't wear a mask. It's Darwinism time for you. And you people who have been saying I'm not gonna take a vaccine because it might hurt me—I can now almost guarantee you that getting covid will hurt you. And it may hurt you for life.
So you go ahead and you take whatever stand you want to take. The damage is going to be on you. I have warned you. I wish you well.