Contents
COVID
Accelerated Aging
Another study was recently published addressing some of the damage that occurs from a COVID infection at the cellular level. It is particularly important because it was looking only at those who were asymptomatic or only had a few symptoms.
One of the outcomes studied was blood leukocyte DNA methylation Age (DNAmAge). DNAmAge refers to the biological age of a person as determined by DNA methylation levels. This concept is based on the idea that DNA methylation patterns change with age, and these changes can be used to estimate an individual’s biological age, which may differ from their chronological age.
“Increased leukocyte DNAmAge correlates with the duration of SARS-CoV-2 infection (average 17 days) because prolonged infections lead to sustained inflammatory responses and cellular stress, which induce significant epigenetic changes. This mechanism is similar to that observed in other viral infections like HIV.
Where this gets really interesting (and concerning) is looking at this result in context with a study from 2021 on telomere length and biological aging from COVID. In the introduction, the authors state “In humans, telomere shortening is associated in vivo with the aging process and, in vitro, with cellular replicative senescence.” Cellular replicative senescence is a phenomenon where cells permanently stop dividing after a certain number of divisions. This process is primarily driven by the shortening of telomeres, which are protective caps at the ends of chromosomes. In human cells, that limit is about 50 divisions, because the telomeres become shorter each time the cell divides.
This is why I suspect that COVID appears to be more of a problem in the elderly. In their case, many cells in various types of tissue have reached the end of their replicative life, which means that the tissue that they compose can no longer function as well.
In children, uninfected cells still have a lot of replicative potential, so these cells divide sooner than would normally occur. That may make the disease seem milder in the short term, but it also has diminished the ability of cells to divide in the future, because they have used up some of their replication potential. This is still not a well understood part of biology yet and also varies by tissue type.
This also means that this likely has a cumulative effect, meaning that the tissue of a child infected multiple times over the course of the pandemic will have some tissue of a 70-year-old person even if they are chronologically only 40-50 years old.
It’s also important to think of that in the context of chronic diseases. Most chronic diseases don’t manifest themselves while a person is young, and they have a lot to do with the ability of tissue to function properly, but this becomes more difficult as more cells in the tissue can no longer replicate, leaving higher demand on the surrounding cells.
Campisi et al continue, “Our findings confirm that chronic diseases are linked to elevated DNAmAge, consistent with previous research on frailty, cancer, diabetes, cardiovascular diseases (CVDs), dementia, and decreased lung function (FEV1) in COPD patients, a known consequence of aging.”
Not only does this impact the future health of people, but it also affects their ability to work. Campisi also looked at Work Ability Index (WAI) scores. The WAI is a tool used to assess a worker’s ability to perform their job based on their health and job demands and is used most often in occupational health in healthcare settings. “HCWs with greater DNAmAge showed lower WAI scores, marking this as the first study to link leukocyte DNAmAge with WAI, consistent with the decline in work capacity due to aging and chronic diseases…Chronic job-related stress and inflammation accelerate telomere shortening, impairing cellular repair and function.”
The next sentence is quite telling. “This relationship is biologically plausible as shorter TL indicates advanced cellular aging, which reduces physical and cognitive capacity, impacting work ability.” It correlates well with what we have seen for increasing MVAs and is why I’m reluctant to take a commercial flight.
Finally, they used COPD patients as a control group to compare to the HCWs who participated in the study. “COPD patients are considered a suitable positive control group because they exemplify accelerated biological aging due to chronic inflammation and oxidative stress.
Our results revealed that the blood leukocytes and IS cells of HCWs are biologically older than those of COPD patients, as determined by AgeAcc and predicted TL. This indicates that COVID-19 may induce more pronounced epigenetic changes and telomere attrition than COPD.”
This is what is so upsetting about those who think we should allow children to get repeatedly infected. The data is quite solid that we are saddling them with chronic diseases and a shorter lifespan, although that has not yet become evident. Those behind and supporting The Great Barrington Declaration have really signed the death warrant of millions, even though it’s not an immediate execution. It’s criminal.
I still have trouble wrapping my mind around this idea. My fear is that it is a way to offset Medicare and Social Security costs in the future. The question is if the US government can be that evil.
In grad school, I had started my thesis work on bioterrorism preparedness planning in 2000. When 9/11 happened, it suddenly became far too big of a project due to the volume of publications. As part of my research prior to that day though, I had submitted some FOIA requests related to the topic. What I found was pretty disturbing, so yes, our government can be that evil.
ACT Scores
These are ACT scores since 2010. The green band is < 2 standard deviations (SD) below the mean (dotted black line). The yellow band is 2-3 SD below the mean.
Normally speaking, values within 2 SD is considered just normal variation in the data. We start thinking that some effect is happening when it gets higher than that. It’s pretty obvious that we could exceed -3 SD in 2024.
I admit that some of this might be due to virtual school at the start of the pandemic, but that effect should have washed out by now and I don’t think it would have been this pronounced.
I think what we are seeing is MUCH more influenced by the cognitive impact of an infection, or in kids, repeated infections, since so many believe it’s minor for them. Schools are a main source of community spread. We are going into the season with COVID cases at full throttle.
Ivermectin Grifters
I’m very happy to report that two big ivermectin grifters and misinformation spreaders who are a part of the Front Line COVID-19 Critical Care Alliance had their board certifications revoked by the American Board of Internal Medicine (ABIM). Pierre Kory, MD, is no longer certified in critical care medicine, pulmonary disease, and internal medicine and Paul Ellis Marik, MD, is no longer certified in critical care medicine or internal medicine.
All one has to do is look at who people like this associate with to figure out if one should avoid them as clinicians.
Yoda probably said it best. “Hmm…FAFO they did.”
Mpox
A new clade (1b) of mpox (formerly monkeypox) emerged in September, 2023 in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. This is different than the clade that began to spread globally a couple of years ago, which had its highest impact in the MSM community. There have been 548 deaths from mpox in the DRC this year, but equally as alarming, about “40% of cases are in children under 5 years old.” This suggests that this is much more infectious than what we had seen in the past and is likely being spread via contact, fomite, and airborne transmission routes.
On August 13th, the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention declared a public health emergency for the first time in their history, and the WHO declared a global public health emergency the following day.
On August 16th, the first case was reported outside of Africa, in a person who returned to Sweden after a visit to the DRC.
It’s difficult to pin down an exact mortality rate at this point, but “early estimates suggest it has a mortality rate of 5% for adults and 10% for children.”
This is further complicated by the fact that someone can be infectious 1-4 days before the onset of symptoms and remains infectious until their rash has completely healed, which can take 2-4 weeks.’
The other big unanswered question with this disease is how much impact a COVID-damaged immune system will have on both the course of the disease in an individual and how that will affect spread to those around them.
Given how people flaunted public health recommendations, the likely lack of adequate vaccine volume as well as vaccine hesitancy by many, and how poorly we had done at the start of the COVID pandemic, I’m incredibly worried. This could be considerably harder to protect yourself from compared to COVID.
