A San Francisco professor is glad to get Covid and wrote about it

An interesting article

I just read a fascinating article by a UCSF colleague, saying she is grateful to have gotten Covid (as far as she knows for the first time).

Here are some highlights.

She took a lot of precautions for 5 years.

First, there was good data that the first dose of vaccine reduced severe disease and the probability of getting covid in the first half of 2021 for people who had not already had covid. These benefits mattered more if you were very old, and mattered very little if you were young.

But there was no evidence to justify giving someone 10 doses of this vaccine. We have no idea if there is any benefit to all those doses. As in this case, even a million doses cannot stop you from getting covid. So the probability of getting covid is 100% no matter what you do.

As for severe disease, the first dose was the biggest benefit (back in 2021), but there's no evidence that many doses is helpful in 2024. The virus is very different now. We have no idea if these repeat doses lower severe disease.

Now, let's think about masking. This holiday season as I've traveled, I've noticed some families still mask. They almost always mask in groups. Usually one adult is more consistent than the other. It's almost as if one partner is forcing the other one to do it. What doesn't get said enough is that masking is unpleasant. And there's literally no evidence that this practice of selectively wearing a mask (for e.g. in airports when not drinking) reduces your chance of getting any respiratory virus. We recently had a debate on sensible medicine about a BMJ paper, but that paper is flawed, it does not even swab the participants. The whole thing could be a placebo effect, and likely is.

Here is what the doctor did

All of the available randomized control trial data shows there is no benefit to giving paxlovid to people who have been vaccinated. There are many drug-drug interactions, it is likely that this practice of giving paxlovid actually worsen's outcomes in a population because it interferes with other beneficial meds.

Recently a colleague gleefully told me that I was wrong because they were sick with covid, took Paxlovid and felt better 2 days later. I was stunned. I didn't know what to say. That's the natural history of a cold, I wanted to tell them, but I didn't have the heart. Just imagine how this person would react if somebody said the same thing but use the word ivermectin. It's the lowest form of evidence: anecdotes.

This passage was particularly well said:

This is the part that really got to me. It's such a shame that so many people in public health were dishonest about the virus and the probability of avoiding it. The few people still masking at airports and trying to keep their chair far away from others… they have lost a lot. It is sad to think about. I appreciate my colleague writing about it. It is a nice essay.

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