Covid rising, Spicing up your mask game during a smoky summer, Covid viral reactivation, Economics of Long Covid, and more

Welcome to the latest issue of the Covid-Is-Not-Over Newsletter!

Yes, indeed, it seems that Covid is back and is still a thing. Perhaps not as bad as some previous summer surges, at least not yet, but it does seem like viral activity is creeping up. Most of the coverage I’ve seen has been focused on the US (1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19), but there’s been some about other places as well (1 2 3 4). Let’s all be careful out there!

The WTFkery of the Week Award goes to all the False claims about miscarriage risk from Covid-19 vaccines are spreading online. They use a faulty interpretation of data. Runner up, in the “Why are we even asking this question” category is Will flu, COVID-19 vaccines be available this fall?

The first WTF award went to an article on CNN; it’s nice to see reporting like this in the mainstream press. All things considered, this one also on CNN is pretty good. Or at very least, could be an awful lot worse: What we’ve learned about Covid-19 since the pandemic.

Following up on last week’s feature on that terrible article on air purifiers, we have A New Trial of Air Filters is Making the Rounds. Its Bait from the Pandemic Accountability Index. Dr. Nicola Jane Boyd continues her work on cleaning the air with Far-UVC continues to witness startling technical advances.

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• What COVID-19 Does to the Body (11th Edition, August 2026) / Pandemic Accountability Index

• What Do We Know About Long COVID? A Compilation of Medical Research (125+ Studies) / Pandemic Accountability Index

• ANSWERED: Is COVID-19 Harmful to Children? A Compilation of Peer-Reviewed Medical Research / Pandemic Accountability Index

• ANSWERED: Does COVID-19 Impact the Immune System? A Compilation of Medical Research (45+ Studies) / Pandemic Accountability Index

• ANSWERED: Does COVID-19 Harm the Brain? / Pandemic Accountability Index

• WHN joins in the chorus: Medical masks are not PPE / World Health Network

• Yes, We Continue Wearing Masks—Here’s Why: Common Questions Answered / World Health Network

• Seven Things to Know About Long COVID by Marisa Swanson / World Health Network

• Long COVID in Context: Prevalence, Search Interest, and Funding / World Health Network

• Spectrum of COVID-19: From Asymptomatic Organ Damage to Long COVID Syndrome by Andrew Ewing, Špela Šalamon, et al. / World Health Network

• Simple things you can do to avoid COVID by Lucky Tran / Aranet

• Immunity Debt: The Conspiracy Theory Elevated to Popular Pseudoscience That Is Making Children Sick / LIL_Science

• You Have To Live Your Life & more Responses to Common COVID Minimizing Phrases

• Covid-19: Will It Mutate To Nothingness? by Rawat Deonandan

• The Science of How COVID Spreads by Abby / One Life Lived Well

• How respiratory viruses transmit: Why some viruses spread easily and others don’t, and what it means for prevention by Gage Moreno

There is currently no paid subscription option for this newsletter and I do not have any plans to switch to that model. However, Substack does have an option where subscribers can pledge to subscribe “just in case” and a few of you have done so. I very much appreciated the vote of confidence in what I’m doing here. If you want to send a little “Thank You” I have a Ko-fi tip jar set up. It. My plan is to spend whatever is donated by supporting artists on Bandcamp.

Patio beer season still not over...

Most people carry eight to 12 generally harmless viruses at any given time. But now, researchers at the University of Texas at Austin conclude that severe COVID-19 infections can reactivate these viruses, leading to worse clinical outcomes, autoimmune diseases, and other long-term conditions such as long COVID. …

It also points to a potential role for viral-reactivation monitoring in hospitalized COVID-19 patients via, for example, already validated infrastructure using polymerase chain reaction to detect Herpesviridae and Anelloviridae, they said.

“Although many no longer think of COVID being a problem, up to 50,000 Americans died of COVID in [the] 2025-2026 respiratory season and some estimates suggest over 10 million U.S. adults suffer from long COVID,” principal investigator Ofer Levy, MD, PhD, of Boston Children’s Hospital, said in a hospital news release.

“We need to help these patients recover with the best outcomes,” he added. “Moreover, sooner or later, there may be another coronavirus pandemic, which means we need to learn all the lessons we can from COVID-19 to be better prepared.”

A severe bout of COVID-19 can wake up an army of dormant viruses hiding inside the body.

That’s according to a study of more than 1,000 people hospitalized with the disease that is published today in Nature¹. The analysis finds that this reactivation of pathogens is linked to especially intense bouts of COVID-19 and to the development of long COVID.

If further research reveals that reactivated viruses can cause people to become seriously ill, it could open the door to new treatments for COVID-19 and even long COVID, says Esther Melamed, a physician-scientist who studies neuroimmunology at the University of Texas at Austin and is a co-author of the analysis.

Although the study didn’t dive into how COVID-19 prompts viruses to reawaken, Melamed says that the disease “probably induces the stress that triggers the reactivations, and then these reactivations further amplify the inflammation” caused by COVID-19. In these cases, she adds, “COVID is not really acting on its own.”

Basically, what I’ve found is that whatever can make your mask appear slightly less “clinical” to an outsider will likely help you move through the world with more ease. The difference in how people look at me and treat me is truly so dramatic. Though I don’t think it’s my responsibility to lessen the fear people seem to have when looking at me masked, this is a relatively easy step that also makes me feel a little cuter (especially since Covid has stolen my ability to show my whole face to the world most days, smile at strangers, and wear makeup).

That being said, I’ve decided to collect a list of mask-related accessories and their creators for you to spice up your mask game and hopefully improve your daily masking experience. Below you’ll find a list of sites where you can buy colorful and/or patterned masks, a huge list of mask chain creators, some mask covers, and more.

Most people associate respirators (KN95/N95/P100+) with Covid or being sick or hospitals, but these tools existed long before the pandemic started and have always been used in many different areas like construction, engineering, mold remediation, painting, etc. They are Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) that should not be politicized because they have nothing to do with politics. They exist to preserve health and save lives. And they might save yours.

I’ve been shocked (but I guess not surprised) by the virulent and violent anti-mask rhetoric in my local subreddits when people have brought up masking during this air pollution emergency. But friends, this problem is only going to get worse. I think we need to get used to masking regularly again. Not just to protect ourselves and each other, but to guarantee a chance at growing old and having a future.

A recent review of 49 brain imaging studies reveals that COVID-19 is associated with widespread structural and functional changes in the human brain. The findings indicate that the virus affects regions responsible for memory, emotion, and executive function, which may help explain the neurological symptoms many patients experience. The research was published in the journal Cerebral Cortex.

By pooling the results, the researchers identified consistent patterns of abnormalities across several key brain regions. The frontal lobe, which handles decision-making and cognitive control, frequently showed structural changes. The temporal and parietal lobes, areas involved in sensory processing and attention, also exhibited noticeable differences in patients who had recovered from the virus.

People with Long COVID have accomplished incredible things in the face of medical doubt, government neglect, and societal silence. We’ve fought for recognition, research, and clinical trials, despite disabling symptoms, stigma, and invalidation.

Yet within this extraordinary work, there is a contradiction. Many in the Long COVID ecosystem refer to people with Long COVID as “patients.”

As I witnessed in early Long COVID advocacy spaces, organizers ignored the precedent of placing a person’s humanity before their health status and chose to identify as “patients.” As the movement has increasingly referenced HIV/AIDS history and disability rights advocacy, I thought the tide would turn.

Instead, “patient” became the default, turning millions of people with Long COVID into a perpetual medicalized identity.

COVID-19 vaccination may have prevented more than 16,000 hospitalizations and 4,000 deaths in one Washington county during the first eight months of the vaccine rollout, according to a new modeling study published last week in BMC Public Health. …

The findings help demonstrate the population-level impact of the initial COVID vaccine rollout, the authors conclude. They also note that an analysis using surveillance data could help other local health departments quantify the benefits of vaccination in their own communities.

More urgency is needed to address gaps in prevention, diagnostic frameworks, and treatment pathways to mitigate the impact of Long COVID over time. As health data continues to show growing health care need, there is a risk that health issues associated with Long COVID will be hidden behind the surging demand for care created by an aging population. But attributing additional disease burden to population aging alone is dangerously misplaced.

It is short-sighted and irresponsible for governments and policy makers to dismiss the rising rates of some conditions as being caused by population aging, former pandemic measures, or lifestyle choices without considering the impact of viral illnesses, some worse than others such as COVID-19 and Influenza, which can be prevented through multi-disciplinary layered approaches.

Most importantly, it is insufficient for public health agencies to focus prevention communications on hand washing, sneezing into one’s sleeve, and cleaning of surfaces to combat COVID-19 and associated Long COVID.

In Germany, workers are being banned from calling in sick. In France, there’s a “very worrying drift in the budget impact of sick leave.”

Missed work in Spain has hit a “record high.” In the U.K., the number of people receiving sickness benefits has gone up. The number of sick days taken by public servants in Canada is rising and disability is increasing in the U.S.

None of this should be surprising. Despite the emergency phase being declared over, the COVID-19 pandemic continues. Long COVID is still making people sick, long after infection, damaging immune systems and triggering various illnesses. …

COVID and Long COVID continue to be significant intersectional justice issues.

Fortunately, for equity-seeking justice advocates, organizations like the Canadian COVID Society and Ontario School Safety exist to inform and work with community groups, unions, and others who can organize and fight to make schools and other workplaces Davos safe and equitably accessible.

When organized labour connects with community groups and other justice seeking organizations, effective social movements can form.

An equitable social justice seeking movement can challenge ongoing government minimization of the individual, social and political economic harms from repeated COVID infections and ongoing Long COVID.

On the one hand, the increase in cases of temporary disability is related, according to the report, to the economic cycle. Benefits fell during the financial crisis and rose afterward with the recovery. A large part of this increased cost is related to the evolution of contributions and the income of the Social Security system, another part to the aging of the working population , and a third to other causes, including the impact of COVID-19.

Major research has found that long COVID continues to affect a substantial proportion of healthcare workers, with serious consequences for their health, work and home lives, and NHS workforce overall.

Researchers examined how common long COVID is among healthcare workers, its most frequently reported symptoms and impact on people’s physical, mental and occupational health.

They found that around one in four UK healthcare workers reported long COVID in a nationwide study. Globally, around 40 percent of healthcare workers included in multiple studies experienced long COVID at an average follow-up of 22 weeks, while 26.5 percent remained affected at 12 months.

For those with long COVID who remained employed, work productivity was more likely to suffer compared with those without the condition.

Absenteeism, or work missed because of health, was highest in the long-COVID group, at 14%. Those who had recovered from the condition experienced an 8% absenteeism rate, compared with 5% for those who never had the condition.

In addition, presenteeism (working while ill) was higher for those with PCC. Presenteeism was up to three times higher in those with PCC (43%), compared with those who had recovered from the condition (23%) and those who never had the condition (13%).

When healthy people become ill, they expect to call a doctor, receive treatment, and recover. When people with myalgic encephalomyelitis (ME) become sicker, they often rely on other sick people for care, in the absence of systemic support.

Mari* is a young Black woman living in Canada with severe ME. Each month, Mari receives a care package from a small group of international peers living with severe ME, including food, medications, and household needs. Mari struggles to feed herself as the exertion of preparing a meal leaves her bedbound with pain and fatigue, so friends send gift cards and research meal delivery services. (*Mari is a pseudonym, used to protect her privacy.)

When social workers abandoned Mari in January 2026, peers with ME listened to Mari’s voice notes and offered support. We listened as Mari tearfully described her fears, while her roommate punched walls in the background in response to Mari’s requests for help.

In summary: (a) surgical masks provide inadequate protection against airborne pathogens; (b) the current WHO guidelines are harming healthcare workers (HCWs) and patients; and (c) WHO as a global healthcare safety leader has the power to reduce disease burden in healthcare settings through more effective advocacy. WHO should lead decisively toward safer healthcare by establishing respirators as the universal default for all healthcare encounters, with clearly defined, locally-determined off-ramps based on transparent risk indicators and the use of effective engineering controls. This recommendation would align WHO policy with science and existing safety standards and would improve safety for both patients and healthcare providers.

Without a doubt, young children are the world’s most adorable vectors of disease.

Their chubby cheeks. Their dimpled knees. Their sticky, unwashed hands and perpetually runny noses. Their tendency to put absolutely everything they can grab into their mouths.

Anyone who has lived with a toddler or preschooler knows that youngsters are avid collectors of germs. And they can’t help sharing them.

During the pandemic, a new study suggests, many older adults were infected with COVID-19 around the time of their grandchildren’s birthdays, probably during parties or family gatherings.

In a study of more than 1.1 million older Danish adults, researchers found that grandparents were 10% more likely to test positive for the coronavirus in the week after a grandchild’s birthday than during other times.

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Tony Iommi. World Alone. (Yes, that Tony Iommi)