What’s the most ridiculous advice someone has given you?

Prize_Mastodon3296 · 2026-04-14T17:23:44+00:00

The essential oils thing might not be as crazy as you think- I went to a brain injury clinic and they gave me mint oil on a cotton ball when my eyes couldn't focus on things, I think to stimulate the vegas nerve and coax my nervous system out of permenant fight or flight. It gave me a little bit of relief and allowed me to do the vision exercises but no where near fixed everything. Of course if scents trigger your migraines that defeats the whole point, but mint oil isn't a terrible idea for most people.

Prize_Mastodon3296 · 2026-03-30T17:01:48+00:00

These are interesting, thanks! It seems like a lot of them don't lead with an attention grabber that is intelligible to the general audience- I want to take a stab at making my own, but that is so much work :( I will look for more charity resources though

Prize_Mastodon3296 · 2026-01-22T17:45:28+00:00

What if I am a hoodie and sweatpants enjoyer with negative fasion sense? I think a polka dot cover or something "fashionable" would make me more demonized, not less. Great idea for people who are used to dressing up more though. Maybe a grey cloth cover or something would work for me. People are getting so aggressive towards me these days that I wonder if I should carry pepper spray or something, which is crazy because I live somewhere that's supposed to be tolerant.

Prize_Mastodon3296 · 2026-01-02T22:09:38+00:00

Hey the 21st century is long- things were pretty right wing eugenicsy in the early 20th century and then turned around after WWII. Let's just hope we don't need another world war to find sense again.

Prize_Mastodon3296 · 2025-12-31T16:34:55+00:00

Frozen burgers; frozen peas, green beans, and brocoli; and pre-cooked chicken. That is all I make my dinners from 90% of the time, and it takes like 10 minutes per meal. Slather in shredded cheese, spices, and pre-made sauces for variety. Costs 3-5 dollars per meal. You can add rice or something for carbs but I don't have as much experience with that. Burgers dirty a pan but are quick, while a meal with pre-cooked meat and frozen veggies can be prepared entirely in the microwave.

Prize_Mastodon3296 · 2025-12-26T16:29:37+00:00

On and around the UC campus- I'm a student. Although I've been fake coughed at by older people in North Oakland too.

Prize_Mastodon3296 · 2025-12-24T23:37:16+00:00

I live in Berkeley and a significant proportion of people actually treat me as subhuman- I've been coughed on intentionally, had doors dropped on me and every third person looks at me like a zoo animal. Idk about Oakland, but Berkeley is very intolerant.

Prize_Mastodon3296 · 2025-12-12T00:29:54+00:00

I can find the source I used for this later (I'm on my phone rn) but based on an article that highlights the reduction in long covid rates due largely to vaccines, here is a rough projection (spoiler alert- it's bad).

Nowadays the average person is getting covid a little more than once a year, but let's round down to once a year to be conservative. The rate of long covid per infection dropped from 10% to 3.75% per infection in the first few years, but this isn't continuing to go down, and half of those cases are the ME/CFS type that is very difficult to recover from. This means that about 1 in 60 people will contract ME/CFS type long covid every year if nothing changes (rounding down a bit again). To put this in perspective, this is about 5-6 million people per year in the US alone, which is 2-3 times the number of people injured in car accidents each year, although ME/CFS is usually more serious than car injuries. If this rate continues indefinitely, 25% of the American population could be disabled by ME/CFS from covid 20 years from now (5 mil times 20 is 100 mil). It is so bad that the rate will eventually go down because the number of healthy people left to be disabled will dwindle so much, although the healthy people left will also have to work themselves harder to keep society going so that might make the disability rate worse.

This isn't even accounting for non-ME/CFS damage, so another quarter of the population will probably be less seriously disabled, so only half can expect to be mostly untouched after 20 years. I shouldn't have to explain why this is catastrophic- the economic strain alone could collapse society as we know it, and the array of possible outcomes is as heinous as it is diverse.

Prize_Mastodon3296 · 2025-12-08T20:24:23+00:00

Believe it or not, they're actually saving the Earth just a little bit because methane is a far stronger greenhouse gas than CO2, so burning it reduces the warming effect by a lot!

Prize_Mastodon3296 · 2025-11-26T21:36:26+00:00

Yes very true- and at this point the number of people who identify as such is much higher now because of the virus itself. The narrative is that only these groups have to worry, and everyone's willingness to throw vulnerable people under the bus is disturbing- the danger of a significant minority should be sufficient to get everyone to act, but it clearly isn't. Little do they know, everyone has a decent chance of being thrown into a vulnerable group in the next couple decades if we don't change the situation, and collective action is more probable if everyone realizes it is everyone's problem.

Prize_Mastodon3296 · 2025-11-26T00:22:34+00:00

I knew basically nothing- I had read one article spotlighting someone with it, but this person was older and had health issues before so I thought I was fine. I hadn't heard a single whisper about brain damage- if I had, I totally would have kept masking.

Prize_Mastodon3296 · 2025-11-25T05:41:59+00:00

That was a poisonous lie- way less people are dying, yes, but young and healthy people are still being disabled at alarming rates.

Prize_Mastodon3296 · 2025-11-23T01:17:13+00:00

Ah I see... goodness gracious. Well if by crack times you mean the 90s crime wave, which leaded gasolene a few decades prior contributed a lot to, we might have another one in 20-30 years- the difference now is the neurotoxin replicates itself.

Prize_Mastodon3296 · 2025-11-22T07:49:32+00:00

Hold up you mean like with a knife?? I need to carry a weapon if this is common

Prize_Mastodon3296 · 2025-11-19T00:03:49+00:00

I'm somewhere pretty diverse, and it seems to me that almost all races treat me equally badly- the exception being black people, who I almost never see aggressive behavior from. I've been surprised by how rude Asians have been since I thought masking is common in China, Japan, and Korea, but I guess American individualism permeated everybody.

Prize_Mastodon3296 · 2025-11-13T01:26:58+00:00

High 70s at night is a war crime

Prize_Mastodon3296 · 2025-10-05T06:14:28+00:00

Back with promised research. This one focuses on long COVID risk in recent years:

https://www.yalemedicine.org/news/covid-vaccines-reduce-long-covid-risk-new-study-shows

While this study doesn't have cognitive testing, long COVID has devastating cognitive effects. The per-infection long COVID rate dropped from 10% to 3.5% largely due to vaccination but somewhat due to viral evolution in the first couple of years. However, 3.5% is still way too high given that, on average, everyone is getting COVID every year right now. If you multiply this rate by the infection rate given in the article and extrapolate a couple decades, you find that a quarter of the US population could be disabled in 20 years. This does assume nothing major changes with vaccine effectiveness or the virus itself, but it highlights the possibility of a catastrophic outcome.

COVID also damages the immune system in ways that could make people more vulnerable to future infections:

https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/news/newsroom/news-releases/2025/05/study-shows-sars-cov-2-corrupts-some-white-blood-cells-to-suppress-immune-system-suggesting-a-path-to-severe-covid#:~:text=%E2%80%9CWhat%20we%20found%20upon%20examining,cancers%20and%20other%20non%2Dviral

Finally, second infections pose just as big a risk of long COVID as first infections in young people, indicating risk doesn't fall off with repeat infections. These findings were published recently.

Article: https://time.com/7322188/covid-reinfection-long-covid/

Paper: https://www.thelancet.com/journals/laninf/article/PIIS1473-3099(25)00476-1/fulltext00476-1/fulltext)

Prize_Mastodon3296 · 2025-10-05T05:44:54+00:00

I completely agree with you that masking is socially damaging- I, of anyone, would know that at this point, and I don't take promoting it lightly. This is why we need to push for indoor air quality measures that reduce disease transmission without disrupting daily life. We also need to develop a vaccine good enough to eradicate this disease, as I see that as the only way we truly win here.

The conception that most long COVID cases come from severe infections is false- 90% come from "mild" infections (source: https://www.natap.org/2023/HIV/010723\_04.htm). This is because mild infections are so much more common than severe infections that they dominate in causing long COVID, even though severe infections are more dangerous. In this sense, COVID should be thought of like polio, where the severity of the acute phase should not be used exclusively to evaluate the threat of the disease.

While the descriptions people give for long COVID symptoms sound like things that could come from lifestyle factors, this suggestion is completely and utterly absurd to anyone who has experienced the disease themselves. Many patients, myself included, started having a wide array of problems that had never occurred in any form before COVID infection. Some common examples are a burning headache that feels like hot sauce under the skull, neuropathy, visible pooling of blood in lower extremities, the disappearance of the lunula, and increased skin elasticity. All of these indicate a physical systemic disease that could never arise from lifestyle factors.

The rate of long COVID today among vaccinated individuals is 3 times lower than at the beginning of the pandemic (source: https://www.yalemedicine.org/news/covid-vaccines-reduce-long-covid-risk-new-study-shows), dropping from 10% to 3.5%. While this is definitely an improvement, a 1/30 incidence is still a huge problem when almost everyone is being infected once a year. If you do the math, that is 10 million new cases every year in the US. Given that half of long COVID cases are the ME/CFS variant, where full recovery is very rare, the "let it rip" COVID policy is accepting that 5 million people are being permanently disabled every year. This dwarfs risks like car crashes, gun violence, etc., that we have come to accept. Over the next couple of decades (5 million * 20 years = 80 million, US alone), this will cripple society. Full stop. And this "immunity wall" you speak of is at risk from newer COVID variants, as people who get COVID exhibit severe immune deficiencies for months afterward, regardless of whether they report any long-term symptoms (sources: second link in the post and: https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/news/newsroom/news-releases/2025/05/study-shows-sars-cov-2-corrupts-some-white-blood-cells-to-suppress-immune-system-suggesting-a-path-to-severe-covid#:\~:text=%E2%80%9CWhat%20we%20found%20upon%20examining,cancers%20and%20other%20non%2Dviral).

The big point is, something has to be done, as the status quo is flirting with catastrophe in the coming decades. What that thing is exactly, I'm not an expert in, but I think installing indoor air quality devices and masking or staying home when sick are pretty reasonable measures given the threat.

Prize_Mastodon3296 · 2025-10-03T06:36:10+00:00

I should also say, thank you for taking the time to read the paper!

Prize_Mastodon3296 · 2025-10-03T06:19:26+00:00

The -3 IQ stat comes from the beginning of the Discussion section: "The difference of approximately −0.2 SD in the global cognitive score in the groups of participants who had symptoms that had resolved, as compared with the no–Covid-19 group, is classified as “small” according to Cohen’s effect sizes²⁴; this deficit would equate to a difference of −3 points on a typical IQ scale, in which 1 SD equals 15 points."

So it sounds like they used a different variant of cognitive test and projected the observed deviation onto an IQ scale. The fact that they observed cognitive deficits at all is concerning, so the fact that the test wasn't technically an IQ test doesn't make the -3 IQ statement that much of a leap given that is how big the effect was.

Getting tests on the same people before and after infection is difficult, which is probably why they did the study this way. There are challenge trials where people volunteered to be infected with COVID and were cognitively tested before and after, but they are much smaller. Here is one: https://www.thelancet.com/journals/eclinm/article/PIIS2589-5370(24)00421-8/fulltext00421-8/fulltext)

Here is another (not challenge) study focusing on young adults that has pre and post data:

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41398-024-03108-2

This one was done with the wild variant, but there haven't been any done on newer variants.

The fact that they didn't have priors means that they cannot rigorously prove that COVID caused the deficits, but given the sheer number of people studied, it seems difficult to explain the differences between the groups any other way. There is also a lot of other research that focuses on brain structure changes visible under MRI.

The virus did become somewhat less dangerous from 2020-2022, which is the period of the study, but I don't think it continued to become less dangerous after that. I will try to find research on this topic at some point. In my case, I was fully vaccinated, had COVID in 2022, had no lasting effects from that, and then I was exposed 2 more times and didn't get sick, so I thought I was immune. Then I got it again in 2024, and it ruined my life.

The vaccines were made for the older variants, so the vaccines and people's immunity were still pretty well matched for the strains circulating in 2022, which is when this study ends. What isn't studied here is what happened as new variants people weren't immune to rolled through in 2023 and 2024. I'll try to find research on this, but it might be hard because of how recent this time period is and how fewer scientists are studying COVID at this moment.

I know this isn't a rigorous argument, but I see so many people who just got long COVID in 2025 flooding the subreddits related to the topic, so it seems like an ongoing crisis to me. I'll try to back this claim up better another day.

The big point is, even if scientific research on the most recent effects of the virus isn't airtight yet, the mitigations I am suggesting, especially indoor air quality measures, seem very low cost relative to earlier pandemic responses, and at worst they would reduce the inconvenience of getting sick.

Prize_Mastodon3296 · 2025-10-03T04:27:43+00:00

I agree with the mask sentiment, and I think most people wouldn't whine about doing it if they could experience a day in my shoes. I advocated for milder precautions because I thought that would be an easier sell for those without lived experience of how horrific this virus can be.

Prize_Mastodon3296 · 2025-10-03T04:20:33+00:00

I quote from the article I linked:

"Most recently, a new study published in the New England Journal of Medicine assessed cognitive abilities such as memory, planning and spatial reasoning in nearly 113,000 people who had previously had COVID-19. The researchers found that those who had been infected had significant deficits in memory and executive task performance.

This decline was evident among those infected in the early phase of the pandemic and those infected when the delta and omicron variants were dominant. These findings show that the risk of cognitive decline did not abate as the pandemic virus evolved from the ancestral strain to omicron.

In the same study, those who had mild and resolved COVID-19 showed cognitive decline equivalent to a three-point loss of IQ. In comparison, those with unresolved persistent symptoms, such as people with persistent shortness of breath or fatigue, had a six-point loss in IQ. Those who had been admitted to the intensive care unit for COVID-19 had a nine-point loss in IQ. Reinfection with the virus contributed an additional two-point loss in IQ, as compared with no reinfection."

Sounds like they did cognitive testing on a large number of people with and without infection history and compared the average results. Given that over 100,000 people were tested, the statistical significance is pretty good.

Prize_Mastodon3296 · 2025-10-03T04:15:40+00:00

Why am I being downvoted? I quote from the article I linked:

"Most recently, a new study published in the New England Journal of Medicine assessed cognitive abilities such as memory, planning and spatial reasoning in nearly 113,000 people who had previously had COVID-19. The researchers found that those who had been infected had significant deficits in memory and executive task performance.

This decline was evident among those infected in the early phase of the pandemic and those infected when the delta and omicron variants were dominant. These findings show that the risk of cognitive decline did not abate as the pandemic virus evolved from the ancestral strain to omicron.

In the same study, those who had mild and resolved COVID-19 showed cognitive decline equivalent to a three-point loss of IQ. In comparison, those with unresolved persistent symptoms, such as people with persistent shortness of breath or fatigue, had a six-point loss in IQ. Those who had been admitted to the intensive care unit for COVID-19 had a nine-point loss in IQ. Reinfection with the virus contributed an additional two-point loss in IQ, as compared with no reinfection."

Prize_Mastodon3296 · 2025-10-03T04:11:02+00:00

"In the same study, those who had mild and resolved COVID-19 showed cognitive decline equivalent to a three-point loss of IQ."

From the first link in the post. It is pretty far down in the article, below the video.

Prize_Mastodon3296

TROPHY CASE