The Great Abandonment

What's worse: Long COVID or the isolation?

For years, I would repost studies on my private Instagram account. As more research emerged about what SARS-COV-2 was doing to the heart, brain, blood vessels and immune system, I shared citations. I didn’t want to come across as some ranting conspiracy theorist who’d fallen down a YouTube rabbit hole so, surely, I thought, linking to scientific studies would be persuasive.

I organized the studies into story highlights. COVID INFO was the first. Each highlight can only contain up to 100 stories, so when the first was full I moved on to MORE COVID INFO. Looking back now it appears I made it up to COVID INFO 6, alongside COVID ACTION and COVID RESOURCES and SUBSTACK (where I began posting links to my articles when The Gauntlet launched).

But at some point, somewhere between 500 and 600 research papers deep, I realized that studies could not compete with vibes. People either did not care, did not understand, or did not want to know. I stopped posting the information. Other than links to my own articles, I generally stay off Instagram these days.