The long arm of long covid-like symptoms (1)
I read with interest your article on long covid 鈥� how some people may take a long time to recover after a coronavirus infection 26 June, p 10. I wonder whether similar things may happen with covid-19 vaccination.
When I had my second shot of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine two months ago, I was really under the weather for 36 hours, with tiredness, lethargy and slight fever. The tiredness continued for another week or so, and was especially noticeable during exercise.
However, my 40-year-old daughter continued to have a headache, tiredness and lethargy for more than a month after her second dose. She says she still isn’t completely herself after nearly six weeks, and gets tired easily during exercise. I wonder if others have had the same experience.
The long arm of long covid-like symptoms (2)
Your article covered much-needed information about the causes of long covid and its similarities with chronic fatigue syndrome.
However, it is a pity that the discussion wasn’t broadened to other comparable conditions, such as . The similarities of these to long covid have been I firmly believe that investigations into long covid may shed light on these too.
Is there a third way to deal with coronavirus?
The comparison of mitigation and elimination strategies for covid-19 misses an interesting alternative approach 鈥� tolerance (19 June, p 10).
This focuses on accepting covid-19’s spread and deploying practical, focused hygiene measures rather than societally disruptive interventions. It has been used in Sweden and in , where it was introduced in time for the winter wave.
It also matches the advice of Donald Henderson 鈥� the mastermind of smallpox’s eradication 鈥� and his colleagues in a on handling respiratory pandemics.
ET is watching us: worry about what it will think
You report that it is possible that aliens orbiting 1402 stars near Earth could be looking at us right now (3 July, p 20). That is very worrying.
Before being watched by others, we need to comb our hair and put on our best clothes. Suppose that aliens could pick up our television broadcasts? Xeno-sociologists in the Proxima Centauri system are currently watching the early years of the Trump administration with bemusement, as they are just over 4 light years away.
But they probably aren’t as perplexed as any observers that are around 52 light years away, who will be trying to understand us while watching early broadcasts of Monty Python’s Flying Circus.
Time to turn back the clock on expert decision-making
Daniel Kahneman and Olivier Sibony give a lucid account of variability, or noise, in expert judgements, including a definition of what constitutes such a decision (19 June, p 40). In essence, any choice that can’t be reduced to an algorithm can be classed as an expert judgement.
Until about 10 years ago, so-called support tools for expert decisions. Lately, these seem to have been pushed aside for more trendy technologies, such as artificial intelligence, which is mainly focused on generating complex and often hidden algorithms to simulate expert judgements.
The best of the pre-AI systems went a long way towards indicating both an unbiased consensus decision and a total tolerance range due to various sources of noise. Is it time to revisit the potential of these kinds of expert systems in supporting expert judgements?
One day we may see two giant black holes collide
Regarding the story “Cosmic collisions may push huge black holes off kilter”, what would happen if and when two galaxies merged and their supermassive black holes collided? Maybe it would generate an explosion that would be the largest since the big bang (12 June, p 18). Both galaxies would surely be ripped apart.
The gravitational waves produced would be immense and easily measured. The universe is vast, so this has probably occurred more than once.
Is it time to rename our not-so-great species?
James Fenton correctly states that the word “natural” is pointless unless it is defined in opposition to “artificial” (Letters, 26 June). I have often wondered whether our species is misnamed. Perhaps it should be Homo callidus, meaning clever, crafty or sly, as in “man who is too clever for his own good”. If so, the natural behaviour of H. callidus is self-aggrandisement: to get bigger, richer or more powerful.
In turn, this reflects the letter in the same edition from David Seager, speculating on the successor to our species.
Unlikely though it seems, may I hope for a new subspecies: Homo sapiens veritas, or “truly wise man”? This creature will naturally exhibit the self-abnegation needed to solve climate change and species loss. At the moment, sadly, such behaviour is entirely artificial.
To cut carbon fast, many things may have to go
I would fully endorse Paul Gulliver’s sentiments about the climate-harming pollution of space tourism, but I wonder how the principle of not “generating greenhouse gases for amusement” might be extended and, if this were done, how we should rank the pastimes involved (Letters, 12 June).
For example, would Formula 1 and other big business motor sports continue to be acceptable after package holiday flights and Sunday afternoon drives in the country were outlawed, or would it be the other way round?
I don’t believe such notions are fanciful: to meet the minimum climate targets, on which we all agree, we must stop burning fossil fuels. Ideally, we should stop completely now. But practicalities demand a phased reduction 鈥� so who or what goes first?
For the record
A 2018 study led by Angelo Gemignani and Andrea Piarulli on slow breathing’s effect on brainwaves (19 May, p 34), found no link between the nasal stimulation used and sleep or drowsiness.