Unlike HIV, it's not a permanent effect and affects a different kind of white blood cell in a different way. White blood cells live no longer than a few days at maximum, and neutrophils which this article talks about are even shorter-lived. It's likely part of why covid can be so severe, but once the body has cleared the virus there's no reason to suspect that this effect goes on.

HIV is an unrelated virus to the one that causes covid, and kills a specific and important type of immune cell, doing so over the course of many years and leading to a total breakdown in the immune system's effectiveness, i.e. AIDS. This isn't what SARS-CoV-2 does and if it did, we'd say that it causes AIDS rather than saying that HIV has gone airborne, and hundreds of millions of people would be dead.

[–] JoeByeThen@hexbear.net 15 points 6 days ago

It's likely part of why covid can be so severe, but once the body has cleared the virus there's no reason to suspect that this effect goes on.

However, the body can take months sometimes years to clear Covid. From what we know. so-far

This isn't what SARS-CoV-2 does and if it did, we'd say that it causes AIDS

Potato, potato. . I don't think anyone here talking about airborne HIV actually thinks Covid is HIV. It's just a useful comparison in a world trying to downplay it as a "cold."

[–] TheModerateTankie@hexbear.net 3 points 6 days ago

The problem is that covid can infect places that are hard for our immune systems to clear, like the gut, and there are theories that a lot of long covid cases come from persistent infections, The frequency of reinfections doesn't help, either. China, I believe, has started treated people with drugs used to treat HIV for this reason. In the rules based international community international-community-1 international-community-2 we want to pretends it's over and isn't severe anymore and are leaving people with long covid to fend for themselves.

A lot of the new variants that show up are believed to derive from long term infections, particularly people with suppressed immune systems, where the virus can spend months mutating.

[–] FanofOatmeal@hexbear.net 6 points 6 days ago

I remember when I said it was airborne AIDS in 2020 and the entire left + liberal + conservative world told me I was nuts and the latter two told me I was a Chinese shill for insisting it came from the USA (the former just told me I was crazy)