COVID Isn’t a Cold. It’s Cigarettes All Over Again

The Damage Is Everywhere – That Is the Definition of Long COVID

Look, we’ve been here before.

My grandpa smoked two packs a day for most of my memory of him. Everyone did. Doctors literally prescribed cigarettes for stress. They said it was good for you. Made you look cool. Helped you lose weight. Whatever.

He felt fine until he didn’t.

That’s exactly what’s happening with COVID right now, and nobody wants to hear it. People are catching this thing two, three times a year and acting like it’s nothing. Just a cold. Just the sniffles. Meanwhile, their blood vessels are getting shredded. Their organs are taking hits. Their brains are leaking.

But sure, tell yourself it’s fine.

Your Body Is Keeping Score

Here’s the thing nobody gets: COVID doesn’t give a shit about your positive thinking. It’s not checking your Instagram to see if you’re living your best life. It’s binding to your ACE2 receptors. Those are everywhere, your heart, your brain, your kidneys, your liver, your gut, your reproductive organs. Literally everywhere that matters.

You know what else binds to receptors everywhere?

Nicotine.

Remember how that worked out? People smoked for decades feeling totally fine. They ran marathons. They had babies. They built careers. Then boom, lung cancer. Heart disease. Emphysema. Strokes. The bill always comes due. It just takes a while.

COVID is running the exact same playbook, except faster.

The Great Denial Machine

I was at a laundromat before we moved in 2020. The woman working there, standing in front of me was coughing her lungs out, no mask. She saw my concern, then she said, “Oh, it’s just allergies.”

Sure, Alice. In February. Allergies.

This is where we are. We’ve collectively decided to pretend a vascular disease that attacks every organ in your body is basically a head cold. We’ve decided that forty percent of infections happening with zero symptoms is totally normal and fine. We’ve decided that kids getting diabetes at unprecedented rates since 2020 is just a weird coincidence.

We’re not just sticking our heads in the sand. We’re building luxury condos down there.

Your Lungs Are Just the Lobby

Most viruses are lazy. They hit your nose and throat, make you miserable for a week, then peace out. They can’t get past the upper airways because they suck at binding to cells. They’re like that friend who can never quite figure out how to work your front door lock.

SARS-CoV-2 is different. It’s got a skeleton key.

This virus doesn’t just visit your lungs, it uses them as a launching pad. It binds to ACE2 receptors with a grip that would make a rock climber jealous. Those receptors are concentrated in your alveoli, those tiny air sacs where oxygen meets blood. That’s ground zero.

Once it’s there, it’s one membrane away from your bloodstream. One thin barrier between air and every organ in your body. The virus punches through, and suddenly it’s not a respiratory infection anymore. It’s a full-body invasion.

That’s why people are having heart attacks at 35. That’s why healthy athletes are dropping dead. That’s why your friend who “recovered” from COVID can’t remember where she put her keys. Or her car. Or why she walked into this room.

Every Infection Is Russian Roulette

A friend of mine had COVID several times. The first time, he said it was. “Like a mild cold.” The second time knocked him on his ass for three weeks. The third time? He's been dealing with heart palpitations, stomach pain, and allergies, for years. He was a cyclist, regular weight lifter, and clean eater.

But sure, natural immunity is totally working.

Here’s what’s actually happening: Every infection is another round of damage. Another hit to your blood vessels. Another chance for the virus to set up shop in your organs. Another spin of the wheel to see if this is the one that gives you diabetes, or ruins your heart, or breaks your brain.

You’re not building immunity. You’re accumulating injury.

The Kids Aren’t Alright

We’re experimenting on an entire generation, and nobody wants to talk about it.

Kids are getting COVID multiple times a year. Their ACE2 receptors are everywhere, just like ours. We have no idea what this does to a developing brain. We have no idea what this means for their hearts, their fertility, their future. We’re basically running a massive uncontrolled trial on millions of children and hoping for the best.

Diabetes diagnoses in kids are through the roof. Cardiac issues in young people are exploding. Academic performance is tanking. But sure, let’s keep pretending this is about lazy iPad kids and not the virus that’s literally eating their brains.

What will it look like in twenty years, or seventy years, when we’re dealing with a decades of infections? Will it be chronically ill adults who can’t work, can’t think, can’t function, remember this moment. Will it be cancers? Remember when we decided their health was worth less than our comfort. Remember when we chose convenience over caution.

Remember when we could have done something.

The Bill Is Already Here

We’re not waiting decades for the smoking gun. It’s here. Young people having strokes. Healthy adults developing autoimmune diseases. Athletes with destroyed hearts. Twenty-somethings with the cognitive function of seventy-somethings.

The data is screaming at us:

- Heart attacks up across all age groups

- Diabetes diagnoses skyrocketing

- Excess deaths still way above normal

- Long COVID affecting millions

- Brain fog becoming endemic

- Fertility issues exploding

But we don’t want to hear it. We want to pretend it’s 2019. We want to believe that if we just ignore it hard enough, it’ll go away.

Viruses don’t care what you believe.

The Science They Don’t Want You to Know

Studies keep coming out showing the same thing: This virus doesn’t leave clean. It persists. Researchers are finding viral fragments in people months, even years after infection. In the gut. In the brain. In the heart. Just hanging out, causing inflammation, triggering immune responses, aging you from the inside.

This isn’t conspiracy theory bullshit. This is published research from Harvard, Stanford, Yale. Major medical journals. The best scientists in the world are screaming into the void while everyone else is at brunch.

The spike protein alone can cross the blood-brain barrier. Your own immune cells can smuggle the virus into your brain. It can hide in your gut for months. It can infiltrate your bone marrow. It can wreck your mitochondria, the literal powerhouses of your cells.

But yeah, it’s just a cold.

What The Hell Do We Do?

Look, I’m not saying panic. Panic is useless. I’m saying wake the fuck up and do something.

Wear a decent mask in crowded spaces. Not that cloth nonsense, an N95 or better. Get an air purifier. Several, actually. Build a Corsi-Rosenthal box if you’re broke. It’s literally a box fan and some filters. A child could make one.

Stop pretending “mild” infections are harmless. They’re not. Every infection matters. Every exposure is a risk. This isn’t fear-mongering, it’s math.

Demand better treatments, like vaccines, monoclonal antibodie, antivirals. The current ones help but they’re not enough. We need nasal vaccines. We need pan-coronavirus vaccines. We need the existing monoclonal drugs available for everyone. Approve new antiviral drugs! We need governments to stop pretending this is over and start funding real solutions.

Stop shaming people who still mask. They’re not crazy. They’re paying attention. They’re the ones who’ll still have functioning organs in ten years while everyone else is wondering why they can’t climb stairs anymore.

The Ugly Truth

Here’s what nobody wants to admit: We chose this.

We could have had clean air in schools. We could have had better vaccines. We could have had mandatory sick leave. We could have had a coordinated response that actually protected people instead of corporate profits.

Instead, we chose to pretend it was over. We chose to sacrifice the vulnerable. We chose to gamble with our kids’ futures. We chose short-term comfort over long-term health.

And now we’re all going to pay for it. Some of us are already paying. The rest are just running up the tab.

Your Organs, Itemized

Since people love lists, here’s every system this “cold” is destroying:

- Blood vessels: Inflammation, clotting, scarring, permanent damage

- Heart: Myocarditis, heart failure, arrhythmias, sudden death

- Brain: Strokes, cognitive decline, memory loss, personality changes, depression, anxiety, the inability to recognize that you’re impaired

- Lungs: Scarring, fibrosis, permanent reduced capacity

- Kidneys: Acute injury, chronic disease, failure

- Liver: Inflammation, enzyme elevation, metabolic dysfunction

- Pancreas: New-onset diabetes, insulin resistance, cell death

- Gut: Chronic inflammation, destroyed microbiome, malabsorption

- Reproductive system: Erectile dysfunction, menstrual disruption, reduced fertility, pregnancy complications

- Immune system: T-cell exhaustion, autoimmune activation, increased susceptibility to everything

- Muscles and joints: Chronic pain, inflammation, weakness

- Eyes and ears: Vision loss, hearing damage, tinnitus that never stops

- Skin: Rashes, COVID toes, premature aging

That’s not even everything. That’s just the highlight reel.

It Doesn’t Always Leave

Here’s the part that should terrify you: The virus doesn’t always go away.

We’re finding viral persistence in tissue months after “recovery.” It’s just sitting there, lurking, causing ongoing damage. Your immune system keeps fighting it, causing chronic inflammation. Your body is basically in a permanent state of low-grade war.

That’s why people don’t get better. That’s why Long COVID exists. That’s why “mild” infections turn into lifelong disability. The virus sets up shop and doesn’t leave.

Smoking filled your lungs with tar. COVID fills your body with viral debris.

Pick your poison, I guess.

The Clock Is Ticking

We’re five years into this experiment. Five years of letting it rip. Five years of pretending it’s fine. Five years of accumulated damage that we’re only beginning to understand.

Smoking took decades to reveal its true cost. COVID is speedrunning the whole thing. We’re seeing the consequences in real-time, and we’re still pretending we don’t.

Your body doesn’t forget. Every infection leaves a mark. Every “mild” case adds to the pile. You might feel fine now. You might feel fine for years.

But the bill always comes due.

And when it does, remember: You had a choice. We all did. We chose comfort. We chose denial. We chose to look away.

How’s that working out?

The research is there if you want it. Hundreds of studies. Thousands of scientists. Mountains of evidence. But sure, trust that random guy on Twitter who says it’s just a cold. What could go wrong?

Here’s a beginners reading list if you actually give a damn:

The Litany of Damage

Endothelial cell infection and endotheliitis in COVID-19, The Lancet (2020).

The S1 protein of SARS-CoV-2 crosses the blood–brain barrier in mice, Nature Neuroscience (2021).

SARS-CoV-2 RNAemia and disease severity, Journal of Clinical Virology (2023).

Persistent clotting protein pathology in Long COVID, Cardiovascular Diabetology (2021).

SARS-CoV-2 induces blood-brain barrier and choroid plexus injury, Acta Neuropathologica (2024).

Persistence of SARS-CoV-2 in the body and implications for long COVID, Nature Reviews Microbiology (2023).

Cardiac Involvement in Children Affected by COVID-19, Frontiers in Pediatrics:

Venous and arterial thromboembolic complications in COVID-19, Thrombosis Journal:

Post-COVID Conditions Among Children and Adolescents, CDC MMWR:

NIH Study: 5.8 Million Children and Youth Have Experienced Long COVID, Inside Precision Medicine:

Mechanisms of Gut-Related Viral Persistence in Long COVID, Frontiers in Immunology:

COVID-19: Two Studies Confirm the Persistence of Prolonged Cognitive Impairment Up to One Year After Infection, Le Monde / The Lancet coverage:

Long COVID in Children and Adolescents: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis, Scientific Reports (Nature):

SARS-CoV-2 Infection and Persistence in the Human Body and Brain at Autopsy, Nature:

Viral Persistence in Long COVID: Research Advances and Therapeutic Implications, LWW Infectious Diseases: