Feeling a little vindicated. I've been using Paxlovid on anyone, any age, even though guidelines have been that it's for a select, high risk group of people (old, fragile, etc). But there was a suggestion that it had few side effects (more likely: metallic taste in mouth) and might have a role in decreasing Long Covid.

Now, there's more suggestion that it's good to protect against the Long, and even in younglings. 

The antiviral drug Paxlovid reduces the risk of getting long COVID

"On average, the drug lowered the relative risk of developing the conditions by 26 percent"

?

Lab Leak Theory: 1, Misinformation Cops: 0

Confirmation of Wuhan scientists as "patients zero" makes the lab leak theory look likely—and the misinformation police look like fools.

The lab leak theory of COVID-19's origins gained tremendous legitimacy this week as The Wall Street Journal confirmed independent reports that the earliest outbreak occurred at the Wuhan Institute of Virology in November 2019.

"Patients zero" are now presumed to be three Chinese scientists, including Ben Hu, who worked extensively on gain-of-function research (the manipulation of viruses to make them more dangerous), which was funded by grants from the U.S. government. Those cases occurred in November 2019—well before the Huanan wet market outbreak favored by some in the scientific community as the more likely origin story—and they occurred among the very people one would predict if the virus originated in a lab. This is quite damning, to say the least. Anyone still clinging to an animal origin theory—remember the pangolins and raccoon dogs?—is running up against Occam's razor.

Assuming the intelligence reports are accurate and that Hu and his colleagues did contract the earliest cases of COVID-19, the implications are huge. This would mean that substandard safety protocols at the Wuhan lab probably unleashed a killer pathogen on the rest of the planet, and the Chinese government attempted to cover it up.