If only we had a way to slow down or stop the spread of disease. 
Someday, far onto the future, scientists will figure it out!
Around the world, a post-Covid reality is beginning to sink in: Everyone, everywhere, really is sick a lot more often.
At least 13 communicable diseases, from the common cold to measles and tuberculosis, are surging past their pre-pandemic levels in many regions, and often by significant margins, according to analysis by Bloomberg News and London-based disease forecasting firm Airfinity Ltd.
The resulting research, based on data collected from more than 60 organizations and public health agencies, shows that 44 countries and territories have reported at least one infectious disease resurgence that’s at least ten times worse than the pre-pandemic baseline.
The post-Covid global surge of illnesses — viral and bacterial, common and historically rare — is a mystery that researchers and scientists are still trying to definitively explain. The way Covid lockdowns shifted baseline immunities is a piece of the puzzle, as is the pandemic’s hit to overall vaccine administration and compliance. Climate change, rising social inequality and wrung-out health-care services are contributing in ways that are hard to measure.
We can explain it, covid takes a toll on our immune system, and we are constantly exposed to it and can catch it multiple times a year. No one in public office wants to acknowledge it because that would mean putting money and effort into infection control.
Welcome. Did you happen to listen to that Death Panel episode about the NPR lady trying to shame her husband about not caring about Covid? It’s pretty cathartic; nice to be able to hear other people talking about actual reality. But also, they hit on an excellent point that we often touch on here which is that so many people out there are basically abandoned by their government, and thus society. And I think the interesting thing about Covid is that, it’s growing that class of abandoned people at an incredible rate, to the point the middle class that thrived off the pride of not being that abandoned class has largely joined it. It gives me a lot of hopes seeing the Pro-Palestine protests being so mask friendly, because that’s where a lot of these middle class folks are going to be radicalized. There’s a lot of potential there, I think.🤞
I did listen to it. I have been a follower of that podcast on the periphery and it is nice to hear from other IC people how they are dealing with this reality. I got a little choked up listening and thinking of my own partner, who at this point is almost a caregiver, too. It irrevocably changes your life and the lives of everyone around you to be like this in a way I don’t think anyone can really grasp until they’re in it. I don’t want to say it’s become a “special interest” or anything but I have been really diving into reading about the history of movements of the sick/disabled and especially how it relates to modern socialist ideology- there’s a LOT of material about this from the USSR, actually! it has been equal parts inspiring and horrifying especially knowing the trajectory we are moving in. I don’t know that there is a more singularly reviled condition by the public writ large historically than being disabled…at least it sure seems like it. There is a lot more I need to learn.
Not quite the same, but I was caregiver for my grandparents in their final years basically right up into the beginning of Covid. And yeah, the things I learned with just some of the hoops we had to jump through working with the US healthcare system was horrifying. Definitely contributed to my radicalization. Funny you mention the USSR, but also not all that unexpected I suppose. Learning about the link between the rise of Nazis and the Spanish flu certainly cements their positions as polar opposites. I can only hope that some of our comrades start waking up from their complacency before it’s too late.