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.
The "lockdowns" that never even happened in 99% of the US
you mean 100% of the US
there was no lockdown, people were just off from work for a few weeks in April 2020 I think? I remember driving to stores and stuff, so we were obviously not under lockdown
The kite store in the park of a Midwestern city I used to live in even stayed open as an "essential business" because they also run a snack stand and apparently offered takeout. The owner still had a sandwich board out front complaining about the "china virus".
There was definitely like, an 80% reduction in cars on the road in the northeast. But it only lasted a couple weeks and went back to normal very quickly
I had to work the whole time in a busy store. Didn't get any time off. It was nice eating lunch outside and not having to listen to traffic for a few weeks, though.
"It's time to ban masks though because Hamas" - USA states.
H5N1 is a type of an influenza A virus. A recent study found Influenza A infections make you more susceptible to Covid.
It would be nice to know if the flu shots they give out have any crossover protection. Oh well, I guess we'll find out.
It's going to be backwards though, bird flu isn't good at infecting humans, the immune deficiency caused by covid will make it easier for bird flu to infect humans which will greatly increase the odds of mutating a strain that infects humans more readily
For now! But yeah, totally. Right there with ya. See my previous doom postings about mass immune dysregulation.
It could just go back and forth because they're disease friends now.
COVID making people more susceptible to infection so they get H5N1. H5N1 making people more likely to get COVID. If H5N1 mutates fast enough they can get a cycle going.
Yeah but you're forgetting there is a 52% chance that H5N1 makes you permanently immune to covid.
Also it just feels like the anti-vax movement has gained way more momentum "post"-Covid. Like hasn't the rise in measles cases been mainly in school children who haven't been vaccinated due to anti-vax parents?
In order to normalize ending lockdowns and masking and whatnot, corporate media platformed so many anti-science folk to the point that I don't think we're ever gonna get that genie back in the bottle.
I gotta be honest I genuinely don't know what any future looks like under these conditions. There is nothing like the confluence of what we are going through in any history book I know, and I get extremely anxious about that.
I mean, the future isn't great, but the struggle is the same. We still have the same enemy, we've just gotta fight them while wearing N95s and using nasal sprays now. I don't know if it'll make you feel any better, but I read The Grapes of Wraith a few months back and it still very much resonates with the struggles we're facing today. Capitalists are fucking us over and they've infected the minds of our fellow workers with a debilitating belief that the way things are, are the way the things always have to be. The big challenge I've found is freeing your own brain to be able to see possibilities of a different world and what we might have to do to get there. The brightside is since you're here at least you recognize that "Back to Normal" is a lie, so hopefully you're also picking apart at all the other related mental chains that keep your inner revolutionary arrested.
Thank you, it did help. That book is one of the old classics I have yet to get to, but I think I’ll move it up my list.
The brightside is since you’re here at least you recognize that “Back to Normal” is a lie, so hopefully you’re also picking apart at all the other related mental chains that keep your inner revolutionary arrested.
This is true. I am imagining and building what a new life, at least for me, looks like in this hell, and that’s not nothing. I never feel like I am afforded the grace to mourn my old life but this adaptation is the only way forward for us all and I am, at least, doing that. I should consider it a head start if nothing else, and it has led to a lot of actualization that otherwise went neglected. Even if it hurts now, I am better for it.
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.
There is nothing like the confluence of what we are going through in any history book I know
Yea there is, 90% of the population dies within the next 4 decades from a diverse variety of causes
It's not just that but the anti-vax movement is mainstream conservatism and fascism now as it was pushed hard in those media circles because COVID was made into bs culture "war" issue. It's fucking idiotic the society we live in.
The anti vax campaigns people and governments have been running are doing damage, for sure.
In the UK at least, vaccination rates are at a 10 year low. With something as infectious as measles that might be enough to see the huge outbreaks we are seeing.
Then you have Dtap vaccines, which are down a couple percent in the UK over the last few years, but is that enough to explain things like this:
Show
And we are also seeing a rise in rare cancers and other diseases that are usually only associated with immune disorders like AIDS.
Millennial I know who have had kids since 2020 are forgoing all vaccines. That hardline ideology developed for them during Covid. In 5 years measles outbreaks will be widespread
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.
I attended a lecture recently given by a PhD student who is studying tuberculosis. Learning about the cellular mechanism that is used to infect the cells is terrifying. I won't be able to do the explanation justice, but it basically it uses your immune system against you to create more toxins. One of the most terrifying things I've learned about in awhile.
I get a notice from my transit agency about once a month that I have been exposed to tuberculosis...
Saying anything about COVID lockdowns in 2024 should get you a one-way ticket to
. IMMUNITY DEBT ISN'T A THING AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH 
COVID 'LOCKDOWNS' ENDED 4 YEARS AGO COVID 'LOCKDOWNS' ENDED 4 YEARS AGO COVID 'LOCKDOWNS' ENDED 4 YEARS AGO COVID 'LOCKDOWNS' ENDED 4 YEARS AGO COVID 'LOCKDOWNS' ENDED 4 YEARS AGO COVID 'LOCKDOWNS' ENDED 4 YEARS AGO COVID 'LOCKDOWNS' ENDED 4 YEARS AGO COVID 'LOCKDOWNS' ENDED 4 YEARS AGO COVID 'LOCKDOWNS' ENDED 4 YEARS AGO COVID 'LOCKDOWNS' ENDED 4 YEARS AGO COVID 'LOCKDOWNS' ENDED 4 YEARS AGO COVID 'LOCKDOWNS' ENDED 4 YEARS AGO COVID 'LOCKDOWNS' ENDED 4 YEARS AGO
https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2024/06/debilitating-a-generation-expert-warns-that-long-covid-may-eventually-affect-most-americans.html
They are truly still trying to pin this "mystery" to the few week long pseudo-lockdowns...
The lockdowns that not even the US could commit to because "muh freedumz"?
This is the entirely predictable result of a system which inspires no confidence facing a crisis that destroys any lingering confidence. Imagine confidence in the system like a bag of beans and every new good thing the system does you put a new bean in the bag. Every bad thing that happens you take out a bean. Well, thanks to austerity and neoliberalism no new beans have been added to the bag. We (our oligarchs and their consent manufacturers) have decided that we have enough beans. We have achieved The End of Beanstory. But real life doesn't work like that. Crises continue to appear. Beans are getting removed. Eventually we will be left with a terminal realization crisis: is it still a bag of beans if it has no beans inside it?
Finally gave it a full read, this article relies on someone from the notoriously inaccurate IHME group that has been providing the consent manufacturing machine much of their "expertise" ever since they began the sociological ending of the pandemic.
that should not have made laugh as hard as it did.
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