I mostly just follow Death Panel and get recs from there, but I rarely have the appetite for it anymore despite being a really good podcast, it all just depresses and enrages me too much. Haven't listened in awhile but they frequently gave good citations to studies and papers and book recommendations and whatnot.

not sure if this is heavy-duty enough but it might whet your appetite

What we see during COVID-19 is stark operational differences between nations where politicians are the top authorities, and nations where Capital is the top authority. We are endlessly told that nations with activist governments are unfree, and that any support for these governments must come from either a pathological culture of obedience or the threat of state violence. And yet socialist nations plainly outperformed capitalist ones in terms of fighting the virus. [12]

This analysis does not imply there were simply two modes of response: capitalist and socialist. Market domination is not a binary affair, and Capital doesn’t rule by decree. As Roberts puts it, the market doesn’t tell capitalists what to do — rather, they have to guess and prognosticate and forecast and hope. Capitalists don’t find out whether they did what the market wanted until after the fact. [13] People around the world defended themselves from the virus, repressing the political will of Capital, in proportion to what they could get away with politically and economically. In socialist states, resources were deployed as deemed necessary to meet the challenge. In capitalist states in the sphere of influence of socialist China, such as South Korea, capitalists offered a decent response, perhaps because catastrophic handling would create a domestic political shift in favour of socialism. In the imperial core, where white supremacy reigns and there is no political will whatsoever to look to China for a good example, self-assured capitalists simply allowed the plague to spread essentially unopposed. In fact, imperialists succeeded to a great extent in turning the ensuing resentment into a foreign policy weapon. [14] This isn’t isolated to the most proudly capitalist nations; the kind of political power, infrastructure, and resources needed to enforce a tolerable quarantine has been completely eroded in social democratic havens like Canada and Sweden. No notable political force in the West referred to socialist successes in their efforts to affect domestic COVID-19 response policy, and I attribute this mistake to chauvinism.

from https://redsails.org/why-marxism/

and how often do people get infections? probably less than two years apart on average

I was at the point of thinking "fuck, do I need to go to the hospital?" at the worst of it but my fever wasn't dangerous and my O₂ level stayed in a safe range so I didn't, but there were a couple nights where it was bad enough that it hurt too much to fall asleep despite being exhausted? I've had recurring chronic fatigue and some minor tendonitis and brain fog kinda symptoms since, but idk if that's related and I don't have health insurance so I've been hesitant to get anything looked at unless "shit am I dying?" crosses my mind