In Ontario, Canada:
Across all ages, admissions are 6 standard deviations above the seasonal average. But we've grown accustomed to disease, to living our lives with complete disregard for reality and for what living in society means, at the most rudimentary level. https://t.co/h0aTP8xAeg pic.twitter.com/zEsOtBuaal
— Diego Bassani, PhD (@DGBassani) December 1, 2023
Meanwhile, in China there’s a huge respiratory disease outbreak that the Chinese government refuses to give details on. Could be something new, but it equally it just could be standard respiratory disease: a LOT of standard respiratory disease.
I hate to keep hammering this issue, but it’s important. There is NO immunity debt, what there is is immune system damage from Covid infections. Every Covid infection has a chance to degrade your immune system and to damage basically every organ, including your brain.
Every additional Covid infection can and often does do more damage. This damage is often imperceptible (until it isn’t): your body is hurt, but you can’t feel it—yet. When you do, well, that’s Long Covid.
Meanwhile you get sick more often. We’ve also seen huge increases in children with heart and respiratory ailments, since schools are a primary vector for infection.
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When China stopped their Zero Covid policy, I said a lot of people would die and suffer. We don’t know the immediate death toll because China isn’t talking, but estimates put it between 1.4 and 2 million people in the first two months. But, as I wrote at the time, it was the long term consequences which would really matter.
They show up easier in China because China has fewer hospital beds per capita and it’s harder to conceal when hospitals become swamped.
We could still wipe out Covid if we really wanted to, though it would be a big and worldwide effort, but so far we’re mostly just pretending it’s over “because we say it’s over.”
Alas “because I say so” doesn’t work with respect to nature and the knock-on effects of the pandemic continue, and they are very very nasty.