A Genius of a Virus

We're starting to see more effects of Covid.  

Yesterday, biorisk consultant Conor Browne wrote about something many have been screaming into the void for some time now:

"A core part of the analysis I perform involves zooming out; that is to say, taking a very broad view of the effects of infectious disease on populations, rather than individuals. People often reply to my posts here with something like, 'everyone I know who had Covid is ok'. And that is almost certainly true because most people only know a few people well. 

However, when I zoom out to the population level, it is crushingly obvious that continued unmitigated transmission of SARS-CoV-2 is having increasingly damaging population-level effects. This manifests primarily as ever-increasing levels of disability caused by Long Covid, and, more perniciously, sequelae of Covid. Increased cardiovascular problems, increased autoimmune problems, increased diabetes etc.

This increase in overall population ill-health presents in five ways: 1. Shortages of workers in professions that have high occupational exposure to SARS-CoV-2 (teachers, for example). 2. Increasing amounts of disability claims made to social welfare systems. 3. Increasing numbers of economically inactive adults (many are new carers). 4. Increasing and persistent levels of school absences. 5. Intense and increasing pressure on healthcare systems.

What is most concerning, however, is what I believe to be mass immune dysregulation caused by repeated infections with SARS-CoV-2 (@fitterhappierAJ [who called it way back at the beginning of it all]). We see this in increased RSV Specific interaction with dengue, increased TB, and increased outbreaks of atypical infections. In short, allowing SARS-CoV-2 to transmit globally with no attempt to mitigate may well have, in aggregate, dysregulated the immune system of the global human population, and, with bitter irony, made another pandemic more likely."

The day before, HIV+ and Long Covid advocate Daniel Brittain Dugger wrote this in response to a calculation of the amount of disability we're about to see:

"What a genius of a virus. Is this the first time we have seen a virus that depletes CD4 cells, is persistent, there is an aversion to NPIs, vaccines fail, and we have forward transmission? Absolutely not. Parallels could have been drawn starting September 28, 2020. If not then, March of 2022.

But, not a single country in the West will do it to preserve the immune competence and cognition of their intellectual capital. Not a single one. Not even advocacy groups, who have extracted millions from clinically vulnerable people, will do it. Intellectually bested by a virus that has left your population disabled by osteoporosis, demented by amyloid, and living with a decompensated immune system that has allowed for TB reactivation in some. By the time you get around to trying to save these folks, the other genius has been at play. It burned up their livers and kidneys due to ACE-2 receptor distribution."

It's hard to know what we know. But it's so necessary to look it in the face. Absolutely.

I just got back from my early morning grocery trip. In and out as fast as I could with my N95 securely in place. It was unusually crowded for the time, and only one other person in a mask - a cashier. As she scanned all my groceries with her baggy blue and gloves I realized she was really, really sick. It was likely the only reason she was masked. 

We have totally forgotten how to prevent illness. We have all the tools and all the potential in the world but absolutely no will to use them appropriately. I'm not sure it's the case that the virus is a genius but that's we're not nearly as brilliant as we'd like to think we are. All our leaders are fighting hard to ignore climate change and Covid. I think we won't be long for this world; we're like the fall of Rome on steroids right now.