COVID, after all?

COVID, after all?

Postby Dave Z » Sun Feb 05, 2023 1:57 am

One of the spooky things about Covid19 is that it damages us with each infection, whether or not obvious symptoms show. This suspicion has recently been confirmed by the study, Acute and postacute sequelae associated with SARS-CoV-2 reinfection, published in Nature (Nature Medicine volume 28, pages2398–2405 (2022)).

The evidence shows that reinfection further increases risks of death, hospitalization and sequelae in multiple organ systems in the acute and postacute phase.


At present, the increases are at merely disturbing (vs galvanizing) levels. The predominant, highly transmissible AND highly re-infective variants are related to Omicron, which have been less deadly, to date, on a per case basis. There is no guarantee that future variants, or even further subvariants, will maintain their relatively lower rates of injury. As is, the numbers are... disturbing.

Repeat infections undermine the general health of the infected, and each round takes us another step toward critical function failure and death. In short, Covid is creating its own co-morbidities. This is not what we want to hear in a disease which is already endemic and may settle into repeated, seasonal patterns. Imagine 'catching a covid' every season of your life from infancy. There are in fact, toddlers for whom this is the ongoing case.

While a general vaccine may eventually come available, there is none yet. Meanwhile, first world nations have done a poor job in vaccinating their own people, much less those of our developing world neighbors.

Since global, industrial civilization is a complex adaptive system, it is prone to tipping points. Any feedback loop within such a system which goes 'positive' (increases without a counterbalancing decrease) pushes aspects of the system toward a tipping point, which could well collapse the system. Add to this other Covid related, systemic positives, such as drain on medical personnel and resources and supply chain contagion, and yeah...

Covid might yet collapse civilization.
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Dave Z
 
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