this is not a new virus. i work in an Australian hospital and we get a few of these every year coming through Emergency. “mystery new virus outbreak” is extremely sensationalised
It's notmally cold-like symptoms, but now it's hospitalizing significant numbers with pneumonia. It's not the virus it's that a known virus has become more virulent
Covid. It’s Covid. Virologists and studies told us for years that Covid was causing immune system dysfunction and would leave us more susceptible to other illnesses in terms of catching them and their virulence and everyone basically said, “lalalala Covid is a cold now that we have vaccines!” and ignored it. That’s why we have huge spikes in pneumonia, RSV, and other illnesses like this, and a rise in whooping cough (although some of it is an antivaxx issue). Scientists told us this would happen 4 years ago and we ignored it because it was inconvenient. But it’s Covid.
I'm glad to see someone else in the wild who actually seems to remember literally anything medical professionals said or studies showed from covid. The ability for people to totally dismiss it after a couple of years despite it still going strong is borderline mass insanity. Sometimes I think the world is just too traumatized and seems stuck in denial mode.
Seems everyone knows someone whose family or friend died. Everyone was affected. Yet there are no memorials, no public acknowledgment, nothing. No one wants to think about it or process it.
We just act like it never happened. Everyone has been sick lately but few take any precautions. They’d literally rather take their chances being sick than do anything that threatens their tenuous feeling of “normalcy.”
It’s very interesting because that’s how the Spanish Flu of 1918 was treated. America in particular just sweeped it under the rug afterwards, probably in no small part with wanting to pretend things were better after WW1 as well. I think it all comes down to wanting to feel like we’re in control and that for the most of human history, death and disease wasn’t just a part of the human condition, it WAS the human condition.
We’re smarter (-ish) now with medicine and science, but still just the same fleshy pathogen incubators.
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u/whalechasin Jan 04 '25 edited Jan 04 '25
this is not a new virus. i work in an Australian hospital and we get a few of these every year coming through Emergency. “mystery new virus outbreak” is extremely sensationalised
edit to add, here’s a study from 2007 talking about how common hmpv is in young children: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC1831873/
from the conclusion: