What is the future of Covid?

hibiscuswahine said:
Bird flu is a concern
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Particularly if pregnant!

Systematic Review of Avian Influenza Virus Infection and Outcomes during Pregnancy - Volume 31, Number 1—January 2025 - Emerging Infectious Diseases journal - CDC (2025)
Rachael Purcell; Michelle L. Giles; Nigel W. Crawford; Jim Buttery

Human cases of avian influenza A(H5N2) and A(H5N1) viruses associated with outbreaks in birds and mammals are increasing globally, raising concerns about the possibility of a future avian influenza pandemic.

We conducted a systematic review examining 30 reported cases of avian influenza in pregnant women. We found high mortality rates for mothers (90.0%, 27/30) and their babies (86.7%, 26/30) when women were infected with avian influenza virus during pregnancy. Despite being a high-risk population and having worse health outcomes across multiple pandemics, pregnant women are often excluded from vaccine trials.

However, as the risk for a new pandemic increases and human vaccines against avian influenza are developed, early inclusion of pregnant women in clinical trials can inform the risk–benefit analysis for both the mother and their newborn infant. Early inclusion of pregnant women in public health vaccination programs is vital for protecting this high-risk population.

Link | PDF (Emerging Infectious Diseases journal) [Open Access]
 
Sasha said:
Smallpox, though!
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Yes, small pox was eradicated but unfortunately there is a tiny possibility of a lab leak or someone thinks it would be a good idea to use it as a bio-weapon.
https://www.ijidonline.com/article/S1201-9712(04)00131-6/fulltext

I was trying to say that vaccination programmes have been seriously disrupted by many factors in recent years.

Our pandemic government started to lose credibility when they were trying hard to get the country fully vaccinated with the hope of eliminating covid again at what ultimately was the last local lockdown in Auckland, just as the omicron variant had emerged. They said "covid was coming for the unvaccinated". Which is wrong, it lowers the risk of serious medical events and death. Mask wearing and other measures lowers the transmission. Unfortunately by then, the antivax movement had got very strong and they didn't want a vaccine or to mask and the general public wanted to be "living" with the virus like the rest of the world. To be able to totally eliminate a virus requires global cooperation and the local means to do it.
 
Kitty said:
Yep. It's almost as if epidemic disease such as measles, and the deaths and life-changing impairments associated with it, aren't well within living memory.
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Sadly, our capacity to learn from history is limited. As soon as the lived memory of something dies out we start getting complacent about it.

Same thing is happening with the memory of WW2 and all its horrors. Almost all those who were direct witnesses to it, particularly participating adults, are now dead, and the lessons and warnings are being forgotten.
 
Sean said:
Same thing is happening with the memory of WW2 and all its horrors. Almost all those who were direct witnesses to it, particularly participating adults, are now dead, and the lessons and warnings are being forgotten.
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What I find interesting is that though my parents’ generation with direct memories of WW2 are dying off the idea of WW2 is very significant to my generation, who grew up with stories of the War, watching wartime movies every Sunday that were essentially propaganda films, etc. We tend to have a very distorted view of War ignoring the reality but informed by a fantasy version, which here in the UK is used to feed a false sense that we are somehow special and more deserving than other nations. This myth making has certainly been used by political parties to push their own partisan agendas. It is almost as if my generation believe they have memories of the War which results in a failure to recognise current realities.

I do wonder how we will mythologise Covid through selective and biased story telling. Certainly for many the biggest myth is that the pandemic is over.
 
Peter Trewhitt said:
What I find interesting is that though my parents’ generation with direct memories of WW2 are dying off the idea of WW2 is very significant to my generation, who grew up with stories of the War, watching wartime movies every Sunday that were essentially propaganda films, etc. We tend to have a very distorted view of War ignoring the reality but informed by a fantasy version, which here in the UK is used to feed a false sense that we are somehow special and more deserving than other nations. This myth making has certainly been used by political parties to push their own partisan agendas. It is almost as if my generation believe they have memories of the War which results in a failure to recognise current realities.

I do wonder how we will mythologise Covid through selective and biased story telling. Certainly for many the biggest myth is that the pandemic is over.
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Crystal clear dear.
Pure poison.
 
Sean said:
As soon as the lived memory of something dies out we start getting complacent about it.
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It hasn't, though, that's what I find so astonishing. There are people disabled by measles who aren't even old enough to retire, let alone dead! The little lad who lived in the next yard to us, who was left profoundly deaf and without speech, will be 58 now.
 
Kitty said:
It hasn't, though, that's what I find so astonishing. There are people disabled by measles who aren't even old enough to retire, let alone dead! The little lad who lived in the next yard to us, who was left profoundly deaf and without speech, will be 58 now.
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Yes. And tell me again how we made a whole new crop of aged over five’s with which to repopulate the world in the time just since Covid began and we apparently all died out taking living memory of events with us?
 
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