Immune system
It is now clearly established that Covid can weaken the immune system. We are seeing dramatic surges in bacterial pneumonia, Streptococcal tonsillitis infections, children being hospitalised with RSVs. Endless studies show the link but the public message is that these outbreaks are mysterious. At some point we have to wake up.
Unfortunately we have seen this movie before.
In 1971 people started getting infected with a virus called HIV. The harm caused by HIV is invisible, the virus creates hidden reservoirs in the body such that the immune system can’t clear it and to date there is no way to clear it from the body. It causes a gradual but continuous depletion of some key elements of the immune system including CD4 and CD8+ T-cells. Over time the body becomes incapable of fighting infection and people die from conditions that normally would not be fatal. The name given to the state where the immune system becomes too weak to be effective is AIDS. The enormity of AIDS did not start to become apparent until a decade later and was not accepted for many more years.
HIV is not highly infectious as it is transmitted through bodily fluid exchange and there is now a cocktail of drugs that, taken for life, can keep the virus suppressed.
If HIV was airborne and as infectious as Covid, no-one would be thinking it was OK to get infected twice a year, no-one would be thinking it was OK for their kids to be getting infected over and over.
Scientists with specific specialities in T-Cells began warning that what they were seeing with Covid appeared very similar to what we had seen with HIV, they were ridiculed and attacked for fear-mongering.
Four years into the world with Covid and study after study is proving they were right. There is a new virus that acts like HIV (in at least a proportion of people and among other things) but is as infectious as Covid, it is called Covid.
If Covid didn’t do anything else this should be enough to make people understand that we have to do whatever it takes to not get infected. As it is this is just one area of concern,
March 2023 - COVID-19: Study Suggests Long-term Damage to Immune System
Nov 2023 - T cell cross-reactivity in autoimmune-like hepatitis triggered by COVID-19
Nov 2022 - What If COVID Reinfections Wear Down Our Immunity?