Thread by @brownecfm

1. 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'.

2. 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.

3. 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.

4. This increase in overall population ill-health presents in five ways:

- Shortages of workers in professions that have high occupational exposure to SARS-CoV-2 (teachers, for example).

- Increasing amounts of disability claims made to social welfare systems.

5. - Increasing numbers of economically inactive adults (many are new carers).

- Increasing and persistent levels of school absences.

- Intense and increasing pressure on healthcare systems.

6. What is most concerning, however, is what I believe to be mass immune dysregulation caused by repeated infections with SARS-CoV-2 (@fitterhappierAJ ).

We see this in:

Increased RSV
Specific interaction with dengue
Increased TB
Increased outbreaks of atypical infections.

7. 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 /end