Thread by @1goodtern

The Spanish Flu comparison is an insidious one that I keep coming across.

A woman in her late 50s said it to me yesterday.

"do you know when the Spanish Flu ended?... It didn't!"

She agreed with me that covid infection is dangerous for some people.

But that she has had it three times and it hasn't affected her.
Her sudden hearing loss and persistent fatigue are just aging, and her continued loss of taste and smell is because of her recent cold and blocked nose.

And, yes, her most recent infection was like a nasty flu, but it wasn't as bad as her first infection, and her husband thought about calling an ambulance for her, but didn't need to in the end.

But "the Spanish Flu never ended, it became the flu that circulates today" she said with deep certainty, "and that's why we need to let covid circulate".

During the chat, she also told me about how she lost a childhood friend who caught Covid in the summer of 2023 while recovering from surgery, so she knows how dangerous it is.
She understands that, she said.

But it'll be like the Spanish Flu she said.

Let's kill that comparison.

The population of the world was about 1.8 billion in 1920.

They reckon about a third of people got infected.

So 600 million hosts, very few reinfected.

600 million hosts to reproduce in and mutate in.

Now, Covid is everywhere.

It has over 8 billion hosts, multiple reinfections.

So tens of billions of opportunities to mutate.

But worse than that, we have a weird feedback method produced by modern medicine:

We have a huge *immunosuppressed* population that *did not exist* in 1920.

And many of the new variants have come from chronic (long lasting) Covid infections in (probably) immunosuppressed people.

Covid has tens of billions of opportunities to evolve, plus millions of those special immunosuppressed super-incubators.

And air travel and road travel and public transport all across the world are totally different to 2020.

The worldwide mixing is constant.

There is intense overcrowding due to increased populations.
Metropolitan areas are more common and bigger and more densely packed.

Buildings are more closed to fresh air.

In 1920, buildings in hot countries relied on air flow to cool occupants, and buildings in cold countries relied on air flow to feed the fires that heated the buildings.

Now, too many buildings are sealed for heat efficiency against the cold or heat.
No airflow.
More transmission, more infection.

And then there's one absolutely killer contrast between then and now:

People in 1920 WERE TRYING NOT TO CATCH FLU AND DIE.

People in 2020 don't give a shit.

Back in 1920, they were trying to avoid it.
Here and now, everyone is trying to catch not just covid, but EVERYTHING.

So, no, this situation is totally unlike the Spanish Flu situation.

And one last thing...

Spanish Flu MUTATED to become as deadly as it did.

If you think that Covid can't mutate to become more deadly in the acute stage, then you're a fool.

I'm not saying it *will*.
But if you're ruling out the possibility, then you're just stupid.

But if you've been reading my posts for long enough, then you'll know that it's not the acute deaths that I'm concerned about.

It's the long term effects, and the drip drip effect on the individual health and on collective health and on the economy and on our philosophy and morality and ways of thinking and understanding how we live as a society.

Spreading covid is killing our minds.

And the evidence is all around.

A footnote... also, a flu isn't a sars isn't an ebola isn't a dengue.

Why, of all the waves of plagues throughout the millenia pick Spanish Flu as the comparison?

It's just another head of the hydra of hopium.

Herd immunity
Spanish Flu
Vaccines
Just a cold
Hybrid immunity
Mild variant
We've all got to get it
We have all the tools
It's not airborne

Pick your poison, the lies just circulate and circulate and mutate as fast as the virus.

Oh, and another thing....
These days we even have treatments (looking at you molnupiravir) that help the virus mutate.

We never had that in 1920.