Wishful thinking covid policy

"We are not there yet with Covid, but with repeated infection we should build up natural immunity," a BBC article advises readers who wonder why they feel so roughed up by the virus this winter.

The problem is, there is no scientific evidence suggesting that this will be the case.

There is no evidence that covid, having failed to create herd immunity through infection, or hybrid immunity through infection combined with vaccination, will now create immunity through many repeat infections.

The idea is now that we must catch the virus to make it less lethal. This imperative is especially there for young children who cannot consent to be put into this large natural experiment with a novel pathogen, of which the long-term effects remain unknown.

Speaking of which, one of the currently known long-term effects is long covid. I know several people who have been disabled by it. But the BBC article, like most media people can find, is silent about long covid. Mentioning it doesn't fit the UK's infection-booster policy, because it might make people cautious.

What motivates the infection booster policy? The truth is that our economy, a service economy, cannot work without pre-pandemic patterns of consumption so it's really important we go back to normal. So, the lie (that covid is no big deal) hides, as Nate Bear says aptly, a bigger truth, namely our economy needs these spending patterns.

Even if you take long covid and the continued death toll out of the equation, the prospect for this winter in the UK, US and elsewhere is that "a lot of people having a pretty nasty illness that is going to knock them out for several days or weeks.”

This is presented as an unalterable fact. The UK deliberately chose to offer boosters only to the over-65s, so apparently has resigned itself to a sicker, more disabled workforce while record numbers of people are taking long-term sick leave. One of the few tools that is being used, vaccines, is deliberately restricted, even though covid's death and sickness toll is still far greater than the flu (see here for an overview of how Covid is worse than the flu and see here for a handy review of all the research on how covid assaults every system in your body, not only your lungs).

Wishful thinking is now UK policy. Note also in the same article, we read “‘I thought every time you catch an illness it's supposed to be a bit better each time?’ was the message from his sickbed.”

Sickbed? Notice how the national UK media attempt to normalize a word we associate with 18th- and 19th-century novels. Welcome to being a character in a Jane Austen or Louisa May Alcott novel, where you can die of a cold. Or be roughed up for weeks. Or, like Beth March, get an infectious disease (in her case, scarlet fever) that you initially survive but leaves you permanently sick and disabled and leads to an early death.

My FaceBook feed (I really need to deactivate it) is now filled with people who test positive, some of them the third time. Their friends then wish them them a full and swift recovery. Why? Because we know that a full recovery is not guaranteed. And indeed, long covid becomes more likely with each reinfection.

I refuse.

I refuse to be part of this giant natural experiment and wager my health, wellbeing, indeed my life, on this very risky gamble with the entire population. There is no scientific evidence to warrant our current handling of the virus. Governments have stopped "following the science" as soon as it became inconvenient. So I am still taking precautions. I am the only masked person in a three-hour departmental meeting. I apologized to my students (I do feel the social pressure not to mask very keenly) telling them that I could not afford to fall ill for weeks or get long covid, because I have a lot of work to do. I put a good air purifier in my office.

I try not to be a participant in my own oppression when it concerns racism or sexism, and I don't want to be a participant in this wager with my health either.