Whooping cough’s back — and it’s Covid’s fault
The Dickensian disease is the latest Victorian-era ailment to stage a comeback in the West.
Just when you get rid of one cough, another emerges in its place.
While the the Covid-19 pandemic officially ended last year, cases of pertussis — or whooping cough, as it’s more commonly known — have been spiking across Europe in recent months.
The retro infection, a staple of Charles Dickens’ novels, is the latest Victorian-era ailment to stage a comeback in the West after an increase in measles, syphilis, gout, leprosy and malaria.
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A report from the British Medical Journal says that part of the reason for the spread is a drop in vaccination rates.
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Europe's disease agency also suggested Covid could be to blame for the rise.
“The current increase is potentially linked to lower circulation during Covid-19 pandemic, combined with suboptimal vaccination uptake in certain groups during the Covid-19 pandemic,” it wrote in a March report.
Getting people vaccinated is key to stemming the outbreak, but that’s becoming easier said than done.
So it's not because of COVID... it's because antivax idiocy is threatening to extinct us.
And anti-vax idiocy flourishes because communities didn't make life hell for them.
Measles also has a come back for that reason
Sounds like measles and whooping cough are making life hell for them.
It's ending life for them so after that they don't have to worry about it.
It's ending life for a lot of people outside the antivax community, though. We need to get a lot more forceful about vaccinations and make them obligatory. I'm not certain in which way but this needs to happen.
Vaccination can't be optional.
Yes, unfortunately it becomes everyone's problem, especially those who are immunocompromised. Once they lose the protection of herd immunity, they're kinda fucked.
I'd wager "them" are vaccinated and it's their kids that are the ones getting these diseases and potentially dying.
On the one hand that is your fact, while on the other hand the article got people to click on it by using this word in the title, a sort of "alternative fact" if you will.
Conservativism is not the only thing enshittifying our world. Chasing after profits and other forms of power at all costs are more foundational factors.
"While the the Covid-19 pandemic officially ended last year"
It actually didn't, the WHO still has it as a pandemic https://www.who.int/europe/emergencies/situations/covid-19. They declared the emergency over because people had accepted the consequences of the disease, but its still a pandemic.
Everything is up especially strokes and heart attacks but especially infections of diseases. The vaccination percentage hasn't dropped much. TB is on the rise for example and its due to immune system damage that Covid causes in a lot of people. It can take a year or more to recover from the immune disturbances that Covid causes, its driving a lot of increased infection. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41590-021-01113-x
Yes, the emergency phase is over, which is bad because it means we didn't get it under control during that phase.
Don't blame it on COVID. Blame it on people being massive idiots.
I caught whooping cough as a kid. Nearly killed me. It’s a terrifying disease.
Anti Vaxers out here tryna play Modern Day Oregon Trail. Poor little Susie is gonna have a real bad time when she catches meastussisumption.
With the state of some public utilities, dysentery won't be far behind.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
While the the Covid-19 pandemic officially ended last year, cases of pertussis — or whooping cough, as it’s more commonly known — have been spiking across Europe in recent months.
The retro infection, a staple of Charles Dickens’ novels, is the latest Victorian-era ailment to stage a comeback in the West after an increase in measles, syphilis, gout, leprosy and malaria.
In Czechia — where there are reports of whooping cough vaccine shortages — case numbers are at their highest in 60 years, according to the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC).
“Most of the rise in the past couple of years has been because of a return to pre-Covid levels,” said Paul Hunter, a professor of medicine at the university of East Anglia.
Teenagers between 15 and 19 make up the majority of current cases but “virtually all deaths” in the EU and EEA this year have been in babies under three months, according to the ECDC.
In the U.K., five regional health services reported that the pandemic adversely affected vaccination rates, on top of a longer-term decline.
The original article contains 598 words, the summary contains 181 words. Saved 70%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!