The Media’s New Pastime: Spreading Alarm About Normal Winter Viruses
During the pandemic, journalists discovered a new occupation, one which was particularly appealing for the small effort it required. This occupation consisted of consulting any of the numerous Covid dashboards and weekly virus statistics supplied by health authorities, and pasting the numbers they found there into tiresome one-dimensional articles on which numbers happened to be going up and which numbers happened to be going down. Now that the dashboards have gone dark and nobody bothers to test anymore, our journalists have been deprived of their convenient pastime. One suspects they are not happy about this.
In Germany, all that remains to these uninspired, myopic journalists are the weekly reports compiled by the tireless influenza tabulators of the Robert Koch Institute. Before 2020, the flu sniffers laboured in obscurity, but now their weekly reports routinely generate headlines. Like the Covid headlines which preceded them, these are all about which numbers are going up and which numbers are going down. In this way, the reading public can continue to enjoy the virus anxiety to which they have grown accustomed. The Deutsche-Presse Agentur appears to drive the greater part of this reporting, and its dogged virus updates are recirculated reliably by most of the national and regional papers. It is cheap and easy content.
This week, it is RSV that is going up. ‘The RSV Wave Has Started in Germany,’ say Der Spiegel and tagesschau. ‘Respiratory tract infections: RS-Virus Wave Underway‘ declares ZDF. ‘Corona, flu, RSV: The infection situation in Bavaria,’ is the offering of Bayrischer Rundfunk; ‘Wave of infections continues to grip Saxony: Covid, influenza and RSV,’ is an equivalent piece from the Leipziger Volkszeitung. And because we are mostly asked to worry about those viruses for which there exist vaccines, the Süddeutsche Zeitung supplies its own write-up on ‘RSV Protection: These New Vaccination Options are Available‘.
Now, it is true that RSV infections are on the rise. This is because RSV is among the solstice viruses that become especially active in the darkest months of the year. So far, however, everything suggest that RSV infections are in line with long-standing historical trends. The latest RKI report shows that the “consultation incidence” for the critical age group of 0-4 year-olds – the number of kids seeing the doctor because of acute respiratory infections – is about 5,000 per 100,000, or 5%.
This is the age group most heavily affected by RSV, so we can assume the virus is driving a good part of this trend. Past RKI reports show that this incidence is totally normal: in 2018 and 2019, for example, the consultation incidence for this age group was also at or just below 5,000 in early December.
By all accounts, the situation is vastly better than last year, when children were being treated at twice the normal rate. The immunity deficit that ravaged the young after the end of pandemic measures has been repaid, and we are once again in equilibrium with the respiratory syncytial virus.
This doesn’t matter and we get the mindless contextless number-go-up reporting anyway, because everything is stupid now, and few things are as stupid as post-Covid health reporting. I’ve searched high and low for pre-pandemic articles on RSV infections, and beyond a few items in the local press I can’t find anything of note. This anxiety about RSV is a legacy of the pandemic, and in the near term I guess it will be used to encourage RSV vaccine uptake in pregnant women. I very much doubt that these vaccines will do anything to alter seasonal trends; as far as I can tell, nobody is even claiming that they will. If this time next year we see the same hospitalisation and consultation incidences that we always have, we’ll know the vaccines are for nothing. That won’t stop the vaccinators, though.
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Respiratory viruses increasing in the winter months. Who would have thought? Never happened before has it!
As far as I am aware getting stressed will weaken the immune system.
How the main-stream media works- if they want to sell newspapers (or the online equivalent) is via fear. Imagine your a journalist- you need your articles published otherwise you are out of a job. Your editor asks you “But you said this last year?” – Reply from the journalist “But this year it is much much worse”. Hence, the continual increase in fear. Add to that vested interest from companies and politicians, and the result is a continued increase in fear-mongering.
Flying Viruses?
Or pleomorphic bacteria which change shape and function due to exogenous conditions and external stimulants?
A change in weather will change your bacteria.
But go on, believe in the flying virus magic circus. And don’t bother proving it. Just believe. ‘Science’. Diaper up.
Who would have thought that infants with immature immune systems would suffer most from winter viruses and thereby acquire immunity?
When I was 10ish, I remember walking round in the Winter with a constant snotty nose.
But I bet your mother sent you out in a duffle coat and scarf. Today’s school age kids are never dressed for the weather probably because they are cooped up inside playing computer games or ferried to the school gate. I know…….showing my age. 🤣
When I were a young un’….I used to explore the local countryside and was always out and about in the fields and woods, getting muddy, having colds and coughs…you know, normal! Think I had all the childhood diseases – mumps, measles, German measles, scarlet fever, gastric flu, tonsilitis (although still have my tonsils!) etc…
I was just the same. My mum was a great one but didn’t want to see us six kids between dawn and dusk.
“Bugger off and play, I’m busy”🤣
Blimey, you’ve just described my childhood!
And we were fed on post-war rationing diets too – lots of carbs and a cooked breakfast to keep us warm until the fireplace had been cleared of last night’s ash and a new fire lit ready for Dad to come home to for his lunch (or dinner as we called it).
it will be used to encourage RSV vaccine uptake in pregnant women. I very much doubt that these vaccines will do anything to alter seasonal trends; as far as I can tell, nobody is even claiming that they will. If this time next year we see the same hospitalisation and consultation incidences that we always have, we’ll know the vaccines are for nothing. That won’t stop the vaccinators, though One would assume that this is a losing game for the jab industry. That cycle of panic, jab, no effect, panic, jab, no effect, will lead to more people, in time realising the jab scam. I would argue it was during omicron when the covid scam finally collapsed, when the penny dropped and people realised the jabs did nothing I am now quite certain most jabs do nothing and simply take credit for drops.in diseases for other reasons. The reason they’ve got away with it is because it’s all happened quietly, away from public gaze, amidst a life free.of major diseases. That can’t carry in the same way with the press panicking people every year with a disease they’ve supposedly been immunised from. Eventually the number of people spotting the wider… Read more »
The problem is, we are constantly told that the jabs have saved us/saved the NHS despite the lack of evidence, and most people believe it.
I think many will tell you they believe it, and they might even tell themselves, but I think in their heart of hearts many know it’s not true. I was referred to by a colleague as “one of those conspiracy people” (he’s inarticulate as well as easily fooled) when I had endured him and others chatting rubbish about having covid and how many “vaccines” they had taken and I pointed out I felt in good health and had not taken any, but I think he doth protest too much.
Maybe. I still remember when a good friend and her family finally caught covid, how puzzled she was that they were still relatively unwell (flu-like levels) despite being jabbed and boosted – and she was semi-sceptical from the start. She just couldn’t understand why “the jabs don’t seem to have helped us much” because the entire jab campaign had been based on preventing you from catching the thing in the first place, let alone feeling actually quite unwell from it!
I find it hard to tell. Covidians rarely mention covid to me – perhaps they have moved on, perhaps they are worried about getting an earful. I have given up, unless directly asked my views. I tried to engage with so many people I had regarded as friends and as thinking people, and it always ended in silence, them blanking me, or ad-hominen attacks on me.
I think this will be true for some. I had a drinks party with a load of neighbours, mostly Covidians, one in particular declared he doesn’t have time to keep up with the latest ‘science’ and is quite comfortable remains supportive of “the science” because we must trust our government or we would have chaos. And he doesn’t believe they would wilfully lie to us…
Im not sure how representative he is but, even knowing he may have injured himself and his family, was not sufficient to stop him being sheep like.
I have no doubt that fear of chaos is what drives many people to wilful self delusion and accepting state abuse.
When I was a kid colds and flu along with many other ailments were perfectly normal!
I didn’t know of a child in the whole school with any allergy to anything other then hay-fever! What the f happened to this whimpy lot these days!
Environmental toxins, indoors and out. Look at all the chemicals that are marketed at the home: bleach, airfresheners, scented laundry products, endless washing/showering, soaps, gels.
Showers in particular: when in our evolution did we spray warm water (that has been lurking in a gungy pipe gathering bacteria) directly into our faces and breathe in those droplets of steam? Chlorinated water may kill some bacteria but some become resistant and chlorine gas was a useful First World War weapon.
And yet the constant showering and washing and damp are supposed to equal a lovely clean (therefore “healthy”?) person who steps out of the shower leaving all that to moulder away behind them.
Thought for the Day…
And we are always “battling” or “grappling” with these viruses, they are always “sweeping” the country or “ripping” through the population.
I think it’s more to do with the weight of numbers than the illnesses themselves!
Truth be told, there’s got to be 80 million in the uk by now! F what the official figures say
Very true, shame someone can’t do something about that… Like, I don’t know, stop letting so many extra people into the country. Just an idea.
Covid is still a term used approx 3,1/2 years after it was /wasn’t a thing ! So why is it still being used ? Even still in radio adverts to get your Covid vaccination!!..
Haven’t you noticed no one gets ill these days as every one gets “covid” instead?