22 August

The greatest epidemic of all time is likely the heart disease epidemic of the 20th century. Took off early in the century, peaked about the 1960s, and in decline ever since. The usual explanation for this is we ate bad things, we smoked. Then we ate better things, smoked less, etc. The problem is, the things we ate like saturated fat, are things we’d been eating for centuries, and few people know that heart disease was almost unknown before the 20th century. We also smoked heavily for centuries. A much more interesting idea is that the cause of this epidemic was the Spanish Flu. It happened early in the 20th century, and the heart disease epidemic may be the chronic phase of Spanish Flu infection. Which also explains why it started to fall after the 1960s, as the people exposed to Spanish Flu early in the century started to die out. There’s also research linking Parkinson’s Disease to the same Spanish Flu cause. This is what we may now be doing with Covid, but possibly much worse. We’re far too casual about infection. Infection is disease, and possibly the cause of all major chronic as well as acute disease. I despair watching people meekly accept Covid infection, potentially taking years off their lives. A quote from a researcher: “I think that COVID is setting us up for a hundred years of problems.” Eileen Crimmins, Chair in Gerontology at the USC Leonard Davis School.