Humans are built to notice and be concerned about contrasts, not absolutes. For example you perceive a change…

Humans are built to notice and be concerned about contrasts, not absolutes. For example you perceive a change in temperature or smell, then become accustomed. This is where normalising Covid infection got its power. By drawing upon a previous baseline experience. /1

Mostly, colds and flu. Politicians directly invoked the flu when letting Covid rip, as if ‘just like the flu’ meant ‘this isn’t dangerous’. Never mind that most people hardly ever get the flu, they were also drawing upon deep social memories of living with colds as well. /2

Nobody treats colds seriously. The research showing antibodies to common cold viruses in the cerebrospinal fluid of Parkinson’s patients was interesting. The development of vaccines and antibiotics has lulled us into complacency against infection. And to its ‘economic’ cost. /3

Some estimates put the cost of common colds for example to the US economy at over $40 billion per year. We were already failing at public health when Covid began, and that failure became the baseline ‘normal’ we’ve been told we have to return to. /4 https://t.co/PjCjgu6v4O.

So much of this is the eternal public health basics. Clean air, clean water and food, adequate living conditions. All the things the economy couldn’t care less about, unless somebody can privatise it for profit. And then they still don’t care. /5 https://t.co/AxeisRt52e

The main point of this thread though is to ask that we constantly question the ‘normal’ baseline we’re told is optimum. It was already strongly sub-optimum. The damage to societies caused by the pandemic was damage that was pre-existing. Covid was only an accelerant. /end