Have tweeted before about the possible links between the 20th century epidemic of heart disease and…

Have tweeted before about the possible links between the 20th century epidemic of heart disease and infection. Another 20th century epidemic was obesity. Is there a possible link to infection for this chronic condition? You betcha. /1 https://t.co/pV3nDeXB4D

(Diagram from: https://t.co/FScePwZqe7) The explosion in obesity in the 20th century coincided with something deeply linked with infection. The invention of antibiotics. The dysbiosis in gut bacteria caused by antibiotic use is well known. /2 https://t.co/1cdcYbZ7oI

Research linking this dysbiosis to obesity is well advanced. And farmers know feeding animals lots of antibiotics fattens them up. Of course antibiotics were a boon in so many ways as well, this is not at all to suggest they were a bad thing. But we’re very ham-fisted here. /3 https://t.co/WT4Ut4fvq4

Our current ridiculously casual attitude to infections was largely driven by the success of antibiotics. Prior to their use, cutting your finger in the garden could kill you. Now we deliberately infect entire populations and call it public health. With viruses too. /4

Vaccination was the key there, our other great advance but also a prompt to become ridiculously casual about infection. Politicians have been completely cavalier with Covid because they used vaccines the same way farmers use antibiotics. Infecting the herd, it’s in the name. /5

Anti-vax, ‘natural’ health types go even further, openly embracing infection as some kind of immune system workout. We’re well down the road to complete collective insanity. It’s also interesting that obesity is given as a key cause of that other 20th century epidemic. /6

Heart disease. As per my previous tweets, there’s significant evidence that may actually have been an epidemic of chronic infection, with various pathogens. And now it appears also of side-effects of the battle with those infections. Look at the chronology. /7 https://t.co/mHe1xedyP7

All of this aligns, the casual indifference to infection, and particularly chronic (’invisible’) infection. And now dysbiosis, caused by set-and-forget treatment of these same infections, to pretend we now live lives free of concern about infection. /8 https://t.co/eALvnFf3eV

We’re not creatures with some microbes here and there. As Lynn Margulis argued, we’re fundamentally societies of micro-organisms. Endosymbiotically constructed, from the ground up. Deliberate casual infection and casual treatment of infection screws up our wiring. /end