The End Of Covid -- As A National Public Health Concern -- October 13, 2023

Locator: 45767COVID.

This is quite remarkable. After years of combining pneumonia, "seasonal flu," and Covid in its weekly surveillance update, the CDC appears to be going back to separating out Covid from "seasonal flu."

It appears the CDC no longer posts that most important graphic that combines the three.

All I could find today was the graphic on "seasonal flu." The Covid data is still there but not in that simple chart that the CDC was posting as recently as last week.

I take this as evidence that from a national public health point of view, Covid has "disappeared" as a concern. Sure, we'll get stories of new variants and weekly statistics of new cases and new hospitalizations, but from my perspective, Covid is "gone" based on CDC surveillance data released today.

• Covid-9, CDC surveillance.
• "Season flu": CDC surveillance.

October 6, 2023: this was the last time this graphic was shown -- it is no long being posted by the CDC suggesting we're back to "normal."

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The Book Page

Linda Porter's 1995 biography of Queen Mary, the first queen of England.

I'm coming near the end, maybe two-thirds of the way through the book.

The first third of the book was about King Henry III's first two daughters, Mary and Elizabeth, and then a bit about his first and only son, Edward.

The middle fifth of the book moved very, very quickly, covering Edward's short life, "king" at age nine and dead at age sixteen. 

The next fifth of the book moved quickly as the throne went from Jane Grey (for nine days) and then to Mary, the first queen of England. And that's where I am now.

Page 229: 

"Those spared by the weather might equally succumb to disease. Epidemics did not always follow bad harvests but their effects were just as devastating. in 1558, the year of Mary's own demise, a virus probably related to influenza caused one of the greatest losses of life in England in a single year since the Black Death.'

From wiki:

In 1557, a pandemic strain of influenza emerged in Asia, then spread to Africa, Europe, and eventually the Americas. This flu was highly infectious and presented with intense, occasionally lethal symptoms. Medical historians like Thomas Short, Lazare Rivière and Charles Creighton gathered descriptions of catarrhal fevers recognized as influenza by modern physicians attacking populations with the greatest intensity between 1557 and 1559.

The 1557 flu saw governments, for possibly the first time, inviting physicians to instill bureaucratic organization into epidemic responses. It is also the first pandemic where influenza is pathologically linked to miscarriages, given its first English names, and is reliably recorded as having spread globally. Influenza caused higher burial rates, near-universal infection, and economic turmoil as it returned in repeated waves. 

If you know, you know. 

The book above was published almost fifteen years before Covid-19 identified.

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Queen Mary: The First Queen Of England

Linda Porter, c. 1995, p. 401:

Disease was stalking Mary's kingdom. In 1557, Charles Wriothesley wrote in his Chornicle:

'This summer reigned in England diverse strange and new sicknesses, taking men and women in their heads; as strange agues and fevers, whereof many died.'

In the countryside and in the towns people began to fall ill with unexplained fevers and a general malaise that sapped their strength, often over a long period of time.

Death was not always sudden, but for many it was inseparable.

During the summer of 1558, the situation deteriorated, accelerating to produce the greatest mortality crisis off the 16th century.

The result was a demographic disaster of huge proportions, with nearly 40 per cent of the country affected.

In 1558 / 1559, the number of deaths reported was 124 per cent above the national average. Burials exceeded baptisms in parish registers almost everywhere.

Among the major towns of England, only Hull and Shrewsbury were not severely affected. The situation grew worse as the summer gave way to autumn. In the fields the harvest lay ungathered:

'Much corn was lost .. for lack off workmen and labourers;"

... affected, more than half the people in Portsmouth, Southampton and the island (Isle of Wight), itself
... a month later, in Dover, people arriving from Calais dying daily
... the epidemic came after a year of good harvests and was particularly deadly among the well-nourished ruling class. This points to it being a new type of virus, probably related to influenze
... it was certainly not the plague, whose symptoms were well known and recognizsed, nor does it seem to have been an outbreak of the sweating sickness, which had last visited England in 1551 ... sweating sickness, also, most likely viral
... chief among the victims of that terrible ear: Cardinal Pole and Queen Mary herself.

Well read infectious disease scientists, like Tony Fauci, were very, very aware of these regional and global epidemics, and the fact that "we" still had no specific cure for viral diseases, like the antibiotics we have for bacterial disease. 

The more one reads ... well, if you know, you know.

Epilogue:

Reginald Pole (12 March 1500 – 17 November 1558) was an English cardinal of the Catholic Church and the last Catholic archbishop of Canterbury, holding the office from 1556 to 1558, during the Counter-Reformation. Died of the same viral disease as Queen Mary, about twelve hours later.