Why Is Everybody Still Getting Sick All The Time?

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Earlier this year, Bloomberg data reporter Jinshawn Honk got hung up on this question. It was something she kept noticing at work, at home, everywhere she went. She couldn't shake it.

Why does it seem like everyone everywhere like seems to be getting sick all the time.

Jinshawn's colleagues in Hong Kong and their family members all seemed to be getting sick. Jinhawn kept catching things too. Everybody was talking about it.

I'm a person that rarely gets sick. I had pink eye, my broat was swollen. I couldn't breathe through my nose. It was the worst two months of my life.

Here at the Big Take, we've been hearing similar laments from our family and friends all year.

My husband had COVID in September. My daughter and I had stepped throat in October.

RSB.

In November, it seemed like everybody had their own sickness story. I had pneumonia. It turns out I went to urging care twice. It probably took a little about three weeks before I started feeling human again.

In March, I had shingles, at the age of twenty nine.

At first I thought it was allergies, but now I think I'm sick. My nose is running uncontrollably and I feel achy and tired.

Even Olympic athletes are getting sick. This week, Team USA sprinter Noah Lyles won a bronze medal in the two hundred meter dash, only to disclose afterwards that he had tested positive for COVID a few days before. Olympic authorities new Liles had COVID, but he was allowed to compete anyway. In fact, dozens of athletes have reportedly tested positive for COVID at the Games, but most people seem to have

We decided to look into this and find out whether it's just a perception issue, is there something really going on that we should figure out for the public.

It was a mystery, so Jinhn and her team went into detective mode. Working with disease forecasters to gather case counts, calling up doctors, combing through research from all over the world, and what they found was truly eye opening. Today on the show, grab your hand sanitizer and your N ninety five's for a data detective story, we joined Jinshan as she scours the research for clues, culprits, correlations, and causations as she takes on the case of why everybody seems

We will to vote to identify at least thirteen communicabo diseases the dah surging in paths of the world that's above pre pandemic waves and in some cases is surpass the pre pandemic peak by a significant margin.

These diseases included cholera, measles, tuberculosis, RSV, dengay, and the flu. Jahn also wanted to know where these diseases were spiking.

So before the pandemic we were able to find out the peak of every disease in every country between twenty seventeen to twenty nineteen, and after COVID we have twenty twenty two to twenty twenty four, also three year and we find out a peak and compare the two. Whenever we see a spike. Then we market on a map, and with that we were able to identify regions where certain diseases are searching more profoundly.

Now, this data wasn't completely exhaustive, but it did show some notable trends. All thirteen of the diseases they tracked had surged above post pandemic levels somewhere.

It may not be higher in every country, but then we do see every one of them seem to be showing up in a variety of geographies at higher levels. So, for example, dn GEY is making a very strong resurgence in Americas. We also have like nisos like spreading to about twenty states in the US and other countries in Europe. And we are also seeing tuberculesis is like really making

Some of the surges are especially dramatic and more than forty places at least one of these diseases has seen case counts leap tenfold or more from their pre pandemic baselines. Influenza was up forty percent in the US during the last two flu seasons compared to pre COVID levels. Besides the health impacts and the strains to the medical system this can create, there are also other economic impacts. All those sick days are starting to add up.

We were looking through workplace research reports from places like UK and the US and there is more absenteesan with that, we seeing people reporting more sick days or taking longer sick leaves from work. Maybe in the COVID years when you were a little sick, you'll still go out and have a drink. It's like, Ah, I'm sick, but I'm not sick to a degree that I cannot function. I'll

That's one helpful lesson to come out of COVID. That's staying home when you're sick and curb infections. But illnesses are spiking anyway, and that's concerning, especially because Ginhan reminded me the COVID nineteen pandemic was unprecedented, and so is our post pandemic reality.

According to who's chief scientist Jeremy Farral, we are really in a new place because the last devastating major pandemic we had was in nineteen eighteen, which was so called the Spanish Flu, and back then we were not having as many vaccinations, diagnosis, or even treatment. At that time. It was really a different stage. So what we are facing right now is really an unparallel situation that scientists are raising to understand.

Even though it was a massive data lift, Jinshan says that figuring out that we were all getting sick more often was actually the easy part coming up after the break, unraveling the mystery of what's causing this spike in global illness If you think about this story as a big global health mystery at this point, Bloomberg's Jinshawn Hank has identified the say victims, those of us who are getting

That theory, which was at one point very leading theory during the pandemic, is that it's called immunity debt, where people became more susceptible to various infectious respiratory diseases because they were not exposed to the pathogen during the lockdown years. But that's still quite controversial among scientists that we talked to some of them think there's not enough data yet

While this immunity debt theory is contested, experts told Jinshn that lockdowns could have contributed to the current spikes in a different way. Babies who avoided catching respiratory diseases during COVID quarantines and school closures maybe getting exposed and sick for the first time as toddlers.

It's more like a delayed education to their immune system.

Delayed education. In other words, in the years since lockdowns ended, more kids might now be getting sick all At the same time, these kinds of COVID related delays are also showing up in some countries mortality rates.

Some countries that used to control COVID very well during the pandemic years seem to have higher O course mortality rates right now. So one theory they presented was that because those countries were able to keep frail elderly people live longer and keep them away from regularly circulating disease that are usually common in the communities. So with that they are now facing a higher death burden.

Another mystery doctors and scientists are trying to investigate is the effect of COVID infections on people's longer term health. Did you look into long COVID. Has COVID itself made people more susceptible to other illnesses?

Yeah, that is also a very heated topic that scientists are looking into, because COVID definitely has changes on some people that's much more than the general public, But that's still like relatively a smaller population compared to the general public in terms of everybody. I think there's no proof at this point, according to our interviews, that we are becoming much weaker than before.

Suspect in the rise of illness across the world. The anti vaccine movement.

For example, one thing that went very rampant during COVID was the vaccine misinformation, the social media and how the information got spread to many many people, and the mistrust of vaccination seems to continue.

Vaccine hesitancy and misinformation, along with supply chain issues, have led to a steep drop in childhood vaccination rates in Europe. Musles case suspect thirty fold last year after a few years where nearly two million infants missed their shots. And it's not just musles vaccines.

Basic vaccinations for children such as DTP had declined and that's resulting in a lot of the surges right now.

Meanwhile, COVID exacerbated other issues that can keep people sick.

There's also the social inequality caused indirectly by COVID policies. So there are increasingly poorer communities living in crowded environments and that prompts and potentially fuel disease circulating in the areas.

So those are all the culprits that are potentially related to the pandemic and its aftermath. But as any mystery fan knows, oftentimes the real villain is completely unrelated to the obvious suspect. So I asked Jinshawn, were there any other plot twists or culprits unrelated to the pandemic.

When we talked about climate change, we tend to think about economic losses or risks to different kinds of countries and people. But like in terms of diseases, now we are seeing it playing out in multiple aspects, with more flooding, with more extreme weather, with more warm weather. We are seeing, for example, like Dean Gay, which relies on mosquitoes to spread the disease is getting to more places because a mosquitos where able to survive in previously colder environments.

So Jinchon, out of everything that we've talked about, what did the experts tell you is the most likely reason why sicknesses are surging?

They tell us it's a perfect storm, and it is.

A puzzle a perfect storm. What they mean is there's not just one bad guy here. There's the disruption to our immune systems, a rise in global poverty, climate change, and a dip in childhood vaccination rates. It's that last one, vaccines that many scientists and health researchers agreed is most compelling. In the meantime, I asked Jineon what can we do to stay healthier? I've been sick, You've been sick. Nobody

That's something I think people have been trying to find a balance with. Do we need to continue a lot of the measures that we started with COVID, for example, wearing masks on public transport and buses when you feel unwell. The answer from some experts that we talked to is probably yes, because there's kind of a public fear for doing those measures again because they make them look weird, like, you know, COVID is over, why are you still wearing masks?

But actually, right, you're living in the past.

Yeah, are you living in the past. What are you afraid of? But if you really feel sick, that might help to spare your colleague from this particular disease that you are going through.

So after months of research and data collection and creating her map, Jinchon did not end up being able to name any one offender. There was no kernel mustard in the library with the candle to really hammer home the metaphor. He likely had some accomplices. The culprits seem to include all of us have slightly wonky immune systems after being isolated and inside for a long time, though that might