s what people are thinking of when they hear¶

Because the initial waves of COVID had such a massive death toll, that's what people are thinking of when they hear "COVID." But it's more useful to view it like a chronic condition, in the same vein as AIDS coming out of HIV infection, or MS coming from Epstein-Barr virus. It's a multi-system affliction, not just a respiratory infection. Cardiovascular, neurological, and--crucially--immune damage are the real "goal" of SARS-CoV-2. The respiratory system is just its route into the body. It sets up shop all over your body and evades immune detection. The effects of ignoring this "invisible" stage of chronic disease progression will continue to accumulate in our society. It will be more insidious than even AIDS, due to its respiratory route. Even if the acute stage gets less deadly, more and more deaths will rack up. Many clinicians--and definitely all public officials--will fail to attribute the ever-increasing rates of death and disability to the pandemic of yesteryear. It'll be chalked up to "unknown etiology." Scientists will be exposing the real causes for decades, constantly ignored. This mass chronic illness will be the backdrop of the coming upheaval of climate change. Ascendant global fascism will harden even further in the face of mass migrations from disaster-ravaged regions. We're in for a very, very bad time if communists can't get our shit together.