More people are getting sick for several reasons.
The changing of the seasons is only part of the equation.
Use of masks is also only part of the equation.
Masks never could be more than a low wall, and if they are not kept clean they quickly (three days or less) begin to defeat their own purpose. A dirty mask helps neither the wearer nor the people he is around.
The materials masks are made of become allergenic after long term use.
And I could go on about masks, but they are only part of the equation.
If you believe in God, may I ask you to consider that God may be trying to get us to slow our collective pursuit of the rat race down.
If not, let me tell you about how excessive and inappropriate competition is weakening all the foundations of our society, including our bases for maintaining health.
As best we can understand it, and much to the Chinese government's dismay and embarrassment, the virus made the jump from animals to the human population in slave-labor populations in China, where it is impossible for people to maintain nutrition, hygiene or other necessary conditions for health.
From there, it traveled first among populations in poverty, and communicated to the upper middle class where those populations touch -- ergo, from the slave-labor conditions where it jumped to the relatives and friends in slightly better conditions who work in sweatshops making our high-tech gadgets and such, and from there to their managers.
Their managers have the means to go traveling, and it was a large group of vacationers who first brought it from China to Japan, to places like the snow festivals in Sapporo and Hokkaidō.
In the developed world, it was the people with compromised immune systems who picked it up first (and whom it hit worst). This is not a surprise, really, since it is the immune systems' job to defend us.
We were surprised when the methods of kicking certain parts of our immune systems into high-gear backfired, and excessive immune system reactions began to turn deadly.
Think about this carefully. These are partially immuno-compromised individuals who have adopted the habit of taking various drugs to help them keep working in spite of having really bad colds. In times past, a cold that bad could be deadly, but we have drugs to deal with the cold symptoms now.
Well, it turned out that those drugs had side effects that turned against us in this version of the cold virus. (Corona viruses are cold viruses, remember?) This should also be no surprise.
When you push your body too hard with those drugs (including antihistamines and excessively high doses of vitamin C, and such), you go down, and the doc has to take you off those crutch medicines and convince you to get rest and nutrition. Even if the doctor can't convince you to go off the drugs, he or she really tries to convince you to get some rest.
(Take notice of this: It's the rest and nutrition that heals you.)
A virus that kicks up a high-level response in the body combining with drugs that kick up a high-level response is going to result in a violent reaction, and the violent reaction can result in death and debilitating disease.
Now, a rudimentary understanding of epidemiology tells us that these kinds of pandemic continue until we develop herd immunity.
We develop herd immunity in several ways.
One is die-off. Horrible as that is, it is reality.
Another is by letting our bodies develop natural immunity by exposure. The low walls like masks slow the contagion down, which gives individuals more time to develop immunity. But if we then fail to strengthen our general health, to be ready for increased exposure, we lose the benefit of the low walls.
Pre-exposure through vaccines is similar to the low-walls in this -- if we fail to keep our health up, vaccines have limits.
In modern society, we have often been able to dodge die-off by hygienic practices, by improving our overall health, and by the pre/faux-exposure of vaccines. But all of that also slows down the development of herd immunity, which means the viruses mutate and come back.
They don't go away until we develop herd immunity, both by exposure and by giving up the behaviors which enabled the virus to make the mutation jump in the first place.
The virus jumped in slave-labor conditions where it is impossible for people to maintain health.
We pick it up and pass it on when our behavior causes us to have dropped immunities.
Those behaviors include bad nutrition, lack of sleep, high levels of inappropriate stress, use of mood-altering substances, poor social hygiene, etc.
How sick we get is also in no small part determined by our overall health, including whether our immune systems are within appropriate functional parameters -- we have seen clearly this time that kicking (some of) our immune systems into overdrive is another bad habit of modern society, and can cause a virus infection to turn fatal or debilitating when it otherwise wouldn't.
Even if you don't believe in God, you have to understand that nature itself is effectively telling us as a civilization, and me and you as individuals, to slow down.
-- to give up the bad habit of excessive competition, and the bad habit of trying to force everyone around you to compete in the games that you think you can win.
This is why this post is in my political blog. The causes of the pandemic, and the cure, happen to coincide with the causes and cure of our current social, political, and economic distress.
If we don't change what caused the pandemic, hanging on to your mask will be no better than trying to hang on to a clump of grass when you're dangling over the edge of a cliff.
Sure, wear the mask sensibly, but fix the other problems.
Slow down. Learn to give others a chance to live.
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