The Dickensian disease is the latest Victorian-era ailment to stage a comeback in the West.

The Dickensian disease is the latest Victorian-era ailment to stage a comeback in the West.

Just when you get rid of one cough, another emerges in its place.

While the the Covid-19 pandemic officially ended last year, cases of pertussis — or whooping cough, as it’s more commonly known — have been spiking across Europe in recent months.

The retro infection, a staple of Charles Dickens’ novels, is the latest Victorian-era ailment to stage a comeback in the West after an increase in measles, syphilis, gout, leprosy and malaria.

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A report from the British Medical Journal says that part of the reason for the spread is a drop in vaccination rates.

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Europe’s disease agency also suggested Covid could be to blame for the rise.

“The current increase is potentially linked to lower circulation during Covid-19 pandemic, combined with suboptimal vaccination uptake in certain groups during the Covid-19 pandemic,” it wrote in a March report.

Getting people vaccinated is key to stemming the outbreak, but that’s becoming easier said than done.

  • xmunk@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    1672·
    7 months ago

    So it’s not because of COVID… it’s because antivax idiocy is threatening to extinct us.

    • GhostFence@lemmy.worldEnglish
      471·
      7 months ago

      And anti-vax idiocy flourishes because communities didn’t make life hell for them.

            • xmunk@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
              131·
              7 months ago

              It’s ending life for a lot of people outside the antivax community, though. We need to get a lot more forceful about vaccinations and make them obligatory. I’m not certain in which way but this needs to happen.

              Vaccination can’t be optional.

              • FartsWithAnAccent@fedia.io
                6·
                7 months ago

                Yes, unfortunately it becomes everyone’s problem, especially those who are immunocompromised. Once they lose the protection of herd immunity, they’re kinda fucked.

            • AbidanYre@lemmy.worldEnglish
              1·
              7 months ago

              I’d wager “them” are vaccinated and it’s their kids that are the ones getting these diseases and potentially dying.

    • OpenStars@discuss.onlineEnglish
      71·
      7 months ago

      On the one hand that is your fact, while on the other hand the article got people to click on it by using this word in the title, a sort of “alternative fact” if you will.

      Conservativism is not the only thing enshittifying our world. Chasing after profits and other forms of power at all costs are more foundational factors.