The entire political establishment is in agreement on the need to enforce the pro-corporate policy of “forever COVID,” in which the working class and broad layers of society as a whole are condemned to unending waves of mass infection, death and debilitation with Long COVID.
Copying from my comment when you posted this on another community:
The issue is that it’s less severe, partially because people have immunity and partially because the virus is weaker (this happens with new illnesses - they get less fatal and spread more).
But wastewater isn’t newsworthy. It never has been. It’s disingenuous to say the media isn’t covering this when ERs are NOT having issues and people aren’t dying.
Many doesn’t the media have mass coverage of the common cold? Why don’t they cover norovirus? Endemic shit that doesn’t kill people isn’t really newsworthy.
Right. Except it does kill people, just like the flu kills people. Large numbers, not nearly as large as several years ago but still large. And the effects of Long COVID look rather bad, too.
So it is newsworthy, by your standards. Meh.
Also, there’s been a January spike every January since 2021. It’s practically clockwork. Which also makes it not really newsworthy, especially as the disease becomes less deadly.
https://www.mwra.com/biobot/biobotdata.htm
On the other hand, I saw plenty of news stories about bad travel this holiday. Which is really, really not newsworthy. But we get those every year.
A virus that kills its host looses a vector to spread. It’s an evolutionary advantage to not kill your host, just leach off them to spread. Look at how well the common cold does.