Summer Bonus: The Covid pandemic continues to transform the world around us

Bonus Climate change too

Photo by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash

Welcome to the third Summer 2025 Bonus Issue for the Covid-Is-Not-Over newsletter!

These bonus issues are basically collections of links that I haven’t been able to use for the regular newsletter. This one is all about how the Covid pandemic is ongoing, and not only is it ongoing, but it’s a transformational event for society in terms not only of public and individual health but the economy and education and lots of other sectors of society as well.

I’ll have a couple more of these weeklyish bonus issues before I resume regular newsletter production sometime around the end of July or the beginning of August. Forthcoming issues will probably focus on Long Covid and looming pandemics & surging infectious diseases. But we’ll see. No guarantees about number of issues, timing and content. I’ll probably be including Must Read Articles and Musical Interludes in the bonuses, but, then again, I may not.

The whole purpose of these bonus issues is to get something out that I hope you will all find useful but that I don’t have to work too hard on. What with it being summer and all, that seems like the best idea. My focus will be on rest, relaxation and recharging.

With that, I’ll just stop typing.

Top Articles Everyone Should Read on Covid

• What COVID-19 Does to the Body (Eighth Edition, June 2025) / Pandemic Accountability Index

• ANSWERED: Is COVID-19 Harmful to Children? A Compilation of Peer-Reviewed Medical Research / Pandemic Accountability Index

• Immunity Debt: The Conspiracy Theory Elevated to Popular Pseudoscience That Is Making Children Sick / LIL_Science

• You Have To Live Your Life

• "You Have to Live Your Life:" Responses to Common COVID Minimizing Phrases

• Simple things you can do to avoid COVID by Lucky Tran / Aranet

• COVID Incubation Period: Key Facts and Guidelines by Sarah Hudgens / Health

• Calm-mongering: Fine-tuning the potential emotional impact of risk is not the same as managing it by Arijit Chakravarty and T. Ryan Gregory / Monkeys on Typewriters

• Why is EVERYONE more SICK? by Lola Germs

• Covid-19: Will It Mutate To Nothingness? by Rawat Deonandan

• Everything "That Friend" Wants You to Know About Covid by Jessica Wildfire / OK Doomer

• Coronavirus Disease 2019 and Airborne Transmission: Science Rejected, Lives Lost. Can Society Do Better? by Lidia Morawska, William Bahnfleth, et al. / Clinical Infectious Diseases

• Real Impact of COVID-19 Infection and Why We Should Care by Jeff Gilchrist, PhD

• Navigating the Long Haul: A Comprehensive Review of Long-COVID Sequelae, Patient Impact, Pathogenesis, and Management by Nishant Rathod Jr., Sunil Kumar, et al. / Cureus

• A TALE OF TWO TECHNOLOGIES: Far-UVC light disinfection and mRNA vaccines are both potent life saving technologies. In the fight against Covid-19, one was thrust into the limelight, while the other languished in the shadows by Nicola Jane Boyd / Matters of Perspective

As most have probably noticed, there is no paid subscription option for this newsletter. However, Substack does have an option where subscribers can pledge to subscribe “just in case” and a few kind subscribers have made that pledge. I very much appreciated the vote of confidence in what I’m doing here. What I’ve decided to do on a trial basis is to set up a “tip jar” on the Ko-fi platform. I’m not anticipating a huge surge of income from using Ko-fi but whatever revenue I do end up with, I plan to spend on supporting artists on Bandcamp.

The World Has Changed and it’s Because of Covid (Since December 2024)

• Long COVID Keeps People Out of Work and Hurts the Economy > News > Yale Medicine

• NHS highlights dementia symptoms to look out for over Christmas as numbers diagnosed soar

• U.S. whooping cough cases hit highest level in a decade

• Hospital wards 'full to bursting' with patients suffering respiratory and flu symptoms amid 'quad-demic', leading doctor warns

• UK doctors and nurses with long Covid to sue for compensation

• Cruise ship stomach bug illnesses hit 12-year high: CDC

• Disability claims skyrocket, raising new puzzle alongside 'excess mortality' - Insurance News | InsuranceNewsNet

• The future of excess mortality after COVID-19 | Swiss Re

• Disability claims skyrocket, raising new puzzle alongside 'excess mortality' - Insurance News | InsuranceNewsNet

• Cruise ships hit by worst year for stomach bugs in over a decade, CDC data reveals | CNN

• Early-life infection burden continues throughout childhood, new data reveal | CIDRAP

• ‘This sucks’: Long COVID has taken thousands out of N.H. workforce, study says - The Boston Globe

• NIH-funded study finds cases of ME/CFS increase following SARS-CoV-2

• Opinion | COVID-19 should be part of teacher absenteeism discussions

• Driving Under the Cognitive Influence of COVID-19: Exploring the Impact of Acute SARS-CoV-2 Infection on Road Safety | Neurology

• Chronic Fatigue Syndrome Has Surged Since The Pandemic, Study Reveals : ScienceAlert

• Analysis shows significant financial burden of long COVID in US | CIDRAP

• The unseen aftermath of the pandemic | The Manitoban

• Kansas tuberculosis outbreak is now America's largest in recorded history

• 'Capacity was a huge issue': The lingering impact of COVID and climate change

• Students aren’t recovering from covid. Test scores are getting worse. - The Washington Post

• School closings continue due to illness-related absences

• Multiple schools closed through Friday due to ‘staggering’ number of illnesses

• Nearly 2% of new Swiss disability insurance claims involve Long Covid - SWI swissinfo.ch

• Toronto tuberculosis cases reach level unseen since 2002

• Essex County High School closed after 100 illness-related absences in one day | WRIC ABC 8News

• Bird Flu Outbreak Costs U.S. Poultry Industry $1.4 Billion

• Africa CDC urges immediate action to protect lives amid escalating health and security crises

• 5 years since COVID declared public health emergency in US, still killing thousands - ABC News

• Waffle House is passing along the sky high cost of eggs to diners with a 50 cent surcharge

• Closed due to illness: Classes canceled at multiple Northeast Ohio schools Tuesday

• Flu is so bad right now that schools across the country are closing

• Isolationist working from home bad for public service and national capital, says Byron | Region Canberra

• Why are so many London-area pupils missing so much class?

• Knox County Schools to close Feb. 10 and Feb. 11 for illness | wbir.com

• New dementia cases in US projected to double to 1 million by 2060: Study - ABC News

• Flu season intense in U.S., on the rise in Canada, reports say | CBC News

• Why so many people in Canada seem to be sick right now | CBC News

• Ont. hospital ‘seeing a lot of younger patients’ with breast cancer

• US flu reaches high severity status as deaths outpace COVID

• Six things you need to know about this year’s brutal flu season

• Fever dreams: the startling impact of infections on sleep

• How excess deaths in the COVID-19 pandemic impacted Social Security

• Flu outbreak is causing a deadly children’s brain illness: What you should know - nj.com

• As sick leave costs spiral, European states move to cut benefits

• Bridget Phillipson warns parents against ‘casual attitude’ to school attendance | Education | The Guardian

• As measles cases near 100, Texas health officials probe exposures at 2 universities

• What’s the deal with all these airplane crashes? | The Verge

• Tourist may have exposed ‘hundreds of thousands’ of people in San Antonio to measles, health experts say

• Flu in Mass.: Health officials warn of seizures, encephalitis in children's flu cases

• Measles death of unvaccinated child in Texas outbreak is 1st fatality in US in a decade

• Measles confirmed in unvaccinated Montgomery County child; other people may have been exposed

• Texas official warns against “measles parties” as outbreak keeps growing - Ars Technica

• Measles is back, and so are all the old antivax tropes about it

• Canada’s chief public health officer warns of potential rise in measles cases ahead of spring travel season - The Globe and Mail

• Children are increasingly starting primary school struggling to talk, teachers have warned | The Independent

• West Texas measles outbreak expands to three states | CNN

• Cardiologists seeing more cases of POTS since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic

• ‘Old fashioned graft’ needed to tackle pupil absence, Education Secretary to say

• COVID worsened shortages of doctors and nurses. Rural hospitals are still struggling : Shots - Health News : NPR

• Waiting lists, crumbling buildings, staff burnout: five years on, COVID is still hurting the financial health of the NHS

• Texas measles outbreak grows as US surpasses case count from 2024

• The Other Vaccine-Preventable Diseases Worrying Doctors Now

• Starmer says cost of sickness benefits 'devastating'

• Long COVID could be costing U.S. between $2 billion and $6.5 billion annually

• Almost no ME/CFS patients return to work "The help we have provided to patients through the welfare and healthcare systems has had little rehabilitative effect," says a researcher.

• Vietnam Faces Measles Outbreak With Over 42,000 Suspected Cases

• Parents of unvaccinated 6-year-old killed by measles in Texas speak out. They still are anti-vax

• Starmer says cost of sickness benefits 'devastating'

• THE HOT TAKE: Niagara’s measles outbreak has Covid roots - Village Report

• Study shows link between COVID-19 and rise in POTS diagnoses

• Working days lost to respiratory illness soar since pandemic

• Multimodal MRI analysis of COVID-19 effects on pediatric brain | Scientific Reports

• A nationwide study of risk factors for long COVID and its economic and mental health consequences in the United States | Communications Medicine

• Is Measles Here To Stay? The United States is on the verge of losing it's measles elimination status What this means for you based on when you were vaccinated.

• ‘It’s only going to get worse,’ warns Pulitzer Prize winning science journalist Ed Yong on America’s measles outbreak | CNN

• Is Covid Rewriting the Rules of Aging? Brain Decline Alarms Doctors - WSJ

• Fungal infections are 'taking over the world'. Can they be stopped?

• CDC scientist says measles cases are likely being underreported

• Brain Fog Is Here to Stay

• Post-Pandemic Surge of Group A Strep Infections in Children

• 'Major impact': 4% of Belgians over 15 suffer from Long Covid

• Australia Braces for Major Influenza, RSV, Pertussis Season

• Why heart attacks are rising in young adults—and what to watch out for | National Geographic

• US kids' flu deaths top 200 as respiratory diseases decline further | CIDRAP

• Long-term clinical outcome and exercise capacity in SARS-CoV-2-positive elite athletes

• Patients as young as 8 reportedly having strokes in Hampton Roads

• US at tipping point for return of endemic measles | Reuters

• 'On the precipice of disaster': Measles may be endemic in 25 years if vaccine uptake stays low, model predicts

• Measles is spreading quickly in Canada. Where is the public-health response? - The Globe and Mail

• Measles cases in Europe, the Americas skyrocket

• Leading long COVID researcher fears it could become a national epidemic

• Lower immunization rates driving measles outbreaks | The Kingston Whig Standard

• Whooping cough cases on the rise in Louisiana

• CDC: 12 more children die of flu, reaching new season high for a nonpandemic year

• Thanks anti-vaxxers: Child flu deaths soar as vaccination tanks

• Need for awareness and surveillance of long-term post-COVID neurodegenerative disorders. A position paper from the neuroCOVID‐19 task force of the European Academy of Neurology

• Persistent neurocognitive deficits in long COVID: Evidence of structural changes and network abnormalities following mild infection - ScienceDirect

• 86,000 ‘excess deaths’ in West Bengal in 2021; four times official Covid casualties - The Hindu

• Data show slight increase in menstrual length after COVID vaccines | CIDRAP

• Global life expectancy plunges as WHO warns of deepening health crisis Post-COVID | Africanews

• Covid-19 death tolls in Europe highlight stark regional differences in 2020 and 2021

• Systems are crumbling – but daily life continues. The dissonance is real | Well actually | The Guardian

• At-home heart attacks and cardiac deaths on the rise since COVID-19 pandemic

• Long-COVID diagnoses fairly common in Medicare claims

• Why so many people are having strokes in their 20s, 30s and 40s: ‘We’ve never had patients so young’

• Long-COVID is associated with increased absenteeism from work | PLOS One

• Why Are So Many Children Getting Long COVID? - Newsweek

• Life insurers grapple with post-Covid mortality spike, see 25% decline in insurance coverage

• Living with long Covid can be devastating – it's time our benefits system recognised that

• How Wildfires Might Increase Risk Of Flu, COVID-19

Climate Too.

• Climate progress screeched to a halt this year. One country had its foot on the brake. | CNN

• A Reality Check on Our ‘Energy Transition’ | The Tyee

• ‘Fire Weather’ Is Hitting the North the Hardest, Study Says | The Tyee

• To resist the climate crisis, we must resist the billionaire class | Peter Kalmus | The Guardian

• Scorched Earth The precarity of living on a burning planet.

• Wildfires increase infection risks by weakening immune defenses and spreading microbes in smoke

• California will spend $2.5 billion to help the Los Angeles area recover from wildfires | AP News

• 'Capacity was a huge issue': The lingering impact of COVID and climate change

• European cities face millions more deaths from extreme temperatures | New Scientist

• Air pollution reduces people’s ability to focus on everyday tasks, study finds

• The end of capitalism – or the end of civilisation? The choice could be that stark

• Millions of bees have died this year. It's "the worst bee loss in recorded history," one beekeeper says. - CBS News

• Big Banks Quietly Prepare for Catastrophic Warming

• Average person will be 40% poorer if world warms by 4C, new research shows | Climate crisis | The Guardian

• Climate crisis on track to destroy capitalism, warns top insurer

• Half the World’s People Depend on Rice. New Research Says Climate Change Will Make it Toxic

• A torrent of infectious diseases is erupting from melting ice. We shouldn't freak out just yet | Salon.com

• Earth’s Future at Risk: Scientists Warn of Imminent Climate “Tipping Points”

• India and Pakistan already sweltering in ‘new normal’ heatwave conditions | Climate crisis | The Guardian

• Dear Climate Therapist: What should I do with my white hot rage?

• High-income groups disproportionately contribute to climate extremes worldwide | Nature Climate Change

• Sea level rise will cause ‘catastrophic inland migration’, scientists warn | Climate crisis | The Guardian

• Almost 40% of world’s glaciers already doomed due to climate crisis – study

• ‘Half the tree of life’: ecologists’ horror as nature reserves are emptied of insects

• 'This is classic climate change': Sask. faces worst wildfire season in decades | CBC News

• Carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere break new records in human history

• Fewer scavengers could mean more zoonotic disease

• Climate Change Will Bankrupt the Country - The American Prospect

Joshua Redman ft. Melissa Aldana. So It Goes.