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Friends, colleagues and family at BBC HQ have been having an even more exciting year than usual – shaking off one cold and quickly moving from infection to infection to catch another.
Professor Jonathan Ball of the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine said: “The reality is we don’t have the data, so we have a lot of stories.”
So what could it be?
It’s the winter of covid.
We’re in the midst of a summer covid wave, so if you have a cough or fever, the virus could be the culprit.
We don’t collect the same detailed information as we did at the height of the epidemic, but the tide has begun Building around May.
“I know a lot of people who have had Covid recently,” said Professor Peter Openhow from Imperial College London.
About 3,000 people in hospital are currently testing positive for Vivid – almost double the figure at the start of April. The infection isn’t the reason you came in, but it’s one way to gauge whether we’re in a storm.
“There is a very significant increase, Covid has not yet turned into a winter virus, we can be very confident in saying this,” said Professor Ophau.
This seems to be driven by FLiRT viral strains and pubs packed with football fans are likely to lend a helping hand to the virus.
The virus is still an unpleasant infection and although we do not take emergency measures to control it, we give two doses of the vaccine a year to the most vulnerable people because of the risk it can cause.
Broken seasons
During the winter months you can expect to catch most respiratory diseases – coughs, colds and flu.
The cold weather, spending too much time indoors and keeping the windows shut all give respiratory viruses a major boost that time of year.
One argument is that pandemic restrictions have disrupted that normal pattern (the flu almost disappeared during some winter lockdowns) and things haven’t returned to normal.
“They think seasonality, especially cold viruses, have been thrown out of the ground so they’ve grown dramatically and I don’t think things are fixed at the minute, there’s a little bit more to do,” Professor Ball said. .
The idea is that even if you get exactly the same number of infections in a year, you can always look sick.
“Those kinds of things are prolonging the time when we’re feeling so frustrated that we think, ‘I’m sicker than ever,'” suggests Professor Ball.
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Severe cough
We also see a resurgence of the 100-day whooping cough, or whooping cough, known as pertussis in 2024.
Every three to five years there is an outbreak of bacterial infection, but the last one was in 2016.
So maybe there should have been an epidemic in the high epidemic years.
United Kingdom Health Protection Agency He warns“The effect of the epidemic is that the immunity in the population is reduced.”
The symptoms are similar to the flu, with a runny nose and sore throat turning into a cough, which can last for a long time, hence the nickname of 100 days.
Anyone can get a dry cough, but it is generally easier in adults. The problem is that they can pass it on to high-risk children. This year, nine people died of the disease.
This is why newborn vaccinations and the pregnancy vaccine for whooping cough (which passes protective antibodies to the baby while in the womb) are so important, but…
Vaccination rate is reduced
Low vaccination rates mean more people are sick with preventable diseases.
Get Whooping Cough – 72.6% of pregnant women chose to get the vaccine in March 2017. The figure for March 2024 was 58.9%.
But dose reductions are a widespread pattern in childhood vaccines. The UK reached the 95% target for children to be vaccinated against measles, mumps and rubella for the first time in 2017, but this has now fallen to 92.5%.
Professor Sheena Cruickshank from the University of Manchester said: “We have more vulnerable people and that drives these infections to develop, which is why we have warnings about measles outbreaks.
Measles outbreaks in Birmingham and London. First symptoms like flu – fever, runny nose, cough – before rash.
He asked the experts “Urgent Reversal” Immunization rates are falling at a time when we are at the peak of children dying or becoming seriously ill from preventable diseases.
More vulnerable to the disease
Another idea is that even if there is no change in the number of worms circulating, our overall health is deadly after austerity, epidemics and the cost of living, so we are becoming more vulnerable to them.
Professor Cruickshank said stress “reduces the ability to function” of the immune system and sedentary lifestyles and unhealthy diets cause “metabolic inflammation”.
“This is when our immune system is out of balance, which makes us less able to deal effectively with threats,” she says.
“Many of us are malnourished and lacking key nutrients that are vital to our immune system.”
So infections that the body could easily clear in the past can now cause more severe symptoms.
Hay fever
If you experience runny nose, itchy throat and sneezing, it may be your immune system reacting to pollen rather than disease.
“If you’re not as lucky with hay fever as I am, it doesn’t make you feel any different,” she says.
Office of the Met Climate change can affect hay fever by increasing the pollen-season and the amount of flowers – essentially making hay fever worse and lasting longer.
This is a long-term trend, but Professor Cruickshank said this could explain the “slightly worse” mood in summer.
Summer cold is nothing new
The phrase “summer chill” wasn’t invented in 2024.
Professor Ball said the other reasons above are that we may be more concerned about coughs and colds once we have a “heightened” response to the pandemic.
In the year In 2019, is anyone saying “is it covid?” He didn’t think so. When my colleague has a nagging cough or “Should I buy a covid test?” When you feel roped in before a holiday flight or visiting elderly relatives.
“People know a little bit more about sneezing and probably pre-Covid stuff,” Professor Ball said.
Covid is still Covid, but maybe we don’t need to fret so much about the old-fashioned summer sniffles.