Rich and Strange Aeons

So if you've been paying attention to the reality-based community, you've heard that covid-2019 isn't just a matter of live or die, it can leave you wheezing, missing a sense of smell, with organ or brain damage, and other exciting gifts.

I think of most diseases as "live or die", so this seemed pretty unusual. Almost lends credence to the bioweapon idea: asymptomatic spread, long incubation time, long term effects...

But recently I remember polio, the diseases that left FDR in a wheelchair. So there's precedent.

And I've been reading Kurlansky's Milk, which happened to include these passages:

"Bovine tuberculosis, a disease found in cattle, is transmitted to humans through milk. It attacks the glands, intestines, and bones. Humans who survive the disease often become hunchbacked or deformed in other ways."

"It caused what was called Mediterranean fever, whose symptoms were severe joint pain, sweats and chills, and fevers that lasted as long as six months. On occasion, the symptoms were permanent. The bacterium that caused the disease was named Brucellosis,"

"A similar discovery, bad news for goat’s-milk advocates, was that raw goat’s milk can carry a bacterium called Brucella melitensis, which causes undulant fever, heavy perspiration, and aching joints, a condition that can last for weeks or months."

So not so unusual. Just unusual among First World diseases of recent decades.