Déjà vu

Sometimes I stumble across videos on youtube that were recorded during the pandemic but had nothing to do with it and off hand comments mention things going on in the world at that time and for a moment I have to remind myself "oh yeah, that actually happened" - I don't think I am alone in that mentality. When people talk about blacking things out from their mind there is this idea that a complete hole in your memory is left behind but that's not usually how trauma works.

The easiest way to visualise memory as a concept is to imagine a net hanging from the ceiling, each time you learn something new it gets tied onto that net but the rope isn't very tight, over time it slips. The more important a memory is, the more connections it establishes with other memories, more ropes are used to tie it to the net, the more ropes there are, the more connections we establish, the less likely we are to forget that memory.

Any time we recall a memory from our mind, those memories tied to it also get jiggled and jostled around on the net, which is why little things can end up reminding us of much bigger things. When we experience trauma, the brain doesn't like the traumatic memory being triggered like this every time we think of things associated with it, so over time in self defence those connections get severed so that only key connections remain. Whilst those ropes get cut, they are not removed, they're instead left hanging, we can tell when a connection used to exist but doesn't anymore, this is where that sense of knowing you once knew something but being unable to recall what that thing was comes from - in other words the true definition of "forgetting" something.

We overuse that word, we tend to apply it to memories that we cannot immediately recall with ease but those memories aren't things we forgot, if they're still there just hard to reach then we didn't forget them, we either repressed them or they weren't deemed to be important enough to need to access with ease. Forgetting something in the truest sense is when every rope is cut and that memory falls out of the net entirely, when even having it presented to us doesn't evoke any reaction.

I haven't forgotten the pandemic, and I don't think anyone else has for that matter, it wasn't that long enough ago for that to actually be a possibility for most people, but I do think the process of repressing those memories is in full force both in my mind and the minds of others.

There are murmurs right now of a number of infectious diseases that the World Health Organisation is monitoring, Rhinovirus is spreading with the UK having weekly positivity rates of 6.9% but for the most part it is relatively harmless to most people. Respiratory Syncyital Virus is also spreading but in the UK weekly positivity is at 0.2% at the time of writing, Parainfluenza at 1.6%, Human Metapneumovirus at 1.1%, and Adenovirus at 2%. None of these have garnered any substantial media coverage. As for COVID, the FLiRT variants are spreading in the UK at 1.3% positivity but again virtually no media coverage has been devoted to this.

The reason I am mentioning all of these viruses specifically is because they are monitored by the UK Health Security Agency with public updates posted to their Dashboard which you can find here

There is another virus spreading which as yet at the time of writing hasn't reached the UK but has now reached one of our Nordic neighbours in Sweden, that is the mpox virus [the artist formerly known as Monkeypox] - this one has however received significant media attention and is now in the full throws of churnalism with some newspapers reporting speculation as fact and other newspapers then citing those supposed facts and thus propagating misinformation.

What we do know about the new variant that is spreading is that it was first spotted in Democratic Republic of Congo and has since been detected in multiple African countries, notably Burundi, Kenya, and Rwanda. It has also now been detected in Sweden in an individual who had travelled to an infected region. The new variant spreads more easily and has a higher fatality rate. It is also worth reiterating that despite tabloid newspaper efforts to brand mpox as such, it is not and has never been a sexually transmitted disease, it is transmitted through close personal contact, which for most people by virtue sex is a form of close personal contact.

The new variant however spreads more easily with respiratory dispersal the most likely mechanism - coughing and sneezing in particular. Sweden's public health agency has reported (English) that the spread in cases is primarily through household contacts and that the primary spread of cases is being seen in children. Given the summer holidays across Europe including the UK are drawing to their close and schools are soon to reopen for the Autumn term this likely means a spike in cases will follow.

The early stages of consumer panic are beginning to surface as we saw last time and with it the weight of the mental and emotional strain of the last pandemic is beginning to rear its ugly head again for many.

They say those who do not remember history are doomed to repeat it, we've been here before and we saw the mistakes that were made and the impact those mistakes had. As much as we may want to forget everything about the pandemic and repress the memory of it, there is a need to recall, if we are to avoid the mess we got ourselves into last time we need to be sensible and focus on the reality of the situation. Everything in context, this isn't the only infectious disease spreading right now, it's still a minor risk, but it must be taken seriously.

If you live in the UK read the NHS website's information page on mpox and familiarise yourself with the signs and symptoms, be aware of the risks, get vaccinated if you are able to do so, and don't be reckless with your health and others; if in doubt keep yourself out, don't expose yourself or others unnecessarily to the risks - and for the love of God please don't panic buy bog roll.