[vsnf]

please don’t mistake me for some kind of anti-vaccine anti-mask zealot. Having diligently participated in all the responsible social and personal anti-covid measures, my take on the article remains that it was a bizarre choice for the author to so directly entangle the two things together. CDC comments not withstanding, the flesh eating bacteria is enough of an eye catching story on its own, it doesn’t need to be attached to another horrible disease to be an interesting article.

[pohl]

There’s nothing bizarre at all about mentioning the recent prominent contagious disease crisis in an article about another rising contagion. It would be kind of weird not to.

[vsnf]

I think I’m being misinterpreted, which is on me for being unclear.

To address a sibling commenter first: no, I don’t think any mention of covid is a political statement, that’d be absurd. We all experienced the mayhem, fear, and uncertainty together, and most of us, though sadly not all of us, made it out alive. It itself is not political.

But it is often made to be. I find the articles opening sentence is phrased in a way as to be invoking a boogeyman, not least to which is because covid restrictions in japan were relaxed two years ago. The phrasing implies a strongly direct correlation, rather than a more nebulous one where all diseases would increase by the same reduction in measures. The overt entanglement in the opening sentence feels like baiting a response by disingenuous or superfluous association. The article would have stood stronger on its own legs, I feel.