Anyone in TX notice increased respiratory sickness?

The past year it seems as if everyone I know (including my self) have gotten at least some type of respiratory illness to a degree much greater than previous years. In fact, now that I think about it the ONLY time I get sick it's a respiratory thing.

Has anyone else noticed this? It makes me think something has seriously gone wrong with the air and nothing has been said about it.

he is getting this pain when he breates. took him to hospital last summer. they found nothing. then me and the other kids got a liter form. figured it to be a virus, though our personal doctor or hospital said nothing about it. he just came to me yesterday saying feeling the same thing. gonna have to take him to doctor

and yes, all around me brnchitus everywhere, but not our house

on edit, we also have a huge ass plane last handful of years flies low and slow over us about noon. coming out more and more., cant get anyone to tell me what this plane is about

to that effect in one of her recent columns. I don't know about TX, but here in PA, I've had more colds and flus this winter than ever before.

time. Came on like Pertussis before doctors finally started thinking maybe Pertussis. Now, every time anyone gets a little cold, they relapse into the coughing thing for 3-14 weeks. We are all getting damned tired of it.

Doctors at medical centers in Billings FINALLY decided the place was a Pertussis hot spot this year.

Am thinking the thing hangs on like an opportunistic parasite (sorta the way malaria does in some people) and comes back with a vengeance whenever your resistance gets low. I notice if I miss several nights of sleep, I will get a relapse. Doesn't seem to matter if I have been around anyone else to catch a new mutation of a virus or not. (Easy to NOT be around anyone where I live.) I observe the same in everyone in these parts.

Bacteria probably getting to be more of a problem with the decades of antibiotics we have used. Only the meanest bugs survive. Widespread antibiotic use means we have helped their evolution along by killing off the weaker strains. But wouldn't they/couldn't they culture and identify a bacterial pathogen?

This respiratory thing is a bad dude though. My brother almost died of it a few times, lots of time in ICU over the past several years (in Tucson, it seems to be everywhere) and STILL they say they do not know what it is. Some doctors think it might be some reaction to some sort of chemical toxin, some think viral, some think bacterial, but nobody can name OR TAME the beast. What gets him through is cold mists and very sever restrictions on activity & LOTS of expensive ICU time. But it keeps coming back. I have watched him cough and gasp until he was blue. He is in his 40s and has never had health problems before this started.

Yeah, there is something out there. And I am not 100% convinced it is a wholly natural occurring thing. If it were, some smart doctors would have it named. There seems to be a problem with info for doctors from one area to another. Why has it taken so damn long for them to notice the Pertussis shots babies get do not give lifetime immunity and people all over the country were getting it?

Doesn't help that millions of Americans cannot get medical care. Easy to spread bad shit when you have no alternative to going to work sick.
Easy to hide epidemics when so many do not have access to medical care. So easy for doctors to miss trends when they actually see so few of the sick people.

And I keep thinking about things in our history, like giving contaminated blankets to Native Americans; blankets which spread disease and decimated whole populations. And I hear the junta talk about an 'ownership society'. So are we just sick, or do we need tin foil hats and a serious class war investigation? We know the general population is under a horrendous economic attack. Is it too much of a stretch to think there might be more going on? We know the junta does not like the idea of paying into Social Security so Baby Boomers can live into old age and not be productive, working cogs in the Corporate machine. We know they do not like the idea of communal supporting of invalids and others they villify for being poor even if the poverty is due to disabilities. We know they only value profit and the weak do not generate profit for them.