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by arcticbull 2255 days ago
That's not actually true. The seasonal flu affects 45,000,000 americans every year, and in part because it (a) mutates and (b) there's a huge number of strains, and different ones are dominant in different years. The flu shot is not particularly effective for those reasons (19-60% depending on the year).

COVID however, does not mutate, or has not yet. This means herd immunity is on the table, and so is a ~100% reliable vaccine -- like MMR, not like flu shot.
1 comments
DiogenesKynikos 2255 days ago
It is true. A substantial fraction of the population is immune to the circulating seasonal flu, both through vaccination and previous infection with closely related strains.

Only 5-20% of the population gets the flu each year. 60-70% of the population would have to get CoVID-19 before herd immunity brought the reproductive number below 1.

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arcticbull 2255 days ago
That doesn't make what I'm saying un-true. 20% of the population getting it is enourmous and demonstrates that the effect of herd immunity on the flu is negligible. At 20% infection rate annually after a few years, everyone's had it. But due to the virus propensity to mutate, we don't see herd immunity for the flu. Each new strain resets the counters.

We would see it for COVID. And chances are 15% of us have already had it according to the Gangelt survey.

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DiogenesKynikos 2255 days ago
Without pre-existing immunity, a much larger fraction of the population would get flu each year. That's one of the primary reasons why people worry about pandemic flu, as opposed to the regular seasonal flu. An entirely new strain has the potential to infect a much larger share of the population than the regular seasonal flu, precisely because there's no pre-existing immunity.

> chances are 15% of us have already had it according to the Gangelt survey.

No, that's a completely unfounded conclusion to draw from that study. Gangelt was chosen precisely because it was an extremely hard-hit town. Researchers wanted wanted good statistics, so they went to the place that has the largest case density. There was an early superspreading event in Gangelt, during Carnival celebrations back in February. Hundreds of people came into close contact with a known infected person. The population of the town is only 12,000 to begin with.

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