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by ergothus 2240 days ago
> Which means a response three to four times as strong as the one to the seasonal flu would be appropriate.

I'm not sure that's a meaningful statement. Our response to a seasonal flu - for which we spread a vaccine in advance and have a population with scattered levels of resistance due to similarities to previous iterations - cant be "done but 3 to 4 times more".
1 comments
anoncake 2239 days ago
No, but we can spend 3-4 times more/accept 3-4 times the inconvenience/etc. responding to the flu is worth to us.
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ergothus 2239 days ago
Except that math doesn't work either. 3-4 times the morality rate is not the same as 3-4 times as many dead, for the same reasons I listed above - we've already made lots of societal adjustments to change the input number before the mortality rate of the seasonal flu gets involved.
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bikezen 2239 days ago
The flu has vaccines, and anti-viral treatments. If it did not the reaction to it might be very similar to how we're being told to respond to COVID-19. These are not comparable things because the options for combating them are drastically different.
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