Coronavirus (COVID-19) Discussion Thread

[haxxiy]

SvennoJ said:

You should have natural immunity to the flu and cold virus as well by now, why do we still have the flu shot. Why am I still getting a cold.

Natural immunity helps, but is not enough to stop the spread of an ever mutating corona virus. Yearly updated vaccines, like the flu shot, will be needed to keep Covid-19 cases manageable. There is no end to Covid-19. It's here to stay and with vaccines we can reduce it to a severe cold instead of hospitalization and ICU.

Influenza is kept in check by the fact we're all exposed to it multiple times beginning in early childhood, a time when our immune system is far more able to deal with novel threats. When it got to the Americas, it decimated populations with a very high mortality rate.

The same probably applies for a lot of the other respiratory viruses too.

Personally, I doubt SARS-CoV-2 will be more dangerous than the other endemic coronaviruses. It could even be *less* dangerous than the other four since the little bastards, unlike Omicron, will happily infect lungs when given the chance, and have caused quite lethal outbreaks in care facilities.