I believe while the flu is a serious illness to many and causes deaths, covid is much more dangerous and causes more deaths. So we have never had the impetus or will to mandate and try to eradicate the flu virus. And I suspect the vaccination rate for the flu is much less than for covid.
If we could get enough people vaccinated together with those who have natural immunity, why couldn't we achieve herd immunity? We had a pretty good effort in the past to vaccinate everyone (children) from polio, and we seemed to be successful with that. I believe there is an opportunity now, if can get enough people vaccinated, and soon, that this thing could be stopped. But it will take some credible leadership to show the way.
Nah. Flu and covid are pretty comparable. There just wasn't a vaccine for covid initially and there isn't really anything like tamiflu for covid yet, so covid looks worse. Also remember that a bunch of covid patients were put in nursing homes in certain states, so things got way worse there.
For both the flu an covid, it matters who gets the vaccine. If all the old and unhealthy got the vaccine and not the young and healthy, then hospitalizations and deaths wouldn't be far lower. If all the young and healthy got the vaccine and not the old and unhealthy, deaths and hospitalization would be much higher - you wouldn't even notice a change in the numbers now if it were just the young and healthy that were vaccinated. That being said, age and health status are the largest predictor for deaths and hospitalizations before vaccine status, which is why it's far more important for the old and unhealthy to get vaccinated. So, rate of vaccination isn't really what's important, it's who is vaccinated.
It wasn't that people lacked the impetus or will to eradicate the flu, they just realized that it was impossible without destroying the entirety of civilization. The same is true with covid. Covid is nothing like polio. Polio has 3 variants total, mutates slowly, and the vaccine remains effective for a lifetime. Covid is wildly different - hundreds of variants, mutates quickly, and the vaccine only lasts 6 months. Herd immunity isn't magical. There are viruses that are impossible to elimate and the flu and covid are two examples. It is better to just vaccinate the old and unhealthy and just live with it.
There could be another issue, though, and this may border on conspiracy theory (sorry), but perhaps the pharma industry doesn't want to to totally eliminate the illness. If covid goes away, they will lose a lot of future revenue and profit.
Nah. Like I said earlier, it is not possible to eradicate covid without destroying society. If there is any 'big pharma' conspiracy it would be to have the vaccine and booster mandated to the whole population indefinitely. If this ends up happening, it may likely not be for that, but there was all the nonsense around the swine flu vaccine.
Having said all this, I don't like vaccine mandates and stepping on personal freedoms. But sure would like to see a better approach and leadership to convince more people to get vaccinated. How was it done with the polio vaccine? It worked. Is there not something to be learned from that?
Again, this isn't polio, so the situation isn't comparable. The correct thing to do is tell the old and unhealthy to get vaccinated and to be mindful of interactions and just let the young and healthy engage normally. The next thing that should be done is to address preventable chronic health issues like obesity and the side effects of drug use. Promote healthy diets and exercise. Those are the best courses of action.
Agree with you on the obesity epidemic, which I understand got even worse with the covid clamp down. That's another challenge that we don't seem to be tackling effectively. I think we need to promote more physical activity that is fun, esp outdoors. Fortunately where I live people want to be outdoors, summer and winter. I mountain bike and hike in the summer, and ski and snow hike in the winter. Even when I go to Maui (most winters) I walk at least 6 miles on the beach (keep track on my garmin watch) every day. It saddens me though, to see how many of our kids waste time on their phones and xboxes, when they could be having fun with sports and outdoor activities.
This is true, a lot of the lockdown measures ended up backfiring and making other problems worse. Obesity is a major crisis. People in general do spend too much time inside and on devices, but that is a different discussion

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