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The worst flu season in 15 years has left hundreds of thousands of Americans hospitalized while straining physicians’ offices and emergency departments.

Why it matters: The virus is causing more severe complications and hitting young children especially hard.

"The two predominant strains that are circulating right now are known to be more severe and have more severe outcomes, especially in high-risk patients," said Carol McLay, president of the Association for Professionals in Infection Control and Epidemiology.

Turns out having multiple infections run around wild does not “strengthen” our immune system. Who would have thought /s

  • QuentinCallaghan@sopuli.xyzEnglish
    271·
    3 days ago

    Execpt herd immunity doesn’t apply to viruses that mutate heavily and where the immunity isn’t durable. Dr. Anthony Fauci previously believed that herd immunity could be achieved with COVID, but he has since changed his mind:

    So, with regard to that issue and something you mentioned earlier, how should we define herd immunity with respect to COVID, I mean, how do we think of it?

    I wrote a paper on that. It was a simple paper [9]. It stated that we cannot apply the standard criteria of herd immunity. It’s not applicable with SARS-CoV-2. And the reason is, it’s simple. I can synopsize the paper in 30 seconds. One is that herd immunity is dependent on an immune response that is durable, measured in decades to a lifetime, and a pathogen that does not change. So, you have clear-cut herd immunity with measles. Why? The measles that I got infected with as a child, because I was born before the measles vaccine, is the same measles that’s killing kids in the developing world today.

    Number 2, if you get infected with measles or you get vaccinated with measles, the duration of protection minimally is decades and maximally is lifetime. Those are the criteria that you need for herd immunity. Because if you have a pathogen that keeps changing like the multiple variants of SARS, and if you have a duration of immunity that’s measured in months, the entire concept of herd immunity is no longer valid. That’s the point.

    https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11418601/

    • grue@lemmy.worldEnglish
      29·
      3 days ago

      So that just means keeping vaccine boosters up-to-date is even more important.

    • Sterile_Technique@lemmy.worldEnglish
      3·
      3 days ago

      Not wrong, but also not helpful in the goal of boosting public health. Even if we’re not able to reach literal herd immunity, boosting your own defenses still mitigates the spread and still plays a large role in reducing vulnerable people’s exposure.

      Combine that with other reduction practices like hygiene and masking and we’ve got a solid defense.

      And don’t get me wrong - I’m well aware that’s a pipedream, cuz good fucking luck convincing Cletus and Billybob that an itchy nose and a scary poke in the arm are worth not killing some grandma they’ll never meet… And until we can reach dipshits like that, there’s not much hope in controlling something like covid.

      I’d also expand my initial post to vaccination habits in general, and the less mutatey pathogens than covid do give us a bit more wiggle room in dealing with morons.