Quote:
Originally Posted by Sephiroth
Then why is everybody encouraged to get the jab against the flu virus?
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Not everybody is encouraged to get a flu jab. It is recommended for older people and the otherwise vulnerable. Covid-19 is a different matter.
Flu has been around for generations so we have a good amount of herd immunity, which is bolstered by updated vaccines and by good hygiene and self-imposed isolation when ill. None of these measures and factors are enough on their own, and not even 100% collectively, so we lose up to 20,000 vulnerable people a year to flu.
Covid-19 is still a novel virus, a virus where no immunity and no vaccines were present at the outset. Potentially everyone could have caught it in a very short time with devasting results if all the 1%ish (800,000+) of fatalities happened within twelve months and all those that needed treatment needed it during the same period. The measures taken, albeit rather late, prevented the worst case scenario of many more than 1% dying through lack of treatment from an overwhelmed health service.
The situation now, barring highly lethal variants, is getting closer to being comparable with flu, but until we have the virus at a less than endemic level worldwide and until the vast majority have some level of immunity, Covid-19 has to be treated differently.