Can anyone explain to me how this is different to flu now please?

[musicalfrog]

Apart from the overseas thing, I get that other countries don't have as much protection as we do.

So -

Covid is a respiratory disease as is flu.

We now have our most vulnerable population fully vaccinated (as with flu).

Covid mutates. Just like flu. So we change the vaccine every year, same with covid.

So why are we still in this situation, wearing masks and distancing and all the other bollocks we're going for covid but don't do for flu?

Our bodies build up resistance to flu throughout are lives, that doesn't happen with Covid.

No vaccine is 100% effective.

Some people have covid with no symptoms, so you do not know if you are coming into contact with someone who is infectious.

Not sure about your first point there sash I've never heard that. I certainly wasn't immune when I caught it a few years ago and had two weeks off work.

No the flu vaccine isn't 100% either some years they miss the mark more than others. We still don't shut down.

Everyone e is over cautious because it's a novel virus but I agree with you in some ways we need to start opening up more

However masks is a simple measure I'm happy to carry on with for at least till next year.

Covid is a vascular disease, not at all like flu. We just happen to have a lot of blood vessels in our lungs.

The masks are OK in the winter but stifling in summer. I can't wait to ditch them!

Fucking hell.

Fuck me.

You still don't get it?

Chill your boots Nanny! We have a vaccine now.

Erm. The flu virus and the SARS-COV-2 virus are very different in the way they mutate. Flu has a segmented genome and is able to switch bits around far more easily, Coronaviruses don't do this.

We now have our most vulnerable population fully vaccinated (as with flu).

We only vaccinate the vulnerable against flu and some years the flu vaccine is ineffective (depending on what strains are included). It's actually far less effective than the current Covid vaccines.

Covid mutates. Just like flu.

No it doesn't mutate 'just like flu'. It can't because they replicate differently (flu is segmented) and coronaviruses have error-checking included (yes really) so they mutate less.

Our bodies build up resistance to flu throughout are lives, that doesn't happen with Covid

Not really accurate. If you've had Covid once, chances are you won't get it again, or if you do it'll be mild. There are far more flu strains and it's possible to get flu several times over the course of one's life. They are very different viruses.

we're going for covid but don't do for flu?

I've a feeling masking and SD may be brought in for flu, if we have a bad season.

Because it's not flu

Postdated I've never heard that, so then are there other ways to transmit it? Or test for it? That don't rely on airways/mucus etc. A urine test would be amazing.

If your not sure of sashh point then you don’t have a lot of understanding about immunity.

Two weeks off work is nothing compared to what flu would do to you if you hadn’t been exposed repeatedly during your life up till then without becoming ill.

When diseases like measles and flu got introduced to South American countries by Europeans they killed people in vast numbers like Covid kills people today.

FFS. It's totally different from flu. Educate yourself.

It's embarrassing to read.

Thanks Crunchy that's helpful.

@DancesWithTortoises

FFS. It's totally different from flu. Educate yourself.

It's embarrassing to read.

Nope there will be selective listening involved...... As indicated in the first post

The Chinese find faecal covid tests the most effective. Our government test sewerage farms to check local infection rates.

It is spread by droplet, aerosols, maybe airborne. Airways are its route in and out, hence masks.

Sleep I'm asking the question aren't I? Why so snippy?

How do we know we don’t build up a resistance to Covid? It hasn’t been around long enough. T-cells from SARS (similar coronavirus) have lasted at least 17 years.

Yes no vaccine is 100% effective but we never expected it to be. It’s not a justification to carry on any restrictions.

Actually many people with flu don’t have any symptoms.

So none of those points hold.

Yes it’s different to flu as it appears to have many more vascular elements. And the main reason is that it was a novel virus. So no immunity in the population (actually they did find some people were somehow immune.)

We are working towards it being an endemic virus similar to flu and we will tweak the vaccines each year. We’re not quite there yet with the vaccinations. Next month will be key to see if vaccines have broken the link between the virus and serious illness/death. And also if they hold
against the Delta variant. I think it’s looking promising. We should have started to see deaths rise by now as Delta has been here for a while.

Covid is not a respiratory disease, where have you been that you still think that way? Yes the lungs are affected by it and it is incredibly dangerous when they are, because severe Covid is a syndrome that has inflammation and blood clotting at its' centre and when lungs are affected the parts of the lung that get oxygen from the lung into the body where it is needed are blocked up.
www.hopkinsmedicine.org/health/conditions-and-diseases/coronavirus/what-does-covid-do-to-your-blood
Looking after a case of severe Covid affecting the lungs is hell for HCPs (trigger warning, do not read the next sentence if you are going through a Covid bereavement) , you watch someone suffocating to death and have to make decisions about whether to "make them comfortable" with opioids that will reduce their distress and the distress to those witnessing it while also potentially dangerously suppressing their breathing as that's what opioids do (hence the thousands of deaths worldwide from prescription opioid addiction)
If you put your HCPs through that day after day, week after week, you break them and then you have no functioning health care system. Cases of PTSD in HCPs who worked through the SARS 1 outbreaks in Canada are well documented and that was a tiny outbreak compared to SARS Cov 2.
Covid had brought a massive shock to our under-funded, under-capacity healthcare system and to ourselves as we have had the luxury of being complacent about public health for the last 50ish years since the advent of vaccines and mass produced antibiotics.

The healthcare system now has to budget for thousands of new patients with Covid after effects. There's so much focus on death in the media or long Covid just as a fatigue issue and I don't know why they quote death numbers only everyday because it detracts from the amount of ongoing organ damage that is also going to be overloading the health care system for years to come.

e.g. kidney after affects (and there are similar increased levels of healthcare involvement needed for other organs)
"given that kidney disease does not produce symptoms until very late, we would like to make people who have had COVID-19 disease aware of the possibility of long-term consequences on the kidneys. It's important that general practitioners check their patients' kidney values (GFR, albuminuria) on a regular basis - similarly to other groups at risk of kidney disease, such as patients with diabetes mellitus and high blood pressure.""

www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2021-06/e-clc060521.php

Only just over 50% of adults are fully vaccinated at the moment. Not all of them will have been second vaccinated long enough ago for them to be at maximum effectiveness.

No vaccine is 100% anyway.

The vaccine roll out is going brilliantly but we aren’t at a point yet where that makes us safe, thankfully though when we have so far does seem to be helping keep hospitalisation lower which is a positive.

But it’s not the flu. It’s nothing like the flu!

@Fluffycloudland77

If your not sure of sashh point then you don’t have a lot of understanding about immunity.

Two weeks off work is nothing compared to what flu would do to you if you hadn’t been exposed repeatedly during your life up till then without becoming ill.

When diseases like measles and flu got introduced to South American countries by Europeans they killed people in vast numbers like Covid kills people today.

Exactly and this is why I worry about some of the long term effects if we go on too long in this ultra sanitised world especially for kids! We need to exercise our immune systems not be locked up, masked and sanitised beyond when it was completely necessary for a period of real emergency. I think down the line there will be knock on effects we don't realise yet.

OP, if you really wanted to know, it's quite easy to find out.

www.cdc.gov/flu/symptoms/flu-vs-covid19.htm#:~:text=What%20is%20the%20difference%20between,by%20infection%20with%20influenza%20viruses.

It isn't just a respiratory disease. It causes many neurological problems too.

So influenza has been around for thousands of years and during that time, the human race has built up a lot of resistance to it.

Although new variants are appearing all the time, a good percentage of the population will generally have antibodies effective against the new variant because they were exposed to something similar in their past.

Side not - we all probably get infected with flu quite regularly. It's just cases where we notice are few. Just like covid, asymptomatic and ultra mild infections occur. The whole idea that "it's only flu if you're bed ridden" is false.

SARS is new. Almost nobody got SARS-1, so this SARS-2 pandemic is new to most of the human race. The virus is ~100 to 1000 times more serious than typical flu, probably largely because we don't this thousands of years of immune exposure to help us. While it mutates less easily than flu, it still DOES mutate and as it does, the benefit of previous infection/vaccination will fall.

How long it will take until as a race, we have similar built up protection to the virus generally, is hard to say. It could be a couple of years (with vaccines), it could be decades. Much depends on HOW much the virus can mutate.

NB, typically flu vaccines have an efficacy of about 40-60%. We need covid protection to stay much higher if we want to retain a functioning healthcare system.

@musicalfrog

Sleep I'm asking the question aren't I? Why so snippy?

Because as others have said it's embarrassing And the use if the word bollocks gave away your lack of willingness to undersrand

We need to exercise our immune systems

They're not fucking muscles. They DO NOT need exercising.