[quote carefullycourageous]@Badbadbunny yes, but COVID is more likely to kill my elderly relatives now immunity is waning.
I know the knee jerk response of some is to compare it to flu, but the comparison is not really helpful.[/quote]
I suspect when people say you can’t compare Covid to flu, it’s because they’ve never had real flu.
Real flu is diabolical. We’re not talking about a heavy cold type thing that lasts a few days. Real flu means you cannot move from your bed, you hurt all over so even the duvet causes discomfort, your joints ache from stabbing pains, you boil then you freeze, you can’t eat or drink and if you try, you struggle to swallow, you crawl to the bathroom, your head spins if you stand up, it hurts to breathe, you have no energy - and this can last nearly 10 days if you have it badly. You’ll be exhausted for weeks, possibly with a long term cough and loss of stamina. If you’re very unlucky, it will develop into pneumonia and you end up hospitalised - or even worse.
People write off flu as though it’s of no consequence but I’ve had both covid and flu and I know which was far, far worse.
If we tested as diligently for flu in care homes and hospitals as we have done for covid, I think we would be quite shocked how many actual cases there have been and how many unrecorded deaths are as a result of it. Before covid, flu was being taken seriously enough that there was a campaign to inoculate all school children to protect the elderly as the young were known to be superspreaders. Unfortunately, that has been forgotten and overtaken by the covid pandemic.