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Comment by londons_explore | Hacker News Reader

Considering most economies are losing ~£100/person/day by having everything shut, the cost is fairly irrelevant.

Not for developing countries. And ultimately it is important for them to get vaccinated too, otherwise they will form a huge reservoir of COVID that will inevitably mutate and come back around to us.

That is not how it works. The Spanish Flu hasn't "come back" yet and coronaviruses mutate a lot more slowly. It couldn't really come back anyway, because it's still there, downgraded to regular flu.

Your example proves exactly the opposite of the point you think it does. Every year the flu virus comes back slightly mutated, and the immunity process starts all over again. In the summer the southern hemisphere acts as of reservoir of the virus and vice versa in the winter. This exact process could happen with COVID too. You are right that it does mutate more slowly, but there are upwards of 4 billion people in these countries. A very small number times 1 billion is still a much larger number.

Of course it does. But it doesn't cause anything we'd consider a pandemic.

> The Spanish Flu hasn't "come back" yet

Yes it has, most recently in 2009. From Wikipedia:

“ Well known outbreaks of H1N1 strains in humans include the 2009 swine flu pandemic, as well as the Spanish flu.”

I believe you misread the abstract. After reading the whole article, I believe it should be "include the `2009 swine flu pandemic`, as well as the `Spanish flu`".

How is that different from how you think I read it?

The “Spanish flu” is the name of the 1918 outbreak of H1N1. There was also a major H1N1 outbreak in 2009.

The 2009 outbreak wasn't comparable to the Spanish Flu.

Indeed, for various reasons including no world war and widespread vaccination, it was less bad. But it was literally the same virus.

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