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Comment by jvanderbot | Hacker News Reader

I keep hearing that Covid is never going away (see recent Atlantic article). How is it surprising when vaccines designed to prevent hospitalization don't prevent infection.

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I imagine that it does make infection less likely, and make the likelihood of passing it on less likely too. I mean, most of the research on it says exactly that. But nothing is perfect.

I have heard similarly from various outlets that "we'll just have to learn to live with Covid-19, like we do with the flu and other viruses that we're unable to eradicate".

What I find curious is that SARS-CoV-1 (e.g. the original SARS circa 2003) seemed to eventually disappear overnight. It leaves me pondering two questions:

1. Did SARS-CoV-1 actually disappear or do we just not hear about it anymore?

2. What is different between SARS-CoV-1 and SARS-CoV-2 that makes us think the latter will persist indefinitely when the former seemed to disappear?

There were only ever 8000 confirmed cases of SARS-CoV-1. It was able to be contained. Wikipedia mentions that quarantines were very effective because it wasn't often asymptomatically contagious.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Severe_acute_respiratory_syndr...

SARS-CoV was less contagious and had a higher fatality rate, so it burned out quickly. There's no reliable evidence that it's still circulating in humans.

SARS-CoV-2 is more contagious and less fatal so it has already spread worldwide. It also has multiple animal reservoirs so even if there was some way to simultaneously eliminate the virus from every human (there isn't), we would just catch it again from dogs or deer or something and the pandemic would restart.

Covid is the next Afghanistan.

Flu was the perfect crisis hiding right under our noses.

Variants have been circulating throughout the population causing a high number of deaths for all of modern history. Now that we’ve encountered a somewhat more deadly and contagious version than normal and the “danger” of this version has been super hyped, we’re quite sensitive to all flu related news, all flu variants, all flu deaths, etc. Confirmation bias at work. We’re now noticing something that was there all along: people die from the flu.

Even if actual flu related deaths reverted to a pre-2020 level, I guarantee it would still be news. People will still be wearing masks, state/local governments will be enforcing mandates, etc.

Couple the above with the fact that a group of bureaucrats have managed to seize an almost dictatorial amount of “emergency” powers, you can bet this isn’t going away anytime soon.

You're aware the coronavirus isn't the flu, right? It's a totally different type of virus, completely unrelated to influenza.

> somewhat more deadly

A magnitude more deadly. Flu's death rate is ~.1%, Covid's is about 2-3%.

That is an insane, alarmist claim if I ever saw one. The death rate is absolutely not 2-3%.

What percentage of the population do think has been infected?

To be fair to GP, during the first few months of the pandemic - early to mid 2020 - this was the rate that was used in all publications. Though the rate might currently be known to be lower (or higher for all I know) this is the rate that I remember.

Of cases reported, 2% have died. If you want to go with CDC estimates, it's about .6%, still 5X the flu. If you include all excess death's it's about .7-8%.

Pick your number but COVID <> The Flu.

I can't believe almost a million people have died and people still shrug it off as just the flu.

> Covid's is about 2-3%.

0.7% in Israel. Much much less if you exclude terminal cancer, obesity and immunosuppressed transplant recipients.

Right. So, an overwhelming majority of the people who “died from COVID” would have likely passed away in the near future from something unrelated. They just were unfortunate enough to catch COVID in their already incredibly fragile and deteriorating state and end up with COVID listed as their cause of death.

If a person with cancer is hit by a bus, their death is not and should not be attributed to cancer. Likewise, if someone with a critical illness is robbed of their last few months by COVID, then it is correct to attribute their death to COVID.

The logic of "they were going to die anyways" means we might as well change every cause of death to "old age" or "natural causes", because if nothing else gets us, that's how we will all eventually die. But, of course, that would be stupid, and it would make death statistics meaningless - which is why we don't do it for COVID deaths.

> in their already incredibly fragile and deteriorating state

This state is called "dying". Dying people in ECU will develop pneumonia no matter what. If it would not be COVID, it would be their own gum bacteria.

Remember that a third of the US is considered obese[1] and 10.5% of the population is diabetic[2], another common risk factor for covid.

You probably know a lot of people are in those groups.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_obesity_r...

[2] https://www.cdc.gov/diabetes/pdfs/data/statistics/national-d...

That is misinformation. The CDC estimates COVID-19 death rate to be 0.6%. And vaccination cuts that rate close to 0.

https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/cases-updates/burd...

Vaccination is moot as a point.

And even then... ok... COVID is only FIVE times more deadly, not 10.

It's not slightly more.

Even if actual flu related deaths reverted to a pre-2020 level, I guarantee it would still be news. People will still be wearing masks, state/local governments will be enforcing mandates, etc.

They were in pre-2020 for bad flu pandemics:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_swine_flu_pandemic_in_Mex...

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