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Comment by somewhereoutth | Hacker News Reader

We have zero evidence that the common cold coronas were previously any more deadly than they are now. Zero evidence.

Unfortunately the idea that Covid becomes just another common cold virus can be no more than wishful thinking at this point.

Without vaccines and public health interventions, likely SARS-COV-2 would continue washing through the population, with waning immunity and variants causing endless sickness and death, much as smallpox, polio, measles etc used to before we got a handle on them.

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>Unfortunately the idea that Covid becomes just another common cold virus can be no more than wishful thinking at this point.

It is not wishful thinking that in the future, child exposure and adult immunity will be the norm. Covid is already just another common cold for the young.

Covid infection fatality rate for children is on the order of 1/100,000, similar to influenza or varicella (chicken pox), but much more dangerous for the elderly without immunity (like influenza or varicella).

This is drastically different than something like smallpox, which had a 30% fatality rate.

> Covid is already just another common cold for the young.

> Covid infection fatality rate for children is on the order of 1/100,000, similar to influenza or varicella (chicken pox)

Aren't flu and chicken pox an order of magnitude or two (or three?) more deadly than the common cold in children?

Chicken pox case fatality was ~ 1/100,000 among children age 1 through 14 years before vaccines were introduced per the CDC.

https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/pubs/pinkbook/varicella.html

Glad to hear it. And deaths from the common cold?

Let's hope for none.

I never made any claims comparing covid to the common cold. Just Covid to the Flu and pox.

If you look it up, you can let me know.

I quoted you doing so. Here it is again:

> Covid is already just another common cold for the young.

I stand corrected. I should have said the common flu (not cold) in my original post. I believe that the cold is less dangerous than everything else mentioned.

The Pediatric mortality Influenza, covid, and chicken pox are all about the same order of magnitude as each other. diseases like smallpox are perhaps 5 orders of magnitude more deadly.

Just going by your IFR figures for Covid, without even considering hospitalisations and long term effects, it is certainly not just another common cold for the young.

Furthermore, we don't know what if any protection childhood infection would give later in life - certainly reinfection in adults is common, with no guarantee that symptoms are less severe.

To take any approach that allows the widespread circulation of Covid is reckless at best at this moment, particularly when we do have the tools available to us to control it (mandatory vaccination and targeted lockdowns).

>Just going by your IFR figures for Covid, without even considering hospitalizations and long term effects, it is certainly not just another common cold for the young.

This is exactly what the numbers support. both diseases have deaths on the order of 1/100,000 inflections for young children.

>Furthermore, we don't know what if any protection childhood infection would give later in life - certainly reinfection in adults is common, with no guarantee that symptoms are less severe.

All of the covid data we have suggests that infection symptoms are less severe if people have immunity from vaccine or prior illness.

>To take any approach that allows the widespread circulation of Covid is reckless at best at this moment, particularly when we do have the tools available to us to control it (mandatory vaccination and targeted lockdowns).

Vaccines and lockdowns can help control the spread, but will never be enough to prevent it from being endemic. Vaccinated individuals can spread the disease and it is in animal populations around the world.

Please can you provide some sources for the childhood IFR of the common cold? I can't find anything myself. I suspect your numbers are very wrong.

Please also provide sources for subsequent reinfection (as opposed to vaccination) being less severe.

Lockdowns have certainly worked in China (20% of the world's population), so it is possible, if we choose it.

(to my knowledge, no significant outbreak has occurred from spillback)

"Lockdowns have worked".

Depends on how you define "have worked". If you optimize for just variable (COVID infections), then yes, they have worked. Until now.

If you look at the entire system, they have failed miserably.

They also hide numbers, lie about stats not counting non-symptomatic positives in case totals and literally ignore human rights of being able to go and eat or walk.

Kill peoples animals after forcing them out of their home. The list goes on. They still hide the origin and any information to this day and politically attack any country that pushes to open any investigation into it.

>Please can you provide some sources for the childhood IFR of the common cold? I can't find anything myself. I suspect your numbers are very wrong. Please also provide sources for subsequent reinfection (as opposed to vaccination) being less severe.

I agree that it is hard to find IFR/CFR for the common cold. You can use total influenza death to get a sense for a lower bound.

This paper[1] puts total H1N1 Mortality at 6/100,00ok per year for <18 year olds and CFR at ~20/100,000K

This paper[2] puts the total population mortality for flu at ~0.15/100K for <18 year olds

this paper [3] also puts CFR for flu like symptoms in single digits x/100K for <18 year olds.

>Please also provide sources for subsequent reinfection (as opposed to vaccination) being less severe.

There are many sources available for this one. This Israeli analysis [4] of 2.5 million individuals found that breakthrough infections were 7.13-fold higher in Vaccinated individuals than covid recovered individuals. Hospitalizations were 6.7-fold higher in vaccinated individuals than recovered.

Of course it is better to get vaccinated than get covid the first time, but this demonstrates that natural infection immunity is very robust.

>Lockdowns have certainly worked in China (20% of the world's population), so it is possible, if we choose it.

Lockdowns and vaccination have helped control covid in china. They have not eradicated covid in China. This supports my point that covid will be endemic.

1: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S014067361... 2: https://publications.aap.org/pediatrics/article/141/4/e20172... 3: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1586/ers.10.24?casa_t... 4: https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.08.24.21262415v...

Obviously, the common cold is not the same disease as influenza. So no, Covid is not 'already the common cold for the young'.

Does the Israeli study control for age?

Given that China has perhaps a few 10s of cases currently, amongst 1.5B, I think eradication is accurate to a first approximation.

>Obviously, the common cold is not the same disease as influenza. So no, Covid is not 'already the common cold for the young'.

Covid is equivalent to the common endemic flus for the young*

>Does the Israeli study control for age?

It does

>Given that China has perhaps a few 10s of cases currently, amongst 1.5B, I think eradication is accurate to a first approximation.

Eradication does not mean "in control".

"Zero evidence", "Wishful thinking". No Sir. Just common sense.

They 4 other CoV have been studied extensively and there are also theories about their origins. You are taking very different types of virii and compare them with a Corona Virus, which makes no sense at all.

The question you need to answer: Why should this CoV be so different than the 4 others we know?

Btw: Common colds can be very deadly if your immune system is weak or not familiar with them. Just go and ask some native Americans back in the 1640s.

Why should it be the same? Why shouldn't it be like its nearest relatives, SARS-1 and MERS? (10% and 50% CFR).

As for the common cold and native Americans, you will need to ask them yourself - my understanding is that the common cold viruses have always been globally widespread. Please correct me if I'm wrong!

Because there is a reason they have been given the same name. They belong to the same family of virii. There are studies showing that exposure to one CoV induces immunity to the other.

Here is just one paper around that topic: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34273512/

So you are saying that I should not be afraid of a tiger, because they belong to the same family as the nice pussy cats I see everyday? After all, there is a reason they've been given the same name.

No :) I think that's actually what YOU are saying. You are comparing two virii that we could not observe for long in the wild (The Tigers) with some cat (Sars2). I think we have good evidence after 2 years that Sars2 is much more similar Sars1 and MERS - just from a KPI perspective.

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