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Comment by ilumanty | Hacker News Reader

> We have handled it much better than 100 years ago.

Is that so? The pandemic seems far from over. I think it is a little early to draw any conclusions.

The Danish authorities assume the "Omicron" variant will be the "natural vaccine" which will end the pandemic in about 2 months [1]. As far as I'm concerned it has been over since the vaccines became available for anyone who cares to take them. While they have proven to be ineffective with regard to getting and spreading SARS2 they did seem to be moderately effective in reducing the need for hospitalisation for the earlier strains - up to and including "Delta". This does not seem to be true for the "Omicron" variant but fortunately this variant seems to require far fewer hospitalisations and have a much lower mortality. Knowing that natural immunity is both far stronger as well as longer-lasting compared to the temporary boost in antibodies caused by recent vaccination and seeing how "Omicron" infects vaccinated and unvaccinated alike this seems like a done deal. As far as I'm concerned, it is.

[1] https://www.dn.se/varlden/danmark-omikron-kan-fa-slut-pa-pan...

That's my hope as well, but I think it's mostly wishful thinking.

Best case: Omicron gives everyone a baseline resistance, so that future mutations are more like the flu. We'll get new mutations a couple times a year. Some will contact them, some won't. It will be fatal to those with comorbidities (just like the flu)

I don't think covid is ever actually going away, though. It is just too contagious.

"End of the pandemic" does not mean the end of the disease, it means it will become endemic and as such something we have to deal with. Influenza is endemic, it takes many lives yet society abides. The same will be true for SARS2 until it either dies out by itself (like SARS1 did) or some generic coronavirus vaccine takes out this class of pathogen once and for all.

As for now, yes.

We have 'only' 5 Million covid death while the estimate for spanish flu is at 50 Million.

1920 we had way less people, way less/none cheap air travel, fast transport.

We have never created a vaccine that fast and responded on such a global level together.

But is it fair to compare the Spanish Flu to Covid-19?

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