As COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations creep up during a summer wave of heightened virus activity, updated vaccines are still likely weeks away.
Why it matters:
- Americans have largely tuned out COVID, but the latest COVID uptick is a reminder that the virus continues to circulate and mutate — though the threat is far below pandemic-era levels.
- Health officials face a challenge convincing a pandemic-fatigued public to get an updated COVID shot, as vaccine uptake has declined with each successive booster.
There’s little reason to believe the new shots will be highly protective against BA.2.86, so we’d better hope it gets outcompeted.
First, it’s a sub-variant of omicron, so the new shots should provide some protection against it.
Secondly, per the CDC, as of yesterday:
At least two cases have been identified in the United States. […] It is also important to note that the current increase in hospitalizations in the United States is not likely driven by the BA.2.86 variant. This assessment may change as additional data become available.
That’s my thought as well, these shots are not going to be tuned for the variants we face today but the variants we faced months ago.
Fun fact: Corona is basically like the flu now. People die from the flu. People die from corona.
Do you make big news out of people not getting a flu shot?
It’s a personal risk assessment.
Yup, and it’s always news when vaccination rates go down due to dumb antivaxxers spreading misinformation.
Not sure what point you’re trying to get across here unless it’s a veiled statement about you not getting vaccinated. People should get vaccinated for both especially since they’re both easily transmittable and potentially deadly for certain demographics.
I got the first few covid vaccines because you know, whatever. But I never got a flu shot, and will not really be taking covid shots now, unless we get in another pickle like we did before.
It’s endemic, covid is here to stay. Being vaccinated doesn’t make you totally sterile to the virus, you can still carry it and infect others.
That’s also the way it’s handled by my country (and has been for as long as I have been alive, for the flu) - Switzerland. People at risk get vaccinated, the general public usually doesn’t
COVID disables healthy people in a way the flu does not.
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The flu absolutely kills healthy, young individuals.
I personally know an otherwise healthy 18 year old who died of the flu.
Edit: mine is a completely factual statement. I’m not sure what the issue is, but a later comment is making me think I should tell people to Google “long flu”.
Some viruses are not so bad. Both COVID and the flu are bad. Hopefully, we can control this with something like a combined flu/COVID annual shot (and maybe we should start calling it that instead of a booster). Both are not the same as, e.g., smallpox where it’s kinda “one and done”.
I can get the flu shot before flu season occurs. The point of thr article is the slow ass speed of the newest booster rollout, combined of course with the premium price.
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Thing is, the vaccine doesn’t protect you against infecting other people. This is a known fact, and common for vaccines. That is not the point of a vaccine. A vaccine prevents YOU from being majorly infected - in the way that your body can quickly deal with the infection, because it’s used to it. It doesn’t magically make you immune, and not able to infect anyone.
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The vaccine absolutely does protect you from infecting others. It reduces your risk of getting the illness, so if you’re not sick you’re not a disease vector. It reduces your viral load, so when you’re ill you shed less virus, so you’re less likely to infect to other people. It reduces the length of time you’re sick, so there’s a smaller window when you can infect people.
The vaccine absolutely does protect you from infecting others.
This argument has no bounds, and is the reason why we need to pass explicit constitutional protections against public health infringements
So you have references I can read about long flu?
Since it’s the same and all
It’s not the same disease.
It’s the same kind of disease - an endemic seasonal virus.
We can agree on that, right?
The flu is dangerous, just look up studies, we’ve been researching this for decades.
Any viral disease can potentially turn into a ‘long’ disease. Long covid is just a meme at this point with a lot of people ‘having’ it with some unclear issues, and only a small subset of them actually having verifiable issues.
‘I got the covid, and now I have brain fog!’ - yes, or you might just have a psychosomatic issue because nocebo.
I do agree that there are people that actually get terrible symptoms over a long while.
And you got your medical degree from…?
There are loads of studies actively studying the vascular effects of covid over the long term while there are no such studies for the flu. This is because no one has the long flu. However, chronic issues from covid are observable and proven.
You are playing down a serious health hazard.
We should honestly. Many lives would be saved if more people vaccinated for the flu. The vaccines for covid are safer than most vaccines last I checked, so taking it or not is less personal risk assessment and more doing a public disservice if one opts out. We should probably make access to participation in public life be contingent on taking safe, low risk, public health measures like getting vaccinated. Just like how food prepers are required to wash their hands to serve food, everyone should be required to take certain vaccines in order to take public transit or receive government funded Healthcare.
Covid has become like the flu in that it’s seasonal, isn’t going away, and is less fatal than other diseases, but that doesn’t mean we should go back to business as usual. Covid was a warning shot from nature that disease is a major threat we were ignoring. We need to double down on making sure we’re better prepared for the next one. Heaven forbid it’s as deadly or scaring as polio, the plague, or smallpox. We frankly got a failing grade on how we handled covid, so we better study up.
