jusplay4fun wrote:1) COVID-19 is basically a flu, RIGHT?
Well, not really. They are both RNA viruses with a somewhat similar morphology, but very different behaviour.
Flus (influenzas) are part of the family Orthomyxoviridea, while Covid is is part of Coronaviridae.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virus_classification#RNA_virusesIt probably doesn't help much to use comparisons from animal taxonomy, but covid and the flu are about as similar as dogs and muskrats. Which is to say, their outer shape clearly suggests that they have a common ancestor somewhere in the sands of time, but they're not close enough to call each other brother. This becomes significant when you talk about the vaccine...
jusplay4fun wrote:2) We have a vaccine, of sorts, for the flu. (It is not 100% effective. And further, mortality from COVID-19 is not 100%, no where near that.)
3) We are waiting for a vaccine (for COVID-19) to make things safe, WHEN we do not have an effective vaccine for the flu (influenza). Some years the flu vaccine is only about 60% effective.
Here's where the differences become significant. Influenza is a rapidly-mutating virus. I comes in
literally HUNDREDS of sub-types. Each sub-type (strain) must be vaccinated for independently. It would be prohibitively expensive to vaccinate against all of them, so every February the WHO evaluates which strains of influenza are on the rise and are likely to be factors in the upcoming flu season. Then each country starts manufacturing vaccines for just those strains. The process takes most of the spring and summer, so the vaccines can be ready for the fall.
Usually between 3 and 6 strains of influenza are included in the package. This last year, your flu shot included the following strains:
https://www.uabmedicine.org/-/flu-strains-explained-and-how-the-vaccine-works An A/Michigan/45/2015 (H1N1) pdm09-like virus
An A/Singapore/INFIMH-16-0019/2016 (H3N2)-like virus
A B/Colorado/06/2017-like virus (B/Victoria/2/87 lineage)
A B/Phuket/3073/2013-like virus (B/Yamagata/16/88 lineage)
There are several reasons why this process isn't perfectly effective. First, obviously it's only a selection. In this case, four strains selected from hundreds of possibilities. If one of the more popular strains is circulating in your neighbourhood, that's pretty good, but it doesn't protect your if you encounter one of the oddball strains. Second, it depends on the WHO correctly guessing, in February, which strains will be common in November. Their track record is pretty good, but it obviously isn't perfect. Third, even if they get their predictions right, this is a
fast mutating virus. A strain can change over the course of six months, so even if it was correctly predicted, it can change to a new form which the vaccine doesn't work against.
With all that going against it, you can see why the success rate is often 60% or even less. Still, that's a lot better than nothing.
With SARS/Covid, our luck is running much better, in that this is a much slower-mutating virus. Now, 'slow' is a relative term. This is still a single-strand RNA virus, so it still mutates faster than a double-strand RNA virus, and much, much faster than anything based on DNA. So far all the mutations that have been found in Covid are relatively minor. While they do
technically result in a new strain, they don't seem to change its function much. The prevailing thinking is that once a vaccine is developed, it might need some occasional tweaking for new strains, but it should be a lot less of a nightmare to keep up with than influenza is.
jusplay4fun wrote:I think our generally cautious re-opening of business and society is a good plan going forward.
Which plan? Every country, every state, every province, has a different plan. In some areas even different cities within the same province. So which one are you referring to?
