The flu did mutate and stick around mightily, but annual flu deaths are an order of magnitude lower than COVID.
Maybe this is what you’re already saying, but I want to highlight something specific:
My understanding is this isn’t about the virus mutating to become less deadly, but more because endemic viruses encounter non-naive immune systems, which is true for flus but not for sars-ncov-2 (so far). T-cells have basically lifetime memory I think (longer than antibodies?). This is similar to how european diseases were so devastating to indigenous folk (and I think vice versa in one case?) because of naive immune systems.
And this prepared defense effect might be stronger for people who actually got sick than folks who got the vaccine (I feel like I saw this somewhere but am very unsure) but in either case the odds of this being worse than the flu are now pretty low and it seems to me vaccinated folks should at this point treat covid roughly like the flu—get a shot now and then, and don’t visit your grandparents if you think you might have it, but otherwise don’t worry about it.
Maybe this is what you’re already saying, but I want to highlight something specific:
My understanding is this isn’t about the virus mutating to become less deadly, but more because endemic viruses encounter non-naive immune systems, which is true for flus but not for sars-ncov-2 (so far). T-cells have basically lifetime memory I think (longer than antibodies?). This is similar to how european diseases were so devastating to indigenous folk (and I think vice versa in one case?) because of naive immune systems.
And this prepared defense effect might be stronger for people who actually got sick than folks who got the vaccine (I feel like I saw this somewhere but am very unsure) but in either case the odds of this being worse than the flu are now pretty low and it seems to me vaccinated folks should at this point treat covid roughly like the flu—get a shot now and then, and don’t visit your grandparents if you think you might have it, but otherwise don’t worry about it.
I’m getting much of this from this source, which bases its reasoning on various claims I’m not qualified to assess. Would love to hear others thoughts: Why COVID-19 Is Here to Stay, and Why You Shouldn’t Worry About It