Coronavirus Outbreak

[Biblical Anabaptist]

Daily new Covid cases are now at a number that is higher than both the first and second waves of the virus, and are still slowly increasing. Eventually this may have to be described as a fourth wave.

Increase of cases with a decrease of deaths is a good thing. Means those NOT vulnerable are being exposed, getting immune and going on, as we should have done 6-8 months ago.

Most he vulnerable have been vaccinated. If this wave is let alone, we will have herd immunity.

The increase of cases could be a result of a variant. Weren't we told early on the UK variant was more contagious (increase of cases) but less deadly (fewer deaths)

[nett]

It’s also better to have natural immunity across the population instead of vaccines, because then there is a wide range of protection of all the countless mutations/variants of the virus. Which is better than everyone simply having the same few vaccines, which conceivably could be rendered useless by a variant.

There is no virus against which humans have ever developed natural herd immunity. None.

The only viral diseases that have ever been eradicated or driven back to trace background noise (like today with measles) were beaten by vaccines not natural immunity.

The path you are suggesting is one of endless pandemic. Such as was the case with smallpox which lasted for centuries upon centuries until finally eradicated with a vaccine.

Why isn't the spanish flu still ravaging us every few years then?

[Ken]

Why isn't the spanish flu still ravaging us every few years then?

The Spanish flu was caused by a combined viral and bacterial infection and it was the parallel bacterial infection that was responsible for most of the deaths: https://www.nih.gov/news-events/news-re ... a-pandemic

The published reports "clearly and consistently implicated secondary bacterial pneumonia caused by common upper respiratory flora in most influenza fatalities," says Dr. Morens. Pathologists of the time, he adds, were nearly unanimous in the conviction that deaths were not caused directly by the then-unidentified influenza virus, but rather resulted from severe secondary pneumonia caused by various bacteria. Absent the secondary bacterial infections, many patients might have survived, experts at the time believed. Indeed, the availability of antibiotics during the other influenza pandemics of the 20th century, specifically those of 1957 and 1968, was probably a key factor in the lower number of worldwide deaths during those outbreaks, notes Dr. Morens.

Today we have many modern antibiotics that are extremely effective against bacterial infections. We have no such therapeutics to treat viral infections. We mostly have to treat the symptoms. The main weapon against viruses has always been vaccinations.

So while we get flu outbreaks every year we don't see the same combined viral and bacterial infections that were so deadly in 1918.

[Josh]

According to Ken, humans were ravaged by viruses until vaccines were invented. One wonders how the human race survived until the era of Jonas Salk and Louis Pasteur.

Colds don't kill people, but they used to. We have "herd immunity" against the cold and the flu every year. And there has been no effort towards developing a cold vaccine because we don't need one, and flu vaccines are not particularly effective (and many people don't get vaccinated). Yet we're all still here and alive.

[Josh]

It’s also better to have natural immunity across the population instead of vaccines, because then there is a wide range of protection of all the countless mutations/variants of the virus. Which is better than everyone simply having the same few vaccines, which conceivably could be rendered useless by a variant.

I wonder if that's true RZehr. If a variant outmaneuvers a vaccine, might it also outmaneuver natural immunity? Isn't this what happens with the annual flu cycle?

Your immune system is much more powerful and capable than scientists working in a lab to invent vaccines.

[nett]

Why isn't the spanish flu still ravaging us every few years then?

The Spanish flu was caused by a combined viral and bacterial infection and it was the parallel bacterial infection that was responsible for most of the deaths: https://www.nih.gov/news-events/news-re ... a-pandemic

The published reports "clearly and consistently implicated secondary bacterial pneumonia caused by common upper respiratory flora in most influenza fatalities," says Dr. Morens. Pathologists of the time, he adds, were nearly unanimous in the conviction that deaths were not caused directly by the then-unidentified influenza virus, but rather resulted from severe secondary pneumonia caused by various bacteria. Absent the secondary bacterial infections, many patients might have survived, experts at the time believed. Indeed, the availability of antibiotics during the other influenza pandemics of the 20th century, specifically those of 1957 and 1968, was probably a key factor in the lower number of worldwide deaths during those outbreaks, notes Dr. Morens.

Today we have many modern antibiotics that are extremely effective against bacterial infections. We have no such therapeutics to treat viral infections. We mostly have to treat the symptoms. The main weapon against viruses has always been vaccinations.

So while we get flu outbreaks every year we don't see the same combined viral and bacterial infections that were so deadly in 1918.

How did the Spanish flu end then?

[Ken]

How did the Spanish flu end then?

It never really ended. What ended were the deadliest aspects of that particular pandemic, the parallel bacterial infections. The 1918 flu strain is still around in various forms and infects millions every year:

But the strand of the flu didn’t just disappear. The influenza virus continuously mutated, passing through humans, pigs and other mammals. The pandemic-level virus morphed into just another seasonal flu. Descendants of the 1918 H1N1 virus make up the influenza viruses we’re fighting today.

“The 1918 flu is still with us, in that sense,” said Ann Reid, the executive director of the National Center for Science Education who successfully sequenced the genetic makeup of the 1918 influenza virus in the 1990s. “It never went away.”

. . . .

The longer the influenza virus existed in a certain community, the less lethal the sickness was. An epidemiological study cited by Barry in “The Great Influenza” noted that “the virus was most virulent or most readily communicable when it first reached the state, and thereafter it became generally attenuated.”

Experts say there’s this natural progression where a virus often — but not always — becomes less lethal as time wears on. It’s in the best interest of the virus for it to spread before killing the host.

“The natural order of an influenza virus is to change,” Barry told The Post. “It seems most likely that it simply mutated in the direction of other influenza viruses, which is considerably milder.”

By 1920, the influenza virus was still a threat, but fewer people were dying from the disease. Some scientists at the time started to move on to other research. Barry wrote that William Henry Welch, a famous pathologist from Johns Hopkins who was studying the virus, found it “humiliating” that the outbreak was passing away without experts truly understanding the underlying cause of the disease.

What Welch didn’t predict was that the virus never truly went away. In 2009, David Morens and Jeffery Taubenberger — two influenza experts at the National Institutes of Health — co-authored an article with Anthony S. Fauci explaining how the descendants of the 1918 influenza virus have contributed to a “pandemic era” that has lasted the past hundred years. At the time the article was published, the H1N1 influenza virus in public circulation was a fourth-generation descendant of the novel virus from 1918.

“All those pandemics that have happened since — 1957, 1968, 2009 — all those pandemics are derivatives of the 1918 flu,” Taubenberger told The Post. “The flu viruses that people get this year, or last year, are all still directly related to the 1918 ancestor.”

Because of this, the 1918 influenza outbreak doesn’t come with a neat bookend. Society moved on, but the virus continued in some form or fashion.

Source: https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/ ... demic-end/

[Biblical Anabaptist]

Why isn't the spanish flu still ravaging us every few years then?

The Spanish flu was caused by a combined viral and bacterial infection and it was the parallel bacterial infection that was responsible for most of the deaths: https://www.nih.gov/news-events/news-re ... a-pandemic

The published reports "clearly and consistently implicated secondary bacterial pneumonia caused by common upper respiratory flora in most influenza fatalities," says Dr. Morens. Pathologists of the time, he adds, were nearly unanimous in the conviction that deaths were not caused directly by the then-unidentified influenza virus, but rather resulted from severe secondary pneumonia caused by various bacteria. Absent the secondary bacterial infections, many patients might have survived, experts at the time believed. Indeed, the availability of antibiotics during the other influenza pandemics of the 20th century, specifically those of 1957 and 1968, was probably a key factor in the lower number of worldwide deaths during those outbreaks, notes Dr. Morens.

Today we have many modern antibiotics that are extremely effective against bacterial infections. We have no such therapeutics to treat viral infections. We mostly have to treat the symptoms. The main weapon against viruses has always been vaccinations.

So while we get flu outbreaks every year we don't see the same combined viral and bacterial infections that were so deadly in 1918.

Sounds an awful lot like Covid to me. Folks died from Covid but usually had comorbidities.

[Ken]

The Spanish flu was caused by a combined viral and bacterial infection and it was the parallel bacterial infection that was responsible for most of the deaths: https://www.nih.gov/news-events/news-re ... a-pandemic

The published reports "clearly and consistently implicated secondary bacterial pneumonia caused by common upper respiratory flora in most influenza fatalities," says Dr. Morens. Pathologists of the time, he adds, were nearly unanimous in the conviction that deaths were not caused directly by the then-unidentified influenza virus, but rather resulted from severe secondary pneumonia caused by various bacteria. Absent the secondary bacterial infections, many patients might have survived, experts at the time believed. Indeed, the availability of antibiotics during the other influenza pandemics of the 20th century, specifically those of 1957 and 1968, was probably a key factor in the lower number of worldwide deaths during those outbreaks, notes Dr. Morens.

Sounds awful like Covid to me. Folks died from Covid but usually had comorbidities.

Pretty much. Does that make you feel any differently about the 563,000 people who have died of Covid so far in the US? Most had co-morbidities so it's all OK? Although the biggest co-morbidity is old age.

Co-morbidities actually make most diseases more deadly. That isn't at all unusual.

[Josh]

The idea that viruses would wipe out the human race without modern technology (in the case of COVID, technology less than a year old) seems patently absurd. We would be best off letting our immune systems lead us to herd immunity, just like happens with other species, and just like the human race has done for most of its existence.