General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: I'm going to make the Covid / Flu comparison... [View all]Wounded Bear
(58,604 posts)generally it just means that most people survive and don't suffer serious adverse consequences. Under that definition you could surmise that we have 'herd immunity' to flu and colds, because not that many people die from it and a fairly manageable number of people get hospitalized. This round of covid was about 10 times more fatal than flu, IIRC and my historical memory serves, and had significantly higher hospitalization rates.
There is a chance that if we had done nothing, like the deniers and anti-vaxxers wanted, the death rate in subsequent waves of covid would have dropped off to where there were "only" 30-50k deaths per year (a 'normal flu season) and it would be considered "managed" in the public eye. Nobody really knows, though, and there's no telling how many years at 500k+ deaths we'd have to go through to reach that level, and the disruption to the medical industry and the economy to go along with that.