Herd immunity vs vaccine

[Raiderdawg.sixpack]

Flu changes from year to year. You also don't get everlasting immunity to the strains you do get. It can be just as bad the second time if you are far enough removed from your initial infection.

That’s not exactly accurate.

Unless you are immunocompromised, elderly or very young a person is not going to catch the exact same flu strain multiple times. For example, the most common strain right now is A(H1N1)pdm09. If you catch that, healthy people wont catch that same strain again.

However, there are a bunch of other H1N1 strains that are genetically different enough from this strain that you could catch. Maybe it’s lessened by having been infected before or maybe it looks so different you get really sick. It depends. But normal, healthy people won’t keep catching the exact same strain over and over.

 

[johnson86-1]

You’re exactly right - combination of herd immunity plus antigenic drift (mutation) lead to that strain basically changing to different H1N1 strains. The 2009 pandemic was a H1N1 strain. The most common strain this year is a H1N1.

Early this decade the guy in Wisconsin and in the Netherlands freaked people out When they modified a H5N1 strain (avian) so that it could spread among ferrets. There are some H7N9 strains that could, with the wrong mutation be bad news in humans and then eventually disappear through mutation/herd immunity.

One more question since your knowledge seems to slightly exceed my 10th grade biology education. The ER docs from California that made the video that went semi-viral, they made the comment that while people are staying inside and limiting their exposure to microbes, their immune system is getting weaker by the day and there is going to be a spike in illnesses when they go back to life as normal. I would have assumed that healthy adults are more or less exposed to the microbial flora in the environment and having limited exposure for a few weeks or months wouldn't really impact our immune system's ability to respond. Does our immune system really require steady exposure to "stay in shape" so to say? Or is their constant "drift" in the microbial flora that our immune system "drifts" alongside through constant exposure? Or was that statement full of ****?

 

[idog]

influenza A is a segmented negative sense rna virus.

SO what happens to strains of the flu that are particularly deadly? Is the spanish flu floating around and its' just not a big deal now b/c we've been exposed to it? Or does flu mutate to the point that old strains disappear?

basically, it can rearrange its 8 segments into different strains and each strain can mutate in and of itself. the vaccine is amended each year based on the strains that are most likely to affect the human population. the "bad" ones are the ones that we have not been exposed to so we lack immunity. coronaviruses are non-segmented positive sense rna.

the better a vaccine can mimic natural infection the more effective it is in producing adaptive immunity. naturally acquired infection will produce the most effective long term adaptive immunity but that does not mean a vaccine is less effective given it simply has to do enough to help your T cells identify the antigen and notify your B cells to produce antibodies that fend off the infection/illness.

 

[RocketDawg]

You won't get to one without the other.


Did you get a measles shot? Mumps? Smallpox? Polio?

Or do you trust "herd Immunity" to those as well?

When I was a kid, I had a polio vaccine (I think the "bad" one that first came out), later on the sugar cube one. I had mumps at 8 or 9, and also measles. And had a smallpox vaccine. Polio and smallpox vaccines were required, I think, in the public school system. I also had chicken pox.

 

[thatsbaseball]

Hell I had never even heard of "herd immunity". We got all the shots and had our kids take them when it was their time. I was just curious about the nuances of the different ways immunity could be acquired. Sorry if my question was over your head.

 

[thatsbaseball]

LOL You ain't from around here are you ? Please post more.....

 

[SheltonChoked]

Hell I had never even heard of "herd immunity". We got all the shots and had our kids take them when it was their time. I was just curious about the nuances of the different ways immunity could be acquired. Sorry if my question was over your head.

I'm not trying to be a smart ***, but the reason you never knew what "Herd Immunity" was, is it only worked for the next generation. Even going back to Plague.

We didn't get "Herd Immunity" to Measles, Mumps, Smallpox, Chickenpox, etc. until we had vaccine.

To expect otherwise just means literally everyone will get it. Like in the times before we had vaccines.

 

[L4Dawg]

And that's a big problem, if true (not sure I believe that). I know the theory and all that, but again, polio is a different animal than seasonal flu.

You are correct. We still reccomend it. I thought I saw it had changed. We just changed the vax we give.

 

[L4Dawg]

You predicting 3 million American deaths?

No. I was just using the "everybody will get it" (that translates to about 90% in reality) and the 99% survive thing that routinely gets used by the "open her up" crowd. If what they are saying is true then that is the number the math comes up with. That's what they are advocating. Now if we don't come up with a vax or a treatment it very well could be that bad, and that's only if you can only get it once in your lifetime.

 

[L4Dawg]

SO what happens to strains of the flu that are particularly deadly? Is the spanish flu floating around and its' just not a big deal now b/c we've been exposed to it? Or does flu mutate to the point that old strains disappear?

Flu mutates, a lot. I doubt the exact same strain every comes around more than once.

 

[L4Dawg]

75 million hospitalized? Wut?

The hopitaliztion rate for known cases is around 25%. It will probably diminish when we find out the true extent of it.

 

[My Bru]

I'm not trying to be a smart ***, but the reason you never knew what "Herd Immunity" was, is it only worked for the next generation. Even going back to Plague.

We didn't get "Herd Immunity" to Measles, Mumps, Smallpox, Chickenpox, etc. until we had vaccine.

To expect otherwise just means literally everyone will get it. Like in the times before we had vaccines.

I don't think that is true. These pandemics usually peter out well before they reach these doomsday levels that were predicted. I suppose it's possible, but I don't think it's happened.

 

[L4Dawg]

We don't know what the case fatality rate will be, but it's looking very likely it's going to be somewhere around two to four times higher than the flu. So somewhere between 650,000 and 1.3M deaths if you assume every single person in the US gets it, which of course is unlikely but it could be 90% of those numbers.

That's really bad, but probably not bad enough to justify something other than Sweden's approach unless we get lucky and find a way to significantly cut the mortality rate.

We don't know about Sweden yet. Right now it looks like they really screwed up. Their death rate per capita even given all the natural advantages of their much healthier population, is well above ours. It WAY above their two similar Scandinavian brothers, Finland and Norway.

 

[L4Dawg]

I don't think that is true. These pandemics usually peter out well before they reach these doomsday levels that were predicted. I suppose it's possible, but I don't think it's happened.

His second sentence is absolutely correct. The first one is absolutely incorrect. The third one is mostly true.

 

[msstate7]

The hopitaliztion rate for known cases is around 25%. It will probably diminish when we find out the true extent of it.

"Cumulative COVID-19-associated hospitalization rates since March 1, 2020, are updated weekly. The overall cumulative hospitalization rate is 40.4 per 100,000, with the highest rates in people 65 years and older (131.6 per 100,000) and 50-64 years (63.7 per 100,000)."

https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/covid-data/covidview/index.html

 

[My Bru]

His second sentence is absolutely correct. The first one is absolutely incorrect. The third one is mostly true.

I'm talking about the third sentence. Historically it has stopped at a quarter of the population.

 

[johnson86-1]

We don't know about Sweden yet. Right now it looks like they really screwed up. Their death rate per capita even given all the natural advantages of their much healthier population, is well above ours. It WAY above their two similar Scandinavian brothers, Finland and Norway.

You can't use death rate per capita to determine whether they made a bad decision or not because they are very likely much further through their population than we are. Barring us discovering a treatment that significantly reduces the case fatality rate or developing a vaccine, what is going to determine whether they made a good decision or not is whether they had excess fatalities from the healthcare system getting overwhelmed, and comparing that to whether they reduced the economic damages by not instituting a mandatory lockdown.

 

[johnson86-1]

"Cumulative COVID-19-associated hospitalization rates since March 1, 2020, are updated weekly. The overall cumulative hospitalization rate is 40.4 per 100,000, with the highest rates in people 65 years and older (131.6 per 100,000) and 50-64 years (63.7 per 100,000)."

https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/covid-data/covidview/index.html

Those aren't hospitlization rates per infections, but hospitalization rate per general population I believe. Those percentages are lower than the best guesses on the case fatality rates.

 

[msstate7]

Those aren't hospitlization rates per infections, but hospitalization rate per general population I believe. Those percentages are lower than the best guesses on the case fatality rates.

Thanks. It did seem low

 

[aerodawg.sixpack]

I thought the reinfection thing was debunked as they were all false positives.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/mobile.reuters.com/article/amp/idUSKBN22J0HR

 

[SheltonChoked]

I don't think that is true. These pandemics usually peter out well before they reach these doomsday levels that were predicted. I suppose it's possible, but I don't think it's happened.

Plagues always died out before they killed millions.

They were never called "Childhood Diseases" that killed 30% of those infected. There was "herd immunity"

Signed,
541 Constantinople,
1346 Europe,
1493-1600 Americas
Pre 1796 World (smallpox)
1980 Measles (measles only kills 1-2 per 1000, and still killed 2.5 million in 1980)

 

[SheltonChoked]

I'm talking about the third sentence. Historically it has stopped at a quarter of the population.

Yeah, because not everyone got Chickenpox before the vaccine....

I mean all the adults were immune, so I should never have gotten it...

 

[operch]

LOL You ain't from around here are you ? Please post more.....

I don't think some of these guys are from misssisssipppi.

 

[Leeshouldveflanked]

The hopitaliztion rate for known cases is around 25%. It will probably diminish when we find out the true extent of it.

586 Inmates in Tennessee tested positive for the virus, 580 showed no symptoms, 2 were hospitalized, 4 additional had symptoms....

 

[SirBarksalot]

HIV is a virus that has been around 30+ years and we don’t have a vaccine yet... a Covid Vaccine is probably not on the horizon.

This is a good point that I don’t think people think about. Vaccines are not guaranteed. But, I did hear so,etching to the effect that CV19, doesn’t mutate the way HIV does, so there’s a fighting chance...
but..all you gotta do is look at the flu vaccine. The first time I ever got the flu shot, was literally the first time in my life I got the flu.