Sky_Blue_Dreamer
Well-Known Member
People forget we had over 20,000 flu deaths a few years ago. However for flu the variants are harder to predict and we have a huge infrastructure behind sequencing and targeting probable COVID variants which should give a great degree of confidence
But we're putting a lot of resources (financial, technical and human) into keeping track of Covid and I can't see that being feasible longer term as it takes it away from other areas. We only know which variants are spreading because they're spreading rather than we identified them beofre they did so which is what we do with flu. We're then testing the vaccine on those variants and hoping they're effective against it (which, touch wood, so far they largely have been). It's a more reactive than proactive process.
As time goes on and we get more research done I'm sure we'll be able to predict with greater accuracy just as we do with flu but right now we're still playing catch up and learning.