Harvard mandates the bivalent Omicron-specific Covid-19 booster

Re:Harvard mandates the bivalent Omicron-specific Covid-19 b... by jleyank on Tuesday November 29, 2022 @08:37AM (#33787373)

It might not be a deadly virus now but it certainly was in mid 2020. And things mutate. Flu is harmless as well, except for the years when it isn’t. Minimizing risk for others is a positive human trait.

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Re:Harvard mandates the bivalent Omicron-specific Covid-19 b... by lbeltrame on Tuesday November 29, 2022 @09:02AM (#33787673)

Flu is not harmless. Not at all. It is a bad disease when symptomatic (30-40% cases may be asymptomatic). In particular for young children and the elderly.

Flu for me was way worse than a SARS-CoV-2 infection (think 40C fever).

SARS-CoV-2 was deadly for a specific part of an immuno naive population (60+). The age stratification was known since February 2020 (first Chinese paper on that from the Wuhan data). My country had zero excess deaths in the 0-50 range since the start of the pandemic.

EDIT: Anti-SARS-CoV-2 vaccines do not block transmission, certainly not now. And as thus, their protection is primarily for one's own benefit.

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