The COVID-19 pandemic

[danbrotherston]

The flu vaccine is not free in some provinces? It is not free in NZ, which is shocking to me. The other unfortunate thing about the flu vaccine is that the efficacy is actually pretty low.

It's free here, which is good. But the efficacy is highly variable depending on which flu you happen to encounter. In this regard (the pre-Omicron version of) COVID-19 has been much easier to fight, as a single vaccine has worked rather well against all (pre-Omicron) variants.

For fighting the flu, facemasks would really help more than the vaccine. Maybe there will be less stigma associated with wearing a mask in the future.

There are a number of stable co-existing strains of the flu virus (unlike with corona, where so far different variants [why do we use a different word?] seem to replace less competitive variants), and yes, the vaccine only targets some of them (and experts must guess at which will be most prevalent) so yeah, it depends on which one you get how effective the vaccine is. I believe the numbers they give are effectively averaged, I don't think there is broad testing for the particular strain of the flu people get, just enough sampling is used to try and inform the choice for future vaccines.

So the numbers for vaccine efficacy are across all strains of the flu, which given that you don't get to choose which strain you're exposed to makes the numbers fairly relevant individually as well.

I'm not sure facemasks would help that much, or at least, face masking in most contexts, I don't expect masking would be done in, family, school, visiting friends, non-public work contexts, but would probably apply in public settings like shopping and transit. (There are a lot of different policies available here). My understanding of the flu (which may be wrong--and frankly, epidemiologists may also be wrong as they were for COVID) is that it requires close contact, so it's most often transferred between those with close contact, when you are unlikely to wear a mask. It's also possible to be contagious before you feel symptoms.

As for future mask wearing stigma, maybe, maybe not, I suspect the mask will continue to be part of our culture war between those with empathy and those proudly without.

What I do think however, is that the vaccine has more potential. Masking will always be limited by human behaviour. Even if we expend massive effort and make people more prosocial, mistakes will still be made.

On the other hand, the flu vaccine is constantly improved, scientists increase the number of strains it can target and the generality and strength of the antibody response it generates. They can use more effective vectors.

Ultimately, if I've learned anything as an adult it's that science is easy in comparison to people. Solving people problems (like mask wearing) is almost universally more difficult.

In light of that, I'd argue that improved ventilation is probably even as effective as masking, if the flu is airborne as COVID is.