Flu vaccinations.
A good thing. Had one last year and will this year when invited. But I hope that’s not for sometime because at the moment it’s hard to see how they will choose which vaccine to give, or how they need to tweak existing vaccines for the current version of flu. Usually we rely on the earlier Aussie flu season to identify the prevalent flu virus and protect against it. But, thanks to COVID restrictions Australia has historically low levels of flu, like we did last year. But this year, without masks and social distancing, the experts (who can be wrong) expect a bumper resurgence of flu in this country.
This is a puzzle which I hope people much cleverer than me have a solution for.
Meanwhile, while the surge in cases and the lower but still significant surge in hospitalisations and the little bump in deaths attributed to COVID is as expected and as explicitly broadcast by the government and its advisors, one thing I hadn’t realised and what a scientific colleague explained to me, using small words and talking slowly, was that we risk becoming a hotbed for variants. Because if you are vaccinated, and catch the virus, even if you have no symptoms, let alone being hospitalised, the encounter with the vaccine helps up the odds of vaccine resistant versions developing. The way the avoid this is to minimise the amount of virus circulating, and the English policy is doing the exact opposite. I imagine other countries will be looking at us very carefully, we really are an experiment. Although the US, where vaccination rates have crawled to a halt, is unwittingly doing the same thing.
I can understand why we are taking this approach, and there is some sense that a surge is inevitable and best to get it over with, but I have a growing worry that this will not be a ‘final’ wave after which COVID, which will never go away, becomes an irritating background noise, but simply another wave. We will need high levels of global vaccination and continual updated boosters before ‘background noise’ is achievable.
I’m going to try to stop thinking about this stuff. I’ll still take precautions where it seems sensible, in the full knowledge that unless the vast majority of people do this it’s pretty much a waste of time, and get on with stuff.