4 ms·

Influenza only has an R0 of 1.3. I really wonder if we’ve managed to push it below 1.0 world wide. Pretty wild to think about. 1.3 really isn’t that much. What

Influenza only has an R0 of 1.3. I really wonder if we’ve managed to push it below 1.0 world wide. Pretty wild to think about. 1.3 really isn’t that much. What if all the new people who’ve started washing their hands keeps it below 1.0?

zzleeper 7y ago
Sadly, as long as there's a large enough region where it has R0 > 1, then when we lift restrictions we'll be back to normal.
- closeparen 7y ago
  Or a species. Viruses aren’t just for humans.
  - _ph_ 7y ago
    You have to distinguish between viruses in abstract and a concrete disease. Many viral diseases we are fighting with are human only. So if we erradicate it in humanity, it is gone. This is how smallpox went away. We vaccinated enough people to make it go away once and for ever. Measels have no animal host either, as far as I am aware, so we could have a good chance to erradicate it too. The corona virus sars-cov-2, as well as the first sars virus jumped from animals to humans. There are several animal species which carry variations of the sars virus, but fortunately, they don't make the transition to humans regularly. If we managed to prevent further transmissions of sars-cov-2 between people, there is a good chance, this virus could go away entirely, unless it manages to jump to some common animal.
ummonk 7y ago
It should be noted that R0 won't be constant - the more people have it the lower the R0 since more people will have immunity and more of the extroverts / travelers (who are high R0) will have spread it around to each other already. Also, of course, the R0 always goes below 1 in summer...
noway421 7y ago
If that's the case, few generations from now people won't have immunity to as many common cold viruses as we do. I wonder if that could be detrimental.
cycomanic 7y ago
And then we would get an pandemic of another influenza type virus rushing through the population like wildfire because nobody is immune. It's very difficult to completely eliminate infections (even polio is still around despite extensive immunisation), especially if it mutates as much as influenza. A little known fact btw, most of the influenza virii are descendents of the Spanish flu which have mutated to be less deadly.
- lotsofpulp 7y ago
  > It's very difficult to completely eliminate infections (even polio is still around despite extensive immunisation), This is only the case because some people are refusing vaccinations, or not able to get them.
- Lewton 7y ago
  Couldn't we just vaccinate people with all the known flu vaccines we have now to get the same result?

zzleeper 7y ago

Sadly, as long as there's a large enough region where it has R0 > 1, then when we lift restrictions we'll be back to normal.

closeparen 7y ago
Or a species. Viruses aren’t just for humans.
- _ph_ 7y ago
  You have to distinguish between viruses in abstract and a concrete disease. Many viral diseases we are fighting with are human only. So if we erradicate it in humanity, it is gone. This is how smallpox went away. We vaccinated enough people to make it go away once and for ever. Measels have no animal host either, as far as I am aware, so we could have a good chance to erradicate it too. The corona virus sars-cov-2, as well as the first sars virus jumped from animals to humans. There are several animal species which carry variations of the sars virus, but fortunately, they don't make the transition to humans regularly. If we managed to prevent further transmissions of sars-cov-2 between people, there is a good chance, this virus could go away entirely, unless it manages to jump to some common animal.

ummonk 7y ago

It should be noted that R0 won't be constant - the more people have it the lower the R0 since more people will have immunity and more of the extroverts / travelers (who are high R0) will have spread it around to each other already. Also, of course, the R0 always goes below 1 in summer...

noway421 7y ago

If that's the case, few generations from now people won't have immunity to as many common cold viruses as we do. I wonder if that could be detrimental.

cycomanic 7y ago

And then we would get an pandemic of another influenza type virus rushing through the population like wildfire because nobody is immune. It's very difficult to completely eliminate infections (even polio is still around despite extensive immunisation), especially if it mutates as much as influenza. A little known fact btw, most of the influenza virii are descendents of the Spanish flu which have mutated to be less deadly.

lotsofpulp 7y ago
> It's very difficult to completely eliminate infections (even polio is still around despite extensive immunisation), This is only the case because some people are refusing vaccinations, or not able to get them.
Lewton 7y ago
Couldn't we just vaccinate people with all the known flu vaccines we have now to get the same result?