bentlimerick t1_j0cvsgm wrote
RSV is most dangerous towards the very young and/or immunocompromised infants who can't even get the mRNA vaccine.
And as with most vaccines for rapidly changing respiratory viruses, it's not about infection rates. It's about the hospitalization and mortality rates. The hospitalization rates and mortality rates are higher among the unvaccinated for both Covid-19 and the flu.
The people who got vaccinated against COVID-19 tend to be the same people who get vaccinated against the flu. They also tend to be the same people wearing masks again.
Likewise, the people who did not get vaccinated against COVID-19 tend to be the same people who did not get vaccinated against the flu. They also tend to be the people who never really wore masks.
My guess is you also got a flu vaccine this year while your family members did not.
And since the people who don't get vaccinated tend to be the people who wind up taking up a disproportionate amount of space in the hospitals and morgues due to both flu and COVID-19, there's going to be a correlation between vaccination against COVID-19 and protection against influenza based on behavior alone.
One of the things that makes these theories about vaccine harm so compelling is that our follow-up for clinical trials is still very limited. We haven't really changed things since before the internet. Back when everything was in manila folders it was really hard to follow someone for more than a few years.
Now there are trial registry and results databases and disability claims databases that are reasonably expected to still be around in another 50 years.
But, since we've never bothered to connect those things together, it's hard enough to follow people for 15 years, let alone 50.
rowanskye OP t1_j0dhvue wrote
Yes, I'd expect to see RSV and flu rates to be higher in unvaccinated (mRNA) cohorts for the same reasons you've outlined. I am specifically asking for research demonstrating that result, or it's counter (though I'd find that result unlikely).
racinreaver t1_j0e83gp wrote
You're not going to find peer reviewed research on it yet because there simply hasn't been enough time. The whole news about this being a bad season is, what, a month old? It takes time to get funding, perform studies, write the paper, get through submissions to a journal, peer review, 1-2 rounds of reviews, acceptance, and then publication.
Publications on Covid were all over the place, and let a lot of lower quality publications creep through. In general science runs a lot slower than the news cycle and whatever the talking heads want to start popping off on.
rowanskye OP t1_j0el3ty wrote
Awesome, thank you for addressing my question directly.
racinreaver t1_j0em05l wrote
I should have also given a sense of perspective. I'm not in a bio field, but it's not unusual for the whole review cycle to take 3-6 months. I've had some go over a year...
Writing a paper can also take months, especially if you have collaborators across different institutions and have folks either slow in writing their sections (>_>) or people that really like to do a lot of revisions.
It's not uncommon for the literature to be lagging a year or two behind what's happening within the lab.
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