but how did it compared to the Americas where no natural immunity existed? FWIW, I too read the wiki which is why I corrected in the post you quote. Let's not be history revisionist here and claim the Euros had the same odds and no acquired immunity however. https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20200918-why-some-deadly-viruses-vanish-and-go-extinct Herd immunity was recognized as a naturally occurring phenomenon in the 1930s when it was observed that after a significant number of children had become immune to measles, the number of new infections temporarily decreased.[10]
This is where the basics of a "novel" virus being introduced to a population come in -- which the Wiki does a good job of outlining what happened to the native Americans including fatality rates up to 90% in some instances. Clearly the impact of the smallpox virus was worse on native Americans in terms of death rate comparing it to European experiences in similar time periods. Let's make it clear that Europeans had better odds since the smallpox virus was not "novel" to them -- but be sure to not create a revisionist history pretending Europeans were immune. Until vaccinations were introduced smallpox swept both Europe and North America killing thousands of people of European descent each year -- these people were not immune to the virus.
if not novel to Europeans, how pray tell, did they not have the same death rate as Amerindians before the advent of vaccination? Why do most not care much to vaccinate for the flu or common cold? Could it be most people on this planet have experienced it and built some level of immunity?
You can say there is some acquired immunity to the common cold -- hence a human resistance over the ages. However I would point out that the common cold is a coronavirus -- you can catch the common cold over & over again. And yes, there may be different strains of a common cold. The flu generates variants very quickly -- much more quickly than a coronavirus. Hence the need to updated vaccinations against new strains every year. A situation which will never likely change. Usually the flu (ignoring 1918) and common cold have a low death rate compared to other diseases -- this why there is limited interest in vaccination against the flu (and no vaccine for the common cold).
and that's exactly my point, given enough time, and enough infection even mutations are no big deal because we've reached a level of "herd" immunity to make them non-fatal (much like COVID vax and alpha survivors does w/delta). Ship a 2021 flu or cold to a remote village in the Amazon or 500 yrs in the past and see how that works out. A virus isn't magically non-fatal by default, time and our bodies make it so in many cases. Having said all that; I'll admit to stretching the definition of "herd immunity" in this debate:
Path Between The Seas... read it 3 times...one of my favorite non-fiction books... was just giving a summary to not bore anyone here with the details haha. I have family in Panama and travel there quite often (not since COVID started ). Also happy to say I crossed the Canal about 6 or 7 times..
The World Health Organization Oversold the Vaccine and Deprecated Natural Immunity That propaganda push started 18 months ago but it has now completely unraveled. The largest study yet comparing Covid vaccines to natural infection has produced results that would have surprised no one 50 years ago. “Comparing SARS-CoV-2 natural immunity to vaccine-induced immunity: reinfections versus breakthrough infections” demonstrates that natural immunity is more powerful and broader in terms of preventing infection – a truism of cell biology known and refined over the ages. This is consistent with many other studies over the past year, as explained by Jay Battacharya, Sunetra Gupta, and Martin Kulldorff. Experience with Covid-19 is a textbook case of how the immune system scales naturally to take on the newest pathogens that have always and will always vex the world. The vaccine (especially one using a new innovation rather than a traditional inoculation) for this type of virus – respiratory, widespread, and mild for most – will necessarily be more hit-and-miss, simply because of the pace of mutation and the emergence of variants. The Isreali study is notable only because of the scope of the study and the precision of the results. Reuters summarizes the study in English: The results are good news for patients who already successfully battled Covid-19, but show the challenge of relying exclusively on immunizations to move past the pandemic. People given both doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine were almost six-fold more likely to contract a delta infection and seven-fold more likely to have symptomatic disease than those who recovered. https://brownstone.org/articles/the...-the-vaccine-and-deprecated-natural-immunity/