Distinguishing between the COVID-19 pandemic and influenza pandemics (A/H1N1, A/H2N2, A/H3N2): a narrative review, 2026, Daodu et al.

Chandelier

Chandelier

Senior Member (Voting Rights)
Distinguishing between the COVID-19 pandemic and influenza pandemics (A/H1N1, A/H2N2, A/H3N2): a narrative review

Daodu, Lanre Peter; Yusuf, Omolola Olabisi; Okouzi, Methodius

Abstract​

The COVID-19 pandemic is frequently compared to historical influenza outbreaks, yet this analogy often obscures fundamental biological and epidemiological divergences.
As the global health community confronts new threats like H5N1 avian influenza, a rigorous retrospective analysis is essential to distinguish the unique trajectory of SARS-CoV-2 from the influenza pandemics of 1957 (H2N2), 1968 (H3N2), and 2009 (H1N1).
This narrative review, adhering to best-practice guidance, synthesises literature published up to mid-2025.

We performed targeted searches of PubMed, EMBASE, and WHO/CDC archives to compare SARS-CoV-2 critically and Influenza A across virological, clinical, and sociopolitical dimensions.
Our analysis reveals that while both pathogens share respiratory transmission, they differ starkly in evolutionary mechanisms and systemic impact.
Virologically, SARS-CoV-2 utilises convergent evolution and broad ACE2 tropism to cause multi-organ pathology and long-term sequelae (Long COVID), distinguishing it from the primarily respiratory effects and reassortment-driven shifts of influenza.
Epidemiologically, SARS-CoV-2 exhibits a significantly higher basic reproduction number (R0), rising from ~ 2.5 to > 9.5 in Omicron variants, and substantial asymptomatic transmission, necessitating non-pharmaceutical interventions of unprecedented scale compared to the modest measures of past flu pandemics.
The public health response also highlighted a divergence in medical innovation: the development of mRNA vaccines within 11 months represented a “quantum leap” in vaccinology compared to the slower, egg-based timelines of 2009.

In conclusion, COVID-19 represents a distinct biological and societal entity that defies the historical “flu template.”
The transition to endemicity, marked by year-round waves of immune-evasive variants like JN.1, and the current emergence of mammalian H5N1 underscore the need for pathogen-agnostic preparedness.
Future global health security depends on leveraging the genomic and technological assets developed during COVID-19 to counter threats that transcend historical expectations.

Web | DOI | PDF | Bulletin of the National Research Centre

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Chandelier said:
This documentary was eye‑opening in showing me how some Chinese scientists can pursue their research with no regard at all for ethical concerns:
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As I understand it the Chinese scientists were hired by US and UK organisations to do their dirty work away from scrutiny.

The thread post says video not available. Maybe I am outside your zone of scrutiny @Chandelier !

PS It says my YouTube history is off. Whatever that means.
 
Jonathan Edwards said:
As I understand it the Chinese scientists were hired by US and UK organisations to do their dirty work away from scrutiny.
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Interesting… and after years of denial of any human involvement the intelligence agencies start to point towards China.
Jonathan Edwards said:
The thread post says video not available. Maybe I am outside your zone of scrutiny @Chandelier !
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Ah, too bad. This trailer should be accessible worldwide. The climax is around 1:40min:
Jonathan Edwards said:
PS It says my YouTube history is off. Whatever that means.
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You are probably not logged in or the watch history has been disabled in the settings.
Nothing to worry about.
 
Jonathan Edwards said:
They conveniently leave out that Covid19 was probably man made, rather than 'evolved'.
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Probably because the scientific evidence of that is quite weak, based on poor modeling and bad assumptions, and the political evidence even moreso. I got a pretty good rundown of those assumptions spending a large chunk of the last year on viral genomics projects. An animal reservoir was never required to explain Sars-CoV-2, the evolution from previous human-circulating coronaviruses was well within normal evolutionary leaps, the furin cleavage site that people claim was "engineered in" is a feature of many viruses in that family. Lots of things are theoretically possible but if this is a science forum we ought to make assertions like that on actually good evidence, no?
 
jnmaciuch said:
An animal reservoir was never required to explain Sars-CoV-2, the evolution from previous human-circulating coronaviruses was well within normal evolutionary leaps
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Do you know where I could read about this angle? Is the idea that covid's precursor just circulated as a mild cold for a long time until it happened to become more virulent? Would we expect to be able to find relatives of it then?
 
ScoutB said:
Is the idea that covid's precursor just circulated as a mild cold for a long time until it happened to become more virulent? Would we expect to be able to find relatives of it then?
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Depends what you mean by precursor and relatives. MERS is technically an ancestral relative and has a much higher mortality rate than SARS-CoV-2. But yes in all likelihood the "precursor" to SARS-CoV-2 was probably a milder virus. The initial claims of it coming from bats were due to sequence homology in certain regions of the viral genome, but every analysis of viral ancestry is always a a statistical inference based in several assumptions. Sometimes those assumptions hold up well, especially when you're modeling viral evolution within one host. But the idea of viruses making big leaps in a short period of time has always been known. Just between SARS-CoV-2 variants there's ongoing debates about the role of prolonged infection and coinfection in immunocompromised hosts possibly allowing a leap like omicron to "evolve" out of a single person.

So it's possible that we did already have sequencing data of the closest relative, our models just didn't recognize it as such. There's also the issue of gaps in surveillance--we can only do that statistical analysis on samples that are available. If a virus took some big leaps in a population that wasn't being actively and diligently sequenced, it can absolutely look like certain changes came out of nowhere.

As for accessible reading material, you might have to look for reviews that talk about possible origins published after 2022-2023ish and dive through citations. I think people were falling over themselves to write them for a few years
 
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