i think you have misunderstood and are also misascribing the lack of covid deaths by region.

antigenic fixation is a significant part of age dependent flu risk. the factors you cite are why generalized immunity fades. this can be compensated for by specific b cell immune memory. but when that memory works against you, you get the double whammy. you seem to be trying to presume that i am arguing that OAS is the ONLY reason age adds flu risk. i am not. it is one of the reasons. this is why flu risk runs like a bell curve. kids are all generalized response. the elderly are nearly all antibody driven. the middle are both which is why healthy adults so rarely die of flu.

most of the COV resistance in part of the world was driven not by the lifestyle issue you cite but rather from prior resistance stemming from exposure to sars like viruses. this is why they all saw much bigger surges from delta/omi than original all over the pac rim. (they also count covid deaths VERY differently and do not use the western definition of "death with" but rather "death from as proximate cause" so direct comparability is fraught.

age was clearly less an issue in covid than comorbidity and i have argued such many times.

https://boriquagato.substack.com/p/the-real-public-health-crisis?s=w

but this has been a given everywhere for a long time and does not obviate OAS as an issue. there is a reason that certain flus rip through certain age groups preferentially.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/labs/pmc/articles/PMC5748348/

it's a well established issue.

but we've never seen it with such homogeneity as we're seeing here.

i think you are sidestepping much of the meat of the argument.

the senescence issues you cite provide the baseline. this is layered on top.

they are mutually reinforcing, not mutually exclusive.