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Global circulation of influenza viruses in 2020

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Re: Global circulation of influenza viruses in 2020

#31

Post by Uberphallus »

jtbayly wrote: post #25
Uberphallus wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because they're not reported cases, but sampled cases, so whether reported goes up or down doesn't really matter as the sampling is consistent.

Saying that they are sampled cases doesn't mean anything about whether that number can be effected by other variables. Fewer tests would result in lower total positive results. So would people with flu symptoms actively avoiding being tested. Whether that's happening is an entirely valid question.

Check this link and have a blast[0]

This year, for example in the North America region, there have been 26,000 samples for weeks 35 and 36. Around 40 positives.

Last year, 27,000 in the same period. Around 1,000 positives.

As I said in multiple posts already, the WHO tries to keep consistent sampling to keep the data meaningful. It's literally their job.

[0] https://apps.who.int/flumart/Default?ReportNo=12

Re: Global circulation of influenza viruses in 2020

#32

Post by scottlocklin »

Classic sample bias; the hospitals were closed in anticipation of everyone's weird fantasy of tens of thousands of people hooked up to breathing machines, so very little flu testing was actually done. All the indications were that it was set to be a terrible flu season[0]. Of course it could be that Corona-chan was circulating before it was broadly recognized, but that would be public health nitwits admitting their mistakes: something that doesn't seem to happen, ever.

[0] https://time.com/5758953/flu-season-2019-2020/

Re: Global circulation of influenza viruses in 2020

#33

Post by anoncake »

NoOneNew wrote: post #22

81k is kind of a shitty sample size to make a sweeping worldwide judgement for 7+billion. Next part, since the focus of 2020 was Covid testing, I'm pretty sure flu testing resources were lessened in the process, if not borderline ignored. At what point was it okay to judge a population on 0.0000001157142% sample size? While I'm not a fan of the WHO anymore, to be fair to them, where the hell do they say the flu disap…

Properly selected, 1k is a sufficient sample size for any population.

Re: Global circulation of influenza viruses in 2020

#34

Post by dustinmoris »

fny wrote: post #18

Reading the graph posted, you may think we stopped tracking the flu. However, it's not clear yet whether that is the case, and the charts from 2019 show that. Here are the charts for 2019 and 2020 in the US*: https://imgur.com/a/HvBJoj2 (Note the axes are on different time scales unfortunately). They are very similar with two major exceptions. 1. Week 13, about March 23rd, there is a dip lower, presumably due to the…

The 2019 graph shows nicely that the 2019/2020 flu seasons saw a lot of Influenza B cases, which was not as much present in 2018/2019. AFAIK Influenza B has always been the more severe and deadly type of the flu and to skeptics like myself this underlines even more the suspicion that we have falsly attributed a lot of deaths in our last Winter to COVID when it might have been the flu in many cases. Previous studies have already proven that when a patient had tested positive for the flu and COVID that all these cases have been only counted as COVID deaths. Things like this make it problematic to build trust in the wider population and ask people to follow silly rules when there is so much ground for mistrust in the severity of COVID.

Re: Global circulation of influenza viruses in 2020

#35

Post by cm2187 »

Uberphallus wrote: post #31
jtbayly wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Saying that they are sampled cases doesn't mean anything about whether that number can be effected by other variables. Fewer tests would result in lower total positive results. So would people with flu symptoms actively avoiding being tested. Whether that's happening is an entirely valid question.

Check this link and have a blast[0] This year, for example in the North America region, there have been 26,000 samples for weeks 35 and 36. Around 40 positives. Last year, 27,000 in the same period. Around 1,000 positives. As I said in multiple posts already, the WHO tries to keep consistent sampling to keep the data meaningful. It's literally their job. [0] https://apps.who.int/flumart/Default?ReportNo=12

But what the parent is saying is that lots of people who have fever may be self-isolating and not seeking medical assistance thinking it is Covid (as many of the symptoms are identical), whereas they may have seen a doctor a year before. In this case, the population that doctors see that have flu-like symptoms (as opposed to other symptoms) may be less. So it doesn't matter how many samples you take in that population, you would get less flu patients.

All speculation. But just a plausible explanation.

Re: Global circulation of influenza viruses in 2020

#36

Post by d0mine »

fny wrote: post #18

Reading the graph posted, you may think we stopped tracking the flu. However, it's not clear yet whether that is the case, and the charts from 2019 show that. Here are the charts for 2019 and 2020 in the US*: https://imgur.com/a/HvBJoj2 (Note the axes are on different time scales unfortunately). They are very similar with two major exceptions. 1. Week 13, about March 23rd, there is a dip lower, presumably due to the…

In short: it is too earlier for 2020 (week 43 is almost nothing in 2019)

Re: Global circulation of influenza viruses in 2020

#37

Post by dragontamer »

sidlls wrote: post #8
dragontamer wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But this article is using flu-tests to test for specimens of the flu. Why would a lack of COVID tests mess up the flu-tests that they're using?

He’s saying the published stats could be off because of a bias toward diagnosing flu deaths as COVID deaths without testing for COVID. That is, the suggestion seems to me to be that the sampling methodology may underrepresent flu. I don’t know that I agree, but I suppose it’s possible.

The idea that 172 different strains of the Flu virus can be accurately detected and tracked, but suddenly adding a 173rd virus (COVID19) to the mix would mess up their survey seems a bit ridiculous to me.

-----

These flu-surveys are extremely important for designing next year's flu vaccine. There are hundreds, if not thousands, of flu strains, since that virus is constantly evolving. But the flu vaccine can only protect against 5ish strains.

Some strains (in particular: Flu TypeA) are known to spread much faster than others (ie: Flu TypeC). So even if TypeC is more common, maybe Flu TypeA is prioritized because of the risk of it becoming a pandemic a year out.

Re: Global circulation of influenza viruses in 2020

#38

Post by kolinko »

dustinmoris wrote: post #34
fny wrote: post #18

Reading the graph posted, you may think we stopped tracking the flu. However, it's not clear yet whether that is the case, and the charts from 2019 show that. Here are the charts for 2019 and 2020 in the US*: https://imgur.com/a/HvBJoj2 (Note the axes are on different time scales unfortunately). They are very similar with two major exceptions. 1. Week 13, about March 23rd, there is a dip lower, presumably due to the…

The 2019 graph shows nicely that the 2019/2020 flu seasons saw a lot of Influenza B cases, which was not as much present in 2018/2019. AFAIK Influenza B has always been the more severe and deadly type of the flu and to skeptics like myself this underlines even more the suspicion that we have falsly attributed a lot of deaths in our last Winter to COVID when it might have been the flu in many cases. Previous studies h…

There were virtually no deaths attributed to COVID last winter - everything started in March, past the influenza peak.

This winter the number of deaths from COVID will be an order of magnitude higher than the deaths from flu on an average tear. So even if we attributed every sobgle death from flu to covid, it wouldn’t change the overall picture on Covid really.

Re: Global circulation of influenza viruses in 2020

#39

Post by dcolkitt »

About a month ago, I came down with an upper respiratory illness that felt like a severe flu. Covid nasal swab test was taken 24 hours after first symptoms appeared, and came back negative. Therefore I assumed it was flu.

However given the supposedly very low base rate of flu during the current season, is it more likely from a Bayesian perspective that the Covid test was a false negative?

Re: Global circulation of influenza viruses in 2020

#40

Post by ithkuil »

dustinmoris wrote: post #34
fny wrote: post #18

Reading the graph posted, you may think we stopped tracking the flu. However, it's not clear yet whether that is the case, and the charts from 2019 show that. Here are the charts for 2019 and 2020 in the US*: https://imgur.com/a/HvBJoj2 (Note the axes are on different time scales unfortunately). They are very similar with two major exceptions. 1. Week 13, about March 23rd, there is a dip lower, presumably due to the…

The 2019 graph shows nicely that the 2019/2020 flu seasons saw a lot of Influenza B cases, which was not as much present in 2018/2019. AFAIK Influenza B has always been the more severe and deadly type of the flu and to skeptics like myself this underlines even more the suspicion that we have falsly attributed a lot of deaths in our last Winter to COVID when it might have been the flu in many cases. Previous studies h…

why do you say "silly rules"?

I grant that there is, in principle, a possibility that health authorities are wrong and that these rules are not necessary because the problem has been inflated as you said.

Also, there is the possibility that, in principle, the rules themselves are ineffective.

However, if the rules are wrong, that's even more so a problem of COVID is a real problem.

If COVID has been overinflated, then the problem is not that the rules are silly but that they are not necessary (and thus their negative sideffects are worse than the benefits).

Colouring the rules themselves as "silly" only reveals a bias in your argument and probably will reduce the effectiveness in communicating your point to those in a different echo chamber.

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