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Flu has disappeared worldwide during the Covid pandemic

scientificamerican.com

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Re: Flu has disappeared worldwide during the Covid pandemic

#51

Post by DanBC »

User23 wrote: post #4

Why did the flu also disappear in the states that had effectively no covid restrictions? This is a serious question and not an attempt at rhetoric. I really am curious. Was flu never a problem in Florida? Was voluntary compliance so widespread that heavy handed government policy had no marginal anti-flu effect? Something else?

Flu is seasonal, and there are large pushes to get people vaccinated against flu each year. Sometimes those vaccinations are more effective, and sometimes you get more people vaccinated. This season it appears both are true.

Re: Flu has disappeared worldwide during the Covid pandemic

#53

Post by petertodd »

ibraheemdev wrote: post #5

Just speculating here, but maybe because of false positives where flu cases get labeled as Covid? I've heard that PCR tests were not meant to be used for large scale virus detection. EDIT: The PCR test quote was fact checked and deemed to be misleading, but it still sounds like they are not very accurate [0]. [0]: https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-factcheck-pcr-idUSKBN2442...

It may even be the case that fewer people are seeking medical care for symptoms that they (correctly) think are just the flu. The lack of smell that COVID often causes is very distinct; easy to imagine people who are sick with the flu, but have not lost their sense of smell deciding to stay home both out of fear of covid, and because accessing medical care during a pandemic is less convenient.

Some people may also be worried that they do have covid (or will get a false positive), and don't want to get a positive test due to quarantine requirements, embarrassment, etc.

Re: Flu has disappeared worldwide during the Covid pandemic

#54

Post by jMyles »

User23 wrote: post #4

Why did the flu also disappear in the states that had effectively no covid restrictions? This is a serious question and not an attempt at rhetoric. I really am curious. Was flu never a problem in Florida? Was voluntary compliance so widespread that heavy handed government policy had no marginal anti-flu effect? Something else?

The notion that horizontal interdiction is responsible for this suppression is absolutely, positively absurd and will never stand up to scrutiny.

On the other hand, this patterns very neatly with previously observed and well-documented phenomena of viral interference, specifically with respect to influenza. Here's a good paper to start a journey of research on this topic: https://academic.oup.com/jid/article/212/11/1690/2911897

Re: Flu has disappeared worldwide during the Covid pandemic

#55

Post by paviva »

An alternative explanation is that of "viral interference"[1,2], i.e., the most transmissible virus boosting up viral immunity in the population, and precluding transmission of the less transmissible/fit virus

[1]: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5489283/

[2]: https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanmic/article/PIIS2666-5...

Re: Flu has disappeared worldwide during the Covid pandemic

#56

Post by tpmx »

Joker_vD wrote: post #52
Flatcircle wrote: post #20

I keep wondering how Lice will be able to hang around much after last year's social distancing, especially among children.

Are... are those still a thing in the first world?

Yes.

US: https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&geo=US&q=l...

Interesting to see the graph starting to drop dramatically in early 2020 after a decade of growth/high numbers.

Re: Flu has disappeared worldwide during the Covid pandemic

#57

Post by caturopath »

User23 wrote: post #4

Why did the flu also disappear in the states that had effectively no covid restrictions? This is a serious question and not an attempt at rhetoric. I really am curious. Was flu never a problem in Florida? Was voluntary compliance so widespread that heavy handed government policy had no marginal anti-flu effect? Something else?

1. All places had COVID responses, even places that didn't have state-wide rules. I doubt that there were any real number of Americans -- even in isolated communities -- whose lives were not impacted by public health stuff during COVID.

2. Having flu outside your border be rarer means less flu coming in.

Re: Flu has disappeared worldwide during the Covid pandemic

#59

Post by fridif »

While I am sure that masks and no working from the office played a part in this, I believe:

1) most flu cases are being mislabeled as covid

2) most people who have a mild flu are not going to the doctor

3) the easiest way to test this will be when covid goes away and the flu suddenly reappears.

Re: Flu has disappeared worldwide during the Covid pandemic

#60

Post by caturopath »

yosito wrote: post #3

While I think this is most likely due to masking, distancing and staying home when sick, which were all far more effective against the flu than against SARS-CoV-2, I wonder how much this was affected by some of the deep cleans that cities were doing at the beginning of the pandemic where they basically sprayed entire cities with disinfectant trucks. Does anyone with more expertise have any thoughts about that?

Or -- I bet a lot more likely -- the handwashing etc. prescriptions that turned out to be pretty meaningless for COVID but that are important to the transmission of flu and many other diseases.

Obviously personal action is harder to reproduce than government-sponsored trucks, so it's less useful if it was a main cause.

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