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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

#111

Post by alpaca128 »

linuxftw wrote: post #90
space_fountain wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hum, I think I've only heard of this speculation coming from people who deny covid is a big deal and not that that position should be dismissed out of hand, but the overwhelming evidence is that the strong version of it at least is wrong. I'm also struggling to understand how symptom overlap would lead differences in the number of confirmed cases with PCR tests. These aren't cases confirmed by doctors talking to you…

Perhaps the corona virus is asymptomatic for some people (as is known to be), and the effects they are feeling are from the flu. How many people get a false positive (or true positive that would otherwise be asymptomatic) while also being positive for the flu? Maybe corona virus is an enabler of some other disease, like a particularly virulent flu or some other respiratory infection. This questions are inconvenient,…

> This questions are inconvenient, so they'll go unasked by the media, let alone answered.

Literally an infinite number of questions go unasked by the media. Often because they're a pointless waste of time.

I'd say if leading virologists around the world looked at it in a lab and agree it's not some mystery illness, most media will go with that. At least the reputable ones not fishing for cheap attention from paranoid conspiracy theorists.

Re: Flu has disappeared worldwide during the Covid pandemic

#112

Post by postalrat »

https://syndromictrends.com/metric/panel/rp/percent_positivi...

Unless I'm reading that chart wrong it seems like flu went away but viruses that cause cold like symptoms stuck around.

If masks/etc was super effective wouldn't you expect those to go down with influenza?

Re: Flu has disappeared worldwide during the Covid pandemic

#113

Post by space_fountain »

linuxftw wrote: post #90
space_fountain wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hum, I think I've only heard of this speculation coming from people who deny covid is a big deal and not that that position should be dismissed out of hand, but the overwhelming evidence is that the strong version of it at least is wrong. I'm also struggling to understand how symptom overlap would lead differences in the number of confirmed cases with PCR tests. These aren't cases confirmed by doctors talking to you…

Perhaps the corona virus is asymptomatic for some people (as is known to be), and the effects they are feeling are from the flu. How many people get a false positive (or true positive that would otherwise be asymptomatic) while also being positive for the flu? Maybe corona virus is an enabler of some other disease, like a particularly virulent flu or some other respiratory infection. This questions are inconvenient,…

I mean the first one is possible. I think it has been thought of though, we do random testing sometimes and at least some covid samples are also tested for flu.

The second just seems wrong. Like it could have been true a year ago, but it really would be known by now and there really isn't any reason it would be inconvenient for any sort of narrative. Diseases that weaken your immune system enough for some other disease to be killing loads of people are still worrying and big deals. We would still be calling for lock downs regardless of if covid is directly or indirectly causing extra deaths

Re: Flu has disappeared worldwide during the Covid pandemic

#114

Post by MR4D »

mrtksn wrote: post #107
collyw wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> On the other hand PCR test are not inaccurate at all, at least regarding false positives. https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanres/article/PIIS2213-2... between 0.8% and 4% false positive rate according to that, making them completely unsuitable for mass testing. On top of that BBC's panorama did a program pointing out the sloppy standards at centers where the tests are processed.

How did you decide that this range exactly is unsuitable enough that we are better off we simply assume that the reality is the one that suits our agenda? IMHO that's a pretty good accuracy, significantly better than the "I feel like", "I want to believe that", "what if it's all about" or the "It's suits me better if" methodologies. I'm not being snarky, I simply want to outline the alternatives I'm aware of. I respe…

I’m not the OP, but the rest of the paragraph that the quote above was linked to reads as follows (note the last 3 words in the quote):

* This rate could translate into a significant proportion of false-positive results daily due to the current low prevalence of the virus in the UK population, adversely affecting the positive predictive value of the test.2 Considering that the UK National Health Service employs 1·1 million health-care workers, many of whom have been exposed to COVID-19 at the peak of the first wave, the potential disruption to health and social services due to false positives could be considerable.*

Re: Flu has disappeared worldwide during the Covid pandemic

#115

Post by alpaca128 »

caturopath wrote: post #46
cblconfederate wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

probably the school closings were the largest contributor

Since this has varied so much by region, I wonder if there's any good evidence. This makes a lot of sense. Schools have been surprisingly rare causes of COVID outbreaks, but are constant epicenters for flu outbreaks.

> Schools have been surprisingly rare causes of COVID outbreaks

I can clearly remember that multiple countries closed schools within weeks of the first reopening because the virus was spreading there like wildfire, in the age group with the highest rate of asymptomatic(aka invisible until it's too late) cases.

Re: Flu has disappeared worldwide during the Covid pandemic

#116

Post by lkbm »

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?

There are a bunch of contributing factors (most schools, indoor public places, and workplaces encouraging or requiring masks, and many workplaces remote), but one thing that I'd expect to help with flu much more than it does with COVID-19 is sick people staying home.

Asymptomatic spread is a much larger risk with COVID-19 compared to the flu. A simple behavior change of "If I feel sick, I don't go to work/school/grocery shopping" isn't enough to stop COVID, but could cut flu spread a ton by itself.

Re: Flu has disappeared worldwide during the Covid pandemic

#117

Post by willcipriano »

gregmac wrote: post #94
BitwiseFool wrote: post #78

If I caught the flu, how would the government/scientists studying this stuff even know I got it? If you're anything like me you probably just take some time off and get over the illness without ever seeing a doctor or taking a flu-test. How do they measure such things? I suspect they use some elaborate statistical model to try and generalize the results to the whole population.

If you had flu symptoms, are you not going to go get a covid test?

I'm not OP but no, I work from home and only see the people I live with since this started. Knowing if its covid vs the flu wouldn't really matter much to me and either way my behavior would be the same. Frankly it would be worse for public health if I left the house while sick to satisfy my curiosity.

I can imagine that many others in my situation would come to a similar conclusion.

Re: Flu has disappeared worldwide during the Covid pandemic

#118

Post by collyw »

mrtksn wrote: post #107
collyw wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> On the other hand PCR test are not inaccurate at all, at least regarding false positives. https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanres/article/PIIS2213-2... between 0.8% and 4% false positive rate according to that, making them completely unsuitable for mass testing. On top of that BBC's panorama did a program pointing out the sloppy standards at centers where the tests are processed.

How did you decide that this range exactly is unsuitable enough that we are better off we simply assume that the reality is the one that suits our agenda? IMHO that's a pretty good accuracy, significantly better than the "I feel like", "I want to believe that", "what if it's all about" or the "It's suits me better if" methodologies. I'm not being snarky, I simply want to outline the alternatives I'm aware of. I respe…

At the height of the "second wave" here, it was estimated that around 0.8% of the population was infected at the time. That means that if you were randomly tested there was a greater chance that you would have a false positive than an actual infection.

Re: Flu has disappeared worldwide during the Covid pandemic

#119

Post by linuxftw »

alpaca128 wrote: post #111
linuxftw wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps the corona virus is asymptomatic for some people (as is known to be), and the effects they are feeling are from the flu. How many people get a false positive (or true positive that would otherwise be asymptomatic) while also being positive for the flu? Maybe corona virus is an enabler of some other disease, like a particularly virulent flu or some other respiratory infection. This questions are inconvenient,…

> This questions are inconvenient, so they'll go unasked by the media, let alone answered. Literally an infinite number of questions go unasked by the media. Often because they're a pointless waste of time. I'd say if leading virologists around the world looked at it in a lab and agree it's not some mystery illness, most media will go with that. At least the reputable ones not fishing for cheap attention from paranoi…

Leading virologists said not to give people anti-inflammatories at the beginning of the pandemic and probably killed a bunch of people.

> At least the reputable ones not fishing for cheap attention from paranoid conspiracy theorists.

We're not talking about paranoid conspiracy theories here, we're talking about the inexplicable disappearance of influenza globally, when it should have the same transmission characteristics as corona virus. Corona might spread more rapidly, but it should spread in the same manner.

It's entirely possible that the bulk of people with symptoms actually have a concurrent infection (eg, the flu). We already know the vast, vast majority of deaths have a 'comorbidity.'

Re: Flu has disappeared worldwide during the Covid pandemic

#120

Post by collyw »

jimbob45 wrote: post #18
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...

You don’t deserve the downvotes. There’s long been speculation that flu cases may be getting reported as COVID and vice-versa because of the symptom overlap.

It's even possible that you could have both. They aren't mutually exclusive as far as I am aware.
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