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?
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Flu has disappeared worldwide during the Covid pandemic
261–270 of 821 posts
Re: Flu has disappeared worldwide during the Covid pandemic
#262I was just commenting to a co-worker my entire family hasn't been sick since the pandemic started. That is very unusual for a family with young children.
No flu, no stomach viruses, absolutely nothing for more than a year now. Thankfully no covid-19 either.
Re: Flu has disappeared worldwide during the Covid pandemic
#263Earlier quoted context omitted.
> And if there are fewer deaths from flu, and fewer from suicide [1], then excess mortality itself is under-reported and Covid killed even more than we thought. The majority of covid deaths are those that on average had very few months left to live. There is a likely a high chance these people were going to die to the next "flu" that came around. How do you account for this? It seems like adding flu deaths on top of…
> The majority of covid deaths are those that on average had very few months left to live. In England we know covid is killing people on average at least 10 years early.
10 years earlier from when they would have died from the flu? Or is a flu death also some # of years earlier than {median death age}?
Re: Flu has disappeared worldwide during the Covid pandemic
#264If I remember correctly, Prof. Drosten speculated about a heavy cold and flu season coming winter because we basically skipped one season. Remains to be seen I guess, but this prognosis resonated with me.
If that is the case, expect to see it here in the antipodes first. In NZ we had a almost cold and flu free season last winter, just six confirmed cases in a country of 5 million [1], and are heading into winter now with looser border restrictions (relatively looser, Australians can now enter without being put into a managed isolation facility for two weeks).
[1] https://www.rnz.co.nz/national/programmes/sunday/audio/20187...
Re: Flu has disappeared worldwide during the Covid pandemic
#265If I remember correctly, Prof. Drosten speculated about a heavy cold and flu season coming winter because we basically skipped one season. Remains to be seen I guess, but this prognosis resonated with me.
What factors would cause skipping a season to result in more flu the following season?
Re: Flu has disappeared worldwide during the Covid pandemic
#266Earlier quoted context omitted.
The first, "alternative explanation" the statistician in me wants to mention is perhaps the way influenza data is gathered has changed. "Only people who get tested for influenzalike illnesses—typically about 5 percent of individuals who fall ill—are tallied." If there were a change in the way these tests were administered, for example a blaring medical bias toward another disease, that would present a significant sam…
A bias towards testing for Covid wouldn't explain fewer cases of the flu unless those cases of the flu were coming back as Covid falsely instead of so further diagnosis was stopped. If you have a bad enough flue to seek treatment, then once you get that Covid test and it says "negative", you would move on to the next step for treatment. (Consistent with past years - nobody was getting flu tested just cause they had a…
How is this assessment affected by limited testing capacity and generally overwhelmed medical services?
Re: Flu has disappeared worldwide during the Covid pandemic
#267I was just commenting to a co-worker my entire family hasn't been sick since the pandemic started. That is very unusual for a family with young children. No flu, no stomach viruses, absolutely nothing for more than a year now. Thankfully no covid-19 either.
I suspect a significant reduction of flu vectors is simply closed schools.
Re: Flu has disappeared worldwide during the Covid pandemic
#268This should not come as a surprise, and it was largely predictable from the outset. The flu has a base reproduction number (R0) less than 2 ( https://www.vdh.virginia.gov/coronavirus/2020/12/07/covid-19... ). Covid has an R0 in the vicinity of 2.5 ( https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/hcp/planning-scena... ). In the meantime, public health measures like masking and distancing will work against both viruses. If…
Non virologist naive question, if we apply all these measures targeting SARS-COV2 and it also creates a massive negative pressure on flu viruses, is there a risk that this applies an adaptive pressure to select for a future uber infectious new flu strain?
Re: Flu has disappeared worldwide during the Covid pandemic
#269Maybe we were too callous just allowing the ordinary flu to run rampant, and we should consider in future doing things like masking up when a flu season is expected, so as to stop the disease from killing thousands of old people. And also possibly consider going for full eradication rather than harm reduction. Can flu jabs be made more effective, and multi-strain, using mRNA vaccine technology? That's a genuinely new tool in the toolbox.
Re: Flu has disappeared worldwide during the Covid pandemic
#270Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't know where you live but in Canada we have programs like FluWatchers which send sample groups a survey every week asking about flu-like symptoms, flu vaccinations (and COVID now) and such every flu season. They can also request a voluntary sample from you to help track these things. So the data is there :-)
In the USA, we have a few organizations that try to keep track of the flu. I think they are mostly private companies pushing drug ads though. Before covid hospitals, and doctors, didn't test for the flu viruses. Maybe in severe cases? I know for certain private practice doctors didn't. All you saw was a chart on the wall differentiating a cold, from the flu. In the USA, the government tries to target the upcoming flu…
> Before covid hospitals, and doctors, didn't test for the flu viruses. Maybe in severe cases?
This is simply false.
https://www.modernhealthcare.com/patients/providers-switchin...
> In 2018, providers completed between 35 million and 40 million flu tests in the U.S., including RIDTs that use immunoassay technology and molecular tests, flu testing company executives said.
Anecdotally, my kids' pediatrician does them any time flu-like symptoms are present. Same for strep tests. Both have rapid, in-practice tests that require just a swab.