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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

#381

Post by ceejayoz »

velosol wrote: post #348
ceejayoz wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If masks/etc was super effective wouldn't you expect those to go down with influenza? Viruses are not identical. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhinovirus > They are lytic in nature and are among the smallest viruses, with diameters of about 30 nanometers. By comparison, other viruses, such as smallpox and vaccinia, are around ten times larger at about 300 nanometers, while flu viruses are around 80–120 nm. Differen…

>Different virus sizes, different mask effectiveness. Not necessarily - when speaking and otherwise spreading aerosols they start out much larger than any virus particles contained within them and quickly dry out and shrink if in air (i.e. not caught in a mask) [1, 1um - 500um, between Table I & Fig 11]. If they were on their own, the small 'nanoparticle' regime (1-100nm) shows fairly good filtration in a variety of…

The larger point: You should not "expect" two different classes of viruses to act the same given a specific mitigation, as there can be substantial differences between them.

Re: Flu has disappeared worldwide during the Covid pandemic

#382

Post by trutannus »

JulianMorrison wrote: post #269

Maybe 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…

Given the rather low mortality rate for the flu, I think implementing more regulations in our lives isn't a good idea. Bureaucratic creep is a serious issue, and this sort of thing could be a gateway to regulating more aspects of life down the road.

Educating people and encouraging them to wear masks 100%, but let's not start mandating anything new, or levying new fines that we have already seen be disproportionately used against over policed groups. Studies show that education and awareness works just as well as state intervention.

Re: Flu has disappeared worldwide during the Covid pandemic

#383

Post by kat »

bosswipe wrote: post #309
papito wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Stomach viruses. Where in the world are you? No, seriously - where? Because here in the United States people don't wash their hands before eating. It's fucking gross. I always sanitize my hands with alcohol pads before eating out - ALWAYS. But the others grab subway poles, handles, those nasty menus, and THEN they grab that sandwich with the same hands . If anything should come out of this pandemic, it should be Amer…

I don't have data but my hunch is that being a germophobe leads to worse long term health outcomes. Your immune system needs the exercise.

There is also a whole host of mental illness that are triggered by physical immune responses. Eating disorders that stem from one bad diarrhea episode are a really common example of this. Both ends of this spectrum can result in bad mental health.

Both ends of this spectrum can also result in physicals health issues too. Get a stomach bug and end up with post-infections IBS. On the other hand, stress from fear of germs could also cause IBS. Sadly you end up with the same result. Both approaches, when taken to the extreme, can cause equal amounts of health issues.

Re: Flu has disappeared worldwide during the Covid pandemic

#384

Post by trutannus »

vanshg wrote: post #346
ehsankia wrote: post #255

Wow, I always knew Flu was seasonal, but never realized how extreme that was. Looking at the North America graph, basically after May, the flu almost entirely disappears until the end of summer. Roughly 3 orders of magnitude difference between the peak and summer time. I would've thought it was closer to maybe 10x.

I wonder if it's because folks who were feeling sick got tested for Covid first, and upon a negative Covid result, assumed (likely correctly) that it was just flu and didn't get a flu test

I think you're on the right track, likely our optics into the flu has disappeared. Not the flu itself.

Re: Flu has disappeared worldwide during the Covid pandemic

#385

Post by timr »

Pyramus wrote: post #356
timr wrote: post #315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Given the reproduction number appears as the base of an exponent, I would not consider the difference "small." The difference in measurement is small, relative to the error in measurement. Look at the error bars on the R0 estimates in that paper. Influenza runs from 1.06 to 3.4 . You are trying to make micrometer inferences from a parameter where our best estimates are measured in libraries of congress.

You are dodging parent's point: > I have seen no credible evidence that typical (non-pandemic) influenza has an R0 greater than that of SARS-CoV-2. If you have a citation handy to the contrary, I'd be interested in seeing it. Even if the difference in R of influenza and SARS-Cov-2 was only 0.1 (and there is no evidence suggesting the average difference is that small) and assuming both pathogens spread in a similar fa…

I am not dodging it. As the parent noted in their own post, the best mean estimates we have for SARS-CoV2 are a fraction of a unit away from the best mean estimates we have for influenza or rhinovirus.

Trying to use this tiny relative difference in fuzzy estimates of empirical parameters to make a complex causal arguments about...well, anything...is folly.

Re: Flu has disappeared worldwide during the Covid pandemic

#386

Post by Pyramus »

jvm_ wrote: post #134
postalrat wrote: post #112

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?

It seems there's a battle between virus's, they don't like sharing resources and the 'strongest' wins. https://www.bbc.com/news/health-56483445 Coronavirus: How the common cold can boot out Covid Think of the cells in your nose, throat and lungs as being like a row of houses. Once a virus gets inside, it can either hold the door open to let in other viruses, or it can nail the door shut and keep its new home to itsel…

It's very much disputed how much 'viral interference' was or is an influence in the current pandemic, and this effect (to my knowledge) has been only studied in animal models and human tissue [1], paper from the article [2].

Or to put it another way, the influenza season was already under way when SARS-Cov-2 hit in Feb 2020, but there is no indication the influenza virus slowed the SARS-Cov-2 pandemic.

The exciting thing about viral interference is that no genetic similarity between the viruses is needed, however, the effect is only temporary (days to weeks) and limited.

Unfortunately viral interference is also being misused as an 'alternative explanation' by folks that do not want to see the evidence that non-pharmacological interventions (hygiene, social distancing, quarantine, masks, large gatherings etc.) are effective against a whole host of respiratory diseases.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viral_interference [2] https://academic.oup.com/jid/advance-article/doi/10.1093/inf...

Re: Flu has disappeared worldwide during the Covid pandemic

#387

Post by toss1 »

samatman wrote: post #354
Majromax wrote: post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> and the small difference in R0 is crude thinking. Given the reproduction number appears as the base of an exponent, I would not consider the difference "small." If influenza has a typical R0 of about 2, reducing contacts by 50% would make its growth non-exponential. If covid has a typical R0 of about 2.5, doing the same would require a further 20% reduction of contacts, to 40% of baseline rather than 50%. Since pop…

Small but important correction: nothing can make epidemiological spread non-exponential. Driving base reproduction below one additional infection per infected patient means the exponent is less than one, so the incidence of the disease rapidly decreases. This decrease is also exponential by definition: infection is simply an exponential process, and an exponential equation doesn't stop being what it is when the expon…

>> there will be considerable political pressure to "do something" about the next flu wave. This must be resisted

Why on earth does it make sense to resist sensible public health measures to reduce the influenza to R0The measures would not need to be nearly as drastic as those for COVID ("normal" R0 of 2 vs 2.5+), so more handwashing (good to minimize a broad spectrum of pathogens), masks (already culturally ordinary in many countries), and especially better indoor ventilation systems would be a long-term benefit to everyone.

I'm mostly hoping that the success of better sequencing, mRNA vaccine technology, and the rapid development deployed for CV-19 will also be applicable to influenza and help minimize or practically eliminate it.

Are you assuming other measures?

Re: Flu has disappeared worldwide during the Covid pandemic

#389

Post by kat »

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?

I'm going to guess most people here had short hair while in elementary school...you're all so lucky!

I've always had clean thick long blonde hair, which happens to be lice's favourite hair type. Every time there was a lice outbreak in school, I got it. Its very much a thing in Canada still.

Re: Flu has disappeared worldwide during the Covid pandemic

#390

Post by [deleted] »

havewetsalt wrote: post #324
Majromax wrote: post #237

This 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…

It's conspiracy theory by definition if it falls outside the official narrative. So even science can be a conspiracy theory. In fact, real science has a tendency to be viewed (by non-scientists, it should go without saying) as conspiracy theory insofar as it challenges the official narrative, and invokes complicated explanations, rather than a nice simple answer.

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