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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

#441

Post by Sakos »

timr wrote: post #420
thelean12 wrote: post #361

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> People just desperately want to find evidence that the stuff we did this year made a huge difference. I don't think that's true at all. People have been receptive to the increased evidence that transmission on surfaces is pretty unlikely, for example, despite all the efforts we've put into sanitizing surfaces. I think most people can appreciate that all the shit we threw at the wall throughout the pandemic eventual…

To be clear: I'm not making a specific argument about masks vs. sanitizing vs. whatever here. I'm just saying: responses like the OP immediately leap to the conclusion that influenza went away because of all the stuff we did. It's an error in logic, driven by the emotional desire to believe that the stuff we did must have had a serious impact, and that anything else is not worth serious discussion. That's ideology, n…

> I'm just saying: responses like the OP immediately leap to the conclusion that influenza went away because of all the stuff we did. It's an error in logic, driven by the emotional desire to believe that the stuff we did must have had a serious impact, and that anything else is not worth serious discussion.

I feel like you're coming down too hard on OP. He makes a valid argument.

> immediately leap to the conclusion that influenza went away because of all the stuff we did

It's not an error in logic. It's a reasonable conclusion to draw based on what we've seen and the links he provided. Whether it's true or not, that's debatable and probably nobody here on HN is going to figure that out definitively.

I'm really not sure why you're so argumentative without actually providing any substantial arguments against OP. It feels more like you're the one arguing from an ideological basis.

Re: Flu has disappeared worldwide during the Covid pandemic

#442

Post by opk »

ineedasername wrote: post #199
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.

There is literally an entire industrial complex setup to fight the flu on an annual basis, including massive testing & tracking. This is how we have data on annual flu infections. If anything, this year would have been an excellent year to find more flu infections as many people who got sick didn't simply stay home and get over the illness, they went & got tested.

I've never known a doctor actually run a test for flu. You couldn't even get a test for Covid either for much of last year, even if the symptoms were blatant. I know a few people who simply stayed home with Covid symptoms and never ventured out to a doctor - and thus were never counted in the statistics.

I had bad flu last year and because of home working, I went back to "work" once I reached the number of days after which I needed a doctor's note. In normal times I'd have gone to the doctor to get a sick note rather than infect my colleagues.

Re: Flu has disappeared worldwide during the Covid pandemic

#443

Post by defaultname »

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?

Each virus can only interact with certain cells of your body. COVID and influenza interact with lower respiratory cells. You have to inhale a viral load to be infected, or at least this is the consensus belief right now (and is contrary to all of the concern about fomites early on).

Many cold-like viruses infect mucous membranes (you have a number over your body). A glancing touch is enough to be infected.

Re: Flu has disappeared worldwide during the Covid pandemic

#444

Post by Uberphallus »

NaturalPhallacy wrote: post #378
timr wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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....Covid has an R0 in the vicinity of 2.5....In the meantime, public health measures like masking and distancing will work against both viruses....there's really no need for conspiracy theorizing. Assuming that this is due to "masking and distancing" and the small difference…

Did we even test for the flu? Or did we just presume that flu cases were COIVD because the symptoms are so similar? The idea that the flu just 'disappeared' despite world trade continuing just sets off my bullshit detectors. Between all the countries that did little or nothing initially, and the people who refused to wear masks and didn't lock down...there's just no way it dropped to zero. Less? Sure. But gone? I sim…

The WHO has the FluNET program and they constantly test a fixed set of people with respiratory symptoms for flu, all around the world.

FluNET is precisely why we know flu dropped so much, and hence the large chunk of people with respiratory symptoms have been COVID-19 or otherwise, but certainly not flu.

Re: Flu has disappeared worldwide during the Covid pandemic

#445

Post by cies »

Covid-19 case counting is a mess. Usually it's based on "the PCR test" which is actually a group of many different tests (the chains they test on can be different and the number of cycles can be different as well). Cases may go undetected, so testing-after-symptoms is very different than testing-random-population-sample. Sometime cases are filed based on symptoms alone. Hence we know very little about the number of C19 cases.

This was also a problem with the flu: they were always estimates.

I prefer to look at excess all cause mortality (per 100 inhabitants) or z-index to get a grip on the size/movement of this pandemic. Most developed nations keep track of deaths very well.

Re: Flu has disappeared worldwide during the Covid pandemic

#446

Post by dijit »

jb775 wrote: post #428
fullshark wrote: post #401

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This should not come as a surprise, and it was largely predictable from the outset. That explains all these news stories telling me what to expect: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/experts-warn-twindemic-... https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/health/2020/09/19/covid-... https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-we-can-avoid-... etc: https://www.google.com/search?q=twindemic&tbs=cdr:1,cd_min:9...

Where's all the people that were saying Covid is a completely separate thing from the flu?...and every "Covid Death" was a separate death on top of the normal flu death rate? Occam's Razor: Covid isn't a "pandemic", it's a strong flu

Covid transmits the same way as flu but is more infectious.

Measures against Covid work against flu.

It’s nice to know that our flu deaths are declining. But our Covid deaths are many times more.

Re: Flu has disappeared worldwide during the Covid pandemic

#447

Post by jlund-molfese »

jb775 wrote: post #428
fullshark wrote: post #401

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This should not come as a surprise, and it was largely predictable from the outset. That explains all these news stories telling me what to expect: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/experts-warn-twindemic-... https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/health/2020/09/19/covid-... https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-we-can-avoid-... etc: https://www.google.com/search?q=twindemic&tbs=cdr:1,cd_min:9...

Where's all the people that were saying Covid is a completely separate thing from the flu?...and every "Covid Death" was a separate death on top of the normal flu death rate? Occam's Razor: Covid isn't a "pandemic", it's a strong flu

It's almost universally accepted that covid-19 is separate from, and significantly more destructive than seasonal influenza viruses.

I don't think mainstream virologists and epidemiologists have changed their minds after the past year.

Re: Flu has disappeared worldwide during the Covid pandemic

#449

Post by ykl »

jb775 wrote: post #428
fullshark wrote: post #401

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This should not come as a surprise, and it was largely predictable from the outset. That explains all these news stories telling me what to expect: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/experts-warn-twindemic-... https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/health/2020/09/19/covid-... https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-we-can-avoid-... etc: https://www.google.com/search?q=twindemic&tbs=cdr:1,cd_min:9...

Where's all the people that were saying Covid is a completely separate thing from the flu?...and every "Covid Death" was a separate death on top of the normal flu death rate? Occam's Razor: Covid isn't a "pandemic", it's a strong flu

Scientists have sequenced the RNA for both covid and influenza, we know for a fact that they are completely different species of viruses.

Re: Flu has disappeared worldwide during the Covid pandemic

#450

Post by telchar »

NaturalPhallacy wrote: post #378
timr wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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....Covid has an R0 in the vicinity of 2.5....In the meantime, public health measures like masking and distancing will work against both viruses....there's really no need for conspiracy theorizing. Assuming that this is due to "masking and distancing" and the small difference…

Did we even test for the flu? Or did we just presume that flu cases were COIVD because the symptoms are so similar? The idea that the flu just 'disappeared' despite world trade continuing just sets off my bullshit detectors. Between all the countries that did little or nothing initially, and the people who refused to wear masks and didn't lock down...there's just no way it dropped to zero. Less? Sure. But gone? I sim…

Yes. They didn't just stop testing for flu when someone shows up with influenza-like illness (i.e. flu, covid). Maybe in some places where medical systems were already struggling in normal times, but not in developed nations certainly.
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