The perverse outcome being issues for toddlers who don't develop strong immunity? The single year on year outcome 20,000+ to 1000- is amazing, but, what if this lays the seeds for a future influenza pandemic?
Flu has disappeared worldwide during the Covid pandemic
481–490 of 821 posts
Re: Flu has disappeared worldwide during the Covid pandemic
#482Earlier 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...
We were warned of bad outcomes if precautions weren't taken. Precautions were taken, and the worst outcomes were avoided. This doesn't invalidate the prior warning. I don't want to assume bad intentions on your part but I'm not really sure what you want us to conclude from these posts... elaborate?
Why would the conclusions drawn from the post indicate bad intentions?
The warnings you're referring to were predicated on a pretty generic and nondescript need to get people vaccinated. This was a widespread messaging campaign in the media, heavy on the threats but not specificity.
Instead of what was threatened all summer, what actually happened was that flu disappeared AND people were being chastised for poor compliance with local ordinances and vaccination.
Re: Flu has disappeared worldwide during the Covid pandemic
#483Earlier quoted context omitted.
We were warned of bad outcomes if precautions weren't taken. Precautions were taken, and the worst outcomes were avoided. This doesn't invalidate the prior warning. I don't want to assume bad intentions on your part but I'm not really sure what you want us to conclude from these posts... elaborate?
That it wasn't predictable or obvious flu cases would go to near zero. These news stories are not about how if we do X then flu cases will go to near zero, and most operate under the assumption flu season is coming and will likely be a "twindemic" that needs to be mitigated/lessened. It didn't come and now we are pretending it was clear it was never coming. Just tired of people using selective memories to pretend tha…
You're lumping the poster in with all the experts and novices. They're one person, saying one thing. You need a link to _them_ saying the opposite to substantiate your criticism of their statement.
Re: Flu has disappeared worldwide during the Covid pandemic
#484Earlier quoted context omitted.
This year was a great experiment in person hygiene. It was the healthiest I have ever been for a full year, no colds, stomach bugs, anything. I'm not sure which practices I'll continue, but its definitely shown me that I have wayyyy more control over my health than I previously thought. Curious what others think are the most effective continued practices. Seems like social distancing isn't super reasonable, but maybe…
You can do a LOT. I haven't been sick once in 6+ years because I do the following: 1) Almost never eat out. Home cooked meals that I've prepped / washed. This was single handedly the biggest factor that completely removed "getting sick" from my life. 2) Hand wash before touching face, or food. 3) Avoid sick people. If I hear someone coughing or sneezing, I move away from them. Call me a germ freak, I don't care, I've…
Unfortunately if you take crowded subways or buses, or have meetings in small rooms with coworkers who have young children in school, none of that matters. You still WILL get sick.
It doesn't matter how much you wash your hands, or cook food at home. Plenty of germs are airborne and linger. Unless you stay at home all day long, you're going to get sick.
Now some people have much more effective immune systems than others, and a lot of that is just genetics. Sounds like you're exceptionally lucky here.
Re: Flu has disappeared worldwide during the Covid pandemic
#485This 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…
> 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...
[deleted]
Re: Flu has disappeared worldwide during the Covid pandemic
#486Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Aka the group that has to suffer the most from lockdowns while benefitting the least.
Re: Flu has disappeared worldwide during the Covid pandemic
#487Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
covid might not be more infectious, it might just be less people have any existing partial resistance to sars-cov-2. Each year the flu mutates but it still has overlap with prior variants.
As sars-cov-2 mutates seasonal covid might end up less bad than the seasonal flu. Though there is no way to tell.
Re: Flu has disappeared worldwide during the Covid pandemic
#488This 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…
> 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…
> Unlike Covid, kids are a significant vector of spread for influenza
Kids are significant spreaders of both influenza and Covid (after school reopenings, in many countries kids become one of the top sources of inter-household Covid spread). They just tend to have mild or absent Covid symptoms and didn’t require regular testing for work etc., and therefore did not get consistently tested in most parts of the world. In some places parents deliberately avoided testing their kids for fear positive tests would interfere with their in-person schooling or extracurricular activities.
Repeated claims that kids don’t spread Covid were politically motivated and based largely on junk science.
Admittedly doing good studies was extremely difficult in places like the USA where spread was wildly out of control and contact tracing was completely overwhelmed.
Re: Flu has disappeared worldwide during the Covid pandemic
#489My take on that is: since pandemic started governments have been pretty paranoid, imposing a lot of burdensome restrictions on their citizens, like mandatory quarantine. This incentivized people to never go to doctor unless absolutely necessary, which means that most flu cases go undiagnosed.
[deleted]
Re: Flu has disappeared worldwide during the Covid pandemic
#490Maybe 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…
> 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
Some societies in Asia have been doing that for quite sometime.