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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

#521

Post by ineedasername »

opk wrote: post #442
ineedasername wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Your awareness on flu testing is an indication of the limits of your knowledge, not a lack of testing. Others in this discussion have provided links with hard data on testing from the CDC for the US. For a world-wide picture, FluNet w/ GISRS also provide data on testing.

These form the basis of overall infection estimates. If you are interested in the methodology of those estimates, here is the CDC overviews, complete with citations for the primary research that informed the creation of their models: https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/how-cdc-estimates.htm#e...

Re: Flu has disappeared worldwide during the Covid pandemic

#522

Post by [deleted] »

xyzzy21 wrote: post #516
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…

Or....(and without any conspiracy theories - never mind MOST conspiracy theories of the last 30 years have entirely become true - conspiracy TRUTHS). Everything that was flu was labeled as COVID since doctors, hospitals and medical professions were PAID a bounty on COVID. Multiple this by PCR testing being 99% fraudulent due to high cycle counts which enable cold viruses and even flu viruses to to test positive becau…

[deleted]

Re: Flu has disappeared worldwide during the Covid pandemic

#524

Post by nojokes »

hammock wrote: post #61
khuey wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What in that link sounds "not very accurate"?

The test detects "viral material" and "does not indicate that the virus is fully intact and infectious, i.e. able to cause infection in other people." The fraud is not in the test itself, but in the reporting of test results. When a PCR test comes back positive, more often than not it is assumed the patient is infected with COVID (which may not be the case) - and cases of infected people are reported widely using the…

In your opinion what is the percentage of the questionable test results in your opinion?

What other method would you suggest in replacement to verify if a person is possibly infectious?

Re: Flu has disappeared worldwide during the Covid pandemic

#525

Post by [deleted] »

timr wrote: post #271
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…

> 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…

[deleted]

Re: Flu has disappeared worldwide during the Covid pandemic

#526

Post by ineedasername »

tshaddox wrote: post #218
ineedasername wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The lack of Flu infections in the population that did not contract COVID cannot be explained by viral interference. Viral interference would only explain a decreased influenza infection rate among those exposed to COVID.

If a large portion of the people who contracted COVID are removed from the set of people who could have potentially exposed me to the flu, doesn't that decrease the likelihood of me contracting the flu regardless of whether I contracted COVID?

Removing those people removes, relatively, an extremely small portion of the population. You are removing roughly 10% of the population in the U.S., or 2% worldwide. This does not explain the magnitude of the decrease observed for the flu.

Is it that hard to believe that not being around other people limits the chance of getting sick from other people?

Re: Flu has disappeared worldwide during the Covid pandemic

#527

Post by toss1 »

Mountain_Skies wrote: post #451
toss1 wrote: post #387

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> 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 R0 The 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 ordinar…

Politicians have shown themselves throughout this pandemic to be opportunistic authoritarians who obviously don't believe in their mandates since they break them themselves so frequently. There's no reason to expect that these sociopaths won't jump at the opportunity to drink more from the fountain of power again given the chance. Since they've gotten away with so much this time, they might even be tempted to go even…

Are you serious?

If anything, politicians have vastly under-managed the situation, timidly afraid of offending constituents' offense at any inconvenience, and only partially at best following sound science.

In states that did issue orders for masks and stay-at-home, the orders were weak, late, and lifted early, resulting in multiple waves that only abate now because of the rapid deployment of vaccines.

Most importantly, there was very little and late funding to cover the costs of those who should most have been shut down, group travel, entertainment, dining, etc. - should have been fully shut down immediately, and everyone's costs covered.

6-10 weeks of hard shutdown, while standing up a full masking, test/trace/isolate protocol would have handled it, yet few countries did it.

A few countries did implement early, strong, and effective measures, such as New Zealand. They also then opened up many months earlier than the rest of the world with near-normal life.

Where are the politicians "drunk with power" who are restarting lockdowns for their own gratification?

Where is the advantage for such a "drunk on power" politician? What could they possible gain by unnecessarily implementing measures that are seen at best by the smart ones who understand it as a necessary inconvenience, and by the rest as an assault on them?

Even flat-out authoritarians do no such thing. E.g., China, who is unashamed to run literal concentration camps for Uyghur minorities, and who did hard lockdowns at the start, is not opening up as soon as scientifically feasible.

Unless you can show some citations of evidence, this looks a lot less like a real phenomenon, and more like a pseudo-libertarian teenager's trope.

Re: Flu has disappeared worldwide during the Covid pandemic

#528

Post by eismcc »

aarondia wrote: post #300
gorbachev wrote: post #262

I 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.

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…

I think I got sick a lot from poorly ventilated meeting rooms. I can recall multiple times coming into a room with stale air smell and get sick not long after.

Re: Flu has disappeared worldwide during the Covid pandemic

#529

Post by jampekka »

galangalalgol wrote: post #518
kiawe_fire wrote: post #478

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those measures are not entirely different from the measures previously suggested, though. Obviously your quoted poster’s concerns are less about “hand washing”, “wear a mask if you have symptoms”, and “stay home” while you recover, and instead are about an overreaction in which entire businesses are forced to shut down, children without symptoms are forced to wear masks even as they run and play, and people are forci…

The normal flu can be pretty bad. In 2018 the spike in total deaths in TX and surrounding states were between a third and a half of the covid spike in those regions. Masks might have been a good idea in 2018 and I hope they become part of our culture at least when you think you might be coming down with something. You know, that first day of a cold when you are telling yourself its allergies or drainage. Shutting dow…

How about a culture and social support system where you can just stay home and rest if you feel something's up? Probably a lot more efficient than a mask, and would probably help with lots of other problems as well.

Re: Flu has disappeared worldwide during the Covid pandemic

#530

Post by nodamage »

kube-system wrote: post #464
nodamage wrote: post #461

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's disappointing to see this type of misinformation being spread on HN. All you need to do is look at all-cause mortality in 2020 compared to previous years to easily disprove this: https://i.imgur.com/z9RsQ8e.png

I haven't seen this before, thanks for sharing. Do you know the original source?

It was generated from the CDC data available here: https://gis.cdc.gov/grasp/fluview/mortality.html
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