Flu has disappeared worldwide during the Covid pandemic

Post by justtemporary » Fri, Apr 30, 2021, 12:01 AM UTC

haecceity wrote: post #421

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…

Will the flu come back after covid ends? If covid ends?

Post by rubicon33 » Fri, Apr 30, 2021, 12:03 AM UTC

noja wrote: post #468

rubicon33 wrote: post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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. How do you know this was the biggest factor?

Post by jampekka » Fri, Apr 30, 2021, 12:05 AM UTC

sokoloff wrote: post #539

jampekka wrote: post #529

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Plenty of people, hourly, gig, and self-employed people don’t get paid if they don’t work. You might be able to force some of those to be paid while sick-not-working, but the last category will be very difficult to address without either missing a lot of folks or creating tons of fraud and grift risk (and represent a lot of interactions with the public).

Post by fma » Fri, Apr 30, 2021, 12:14 AM UTC

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.

Post by LeCow » Fri, Apr 30, 2021, 12:17 AM UTC

marvin wrote: post #531

Pyramus wrote: post #408

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By the way, now that we are already talking about R ~= 1 ... Over pretty much the last year you could observe, in different countries all around the world, that the reproduction number was 'magically' floating around 1. Only recently did I learn that this effect was puzzling for epidemiologists as well and was only solved around 2012 (?) in a model that assumes a network of information about the disease in parallel t…

A well-known Norwegian economic commentator pointed this out in a newspaper article a few weeks ago. You'll eventually be forced to maintain an R~=1 no matter what you do, so it's best for everyone if your cases have a low baseline when that happens. The measures will be the same, but the baseline risk can either be terrible or okay. You can almost see the phenomenon in real time during this pandemic. Countries that…