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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

#611

Post by michaelmrose »

galangalalgol wrote: post #549
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.

But sometimes it is allergies, and you feel fine and want to get some work done. Masks aren't a big deal, I forget I have mine on, and I wear it all day. Maybe some people have more difficulty? If I vwas in construction or something more physical vthan typing I might vfeel differently.

People who are subject to allergies know they are so and allergies doesn't cause most of the same symptoms. You could probably differentiate most cases of sickness by simply taking your temperature.

Re: Flu has disappeared worldwide during the Covid pandemic

#612

Post by Fomite »

skocznymroczny wrote: post #424
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.

Exactly. If you renamed flu to FLU-21, did extensive testing for the flu (doesn't really matter how reliable the tests are), you'd have a pandemic every year.

This isn't true.

The definition for a flu epidemic is two standard deviations above the expected cases for influenza that year, as estimated by a Serfling-type regression model using a negative binomial distribution.

Influenza just doesn't breach that barrier for more than a few weeks most years, and rarely in widespread geographic areas at once.

Compare that to SARS-CoV-2, where the expected number of cases is zero.

"Epidemic" means something more than "Lots".

Re: Flu has disappeared worldwide during the Covid pandemic

#613

Post by Fomite »

rorykoehler wrote: post #164
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.

They can figure it out by Google search volumes though of course this year would be problematic

Google Flu Trends was remarkably bad at influenza prediction

Re: Flu has disappeared worldwide during the Covid pandemic

#614

Post by michaelmrose »

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…

This is basically a fantasy. Public health measures that restrict freedom are unpopular even when they are justified. More than anything else your least favorite lawmaker wants to remain employed and to do so they will eventually bow to the will of the people even when the people are ignorant.

Public health measures that you disdain aren't popular where they are because your neighbors want to step on your neck they are popular because people who know more than you do know they on net save lives.

When there is nothing to be gained by such measure support will blow away like dust in the wind. There is no battle for you to fight.

Re: Flu has disappeared worldwide during the Covid pandemic

#615

Post by darkerside »

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…

I'm really excited to see this thread on HN because I've got a question about flu vs COVID, and I feel like this is my only (slim) chance to get a non-politicized answer to it.

It's a simple question. Flu deaths in the US have dropped precipitously. This past flu season resulted in (very roughly) ~1% of the deaths of previous seasons. It seems obvious that this is primarily due to social distancing efforts as you say. To naive little me, this implies that COVID deaths are also likely to have been reduced to ~1% from what they would have been without said measures. In the US, that implies that we may have steered into 500K deaths instead of a stunning potential 50M deaths.

Based on my admittedly naive calculations, I'm sure this is inaccurate, but I don't even know in which direction, could have been potentially even more. Did we really avert 50M deaths by social distancing?

Re: Flu has disappeared worldwide during the Covid pandemic

#616

Post by galangalalgol »

michaelmrose wrote: post #611
galangalalgol wrote: post #549

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But sometimes it is allergies, and you feel fine and want to get some work done. Masks aren't a big deal, I forget I have mine on, and I wear it all day. Maybe some people have more difficulty? If I vwas in construction or something more physical vthan typing I might vfeel differently.

People who are subject to allergies know they are so and allergies doesn't cause most of the same symptoms. You could probably differentiate most cases of sickness by simply taking your temperature.

I think most people have allergies now don't they? It didn't used to be that way. I get colds with no fever usually.

Re: Flu has disappeared worldwide during the Covid pandemic

#617

Post by jjeaff »

darkerside wrote: post #615
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…

I'm really excited to see this thread on HN because I've got a question about flu vs COVID, and I feel like this is my only (slim) chance to get a non-politicized answer to it. It's a simple question. Flu deaths in the US have dropped precipitously. This past flu season resulted in (very roughly) ~1% of the deaths of previous seasons. It seems obvious that this is primarily due to social distancing efforts as you say…

That extrapolation only works if the flu is equally as contagious as covid and also has identical methods of transmission (for example, it may be that covid transmits through the air more readily than the flu). But we know that covid is actually quite a bit more contagious, so you can't really make a linear extrapolation like that.

Re: Flu has disappeared worldwide during the Covid pandemic

#618

Post by caturopath »

darkerside wrote: post #615
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…

I'm really excited to see this thread on HN because I've got a question about flu vs COVID, and I feel like this is my only (slim) chance to get a non-politicized answer to it. It's a simple question. Flu deaths in the US have dropped precipitously. This past flu season resulted in (very roughly) ~1% of the deaths of previous seasons. It seems obvious that this is primarily due to social distancing efforts as you say…

> Did we really avert 50M deaths by social distancing?

No, not even close.

> this implies that COVID deaths are also likely to have been reduced to ~1% from what they would have been without said measures

I don't think it implies that. There is nothing that says that the anti-COVID measures are about as effective at preventing spread of COVID as spread of flu.

> 500K deaths

Closer to 600k :(

This is among 32MM cases reported to the CDC, probably more like 80MM cases total.

Ignoring lots of factors, our ceiling for COVID is more like 4-10x what we've experienced, not 100X.

Re: Flu has disappeared worldwide during the Covid pandemic

#619

Post by anoncake »

Fomite wrote: post #612
skocznymroczny wrote: post #424

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. If you renamed flu to FLU-21, did extensive testing for the flu (doesn't really matter how reliable the tests are), you'd have a pandemic every year.

This isn't true. The definition for a flu epidemic is two standard deviations above the expected cases for influenza that year, as estimated by a Serfling-type regression model using a negative binomial distribution. Influenza just doesn't breach that barrier for more than a few weeks most years, and rarely in widespread geographic areas at once. Compare that to SARS-CoV-2, where the expected number of cases is zero.…

Then that definition is garbage. How bad a disease is does not depend on how bad you expect it to be.

Re: Flu has disappeared worldwide during the Covid pandemic

#620

Post by anoncake »

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…

During the last year, we have done more than enough to protect old people for the time being.
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