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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

#681

Post by notriddle »

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…

> And also possibly consider going for full eradication rather than harm reduction.

That doesn’t seem possible, unless you can get birds and pigs to mask up.

Re: Flu has disappeared worldwide during the Covid pandemic

#682

Post by bagacrap »

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…

The flu doesn't just kill old folks, it kills children as well (unlike covid-19), yet we still never cared enough to take the same precautions.

Re: Flu has disappeared worldwide during the Covid pandemic

#683

Post by warkid »

bsder wrote: post #562
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…

> Unlike Covid, kids are a significant vector of spread for influenza. Children, in fact, have been hypothesized to be the primary reservoir for influenza. The implication of this is that it would be much better to vaccinate all children against influenza rather than everybody else.

Isn't that already the case worldwide? I live in Russia and all schools are routinely vaccinated every autumn here.

Re: Flu has disappeared worldwide during the Covid pandemic

#684

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

Re: Flu has disappeared worldwide during the Covid pandemic

#685

Post by watersb »

timr wrote: post #393
Majromax wrote: post #349

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not a clinician or public health policymaker, so I'm operating on the balance of probabilities rather than a p=0.05 standard. If you consider the influenza estimate independent of equivalent estimates for covid, then there's a substantially greater than 50% chance that influenza's R0 is meaningfully smaller than that of the flu. If the estimates are partially dependent (i.e. methodology that gives a larger estima…

> we also have evidence in the actual observations of epidemic dynamics. Over the southern hemisphere fall of 2020 (northern hemisphere spring), covid cases increased more rapidly than influenza cases in countries that were entering their flu seasons. That's compelling-to-me evidence that covid in fact has a larger basic reproductive number Yes, we know that SARS-CoV2 increased, and influenza went away. That's trivia…

+1 for the first constructive, correct use of the phrase "begging the question" I have encountered this year.

Re: Flu has disappeared worldwide during the Covid pandemic

#686

Post by watersb »

papito wrote: post #285
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.

Stomach viruses. Where in the world are you? No, seriously - where? Because here in the United States people don't wash their hands before eating. It's fucking gross. I always sanitize my hands with alcohol pads before eating out - ALWAYS. But the others grab subway poles, handles, those nasty menus, and THEN they grab that sandwich with the same hands . If anything should come out of this pandemic, it should be Amer…

TOUCH SCREENS

I wash my hands, and yet no doubt my phone and computer keyboard are filthy.

There are ways to keep those surfaces relatively clean; I use a screen protector of my iPad and a keyboard "skin" on the laptop, so they can tolerate a bit of regular washing. In the past I have simply used sunlight - 10 minutes of high desert UV will knock out most bugs. But I haven't kept up with that as much this year.

Ugh. Signing off, gong to wash hands...

Re: Flu has disappeared worldwide during the Covid pandemic

#687

Post by emkoemko »

achenatx wrote: post #499
btilly wrote: post #366

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Last spring COVID was managing to achieve rapid spread at the same time that the flu season naturally ended. Despite the challenges in measuring R0 for both, this is pretty direct evidence that R0 is higher for COVID than for the flu.

R0 is not static. As people become immune to the current strains and the virus mutates, people will still have partial immunity to the new strains. Some people will be fully immune depending on their antibody response and the mutations. Next year it is entirely possible that the R0 of covid drops below influenza. If you introduced influenza to a naive population (i.e. native americans) you would get massive death. >

how does that work? Native Americans didn't have disease Europeans where not exposed to? Only Europeans had diseases?

any info about this? very interesting

Re: Flu has disappeared worldwide during the Covid pandemic

#688

Post by thom »

sokoloff wrote: post #579
jampekka wrote: post #555

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this goes under culture and social support system. Perhaps worth a thought that giving more support for everybody can help everybody. This interaction is quite apparent in e.g. epidemics, but probably has similar effects for many phenomena.

Of course it falls into the category of social support system, but what the specific design choices are matter in terms of driving behavior. If I (salaried) take a sick day, I get paid the same amount from the same source; there’s next-to-no economic incentive for me to risk the health of others by working when sick: problem is solved. We could more or less force the same by law for scheduled hourly workers. It’s a l…

It seems pretty clear that the person you’re replying to agrees with you, they just committed the crime of stating your position more succinctly.

Re: Flu has disappeared worldwide during the Covid pandemic

#689

Post by afrodc_ »

emkoemko wrote: post #687
achenatx wrote: post #499

Earlier quoted context omitted.

R0 is not static. As people become immune to the current strains and the virus mutates, people will still have partial immunity to the new strains. Some people will be fully immune depending on their antibody response and the mutations. Next year it is entirely possible that the R0 of covid drops below influenza. If you introduced influenza to a naive population (i.e. native americans) you would get massive death. >

how does that work? Native Americans didn't have disease Europeans where not exposed to? Only Europeans had diseases? any info about this? very interesting

Europeans did bring back disease they weren't immune to:

Europeans brought deadly viruses and bacteria, such as smallpox, measles, urope. Europeans brought deadly viruses and bacteria, such as smallpox, measles, typhus, and cholera, for which Native Americans had no immunity (Denevan, 1976). yphus, and cholera, for which Native Americans had no immunity (Denevan, 1976). On their return home, European sailors brought syphilis to Europe. Although less n their return home, European sailors brought syphilis to Europe. Although less deadly, the disease was known to have caused great social disruption throughout eadly, the disease was known to have caused great social disruption throughout the Old World (Sherman, 2007)

https://www.kellogg.northwestern.edu/faculty/qian/resources/... (Note that I haven't read this whole thing, but wanted to find a source for my little factoid)

Re: Flu has disappeared worldwide during the Covid pandemic

#690

Post by thom »

ryankemper wrote: post #541
jacobolus wrote: post #488

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. I…

Actually, what you're saying is untrue. The overwhelming evidence shows that children spread COVID less than adults do. My favorite is this: https://www.nejm.org/doi/pdf/10.1056/NEJMoa2006100?articleTo... The study isolated SARS-CoV-2 samples from every positive case, sequenced genome of virus, and tracked the mutation patterns. So, that will avoid a lot of the errors that improper qPCR usage can result in. First thi…

I think it’s entirely reasonable to believe that individual kids are more resistant to spreading COVID, but closing schools is a powerful intervention. Schools have _lots_ of kids in them, in close proximity, and _every_ child lives in a household with at least one, but on average more than one, other person.

This is not the only study implying closing schools was a sensible step:

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-020-01009-0

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