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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

#801

Post by al3xandre »

al3xandre wrote: post #8
yosito wrote: post #3

While I think this is most likely due to masking, distancing and staying home when sick, which were all far more effective against the flu than against SARS-CoV-2, I wonder how much this was affected by some of the deep cleans that cities were doing at the beginning of the pandemic where they basically sprayed entire cities with disinfectant trucks. Does anyone with more expertise have any thoughts about that?

You realize those « deep cleans » are mostly comms operations for governments to look like they are doing stuff, right? Virus live (mostly) in people, not on sidewalks. One of the most ridiculous example: the Thai government went to the extent of spraying disinfectant in the forest next to the Burmese border, and got pictures published in newspaper to show their great work. Comical! [1] [1] https://twitter.com/thaine…

Some more of these fun photo ops: https://twitter.com/thainewsreports/status/13886984576579051...

Re: Flu has disappeared worldwide during the Covid pandemic

#803

Post by travisp »

daddylongstroke wrote: post #764
travisp wrote: post #634

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is just wrong. Vastly more tests were done for the flu during the covid pandemic than have ever been done.

This is absolutely wrong. Labs in all the largest cities in the US, simply stopped accepting samples for anything other than COVID. Source: wife is RN working as triage nurse and interacting daily with the largest testing sites in NY, CA, NJ, IL, etc.etc.etc.

> And the decline has not been because of a lack of testing. Since late September, 1.3 million specimens have been tested for influenza, more than the average of about one million in the same period in recent years.

Source: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/04/22/science/flu-s...

My wife is also an ER doctor and agrees that there were times that they didn't perform many/any flu tests--mostly in the spring of 2020 and after none of the flu tests were returning positive for a while. But this past winter people have definitely been tested for the flu. Rapid influenza tests are also usually performed first, only sending to labs when confirmatory testing is desired.

Re: Flu has disappeared worldwide during the Covid pandemic

#805

Post by prawn »

kelnos wrote: post #699
aarondia wrote: post #300

Earlier 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…

One thing that would be great would be if people would throw on a mask if they have to go out while they're feeling sick. This is considered common courtesy in some places, but just isn't done much in the West. You could do so yourself even when not sick, and that presumably would help protect you from people who are sick (and are probably not masked), but I expect that will be considered socially "weird" after thing…

For your list in the last paragraph - children at school or childcare. Our childcare lists any reported illnesses on the door of each age group's room. Sometimes there can be 2-3 items on a door: gastro, colds, HFMD, etc. Of course, you find out after your child has been exposed and brought it home.

Like others, we haven't had any real illnesses in over a year, as well as living in a place which hasn't really had COVID cases in many months.

Re: Flu has disappeared worldwide during the Covid pandemic

#806

Post by thedmstdmstdmst »

SketchySeaBeast wrote: post #769
thedmstdmstdmst wrote: post #765

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well this is from the early part of 2020 for Alberta. https://www.albertahealthservices.ca/influenza/Page14481.asp... **Please note for all dashboards that as of March 12, community samples are no longer being routinely tested for non-COVID respiratory pathogens including flu. And if you look at the 2020 - 2021 dashboard https://www.albertahealthservices.ca/influenza/influenza.asp... You'll see they don't have any te…

They never post how many tests were done on that dashboard, you can look at past years and see the same results. That data regarding testing doesn't doesn't seem available yet on the sites, but I see no real reason to doubt the CMO's claim, do you?

Well except for the link that I posted that specifically said : *Please note for all dashboards that as of March 12, community samples are no longer being routinely tested for non-COVID respiratory pathogens including flu.

And that they at least show non zero results for past years.

Re: Flu has disappeared worldwide during the Covid pandemic

#807

Post by collyw »

kaba0 wrote: post #793
collyw wrote: post #439

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's potentially the opposite. Say you have a population of 1000. If one person infects ten others. Then its going to be 3 generations before 1000 are infected and full immunity is reached. We go for a suppression strategy instead.If 1 person infects 1 other person (as we seem to be trying to achieve with corna) it is going to take 1000 generations before full immunity is achieved. There is going to be far more chanc…

Your second paragraph assumes that a suppressed virus will not go extinct. If the suppression is effective, with eg. vaccines it can be done with quickly, with no higher chance of mutations.

> If the suppression is effective

Comparing places that didn't lock down to those that did I think its fair to say that the strategy has not been effective.

Re: Flu has disappeared worldwide during the Covid pandemic

#808

Post by ch4s3 »

greiskul wrote: post #571
ch4s3 wrote: post #347

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's been borne out by data from several countries, children don't seem to readily spread COVID-19. Adults are the primary spreaders, which is sort of the reverse of the flu.

Is that data from countries where schools are closed? If so, yeah, of course they won't be the main spreaders, they are quarantined. Opening up schools because the closing of the schools is working in control the spread is just the worst.

No, it's from when German schools were open, when Israel's schools were open and from Sweden. There's also contact tracing data from a bunch of countries.

Re: Flu has disappeared worldwide during the Covid pandemic

#809

Post by ch4s3 »

hrktb wrote: post #720
ch4s3 wrote: post #347

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's been borne out by data from several countries, children don't seem to readily spread COVID-19. Adults are the primary spreaders, which is sort of the reverse of the flu.

Except when they do: they were only at lower risk, not no risk, and the new variants also had more and heavier effects on children. Compounding this with parents having to bring their children to school, thus generating more contacts than just kids alone. All in all, there was some data at the root of the policy, but sending kids to school is still a shitty proposition from a safety perspective.

> Except when they do

There's no evidence to support the idea that children under 12 are a much risk of spreading COVID-19. According to the CDC which is notoriously conservative, "in-person learning in schools has not been associated with substantial community transmission". According to the NYT [1], NYC school reopening did not drive spread. Here's another [2] look a children 9 and under in Israel showing both low infection rates and low spread in Israeli schools.

We also know that basically no children die of COVID-19. But we do know that for small children being isolated at home is terrible for their mental health and educational futures.

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/10/world/nyc-schools-covid-t...

[2]https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle...

Re: Flu has disappeared worldwide during the Covid pandemic

#810

Post by kaba0 »

collyw wrote: post #807
kaba0 wrote: post #793

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your second paragraph assumes that a suppressed virus will not go extinct. If the suppression is effective, with eg. vaccines it can be done with quickly, with no higher chance of mutations.

> If the suppression is effective Comparing places that didn't lock down to those that did I think its fair to say that the strategy has not been effective.

Where people weren’t constantly battling the decisions, lockdowns were quite effective. The problem is that without a very strict but short lockdown you will get into this semi-lockdown that is hardly effective and thus just prolongs everything. But the answer never is “just do whatever you want”.
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