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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

#251

Post by selimthegrim »

mountainboy wrote: post #216
peder wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But the flu has always been here, even when our country was significantly less populated, when we were significantly more rural, and when people were significantly less connected in many ways. Like, how did we get flu pandemics in the 1700s? Weren't we less connected back then, even after you account for all the social distancing that was done this year?

The flu (influenza) has been linked to solar radiation and electricity. -- quote -- In 2001, Canadian astronomer Ken Tapping showed that the influenza pandemics over the previous three centuries correlated with peaks in solar magnetic activity, on an 11- year cycle. It has also been found that some outbreaks of influenza spread over enormous areas in just a few days – a fact that is difficult to explain by contagion…

I mean maybe there are viral aerosol reservoirs in the clouds but posting stuff from a website called 5gexposed is not helping your case.

Re: Flu has disappeared worldwide during the Covid pandemic

#253

Post by roody15 »

Not sure about in other areas, but where i am from the hospital systems rarely checked for flu. During the pandemic anyone symptomatic was told to stay home. People who visited a health clinic were typically first given a covid test. My guess is quite a few people who had the flu over the last year likely did not get an official flu test since it was difficult to get into a hospital or health clinics during the pandemic.

Re: Flu has disappeared worldwide during the Covid pandemic

#255

Post by ehsankia »

Wow, I always knew Flu was seasonal, but never realized how extreme that was. Looking at the North America graph, basically after May, the flu almost entirely disappears until the end of summer. Roughly 3 orders of magnitude difference between the peak and summer time. I would've thought it was closer to maybe 10x.

Re: Flu has disappeared worldwide during the Covid pandemic

#256

Post by Pyramus »

newacct583 wrote: post #207
paviva wrote: post #55

An alternative explanation is that of "viral interference"[1,2], i.e., the most transmissible virus boosting up viral immunity in the population, and precluding transmission of the less transmissible/fit virus [1]: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5489283/ [2]: https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanmic/article/PIIS2666-5...

Those links don't allege what you are saying at all... the second expressly disclaims any such conclusions given the size of the error bars, and the first talks about the protective effect of an active infection , not a simultaneous epidemic. Needless to say, only a tiny fraction of humanity has been actually infected with covid at any one time over the past year. Do you have a link to someone alleging this for covid…

I thought exactly the same. I recently had a lengthy discussion about viral interference here on HN only to learn that the person didn't want to see evidence that the mitigation measures (i.e. associated human behaviour change!) are effective - not only for SARS-Cov-2, but for a broad range of viral (and non-viral!) infectious diseases.

Re: Flu has disappeared worldwide during the Covid pandemic

#257

Post by markus92 »

g3e0 wrote: post #169
ibraheemdev wrote: post #5

Just speculating here, but maybe because of false positives where flu cases get labeled as Covid? I've heard that PCR tests were not meant to be used for large scale virus detection. EDIT: The PCR test quote was fact checked and deemed to be misleading, but it still sounds like they are not very accurate [0]. [0]: https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-factcheck-pcr-idUSKBN2442...

I believe the source of that quote comes from this Q&A session with Kary Mullis, the inventor of PCR: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wT3IqZjT_9A The relevant quotes from Kary are: "With PCR, if you do it well, you can find almost anything, in anybody" "If you can amplify one single molecule up to something that you can really measure - which PCR can do - then there's just.. very few molecules that you don't have at…

That's why there's digital qPCR now, testing has come a long way since 1993. Larger targets etc.

Re: Flu has disappeared worldwide during the Covid pandemic

#258

Post by carlmr »

tombert wrote: post #233
Lendal wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They probably know how many flu cases end up in the hospital or urgent care, then extrapolate from that number. They have historical data and also geographic, and census data, so they can make pretty good statistical estimates. It's kinda the same math that hardware stores use to figure out how many shovels to stock in a given store each week. Nothing is a mystery if you have data.

Genuinely curious; what kind of math are they using to stock shovels in hardware stores? I've never heard that before but it sounds interesting.

Not in that business, but normally you expect certain types of shovels to be seasonal. E.g. snow shovels probably sell more in winter, gardening shovels more in summer. Add to that you can usually look at weather data and refine the seasonal estimates, since in a warm winter people buy fewer snow shovels, in a cold spring, people buy fewer gardening shovels.

Just put all that into some simple regression models and you probably get a fairly good estimate.

The trickiest thing is figuring out how out of stock you are. How many shovels would you have sold if you hadn't run out of stock. So usually you have to be more careful with data points when you might have not registered customers that didn't get what they want in your store.

Re: Flu has disappeared worldwide during the Covid pandemic

#259

Post by JulianMorrison »

eecc wrote: post #245

Hopefully this won't cause selective pressure on flu viruses to become more aggressive.

If a more infectious variant surfaced, it might spread. But a lower absolute prevalence of flu (because of masks, social distancing, and lockdowns) means that low probability events - like a more virulent strain emerging - are less likely, and might not occur at all.

Contrariwise this (beside basic humanity) is why the current out of control situation in India or Brazil is everyone's problem. High absolute prevalence means events that are one in a billion chance get to happen. And spread.

Re: Flu has disappeared worldwide during the Covid pandemic

#260

Post by widget1321 »

roody15 wrote: post #253

Not sure about in other areas, but where i am from the hospital systems rarely checked for flu. During the pandemic anyone symptomatic was told to stay home. People who visited a health clinic were typically first given a covid test. My guess is quite a few people who had the flu over the last year likely did not get an official flu test since it was difficult to get into a hospital or health clinics during the pande…

I can't speak for everywhere, but I know that from what I'm told here (was actually talking about the lack of flu with some nurses who worked in local clinics and hospitals in the area), those who had covid-like symptoms were usually given the covid test no matter what. But, if flu would have normally been suspected and there wasn't a strong indication it was covid (loss of smell/taste, known exposure to a covid-positive person, etc.), they usually also got a flu test just in case.
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