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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

#571

Post by greiskul »

ch4s3 wrote: post #347
llampx wrote: post #306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Germany meanwhile it has become a meme that "schools are not the driver off the pandemic" stated by all politicians who are obviously taking a page from the Iraqi information Ministers playbook.

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.

Re: Flu has disappeared worldwide during the Covid pandemic

#572

Post by cheeri0 »

pfundstein wrote: post #566
cheeri0 wrote: post #561

I'm just going to go ahead here and state the obvious. The flu did not magically disappear and people with the flu are without any question being counted as counted as covid-19 cases.

Firstly no one said it's magical: It's a direct result of the covid-19 measures, and was predicted to happen. Secondly it hasn't disappeared, if you read the article it says there were 600 flu deaths (in the US) last year, where previously there were 20,000+. Finally, all it takes is a quick test to confirm whether it's influenza or coronavirus.

Whoa calm down. No need to downvote because you don't like what I said.

First and second: > 20,000+ down to 600 for no reason is magical. What would you call that? A mystery? Fine. The flu did not mysteriously disappear.

Your last point: First off, those tests don't work. Everyone knows it. The inventor of the PCR test knows it. Elon Musk knows it about the antigen tests. They aren't accurate. Also, hospitals in the US are getting paid for each covid case. hmmmm.

lol and you are so into this cult you can't admit that flu deaths are being counted as covid deaths. Wow.

Re: Flu has disappeared worldwide during the Covid pandemic

#573

Post by irrational »

crazygringo wrote: post #484
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…

Unfortunately if you take crowded subways or buses, or have meetings in small rooms with coworkers who have young children in school, none of that matters. You still WILL get sick. It doesn't matter how much you wash your hands, or cook food at home. Plenty of germs are airborne and linger. Unless you stay at home all day long, you're going to get sick. Now some people have much more effective immune systems than oth…

Not if you wear a mask and wash your hands immediately afterwards. I haven’t been in an in person meeting since COVID started, but I’m wearing a mask to the next one I attend.

Re: Flu has disappeared worldwide during the Covid pandemic

#574

Post by SamBam »

MeinBlutIstBlau wrote: post #363
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…

How can you explain people getting covid but not the flu when nothing changed when places started opening up? It sounds more like poor data reporting more than anything else and I will take that to my grave.

Covid appears to spread much more readily through the air, why the influenza virus spreads much more significantly through fomites (touch and surfaces).

All that sanitizing and hand-washing, as well as not going into the office and school, cut that way down.

Meanwhile, Covid continued to spread fine in public transportation, stores, restaurants, etc.

Re: Flu has disappeared worldwide during the Covid pandemic

#575

Post by SamBam »

xyzzy21 wrote: post #516
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…

Or....(and without any conspiracy theories - never mind MOST conspiracy theories of the last 30 years have entirely become true - conspiracy TRUTHS). Everything that was flu was labeled as COVID since doctors, hospitals and medical professions were PAID a bounty on COVID. Multiple this by PCR testing being 99% fraudulent due to high cycle counts which enable cold viruses and even flu viruses to to test positive becau…

> since doctors, hospitals and medical professions were PAID a bounty on COVID.

You what?

Do you actually believe this? Seriously?

Re: Flu has disappeared worldwide during the Covid pandemic

#576

Post by greiskul »

carlmr wrote: post #258
tombert wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 yo…

Huh, it's funny, I never thought about it, but if you are selling something, the best number of unsold inventory you want to have is 1, not 0. Cause if it's zero, you have no idea how many sales you lost, if it's one, you pretty much stocked perfectly.

Re: Flu has disappeared worldwide during the Covid pandemic

#578

Post by renewiltord »

jacobolus wrote: post #488
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 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…

Would you mind providing a source for your assertions?

Re: Flu has disappeared worldwide during the Covid pandemic

#579

Post by sokoloff »

jampekka wrote: post #555
sokoloff wrote: post #539

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

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 little more difficult for gig. It’s basically impossible (as I see it) to put self-employed people at the same outcome as if they worked without substantial risks of under-comping some and over-comping others.

Re: Flu has disappeared worldwide during the Covid pandemic

#580

Post by greiskul »

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.

Well, the flu only used to kill like 34k people a year in the US. Covid killed over 10 times more, in a population where a significant portion of it was doing social isolation, wearing masks, etc. So yes, maybe you can call flu a pandemic, but don't compare it to Covid after everything the world as seen in the past year.
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