Flu has disappeared worldwide during the Covid pandemic • Hacker News Board

Re: Flu has disappeared worldwide during the Covid pandemic

#661

Post by geoduck14 » Fri, Apr 30, 2021, 3:27 AM UTC

taeric wrote: post #586

SamBam wrote: post #568

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting that this was getting downvoted. Obviously relates to what the poster above was saying about it being "politically incorrect." We may disagree on what the science implies, but downvoting someone for sharing research means that people are refusing to listen to anything that disagrees with their preconceived notions. (I guess perhaps the implicit assumption is that anyone pushing articles that show that kid…

To be fair, that implicit assumption is pretty strong. There is an absurd bias to push kids back in schools so parents can get back to work. Still, your points stand that there are some good studies showing kids are not necessarily the major spreaders. It is somewhat surprising to me, but it is data.

I work from home. My wife stays at home and takes care of young kids.

We sent our 6 yo back to (in person) school because computer school was a bad idea.

I have a friend who teaches high school. He is SO relieved to be ending computer teaching.

I think so people want in person school so parents can work, but plenty of people want in person school because it IS better.

Re: Flu has disappeared worldwide during the Covid pandemic

#662

Post by glennpratt » Fri, Apr 30, 2021, 3:28 AM UTC

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 only think I have very occasional allergies by observing my health during the pandemic. I have no clue what it's from. I just assumed they were colds before, though I certainly had less illness of any kind this last year.

Re: Flu has disappeared worldwide during the Covid pandemic

#663

Post by throwitaway1235 » Fri, Apr 30, 2021, 3:37 AM UTC

There seems to be a great deal of misunderstanding as to what a normal biome in a human nasal passage looks like. Thousands of different pathogens present at any given time.

Having testable traces of Covid-19 in your septum is not the same thing as having Covid-19 the symptomatic disease. But it's statistically treated the same.

Flu cases have dropped because people aren't being tested for it. If health authorities instructed populations to get flu tests as aggressively as covid-19 tests, flu cases would jump again. Not complicated guys.

Re: Flu has disappeared worldwide during the Covid pandemic

#664

Post by darkerside » Fri, Apr 30, 2021, 3:47 AM UTC

Raidion wrote: post #652

JoshuaDavid wrote: post #623

Earlier quoted context omitted.

32.8 million Americans have had confirmed positive tests for COVID-19 as of April 26[1], and the current US population is 328.2 million, so at a minimum 10% of the people in the US have gotten COVID. A maximum of 100% of the people in the US could be infected[2], so that implies an upper bound of 10x worse or 5M deaths averted by all interventions combined. US CDC estimates that about 3 - 3.5x as many people have con…

There are a bunch of stuff that make this hard to calculate. One is that cases are undercounted, while deaths are almost certainly not. Another is that deaths are correlated to available healthcare. 3x cases would mean that the standard of care goes down, which means more deaths. More deaths would probably also mean increased "protective" measures. Risk tolerance (and risk of infection) is elastic. Seeing 3x more dea…

I'm pretty sure what we saw this year demonstrates that protective measures are far less elastic than we might assume.

Re: Flu has disappeared worldwide during the Covid pandemic

#665

Post by darkerside » Fri, Apr 30, 2021, 3:52 AM UTC

caturopath wrote: post #618

darkerside wrote: post #615

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I feel like you misunderstand the meaning of "implies", which is to suggest without explicitly saying. I think it is reasonable to assume that social distancing measures would have a similar effect, and in the absence of other data, the best estimate might be to assume they are proportional.

Fortunately there are a couple of other answers in thread that answered this at a level of detail that I could understand.

Re: Flu has disappeared worldwide during the Covid pandemic

#666

Post by darkerside » Fri, Apr 30, 2021, 3:53 AM UTC

adolph wrote: post #628

darkerside wrote: post #615

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The difference might be in flu deaths being confounded by C19 deaths in vulnerable populations. An example might be a person with a weakened immune system. In an alternate timeline without C19 they would have died of flu. In the real world they caught C19 first and died of that instead.

This makes a lot of sense

Re: Flu has disappeared worldwide during the Covid pandemic

#667

Post by darkerside » Fri, Apr 30, 2021, 3:54 AM UTC

jjeaff wrote: post #617

darkerside wrote: post #615

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If it's more contagious, would you assume social distancing would have a greater or lesser effect? It's not clear to me either way.

Other answers on here have convinced me however that 50M is not a reasonable number.

Re: Flu has disappeared worldwide during the Covid pandemic

#668

Post by darkerside » Fri, Apr 30, 2021, 3:55 AM UTC

JoshuaDavid wrote: post #623

darkerside wrote: post #615

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

32.8 million Americans have had confirmed positive tests for COVID-19 as of April 26[1], and the current US population is 328.2 million, so at a minimum 10% of the people in the US have gotten COVID. A maximum of 100% of the people in the US could be infected[2], so that implies an upper bound of 10x worse or 5M deaths averted by all interventions combined. US CDC estimates that about 3 - 3.5x as many people have con…

Great answer, thank you

Re: Flu has disappeared worldwide during the Covid pandemic

#669

Post by Izkata » Fri, Apr 30, 2021, 4:04 AM UTC

petertodd wrote: post #106

pmontra wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Transmissibility (or Basic Reproduction Number - R0) is an intrinsic characteristic of a disease. Measles is at least 3 times more transmissible than flu [1]. We have a very effective vaccine against measles and a mildly effective one against flu, so people get flu and not measles but let them circulate among people without any protection and measles will get them sooner than flu. And it's also much deadlier [2] [1]…

> Transmissibility (or Basic Reproduction Number - R0) is an intrinsic characteristic of a disease. I'm not talking about the theoretical R0, which assumes an immunologically naive population. I'm talking about the real world reproductive ratio, R, including existing immunity. Estimates of real world R for influenza are are even lower than the 2-4 your source quoted. Eg, this paper estimates a median of just 1.3 for…

> With COVID-19's R0 estimated at 2-3

I haven't been keeping up with it, but that's the lowest estimate I've seen yet. Back when it was still only known to be in China it was estimated at 5-6, but quickly went down to 3-4 for the first several months or so of last year, then some estimates brought it back up to 5-6..

Re: Flu has disappeared worldwide during the Covid pandemic

#670

Post by adolph » Fri, Apr 30, 2021, 4:09 AM UTC

darkerside wrote: post #666

adolph wrote: post #628

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The difference might be in flu deaths being confounded by C19 deaths in vulnerable populations. An example might be a person with a weakened immune system. In an alternate timeline without C19 they would have died of flu. In the real world they caught C19 first and died of that instead.

This makes a lot of sense

I would not claim that it accounts for all flu avoidance, but some nontrivial portion of missing flu deaths.

Additionally I would not be surprised if flu deaths remained lower for several years since C19 appeared to be more severe than flu in vulnerable populations. Future flu deaths were likely preempted by C19.

Paralleling the term herd immunity, this would be called culling the herd.