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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

#721

Post by jobigoud »

hutzlibu wrote: post #592
galangalalgol wrote: post #518

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The normal flu can be pretty bad. In 2018 the spike in total deaths in TX and surrounding states were between a third and a half of the covid spike in those regions. Masks might have been a good idea in 2018 and I hope they become part of our culture at least when you think you might be coming down with something. You know, that first day of a cold when you are telling yourself its allergies or drainage. Shutting dow…

"Shutting down stores makes less sense." Depends on what you want to achieve. If you like a increase of infection, you do it like here in germany and close down hardware stores etc. multiple times on short notice, without telling when they will open again - so people try to storm them before they close, all coming closely together by doing so, which they would not have otherwise.

This particular type of unintended consequence has been repeated multiple times during the crisis, it's puzzling.

For example here in order to avoid contamination in public transports they limited the hours of service. Consequence: same number of people took transport but in less time, increasing density and contact.

Similarly with the curfew forcing shops to close earlier in the day, more people gather in less time.

Re: Flu has disappeared worldwide during the Covid pandemic

#722

Post by oblio »

bsder wrote: post #701
warkid wrote: post #683

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I have never heard of such a thing in the US. Someone else will have to chime in about European countries.

Romania, Luxembourg - no flu vaccinations from what I see.

Re: Flu has disappeared worldwide during the Covid pandemic

#723

Post by oblio »

gregschlom wrote: post #453
fullshark wrote: post #401

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This should not come as a surprise, and it was largely predictable from the outset. That explains all these news stories telling me what to expect: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/experts-warn-twindemic-... https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/health/2020/09/19/covid-... https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-we-can-avoid-... etc: https://www.google.com/search?q=twindemic&tbs=cdr:1,cd_min:9...

Counter point: https://xkcd.com/2287/ , from March 2020

Such cute naivety from Xkcd, kind of unexpected :-D

Re: Flu has disappeared worldwide during the Covid pandemic

#724

Post by oblio »

Majromax wrote: post #651
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…

> To naive little me, this implies that COVID deaths are also likely to have been reduced to ~1% from what they would have been without said measures. No, unfortunately this is not true. While the flu season disappeared entirely, covid obviously did not -- it grew significantly. As it stands, the United States has seen just shy of 100,000 confirmed cases per million people; if that represented 1% of a "status quo" in…

This model greatly depends on the rate of actual infection.

Assuming a perfectly oblivious population, for example, where there are absolutely no protective measures in place† and people just act 100% as usual††, then the infection rate would have skyrocketed in a very short time and the death rate would have been much, much higher because of the healthcare system completely collapsing. You'd have people dying from tetanus because nobody would have been available to give them shots. People dying from easily stoppable bleeding, etc. So in this extreme case I think the total death rate caused by the pandemic could have easily been in the low millions.

† Self distancing, masks, etc.

†† Which would be quite irrational and hasn't actually happened even in places which otherwise ignored the pandemic: a certain percentage of the population self-isolated due to the survival instinct.

Re: Flu has disappeared worldwide during the Covid pandemic

#727

Post by nl »

timr wrote: post #271
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…

> 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…

A R0 of 2 vs 2.5 is enormous. The OP's post was correct.

Re: Flu has disappeared worldwide during the Covid pandemic

#728

Post by fho »

tehlike wrote: post #644
fireattack wrote: post #563

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think junk food place in general is actually more hygienic.

Might be. It also spans to occasional food trucks every now and then, which i would probably not call super clean (though can't claim to know either). "IF a food is tasty, you probably don't want to know under what conditions it's prepared" is something i believe in (but don't necessarily seek for - ie if somewhere is disturbingly unclean, i would probably skip, but otherwise don't care).

> IF a food is tasty, you probably don't want to know under what conditions it's prepared

I was in Bangalore (India) some time ago and everybody and their dog tells you not to eat the street food there, especially not the dairy products!

First thing our host (friend and former flatmate) brought us to was a street merchant with some dairy sweets :-)

Definitely surviorship biased ... but we ate a lot of street foot while we were there and have not gotten sick. I guess it's fine if you don't go to the super rancid places.

Re: Flu has disappeared worldwide during the Covid pandemic

#729

Post by juloo »

Majromax wrote: post #326
DoingIsLearning wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Non virologist naive question, if we apply all these measures targeting SARS-COV2 and it also creates a massive negative pressure on flu viruses, is there a risk that this applies an adaptive pressure to select for a future uber infectious new flu strain?

I don't see any reason to expect it would. Summer months, for example, already apply a strong negative pressure on the flu virus (that is, we have a flu season ), yet we have not seen a year-round flu. Diseases always face selection pressure to spread more easily and rapidly. When that selection pressure is caused by broad factors like "people aren't congregating together," it's hard to imagine how any simple evoluti…

> yet we have not seen a year-round flu.

We had. And it may have killed 3% to 5% of the world population in about 2 years: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_flu

That's also why we are so afraid of this one and constantly monitor it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avian_influenza

Re: Flu has disappeared worldwide during the Covid pandemic

#730

Post by johncolanduoni »

chrisco255 wrote: post #508
johncolanduoni wrote: post #320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unless of course you look at the city level, where different policies and different levels of compliance correlate quite clearly with cases: look at San Francisco or San Jose compared to Miami or Los Angeles.

Not at all, you can cherry pick cities and that proves nothing, they all have vastly different demographics, different density, different climates, etc. For example, New York City is one of the worst performing metros on the planet despite harsh restrictions (and high compliance) at the city and state level and in neighboring states. There's no discernible pattern in the data.

Okay, but then why doesn’t the “vastly different demographics, different density, different climates” apply to comparisons between states, if you’re claiming those comparisons “disprove the hypothesis” (let alone the fact that SF has much higher density that the others and a colder climate)? As far as cherry picking, why does me picking four cities count as cherry picking but you picking two states doesn’t?

Also for the specific NYC case, a crucial difference is that when the restrictions started which was after there were many infections already (thanks in part to disagreement between the city and state early on and different legal powers of the city to effect them compared to elsewhere). I’m also not sure what neighboring states with high compliance you’re referring to for New York. Their most populous neighbor (PA) has consistently had very low compliance and fluctuating levels of restrictions.

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