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It may even be the case that fewer people are seeking medical care for symptoms that they (correctly) think are just the flu. The lack of smell that COVID often

It may even be the case that fewer people are seeking medical care for symptoms that they (correctly) think are just the flu. The lack of smell that COVID often causes is very distinct; easy to imagine people who are sick with the flu, but have not lost their sense of smell deciding to stay home both out of fear of covid, and because accessing medical care during a pandemic is less convenient. Some people may also be worried that they do have covid (or will get a false positive), and don't want to get a positive test due to quarantine requirements, embarrassment, etc.

tpmx 5y ago
For all of the weird things my country Sweden has done (and perhaps more importantly - not done) in the past year, shaming and financially punishing people with covid is not one of them. The flu didn't happen here either according to the long standing sentinel testing program. https://www.folkhalsomyndigheten.se/folkhalsorapportering-statistik/statistik-a-o/sjukdomsstatistik/influensa-veckorapporter/aktuell-influensarapport/ https://www.folkhalsomyndigheten.se/folkhalsorapportering-st... (Swedish, published today) Summary: 145k people were tested (1.4% of the total population), 29 people tested positive for an influenza variant during the winter season 2020/2021. Typical numbers for previous years are in the thousands. Graph comparing winter seasons: https://www.folkhalsomyndigheten.se/contentassets/a9433fcecdc24c788e11ea0d47fdf21b/v15-16-figur-influensa.jpg https://www.folkhalsomyndigheten.se/contentassets/a9433fcecd... (X-axis: week number, Y-axis: number of cases.)