12 ms·

> 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

by timr 6y ago

> 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 in R0 is crude thinking. It's unlikely to be anything of the sort. First, R0 is not a fixed constant. It varies by context and location, and we've seen influenza decline everywhere. Second, R0 is an estimated value. There are big error bars on all of these estimates -- the overlap is far greater than the 0.5 you're using to claim causality. Third, rhinovirus has not gone away (estimated R0 < 2). Nor has adenovirus (estimated R0 ~2.3) [1,2] There's something far more interesting going on here, it is surprising, and it isn't a "conspiracy theory" to talk about it. It's science. (FWIW, my current favored hypothesis is that the closure of schools, and possibly travel, significantly affected the spread of flu. Unlike Covid, kids are a significant vector of spread for influenza. It's one of those little facts about Covid that is...politically incorrect...to acknowledge right now. But I am speculating, and there are problems with this theory as well.) [1] https://syndromictrends.com/metric/panel/rp/percent_positivity/organism/main https://syndromictrends.com/metric/panel/rp/percent_positivi... [2] https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.02.04.20020404v1.full.pdf https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.02.04.20020404v...

mmmrtl 6y ago
Possible explanations include: - More asymptomatic transmission of rhinovirus/enterovirus and adenoviruses than influenza. People often don't notice these illnesses, so wouldn't assume it is COVID and quarantine like they would for influenza. - More fomite spread than influenza. They may be more stable on surfaces or in food
- timr 6y ago
  These are reasonable theories as well. Though the second one would really have to be "SARS-CoV2 has more fomite spread than flu" to explain the observations. In general though, any sort of explanation that focuses on differences in transmission is more plausible than hand-wavy theories involving R0 and masks. People just desperately want to find evidence that the stuff we did this year made a huge difference.
  - thelean12 6y ago
    > People just desperately want to find evidence that the stuff we did this year made a huge difference. I don't think that's true at all. People have been receptive to the increased evidence that transmission on surfaces is pretty unlikely, for example, despite all the efforts we've put into sanitizing surfaces. I think most people can appreciate that all the shit we threw at the wall throughout the pandemic eventually comes down to how much effort it is vs how much benefit we get from it. And our understanding of each measure has changed over time. We now know, generally: Masks indoors are low-effort, medium reward. Masks outdoors are low-effort, low reward. Cleaning surfaces is medium-effort, low reward. Staying home is (economically, societally) high-effort, high reward.
    - timr 6y ago
      To be clear: I'm not making a specific argument about masks vs. sanitizing vs. whatever here. I'm just saying: responses like the OP immediately leap to the conclusion that influenza went away because of all the stuff we did. It's an error in logic, driven by the emotional desire to believe that the stuff we did must have had a serious impact, and that anything else is not worth serious discussion. That's ideology, not science.
      - thelean12 6y ago
        I agree that leaping to conclusions isn't science. It doesn't get past the hypothesis stage and needs proper study. That said, if the massive reduction in flu cases isn't a result of some or all of our Covid efforts, it'd be a hell of a coincidence.
        timr 6y ago
        > That said, if the massive reduction in flu cases isn't a result of some or all of our Covid efforts, it'd be a hell of a coincidence. Mmmm...I wouldn't go that far. Like I said, my current preferred theory involves schools, but other plausible theories involve things like mutual inhibition: infection with one virus somehow interferes with infection by the other. We have some evidence of this happening in the past. Strains of influenza have abruptly vanished due to this phenomena. Certainly, I'd agree that this is interesting (which is pretty much where I end up on this, vs. the OP, who thinks the matter is settled.)
joshgel 6y ago
2 was published in Feb 2020, so not sure how helpful that is... 1 is not normalized data. It does not account for testing frequency. These percentages are of tests using BioFire. My hospital, for example, does not use BioFire to test for SARS-CoV-2 and so we end up running BioFire much, much less frequently than during a normal year. Anecdotally non-COVID respiratory infections in hospitalized patients have decreased dramatically. Working on trying to demonstrate this with data.
- timr 6y ago
  > 2 was published in Feb 2020, so not sure how helpful that is... It's a meta-analysis of many other papers. The estimates for the other ILIs have not changed significantly in 2020. Again, this is nitpicking that misses the forest for the trees: the differences in estimated R0 between these viruses is not so precise as to be useful for claiming the effectiveness of something like "masks and distancing". > 1 is not normalized data. It does not account for testing frequency This is incorrect. The data is normalized across all samples. Your hospital's non-participation may change the coverage of the sample, but that doesn't really matter when it's just showing you that rhinovirus hasn't gone away.
  - joshgel 6y ago
    In the paper associated with 1 it says: The FilmArray RP test utilization rate (TUR) metric is defined as the non-normalized number of RP patient test results generated each week across the Trend sites (computed as a centered 3-week moving average). To calculate the pathogen detection rate (as displayed in Figure 2 [second data view] and on the Trend website), we compute the rate for each organism at each institution as a centered 3-week moving average. To adjust for the capacity differences between sites, a national aggregate is calculated as the unweighted average of individual site rates. Only data from sites contributing more than 30 tests per week is included to avoid noise from small numbers of tests. Because the calculation of pathogen detection rate includes results from patients with multiple detections, the detection rate for all organisms can, in theory, add up to greater than one. In practice, this does not occur. These are rates. This does not account for testing frequency. If they only tested 1 person in the United States tomorrow, and they had rhino/entero, the graph would show 100% (obviously it wouldn't and they won't only test 1 person). That means that if testing decreased, because for example there were less patients with symptomatic viral infections, but the % positive stayed the same, the chart would not appear to change, even though there were fewer cases... paper: https://publichealth.jmir.org/2018/3/e59/ https://publichealth.jmir.org/2018/3/e59/
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
Majromax 6y ago
> and the small difference in R0 is crude thinking. Given the reproduction number appears as the base of an exponent, I would not consider the difference "small." If influenza has a typical R0 of about 2, reducing contacts by 50% would make its growth non-exponential. If covid has a typical R0 of about 2.5, doing the same would require a further 20% reduction of contacts, to 40% of baseline rather than 50%. Since population behaviour and legal restrictions have diminishing returns (eliminating casual contacts first at lower cost, then progressively higher-cost and more essential contacts), this could easily correspond to a large difference in effected (necessary) policy. > Second, R0 is an estimated value. There are big error bars on all of these estimates -- the overlap is far greater than the 0.5 you're using to claim causality. I have seen no credible evidence that typical (non-pandemic) influenza has an R0 greater than that of SARS-CoV-2. If you have a citation handy to the contrary, I'd be interested in seeing it. In the meantime, I tried to be generous in my estimation of influenza's R0; even your reference [2] places its central estimate at 1.68. > Third, rhinovirus has not gone away (estimated R0 < 2). Nor has adenovirus (estimated R0 ~2.3) [1,2] Rhinovirus and adenovirus both have mean-estimate R0 greater than that of influenza in your reference [2], so if policy is going to eliminate any of these disease from general circulation then influenza would be the first. Furthermore, some analysis does show limited evidence of a reduction of rhinovirus cases (https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-03519-3 https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-03519-3). A confounding factor here, however, is that we don't really have comprehensive like-against-like monitoring for rhinovirus in the way developed nations monitor for influenza. Adenoviruses as a broad category are also not limited to respiratory transmission, so air-focused restrictions would have less effect on these other routes. Finally, I reiterate that flu has a pronounced seasonal variation, whereas rhinovirus is somewhat less variable. A set of social responses only needs to prevent the flu season from starting to make it "disappear."
- timr 6y ago
  > Given the reproduction number appears as the base of an exponent, I would not consider the difference "small." The difference in measurement is small, relative to the error in measurement. Look at the error bars on the R0 estimates in that paper. Influenza runs from 1.06 to 3.4. You are trying to make micrometer inferences from a parameter where our best estimates are measured in libraries of congress.
codeulike 6y ago
Flu causes fever, which is one of the signs of covid, causing people to isolate. Whereas colds like the rhinovirus have different symptoms and are less likely to cause fever and so they 'fly under the radar' as it were.
math0ne 6y ago
Where I live in Canada schools never really closed and we are seeing the same thing.
- Dma54rhs 6y ago
  Most of the Europe didn't close schools either or very short periods when numbers where out of the roof. School closure is American teachers union thing really, vast majority of the countries do whatever possible to send kids to school as it takes the priority above everything.
newacct583 6y ago
For clarity: are you genuinely claiming that you believe school closures prevent influenza transmission but that you think other related mitigation strategies like mask-wearing, restaurant closures, work-from-home, etc... don't? That seems a little denialist, honestly.
NaturalPhallacy 6y ago
Did we even test for the flu? Or did we just presume that flu cases were COIVD because the symptoms are so similar? The idea that the flu just 'disappeared' despite world trade continuing just sets off my bullshit detectors. Between all the countries that did little or nothing initially, and the people who refused to wear masks and didn't lock down...there's just no way it dropped to zero. Less? Sure. But gone? I simply don't believe it.
- jhayward 6y ago
  Yes, everyone with ILI symptoms (influenza-like-illness) who goes to one of the clinics or hospitals participating in the surveillance program gets tested for about 30 pathogens. That's how we know what's going on with all those critters. None of that has changed in the era of COVID, although the pattern of who goes to clinic for what may have. If there were flu out there we'd be detecting it is the bottom line.
- collyw 6y ago
  Around Autumn it was subtly mentioned that the UK figures were going to be for flu and covid combined. Before that it was noted that flu was killing more than coronavirus in summer.
  - jimsmart 6y ago
    Do you have any links to substantiate those claims, please?
    - jrek 6y ago
      You have to understand - it was REAL subtle.
      - jimsmart 6y ago
        You have to understand: your claims are nonsense without evidence.
- 6y ago
treeman79 6y ago
Having school age kids means constant illness at home. Not usually severe, but annoying. Was one nice perk having kids at home. 9 months of no illness. 6 weeks after going back family had Covid. No it’s back in the routine of mild illness at least monthly.
jacobolus 6y ago
> 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. In some places parents deliberately avoided testing their kids for fear positive tests would interfere with their in-person schooling or extracurricular activities. Repeated claims that kids don’t spread Covid were politically motivated and based largely on junk science. Admittedly doing good studies was extremely difficult in places like the USA where spread was wildly out of control and contact tracing was completely overwhelmed.
- ryankemper 6y ago
  Actually, what you're saying is untrue. The overwhelming evidence shows that children spread COVID less than adults do. My favorite is this: https://www.nejm.org/doi/pdf/10.1056/NEJMoa2006100?articleTools=true https://www.nejm.org/doi/pdf/10.1056/NEJMoa2006100?articleTo... The study isolated SARS-CoV-2 samples from every positive case, sequenced genome of virus, and tracked the mutation patterns. So, that will avoid a lot of the errors that improper qPCR usage can result in. First things first, age and viral susceptibility: > Of the 564 children under the age of 10 years in the targeted testing group, 38 (6.7%) tested positive, in contrast to positive test result in 1183 of 8635 persons who were 10 years of age or older (13.7%). In analyses involving participants up to 20 years of age, we observed a gradual increase with older age in the percentage who tested positive (Fig. S5). That's more about who got it, but there's some discussion of transmission here where the senior author talks about it: https://www.sciencemuseumgroup.org.uk/blog/hunting-down-covid-19/ https://www.sciencemuseumgroup.org.uk/blog/hunting-down-covi... > Children under 10 are less likely to get infected than adults and if they get infected, they are less likely to get seriously ill. What is interesting is that even if children do get infected, they are less likely to transmit the disease to others than adults. We have not found a single instance of a child infecting parents. > There is an amazing diversity in the way in which we react to the virus. --- (I recognize I only presented one study here - there's only so much time in the day :P - but the other high-quality studies I've seen confirm this. Mechanistically it makes sense if you look at the enormous T-cell cross-reactivity in those age groups. And BTW, data on school closures for Influenza (which children seem to transmit much more readily) showed that school closures were ineffective anyway because they would just spread it more outside of school)
abunuwas 6y ago
This makes sense. I've always caught a flu or cold in the tube or in the office, usually from an infected parent. Last year many parents were enjoying a flu-less life while the schools were closed, only to catch it again a week after opening the schools again. I don't have kids, so last year, for the first time in my life, I didn't spend a single day sick.
- mnouquet 6y ago
  Which doesn't mean it's necessarily a good thing, as all these bugs will come back with a vengeance against immune systems.
- kalleboo 6y ago
  Dueling anecdotes: I live in a country where schools have stayed open and our 2 kids have been going to daycare normally throughout the whole pandemic. Our kids have also been eerily free of colds/flus this winter, after the previous winter where it seemed like they had fevers weekly and so much snot they'd choke on it while asleep.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
bsder 6y ago
> Unlike Covid, kids are a significant vector of spread for influenza. Children, in fact, have been hypothesized to be the primary reservoir for influenza. The implication of this is that it would be much better to vaccinate all children against influenza rather than everybody else.
- warkid 6y ago
  Isn't that already the case worldwide? I live in Russia and all schools are routinely vaccinated every autumn here.
  - bsder 6y ago
    I have never heard of such a thing in the US. Someone else will have to chime in about European countries.
    - abunuwas 6y ago
      I live in Europe and never experienced such a thing. Perhaps to be more specific: I grew up in Spain and now live in the UK. To the best of my knowledge, children keep catching the flu every year and passing it on to their parents, who instead pass it on to their colleagues in the office (or used to, before 2020).
    - oblio 6y ago
      Romania, Luxembourg - no flu vaccinations from what I see.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
Rapzid 6y ago
> This should not come as a surprise, and it was largely predictable from the outset....the flu has a base reproduction number I feel like you constructed a straw man by snipping this out from the parent comment: > work against both viruses. If people become reluctant to socialize because of covid (whether or not there be legal restrictions), they will also not spread the flu. You can socialize from 6 feet and with a mask. I took the parent to include staying home in their assessment and I have no clue why anyone would think otherwise. It's peak social distancing. From the CDCs tips for social distancing: > Choose Safe Social Activities: It is possible to stay socially connected with friends and family who don’t live in your home by calling, using video chat, or staying connected through social media.
Roark66 6y ago
>FWIW, my current favored hypothesis is that the closure of schools, and possibly travel, significantly affected the spread of flu. Unlike Covid, kids are a significant vector of spread for influenza. It's one of those little facts about Covid that is...politically incorrect...to acknowledge right now. You say "unlike covid". Maybe I'm biased because half of my family was infected with covid by a 6 year old(everyone's fine now) . Also here in Poland all 3 of our covid "waves" came few weeks after kids went back to schools (no masks are required at schools here, because feelings). It is obvious kids at schools are a very significant spread factor second only to spread at the workplace (also no need for masks at the workplace for some stupid reason unless you are public facing). It is infuriating that tens of thousands of people have to die, because idiot politicians make policy based on stupid factors. For example, it would be inconvenient for everyone at workplaces to have to wear masks so let's tell them to ensure desks are 1.5m apart and everything is fine despite the fact they are not. There was even a local study done recently that estimated 40% of all covid cases were infected at the workplace. This info was major news for few days, then nothing changed and everyone forgot about it. Also, the pinnacle of stupid (bordering on malice - hopefully it will be prosecuted eventually) is making covid treatment policy based on expected drug availability not on what works. It has been proved recently(9th of April) in Lancet corticosteroids given early on lower the incidence of hospitalisation a lot. However, despite many letters from the public "official medical guidelines" in PL still say the exact opposite using an irrelevant study as justification. * The study is irrelevant because they measured efficacy of those steroids on people that are already hospitalised,it found no impact on death rate of already intubated people. The study authors also extrapolated their research of hospitalised intubated people to people pre-hospitalisation and for some reason wrote in their abstract corticosteroids given early actually have detrimental effect (no proof of this assumption in their study whatsoever). Then the second study comes out that measures efficacy of (inhaled) corticosteroids in real early covid patients.It finds it significantly lowers development of symptoms that require hospitalisation. Everyone ignores it. Meanwhile we have over 80 thousand "extra" deaths in a country one tenth the size of US. Oh, and my claim is that people making decisions on covid policy are perfectly aware of their wrongdoing because transcripts of their meetings are mysteriously unavailable.
nl 6y ago
A R0 of 2 vs 2.5 is enormous. The OP's post was correct.
andrewchambers 6y ago
My feeling is people are told to stay home when sick with flu like symptoms, this would also specifically target flu.

by timr 6y ago

mmmrtl 6y ago

Possible explanations include: - More asymptomatic transmission of rhinovirus/enterovirus and adenoviruses than influenza. People often don't notice these illnesses, so wouldn't assume it is COVID and quarantine like they would for influenza. - More fomite spread than influenza. They may be more stable on surfaces or in food

timr 6y ago
These are reasonable theories as well. Though the second one would really have to be "SARS-CoV2 has more fomite spread than flu" to explain the observations. In general though, any sort of explanation that focuses on differences in transmission is more plausible than hand-wavy theories involving R0 and masks. People just desperately want to find evidence that the stuff we did this year made a huge difference.
- thelean12 6y ago
  > People just desperately want to find evidence that the stuff we did this year made a huge difference. I don't think that's true at all. People have been receptive to the increased evidence that transmission on surfaces is pretty unlikely, for example, despite all the efforts we've put into sanitizing surfaces. I think most people can appreciate that all the shit we threw at the wall throughout the pandemic eventually comes down to how much effort it is vs how much benefit we get from it. And our understanding of each measure has changed over time. We now know, generally: Masks indoors are low-effort, medium reward. Masks outdoors are low-effort, low reward. Cleaning surfaces is medium-effort, low reward. Staying home is (economically, societally) high-effort, high reward.
  - timr 6y ago
    To be clear: I'm not making a specific argument about masks vs. sanitizing vs. whatever here. I'm just saying: responses like the OP immediately leap to the conclusion that influenza went away because of all the stuff we did. It's an error in logic, driven by the emotional desire to believe that the stuff we did must have had a serious impact, and that anything else is not worth serious discussion. That's ideology, not science.
    - thelean12 6y ago
      I agree that leaping to conclusions isn't science. It doesn't get past the hypothesis stage and needs proper study. That said, if the massive reduction in flu cases isn't a result of some or all of our Covid efforts, it'd be a hell of a coincidence.
      - timr 6y ago
        > That said, if the massive reduction in flu cases isn't a result of some or all of our Covid efforts, it'd be a hell of a coincidence. Mmmm...I wouldn't go that far. Like I said, my current preferred theory involves schools, but other plausible theories involve things like mutual inhibition: infection with one virus somehow interferes with infection by the other. We have some evidence of this happening in the past. Strains of influenza have abruptly vanished due to this phenomena. Certainly, I'd agree that this is interesting (which is pretty much where I end up on this, vs. the OP, who thinks the matter is settled.)

joshgel 6y ago

2 was published in Feb 2020, so not sure how helpful that is... 1 is not normalized data. It does not account for testing frequency. These percentages are of tests using BioFire. My hospital, for example, does not use BioFire to test for SARS-CoV-2 and so we end up running BioFire much, much less frequently than during a normal year. Anecdotally non-COVID respiratory infections in hospitalized patients have decreased dramatically. Working on trying to demonstrate this with data.

timr 6y ago
> 2 was published in Feb 2020, so not sure how helpful that is... It's a meta-analysis of many other papers. The estimates for the other ILIs have not changed significantly in 2020. Again, this is nitpicking that misses the forest for the trees: the differences in estimated R0 between these viruses is not so precise as to be useful for claiming the effectiveness of something like "masks and distancing". > 1 is not normalized data. It does not account for testing frequency This is incorrect. The data is normalized across all samples. Your hospital's non-participation may change the coverage of the sample, but that doesn't really matter when it's just showing you that rhinovirus hasn't gone away.
- joshgel 6y ago
  In the paper associated with 1 it says: The FilmArray RP test utilization rate (TUR) metric is defined as the non-normalized number of RP patient test results generated each week across the Trend sites (computed as a centered 3-week moving average). To calculate the pathogen detection rate (as displayed in Figure 2 [second data view] and on the Trend website), we compute the rate for each organism at each institution as a centered 3-week moving average. To adjust for the capacity differences between sites, a national aggregate is calculated as the unweighted average of individual site rates. Only data from sites contributing more than 30 tests per week is included to avoid noise from small numbers of tests. Because the calculation of pathogen detection rate includes results from patients with multiple detections, the detection rate for all organisms can, in theory, add up to greater than one. In practice, this does not occur. These are rates. This does not account for testing frequency. If they only tested 1 person in the United States tomorrow, and they had rhino/entero, the graph would show 100% (obviously it wouldn't and they won't only test 1 person). That means that if testing decreased, because for example there were less patients with symptomatic viral infections, but the % positive stayed the same, the chart would not appear to change, even though there were fewer cases... paper: https://publichealth.jmir.org/2018/3/e59/ https://publichealth.jmir.org/2018/3/e59/

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

Majromax 6y ago

> and the small difference in R0 is crude thinking. Given the reproduction number appears as the base of an exponent, I would not consider the difference "small." If influenza has a typical R0 of about 2, reducing contacts by 50% would make its growth non-exponential. If covid has a typical R0 of about 2.5, doing the same would require a further 20% reduction of contacts, to 40% of baseline rather than 50%. Since population behaviour and legal restrictions have diminishing returns (eliminating casual contacts first at lower cost, then progressively higher-cost and more essential contacts), this could easily correspond to a large difference in effected (necessary) policy. > Second, R0 is an estimated value. There are big error bars on all of these estimates -- the overlap is far greater than the 0.5 you're using to claim causality. I have seen no credible evidence that typical (non-pandemic) influenza has an R0 greater than that of SARS-CoV-2. If you have a citation handy to the contrary, I'd be interested in seeing it. In the meantime, I tried to be generous in my estimation of influenza's R0; even your reference [2] places its central estimate at 1.68. > Third, rhinovirus has not gone away (estimated R0 < 2). Nor has adenovirus (estimated R0 ~2.3) [1,2] Rhinovirus and adenovirus both have mean-estimate R0 greater than that of influenza in your reference [2], so if policy is going to eliminate any of these disease from general circulation then influenza would be the first. Furthermore, some analysis does show limited evidence of a reduction of rhinovirus cases (https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-03519-3 https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-03519-3). A confounding factor here, however, is that we don't really have comprehensive like-against-like monitoring for rhinovirus in the way developed nations monitor for influenza. Adenoviruses as a broad category are also not limited to respiratory transmission, so air-focused restrictions would have less effect on these other routes. Finally, I reiterate that flu has a pronounced seasonal variation, whereas rhinovirus is somewhat less variable. A set of social responses only needs to prevent the flu season from starting to make it "disappear."

timr 6y ago
> Given the reproduction number appears as the base of an exponent, I would not consider the difference "small." The difference in measurement is small, relative to the error in measurement. Look at the error bars on the R0 estimates in that paper. Influenza runs from 1.06 to 3.4. You are trying to make micrometer inferences from a parameter where our best estimates are measured in libraries of congress.

codeulike 6y ago

Flu causes fever, which is one of the signs of covid, causing people to isolate. Whereas colds like the rhinovirus have different symptoms and are less likely to cause fever and so they 'fly under the radar' as it were.

math0ne 6y ago

Where I live in Canada schools never really closed and we are seeing the same thing.

Dma54rhs 6y ago
Most of the Europe didn't close schools either or very short periods when numbers where out of the roof. School closure is American teachers union thing really, vast majority of the countries do whatever possible to send kids to school as it takes the priority above everything.

newacct583 6y ago

For clarity: are you genuinely claiming that you believe school closures prevent influenza transmission but that you think other related mitigation strategies like mask-wearing, restaurant closures, work-from-home, etc... don't? That seems a little denialist, honestly.

NaturalPhallacy 6y ago

Did we even test for the flu? Or did we just presume that flu cases were COIVD because the symptoms are so similar? The idea that the flu just 'disappeared' despite world trade continuing just sets off my bullshit detectors. Between all the countries that did little or nothing initially, and the people who refused to wear masks and didn't lock down...there's just no way it dropped to zero. Less? Sure. But gone? I simply don't believe it.

jhayward 6y ago
Yes, everyone with ILI symptoms (influenza-like-illness) who goes to one of the clinics or hospitals participating in the surveillance program gets tested for about 30 pathogens. That's how we know what's going on with all those critters. None of that has changed in the era of COVID, although the pattern of who goes to clinic for what may have. If there were flu out there we'd be detecting it is the bottom line.
collyw 6y ago
Around Autumn it was subtly mentioned that the UK figures were going to be for flu and covid combined. Before that it was noted that flu was killing more than coronavirus in summer.
- jimsmart 6y ago
  Do you have any links to substantiate those claims, please?
  - jrek 6y ago
    You have to understand - it was REAL subtle.
    - jimsmart 6y ago
      You have to understand: your claims are nonsense without evidence.
6y ago

treeman79 6y ago

Having school age kids means constant illness at home. Not usually severe, but annoying. Was one nice perk having kids at home. 9 months of no illness. 6 weeks after going back family had Covid. No it’s back in the routine of mild illness at least monthly.

jacobolus 6y ago

> 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. In some places parents deliberately avoided testing their kids for fear positive tests would interfere with their in-person schooling or extracurricular activities. Repeated claims that kids don’t spread Covid were politically motivated and based largely on junk science. Admittedly doing good studies was extremely difficult in places like the USA where spread was wildly out of control and contact tracing was completely overwhelmed.

ryankemper 6y ago
Actually, what you're saying is untrue. The overwhelming evidence shows that children spread COVID less than adults do. My favorite is this: https://www.nejm.org/doi/pdf/10.1056/NEJMoa2006100?articleTools=true https://www.nejm.org/doi/pdf/10.1056/NEJMoa2006100?articleTo... The study isolated SARS-CoV-2 samples from every positive case, sequenced genome of virus, and tracked the mutation patterns. So, that will avoid a lot of the errors that improper qPCR usage can result in. First things first, age and viral susceptibility: > Of the 564 children under the age of 10 years in the targeted testing group, 38 (6.7%) tested positive, in contrast to positive test result in 1183 of 8635 persons who were 10 years of age or older (13.7%). In analyses involving participants up to 20 years of age, we observed a gradual increase with older age in the percentage who tested positive (Fig. S5). That's more about who got it, but there's some discussion of transmission here where the senior author talks about it: https://www.sciencemuseumgroup.org.uk/blog/hunting-down-covid-19/ https://www.sciencemuseumgroup.org.uk/blog/hunting-down-covi... > Children under 10 are less likely to get infected than adults and if they get infected, they are less likely to get seriously ill. What is interesting is that even if children do get infected, they are less likely to transmit the disease to others than adults. We have not found a single instance of a child infecting parents. > There is an amazing diversity in the way in which we react to the virus. --- (I recognize I only presented one study here - there's only so much time in the day :P - but the other high-quality studies I've seen confirm this. Mechanistically it makes sense if you look at the enormous T-cell cross-reactivity in those age groups. And BTW, data on school closures for Influenza (which children seem to transmit much more readily) showed that school closures were ineffective anyway because they would just spread it more outside of school)

abunuwas 6y ago

This makes sense. I've always caught a flu or cold in the tube or in the office, usually from an infected parent. Last year many parents were enjoying a flu-less life while the schools were closed, only to catch it again a week after opening the schools again. I don't have kids, so last year, for the first time in my life, I didn't spend a single day sick.

mnouquet 6y ago
Which doesn't mean it's necessarily a good thing, as all these bugs will come back with a vengeance against immune systems.
kalleboo 6y ago
Dueling anecdotes: I live in a country where schools have stayed open and our 2 kids have been going to daycare normally throughout the whole pandemic. Our kids have also been eerily free of colds/flus this winter, after the previous winter where it seemed like they had fevers weekly and so much snot they'd choke on it while asleep.

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bsder 6y ago

> Unlike Covid, kids are a significant vector of spread for influenza. Children, in fact, have been hypothesized to be the primary reservoir for influenza. The implication of this is that it would be much better to vaccinate all children against influenza rather than everybody else.

warkid 6y ago
Isn't that already the case worldwide? I live in Russia and all schools are routinely vaccinated every autumn here.
- bsder 6y ago
  I have never heard of such a thing in the US. Someone else will have to chime in about European countries.
  - abunuwas 6y ago
    I live in Europe and never experienced such a thing. Perhaps to be more specific: I grew up in Spain and now live in the UK. To the best of my knowledge, children keep catching the flu every year and passing it on to their parents, who instead pass it on to their colleagues in the office (or used to, before 2020).
  - oblio 6y ago
    Romania, Luxembourg - no flu vaccinations from what I see.
- deleted 6y ago
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Rapzid 6y ago

> This should not come as a surprise, and it was largely predictable from the outset....the flu has a base reproduction number I feel like you constructed a straw man by snipping this out from the parent comment: > work against both viruses. If people become reluctant to socialize because of covid (whether or not there be legal restrictions), they will also not spread the flu. You can socialize from 6 feet and with a mask. I took the parent to include staying home in their assessment and I have no clue why anyone would think otherwise. It's peak social distancing. From the CDCs tips for social distancing: > Choose Safe Social Activities: It is possible to stay socially connected with friends and family who don’t live in your home by calling, using video chat, or staying connected through social media.

Roark66 6y ago

>FWIW, my current favored hypothesis is that the closure of schools, and possibly travel, significantly affected the spread of flu. Unlike Covid, kids are a significant vector of spread for influenza. It's one of those little facts about Covid that is...politically incorrect...to acknowledge right now. You say "unlike covid". Maybe I'm biased because half of my family was infected with covid by a 6 year old(everyone's fine now) . Also here in Poland all 3 of our covid "waves" came few weeks after kids went back to schools (no masks are required at schools here, because feelings). It is obvious kids at schools are a very significant spread factor second only to spread at the workplace (also no need for masks at the workplace for some stupid reason unless you are public facing). It is infuriating that tens of thousands of people have to die, because idiot politicians make policy based on stupid factors. For example, it would be inconvenient for everyone at workplaces to have to wear masks so let's tell them to ensure desks are 1.5m apart and everything is fine despite the fact they are not. There was even a local study done recently that estimated 40% of all covid cases were infected at the workplace. This info was major news for few days, then nothing changed and everyone forgot about it. Also, the pinnacle of stupid (bordering on malice - hopefully it will be prosecuted eventually) is making covid treatment policy based on expected drug availability not on what works. It has been proved recently(9th of April) in Lancet corticosteroids given early on lower the incidence of hospitalisation a lot. However, despite many letters from the public "official medical guidelines" in PL still say the exact opposite using an irrelevant study as justification. * The study is irrelevant because they measured efficacy of those steroids on people that are already hospitalised,it found no impact on death rate of already intubated people. The study authors also extrapolated their research of hospitalised intubated people to people pre-hospitalisation and for some reason wrote in their abstract corticosteroids given early actually have detrimental effect (no proof of this assumption in their study whatsoever). Then the second study comes out that measures efficacy of (inhaled) corticosteroids in real early covid patients.It finds it significantly lowers development of symptoms that require hospitalisation. Everyone ignores it. Meanwhile we have over 80 thousand "extra" deaths in a country one tenth the size of US. Oh, and my claim is that people making decisions on covid policy are perfectly aware of their wrongdoing because transcripts of their meetings are mysteriously unavailable.

nl 6y ago

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

andrewchambers 6y ago

My feeling is people are told to stay home when sick with flu like symptoms, this would also specifically target flu.