>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 sig

>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.