3 ms·
That would seem to make sense if covid displaced flu entirely. But flu + equivalently harmful covid is twice as bad as historical flu.
by phonypc 5y ago
That would seem to make sense if covid displaced flu entirely. But flu + equivalently harmful covid is twice as bad as historical flu.
- eo3x0 5y agoInfluenza B is thought to have been made extinct recently due to the pressures introduced by SARS-CoV-2 https://www.webmd.com/lung/news/20211025/covid-pandemic-may-have-driven-a-flu-strain-into-extinction https://www.webmd.com/lung/news/20211025/covid-pandemic-may-...
- rsfern 5y agoWow, webmd made it really hard to find the primary source for that. To be clear, they are attributing this drop off of this flu strain to be likely due to pandemic mitigation efforts, as well as maybe lucky timing and some specifics of how this strain spreads Since it doesn’t seem plausible to repeat the wide scale pandemic mitigation controls any time soon, I doubt we can keep wiping out flu strains, but we could certainly reduce the damage the flu does if we want to https://www.nature.com/articles/s41579-021-00642-4 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41579-021-00642-4
- rootusrootus 5y agoDouble the normal flu rate would be just 20% of what we're seeing this year from covid.