Flu Has Disappeared Worldwide during the COVID Pandemic

[Ineedmoney504]

Word

I ate a whole bag of broccoli last night to go with my scrimp tacos

Last week I caught a cold and it was gone in less than a day.

broccoli don’t even have nutritional value lol.

 

[Professor Emeritus]

broccoli don’t even have nutritional value lol.

Breh, please don't believe just any random headline you see from random websites online and then repeat what you heard without checking it first.

The most important aspect of a healthy diet is variety, but broccoli is certainly a nutritional food.

Broccoli: Health benefits, nutrition, and tips

Broccoli: Health Benefits, Risks & Nutrition Facts | Live Science

Health Benefits of Broccoli

Broccoli 101: Nutrition Facts and Health Benefits

 

[BrooklynShow]

That's only a small % of the schools in California that got those waivers, and even out of those many of them re-closed or failed to open at all when California had its surge in December/January.

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From this study (it was actually 10-13%, on average):

The impact of regular school closure on seasonal influenza epidemics: a data-driven spatial transmission model for Belgium

"Christmas holidays are found to be the school closure period with the highest impact on the epidemic outcome, on both its timing and burden, for the 2008/2009 influenza season. Here we assess how this result may vary depending on the timing of the season, by investigating its interplay with the school closure calendar.

In order to distinguish between effects induced by the timing of the influenza season only and those related to other season-specific features (e.g. severity of the epidemic, strain circulation, weather, and others), we considered the same epidemic simulated with the realistic model. We explored anticipations and delays of this epidemic of two or four weeks and compared the results with the realistic model.

The strongest impact is observed for the earliest epidemic (− 4w model) reporting a median anticipation of more than one week with respect to the realistic model (once discounted for the earlier start) and a median reduction of the peak incidence of about 10% (Fig. 5). All other epidemics are rather similar to the realistic one, except for the − 2w model reporting a considerable reduction of the peak incidence (median of approximately 13% across patches). In addition, it is important to note that, differently from previous effects, the anticipation or delay of the season leads to a considerably larger variation of the simulated epidemic indicators across patches, signaled by the larger confidence intervals reported in Fig. 5."


And that wasn't just a temporary reduction, even though the closure was just temporary. Even that one little temporary closure could reduce the peak of the flu season by a median of 10-13%, depending on the timing of the epidemic. In fact, if you read the paper is shows that even the weekends off reduce the spread of the flu season. If even weekend breaks reduce flu spread, then how much more would months of no school reduce it?




I think you're failing to understand how connected we are. The flu is global every year, the same strain moves across the world from one country to the next. If a country has a big lockdown, masks, etc. and flu doesn't spread, then it doesn't magically just jump and skip to the next country. That one nation that reduced flu spread will have a big positive effect on the next country in line. Sure, a "few" cases will move, and if the people in that area act stupid then those cases will multiple over time. But EVERY time the epidemic goes through a place that is behaving in a positive manner, it's going to significantly reduce how much the next place is hit.

Those lockdowns, school closures, lack of mass events, social distancing, and mask wearing people in some places will slow the national spread in ALL places because they act as serious speed bumps to transmission. That's how every epidemic works, the disease can't magically jump over distances to only hit the "bad" people who aren't doing the right thing.

Since everything you mentioned has been highly effective in decreasing the transmission of the flu by 97%, why do you think there hasn't been a similar decrease in the transmission of Covid-19 during the same 4 month timeframe? They are transmitted the same and there infection rates are not that far apart.

 

[Professor Emeritus]

Since everything you mentioned has been highly effective in decreasing the transmission of the flu by 97%, why do you think there hasn't been a similar decrease in the transmission of Covid-19 during the same 4 month timeframe? They are transmitted the same and there infection rates are not that far apart.

Again, it's because Covid IS significantly more contagious than influenza and with exponential disease transmission, it's all about whether you cross that threshold or not. That's what all the talk regarding "herd immunity" is about.

The average person with flu infects 1.3 other people. The average person with Covid infects 3 other people. That is the most critical # to understand.

Is Covid more deadly and contagious than seasonal flu? | David Spiegelhalter and Anthony Masters

For any disease, if you can reduce that "average" transmission number to less than 1, the epidemic dies out. That's what herd immunity is all about. Say that the average person with flu would infect 1.3 people, but everyone manages to cut their daily "transmission likely" contacts by half. Then they may only infect 0.65 people on average. So the # of people who become infected by the current crop of sick people will be LESS than the number infected now, and as long as people maintain their precautions the epidemic will die out.

If you start at the beginning of the flu season and on average EVERYONE has already cut down their contacts by 50% or more, then the flu has no traction to get started. It just keeps dying out everywhere it starts, it can't increase because too many people are moving smart. Even if some people are moving stupid and transmit to 1-2 other people, the fact that so many other people in the community are moving smart means that even the "stupid" people are contacting far fewer persons than they normally would, so the transmission dies out quicker. It keeps running into dead ends.


Unfortunately, for Covid the transmission # is more like 3. So even if you reduce your contacts by 50%, the transmission # is still at 1.5 and you still have exponential growth. Even under those 50% "reduced" conditions you're spreading the disease faster than flu spreads in a NORMAL year. You're not even breaking even until you've reduced significant contacts by at least 67%, and you can't be confident that you're moving towards forcing the epidemic to die out until you get to at least 80% or higher. And if you're one of the dumb people not following precautions at all, you may be spreading to 2-3-4 people - and that exponential growth is gonna ramp up scary. That's why they say for herd immunity to take hold, we can't just have 50% vaccinated, we need to get more like 80% vaccinated so we can reduce that transmission number down to something more like 0.6 and really force it to die out.



A separate but related issue is that flu typically shows symptoms in 1-4 days, while Covid can be 1-14 days. That means more people walk around with Covid for longer without knowing they have symptoms. So in a school or other place where kids are being monitored closely and pulled out the moment they show symptoms, the flu has very little time to spread, while Covid still has significant time to spread before its detected. So the fact that people are much more vigilant about watching for disease than they usually are means flu is controlled quite well. That vigilance will help with Covid control too, just not as much as it helps with flu since that longer incubation period gives Covid more time to spread unawares.

 

[NoMayo15]

I can't believe we've been dealing with covid 19 for over a year now, and there are seemingly still people just now learning that this virus is more contagious and deadly than the flu.

 

[Black Panther]

It would be more shocking if influenza hadn't gone down dramatically.

Honestly, this is the part that amazes me the most. How do y'all think diseases spread? Wouldn't increased hygiene, social distancing, and face masks--not to mention regular vaccines--effectively drop flu rates to record lows?

That makes sense to me, even without looking at the hard data. I even said to myself last year that I'd be curious how the lockdown would effect transmission rates of other diseases. It's like nikkas can't fathom this being good news.

And before anyone (i.e. @thekingsmen ) mentions it: yes, the prevention methods we used for COVID-19 have existed for years (hygiene, masks, social distancing, vaccines), but they have never been practiced on this scale. Not even close. Especially since it was enforced by law/executive orders.

 

[Professor Emeritus]

Honestly, this is the part that amazes me the most. How do y'all think diseases spread? Wouldn't increased hygiene, social distancing, and face masks--not to mention regular vaccines--effectively drop flu rates to record lows?

That makes sense to me, even without looking at the hard data. I even said to myself last year that I'd be curious how the lockdown would effect transmission rates of other diseases. It's like nikkas can't fathom this being good news.

And before anyone (i.e. @thekingsmen ) mentions it: yes, the prevention methods we used for COVID-19 have existed for years (hygiene, masks, social distancing, vaccines), but they have never been practiced on this scale. Not even close. Especially since it was enforced by law/executive orders.

Nah man, that dumbass is still trying to claim that the lockdowns are what CAUSE Covid.