AIBU to ask if you know anyone who has had flu this season?

[notanotherlockdownsurely]

So where's the flu this season?
I don't know a single person who's been off work with it, a single neighbour or friend.

I had the flu three years ago
I'd had the vaccine as I do every year
One minute I was getting ready to go out with friends to watch a band for the evening the next I felt incredibly ill. So from feeling perfectly well to almost collapsing took about five minutes. For three days I couldn't get out of bed except to crawl to the bathroom, the next few days I could get downstairs and make a cup of tea and not much else. I didn't wash, eat nor clean my teeth and lost about a stone in weight. It was absolutely horrible, my temperature remained high for some days and every single part of my body hurt. I didn't have a cold but developed a nasty cough. Honestly wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy

It's a bit early for flu anyway - but in any case there was hardly any flu in the Southern Hemisphere last year, so I imagine it's odds on for a very quiet flu season for reasons that ought to be obvious to all.

No, but TBH I don't think I know someone who has actual flu, rather than "flu like symptoms" most years.

This is from the latest Govt surveillance report on respiratory illness in the U.K., for week 51 ie the week before Xmas:

"The overall influenza positivity remained very low at 0.0% in week 51, with none of 1496 samples testing positive for flu"

In other words there is no or virtually no flu virus circulating yet.

Link: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachmentdata/file/947881/WeeklyyFluanddCOVID-19reportt_w52.pdf

Flu isn't diagnosable by symptoms. It can present as a sniffle, it can present as being bedridden and delirious. Three quarters, that's 75% of people with flu are asymptomatic. People always insist it has to be severe illness but that's simply not true.

Loads of people on the "awaiting a test result" threads come back negative. They all presumably have other viruses and there are plenty of them. Our primary school has been riddled with coughs and colds that weren't Covid. Flu will be out there, in reduced numbers of course, but we won't know half the time who does and doesn't have it.

Governments have surveillance programmes for flu - they have a network of "sentinel" primary health care providers, who collect samples from people with acute respiratory illness which are tested for the different types of respiratory virus.

The U.K. detected no flu virus last week. In France, one sample has tested positive for flu virus since September. I think it is fair to say that there is almost no flu virus circulating (yet).

And your actual point is?

The point is that in all likelihood none of us knows anyone who's had flu this winter, because the flu virus hasn't been circulating in Europe.