It will be interesting to see the death rate from flu this year

[RubyandBen]

Do you think it will be well below normal because of the number of people who died with/from CV in the past few months?

To put it bluntly a lot of the people who would have died from flu and pneumonia this winter have already died of COVID.

When you look at the figures, only 50% of care home entrants will survive one year and the average stay is just 2 years.

@RubyandBen

This should take huge pressure off hospitals this winter. We normally see patients on trolleys in corridors due to flu numbers. Not saying they won't still be over run with CV.

Exactly. There will be side effects from a lot of our restrictions that mean there is less pressure on hospitals. People travelling less and working from home mean less RTA’s, less contact sports and exercise induced injuries, less alcohol related injuries and I even saw a report (sadly didn’t save a link) that suicides and self harm reduced over lockdown and the speculation was part of that was because people had less opportunity to act on their impulses if they were stuck at home with others there.

There are pros and cons as a result of every action but from an immediate hospital capacity perspective anything that reduces pressure at peak times is a good thing. It means our health services are better placed to pick up the pieces afterwards even though that will bring its own problems.

graphs show dramatic reduction in flu in southern hemisphere compared to previous 5 years.

Flu affects children (too) though, it's not like covid.
You can't say "They died of covid instead" because that would mean that you thought the only flu deaths were same demographic that covid hits = elderly people -- this is not true for flu.

Flu deaths seem to be down across all age groups, and right from early in the C19 pandemic. Reports from May about reduced season in S-hemisphere.

It's good news if it stays down, that is key thing.

Pneumonia vaccine is part of the routine childhood vaccination schedule and has been for many years.
Social distancing should reduce flu transmission but equally the same population are vulnerable to Covid so may have succumbed to Covid instead. There’s also a push for uptake of the flu vaccine which should reduce cases and transmission. I think flu cases will be down for all of these reasons.

@Northernsoulgirl45

Agree many have already been taken by COVID

Incidentally there seems to be a pneumonia vaccine this year. Did not know that existed.

It has been around for ages. Anyone eligible for the flu vaccine should be offered it every 10 years. If you aren't eligible for the flu vaccine, you wouldn't hear of it really

Its weird as both dh and I are eligible for flu hab but we have never been offered it. Although right now we can't even get flu jab as they have run out of initial supplies. Dh especially should have it as ECV and immunosuppressed.

Can anyone actually work out how many deaths from seasonal flu there have been in the last few years? There is a lot of possibly inaccurate information online.

It's this correct?

"In the UK it is estimated that an average of 600 people a year die from complications of flu. In some years it is estimated that this can rise to over 10,000 deaths (see for example this UK study from 2013 , which estimated over 13,000 deaths resulting from flu in 2008-09). Flu leads to hundreds of thousands of GP visits and tens of thousands of hospital stays a year."

vk.ovg.ox.ac.uk/vk/influenza-flu

That's what i'd have thought but weren't more people dying of flu last month than Covid?

This is what everyone was saying at work. Headlines read 'flu and pneumonia' in reality flu killed about 400 vs pneumonia killing 13000.

So flu killing more than covid is wrong. But that's what the headlines were creating. Utter bullshit listening to everyone at work saying this is all madness as flu is worse and killing more

@notevenat20

Here are annual flu reports going back for the last 8 seasons

www.gov.uk/government/statistics/annual-flu-reports

I'd imagine lower than usual given social distancing, and extra hygiene and extra the care elderly and vulnerable are taking

The spread of flu and other bugs should be really low in the general population this year, so we should have less deaths indeed.
We may keep some habits from this, I reckon hand gel will be permanent in tge work place and shops.

@scaevola

Are you able to extract the number of deaths due to flu from those?

@gluteustothemaximus

That's what i'd have thought but weren't more people dying of flu last month than Covid?

This is what everyone was saying at work. Headlines read 'flu and pneumonia' in reality flu killed about 400 vs pneumonia killing 13000.

So flu killing more than covid is wrong. But that's what the headlines were creating. Utter bullshit listening to everyone at work saying this is all madness as flu is worse and killing more

flu deaths are impossible to pin down anywhere near as accurately as Covid because seasonal flu is not a notifiable disease so all figures of 'flu deaths' are estimates only. They cannot be compared to Covid because Covid deaths are directly measured. However much you quibble about how accurate measures of Covid deaths are, the fact is they are directly measured and flu deaths are not.

If you compare actual measured flu deaths with Covid deaths, pretty much in any flu year, the flu directly measured deaths are tiny in comparison. This would probably not be the case in a flu pandemic as we would measure the deaths better but the last proper flu pandemic (excluding swine flu which was in the end much much less deadly than Covid) we didn't have the ability to measure worldwide infections and deaths that we do now so we have no comparison

Pneumonia is a description of an effect on the lungs, the source of that pneumonia can be cause by a variety of organisms, including bacteria, viruses and fungi. Lots and lots of viruses can cause pneumonia so lumping 'pneumonia' deaths with anything else is pointless.

[quote notevenat20]@scaevola

Are you able to extract the number of deaths due to flu from those?[/quote]
Quote from the 2019-20 report linked to:

Through the USISS mandatory scheme, a total of 3,157 ICU/HDU admissions of confirmed influenza were reported across the UK from week 40 2018 to week 15 2019, including 312 deaths, based on combined data from England, Scotland and Northern Ireland

The cumulative number of cases and deaths were slightly lower compared to the 2017 to 2018 season (3,245 cases and 330 deaths) but higher than the 2016 to 2017 season (992 cases and 112 deaths) in England (Figure 17)

@notevenat20 - yes you can

notevenat20 - yes you can

:) I tried and I can't on my phone.

@bumblingbovine49

How do you get up to 22,000 deaths from flu in the 2017/18 from that?

[quote notevenat20]@bumblingbovine49

How do you get up to 22,000 deaths from flu in the 2017/18 from that?[/quote]
No idea I'm afraid . I am assuming that have some way of working out people who have died of flu but don't make it to ICU it who are are not tested for it . They must think there are a lot of those I assume

@bumblingbovine49

That makes sense.

This should take huge pressure off hospitals this winter. We normally see patients on trolleys in corridors due to flu numbers. Not saying they won't still be over run with CV

Probably more pneumonia than flu.

The pneumonia vaccine is also given as a one off at age 65.

Thank you @JS87