No flu season anywhere in the world this year ...

[Dustyboots]

Christina Pagel (alternative SAGE) has just said this on Newsnight. She says there's been no flu season anywhere in the world this year because of Covid restrictions etc

Does anyone else know whether this is the case?

She was suggesting that if we kept restrictions up we could eliminate Covid and in the future eliminate most things, therefore reducing deaths forever!

I think she's a bit potty.

@Jgdgjbdssvuuuuu

“It's a completely different virus”

That’s your opinion

It's scientific fact 🤣

Coronavirus' and flu virus' are different.

There's 4 coronavirus' in transmission continuously that are just a common cold alongside flu virus which cause flu.

This coronavirus though (currently) causes an illness worse than both in some people and just a common cold in others.

I was just thinking about norovirus the other day. We haven't had the outbreaks we usually do where hospitals have to put the warning notices up about not going in if you have had sickness or upset stomach in the last 24 hours.

Maybe keeping some of the focus on cleanliness may be positive.

We have rest home bed shortages in NZ this year due to lockdown in 2020 leading to less flu and other infectious diseases spreading and therefore less elderly people passing away.

Page 6 of local paper - link below

issuu.com/nelsonweekly/docs/zz_nelwk-20210210_pg_1-32_-_lowres/6

This is so incredibly insulting to those who have studied for years and perhaps also worked for years in molecular biology/virology/immunology etc. Yes it's not easy to grasp (that's why all that study is needed!) but you really have to start trusting that people who have studied these things actually know what they're talking about. SARS-COV-2 has been genetically sequenced. It's not an opinion!

I actually don't think it's hard to grasp at all, you might not understand the technicalities or finer details but it's easy enough to imagine a Great Dane and a chihuahua are both dogs but they have very different characteristics in both the way they look and behave. Think of viruses like different breeds of dogs (or any analogy you like. It's enough to understand they are a different group)

Christina Pagel is a mathematician rather than an epidemiologist or virologist though isn't she?
So whilst her objective statistical approach is going to be (taking it down to Flu 101 beginners level)
Covid + fewer cases of flu this year = flu has been eradicated by Covid...
if you add in actual human behaviour (what epidemiologist research and modelling does) and other variables you get the not quite so exciting
Period of lockdown due to Covid (including zillions of measures of various governments keeping people physically distant, less international travel, better general hygiene, no mass gatherings, people taking up the flu vaccine more than they probably would have in an ordinary winter etc etc) + fewer cases of flu (could also be down to it being a milder flu year anyway) = the sum of its parts. Covid restrictions have obviously helped in preventing the spread of this winter's flu which was a weedy beast anyway compared to other recent winters.

I'm sure it wasn't her intention to have people think that Covid=flu but it seems to have had that effect unfortunately. And of course, a new strain of flu will be out next winter anyway.

It'd be lovely if Covid had eradicated flu, but that really would rather imply a hand of God scenario given the impossibility of it, and I'm sure neither Nagal or any other scientist would give that much credence.

Apologies, autocorrect has changed Pagel to Nagal for some reason!

I hope the government aren't pressured into lockdowns or other restrictions each year, to prevent deaths from flu and covid.

I think it was Christina Pagel writing on Twitter on this a few weeks ago so I wonder if she was having the same discussion yesterday...

In normal times we accept that x tens of thousand people will die of flu each year.

This year that number is tiny. Possibly due to the (2) category above (social distancing ad increased vaccination).

If we as a society could do more to choose to reduce those “normal” deaths, would we? As in: if we can reduce tens of thousands of deaths to hundreds by strict measures, would we chose to reduce tens of thousands to, say, low thousands by some measures (wearing masks in winter, handwashing, strict working at home for any bugs, etc).

My apologies if this wasn’t her argument, but I found it interesting.

I can't help thinking about how many people in a normal time would go to work and school with a runny nose and sneezes, there were even ads on TV for whatever brand of 'cold and flu' meds that showed how you could keep working through. I think that is unheard of now, anyone with those symptoms would stay off.

I’ve also read flu season was especially low this year.

• flu is less transmissible than COVID
• opportunity for its transmission massively reduced with all the masks/social distancing and WFH etc.

As previous posters have said these virus are sequenced so we know they are different. We can tell the difference between one strain of COVID and another let alone a whole different virus.

Covid isn't flu.

Yes the impact of protective measures taken to prevent covid on flu was first shown in Australia.

Anecdotally it has also reduced the transmission of vomiting/diarrhea bugs in the autumn term in primary schools.

So we’ve all been a bunch of manky sods because before we didn’t wash our hands or surfaces enough.

Well, yeah. I think this (though I am in no way a scientist!). I work in a hospital and when we got new benches (some shiny white plastic?) we were already cleaning them 2-3 x a day as the next receptionist came in came in and that was before Covid but mostly to clean it of any marks - though biro marks we have to get off with the hand gel -which of course we used before Covid as well. We will continue to use the wet wipes after Covid. I just think it makes sense.

I would happily endure flu every year to have my old life back, and all the vomiting bugs in the world bring them on.

Or should I say bring them back!
It will be a sign of success when good old D&V starts circulating once again.

The causes for the drop in flu cases are as far as I know: the increase in the take up of the flu vaccine and social distancing measures.

You might ask why social distancing so much more helpful with flu than covid but that is simply because covid is much more infectious. In particular the presymptomatic but infectious period for covid is longer than for flu.

@SmednotaSmoo

I think it was Christina Pagel writing on Twitter on this a few weeks ago so I wonder if she was having the same discussion yesterday...

In normal times we accept that x tens of thousand people will die of flu each year.

This year that number is tiny. Possibly due to the (2) category above (social distancing ad increased vaccination).

If we as a society could do more to choose to reduce those “normal” deaths, would we? As in: if we can reduce tens of thousands of deaths to hundreds by strict measures, would we chose to reduce tens of thousands to, say, low thousands by some measures (wearing masks in winter, handwashing, strict working at home for any bugs, etc).

My apologies if this wasn’t her argument, but I found it interesting.

I’m quite concerned this might become a regular thing; after all, seasonal flu kills hundreds of children in the US alone. And the yearly vaccine is guesswork (good guesswork, but they do get to wrong) so not really preventable by vaccines and such.

We really can’t live like this though. The promise is that this is just for COVID and just for a short time. I’d hate to think we have to live like this forever or whenever flu gets out of control, like it does once every couple years

There are some dangerously ignorant statements on here. Since when has flu been capable of laying down blood clots in any organ of the body ? And been so infectious? Or cause debilitating long term affects in patients ? Or if we had not had lockdown killed possibly 700000 people in the uk ? 1% of those who caught it ?

Still people are ignoring facts. Unbelievable.

@Unsure33

There are some dangerously ignorant statements on here. Since when has flu been capable of laying down blood clots in any organ of the body ? And been so infectious? Or cause debilitating long term affects in patients ? Or if we had not had lockdown killed possibly 700000 people in the uk ? 1% of those who caught it ?

Still people are ignoring facts. Unbelievable.

👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻

Are the people saying that covid is actually flu just ignorant of basic science/fact, or is this part of some conspiracy theory? I’m not sure anyone has explained their ‘opinion’ yet.

I was also wondering about the flu vaccine. I know that we tweak our vaccine based on how the Southern Hemisphere flu virus mutates. So does the the reverse happen as well so Southern Hemisphere vaccine gets tweaked based on our northern hemisphere mutation? I’m not sure if it matters where the pharmaceutical companies are based. I’m also guessing there was be less flu in the Southern Hemisphere anyway as fewer countries/population in the vulnerable climate.

reduction in flu has been a positive side effect of lockdown and PPE mitigation. I don’t think for a second the govt would support more winter lockdowns just for flu. Flu doesn’t totally overwhelm the NHS.

I think this shows that the flu is less infectious than covid, and that restrictions that just about contain one infectious disease will of course pretty much wipe out another less infectious one that is spread the same way, especially one that is also vaccinated against

(isn't it the case that the low and variable effectiveness of the flu jab is to do with predicting strains, and that if predictions are wrong, effectiveness dips; still highly effective against 3 or 4 strains, but if they're the wrong strains it's just nit good)

I can't believe after all the information that has been made available to people this year that people think flu and coronavirus are basically the same! The mind boggles!

@KeepWashingThoseHands

reduction in flu has been a positive side effect of lockdown and PPE mitigation. I don’t think for a second the govt would support more winter lockdowns just for flu. Flu doesn’t totally overwhelm the NHS.

This is absolutely not the case. Flu can and does overwhelm medical bodies:

www.nytimes.com/2018/01/03/world/europe/uk-national-health-service.html

My guess is that influenza is not as contagious as covid, therefore the restrictions we have in place have helped flu not to spread?