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.

@endlesscraziness

For those of you that think flu is testing positive for COVID, we use 4 in 1 tests that also detect flu. There's been zero flu cases in England for weeks.

There's some thinking that the Covid virus interacts somehow and prevents flu. Even in the US where people aren't following precautions there's a 98% drop in flu cases.

Do scientists have predictions on how that will work in future? If flu has disappeared this year where will it come from next year? I'm not a scientist (fairly obvious) but I'm thinking of smallpox, vaccination meant no smallpox circulating so end of smallpox. If something about covid has resulted in no flu circulating is that the end of flu? If not do we know why.

What I don't understand is that people who must be interested (they have opinions, are discussing it on here) don't watch the news on TV or listen to it on the radio, which would teach them very basic stuff such as the fact that scientists are able to tell a coronavirus from a flu virus just like they are able to tell a dog from a cockroach.

I think the idea that we could have lockdowns ongoing is silly. However a cultural shift towards washing hands more frequently and wearing masks in places like supermarkets might help.

Though I’d like to know if there were any risks from reducing our contact with viruses etc.

I do think it’s an interesting discussion. On one hand it’s been good not to get all the usual colds and bugs going around. I think only time will tell if we all get more ill than normal next year.

I think over cleanliness is damaging. So exposure to germs, dirt, mild illnesses such as colds (and then you fight them off) is a good thing.

We definitely need to ditch the anti/bac stuff in homes. Santiser (but alcohol not anti-bac) is ok where hand washing is not available.
Masks? I’m not sure going forward. I do think staying home when you are ill is a good thing. Maybe we can ease off on school attendance figures?

If social distancing, lockdown and face masks are capable of minimising the nanoscopic transmission of flu virus particles then these measures would have had the exact same effect on the nanoscopic covid19 virus particles. The fact that there has been no flu season across the globe this year but there has covid19 simply demonstrates how covid19 was the most dominant virus strain in circulation this year in the same way that some strains of the flu prove to more dominant than ones seen in previous years. The most dominant virus wins out.

@AIMD

I think the idea that we could have lockdowns ongoing is silly. However a cultural shift towards washing hands more frequently and wearing masks in places like supermarkets might help.

Though I’d like to know if there were any risks from reducing our contact with viruses etc.

A cultural shift towards more hand washing would be a good thing. I think people have become much more relaxed about that sort of thing. It is shocking how often I've seen a smartly dressed woman use a public loo and leave without washing her hands, makes me feel sick particularly if it is in a restaurant and they sit down and start eating.

I was born in a back to back house, shared loo at the top of the yard, no bath, one cold tap in the house. It was my gran's house and if I think of her hygiene standards I am ashamed. It was scrubbed to within an inch of it's life, the front doorstep was donkey stoned weekly but she also scrubbed the front wall as high as she could and the pavement. I have very early memories of standing behind the babygate on the front door watching bucketfuls of soapy bleached water being thrown down before and after she scrubbed it. If that was outside you can probably imagine inside.

The shared loo was immaculate, frequently whitewashed and woe betide the woman (men didn't clean) who didn't do her share.

I don't know the last time I washed my front step. My drive is so grotty I'm going to get someone to powerspay it, my gran and her neighbours would never have let that happen.

Having said that kids played and got dirty, our favourite place to play was the bomb building site. Gran's saying was, "little pigs thrive on muck." She disapproved of people not letting children play and get dirty but once in the house you were scrubbed, not quite as vigorously as the front step but not far off.
Sorry gran.

@ravenmum

What I don't understand is that people who must be interested (they have opinions, are discussing it on here) don't watch the news on TV or listen to it on the radio, which would teach them very basic stuff such as the fact that scientists are able to tell a coronavirus from a flu virus just like they are able to tell a dog from a cockroach.

Ooh! I am going to take that with me, in the hope I can use it, out loud, at some point!

Dog from cockroach!

@ravenmum

What I don't understand is that people who must be interested (they have opinions, are discussing it on here) don't watch the news on TV or listen to it on the radio, which would teach them very basic stuff such as the fact that scientists are able to tell a coronavirus from a flu virus just like they are able to tell a dog from a cockroach.

It's weird, isn't it? Maybe some of modern science is indistinguishable from magic to many people. But it's not magic or opinion. We can not only compare the sequences to know the differences between viruses, we can look at their structures in considerable detail. It takes complicated equipment and a lot of fiendishly difficult computations (fortunately extraordinary clever people write software so that slightly less clever people can do this). There's been so much work in the last year - lots of structures of the covid spike protein, many of them complexed with various antibodies. So then we can do more calculations and figure out the likely effects in those binding regions of mutations to the virus or tweaks in the antibodies.

Here's a random example so you can see it for yourselves. The green is a bit of covid, the rest is an antibody.

www.rcsb.org/structure/6XKQ

@ancientgran

I agree that not washing hands is shocking, but part of the reason we don’t do those other things is time constraints. More women working full time, less time for them to scrub doorsteps, walls and pavements. That’s understandable.

@Delatron yes to the easing of attendance figures. My worry is that push for 100% will be worse though.....😞

[quote Circumlocutious]@ancientgran

I agree that not washing hands is shocking, but part of the reason we don’t do those other things is time constraints. More women working full time, less time for them to scrub doorsteps, walls and pavements. That’s understandable.[/quote]
I don't think it is that straightforward. My gran was a single mother, always worked. I think working class women in those areas worked far more than is acknowledged now. Not a 9 - 5 career type job but up at 5 am to clean offices or when kids were at school scrubbing other women's floors.

It is priorities isn't it, they did prioritise those things because they didn't have the anti bac or as many jabs to protect them and more significantly their children. I remember the polio epidemics, just like most of us are more aware of hygiene than normal because of covid they fought that sort of battle all through their lives.

I think Covid is awful but I am sceptical that the U.K. reporting overestimates it. The face that if you have Covid in the 28 days previously then it is being really order on the figures presented in briefings as a Covid fatality means all other deaths show as lower compared with previous years. This means that Covid is considered so awful almost to the point that any negative impact of the restrictions is dismissed. Long term I personally think we will see that Covid has had an even greater impact upon lack of screening so illnesses were not caught in early stages, poor health both physical and mental etc etc

[quote AIMD]@Delatron yes to the easing of attendance figures. My worry is that push for 100% will be worse though.....😞[/quote]
It is madness isn't it. One year one of my children caught a virus, off school for a week, sent him back and got a phone call teacher didn't think he should be in school. Kept him off for two or three days, sent him back got a phone call teacher didn't think he should be in school. Got a call from the attendance officer (can't remember their title) and was questioned on why he had missed so much time that term. I suggested she ask his teacher as she kept sending him home.

You can't win can you.

How do you get deleted on this topic???

Hand washing in secondary schools is never going to become a thing though, without tripling the length of breaks and increasing sink capacity by 10 x.

We have 4 sinks per 500 odd children. So if 2 sinks per 30 children in primary take too long to use...

So basically it’s like Godzilla vs Kong, and flu is Godzilla and Covid is Kong, and Kong has punched Godzilla out of the water for this season. (Yes I have sons, why do you ask)

@CrunchyCarrot

do you think the vaccine has been brought out to early as the side effects are relatively unknown well some are as for one pregnant ladies can’t have it but can have the flu vaccine?

That's a hot potato of a question! I think the pandemic situation put immense pressure on researchers (who don't forget already had done a lot of work in the area of both mRNA and adenovirus vaccines) to get vaccines developed really quickly. It was possible to speed up parts of this (mainly the red tape and funding areas, so a lot of 'dead time' was cut out and work was able to proceed really quickly). Brought out too early? I don't think so, imagine right now if we were still waiting! There will doubtless be side effects discovered as the vaccines are rolled out, I think this is unavoidable, I hope none are too severe, but it's inevitable some will occur since we've had to get the vaccination program going as quickly as possible. The alternative is far more deaths whilst we waited for longer trials to be done.

I think we rightly have to be very cautious re pregnancy.

Plus the vaccine isn’t a cure but a preventative as in you can’t pass it on once inoculated is that right?

No vaccine is a 'cure'. You'll still 'catch' the virus if you encounter it. The difference is that once you've had the vaccine you will (hopefully!) have antibodies that will go into action and stop the virus replicating. You won't even know that's going on. The jury is still out on whether transmission to another person can occur, but there are indications that it will be greatly reduced - the Israelis are the furthest ahead with vaccinating their population so they're the ones to watch for more data on this.

Flu is still there and once we have school and work open it’ll be back but I feel in a milder form because of the flu vaccine being given worldwide and more folks having it this year.

We should never take our eyes off flu, it's quite capable of having its own epidemic. Govts were (supposedly) preparing for a serious outbreak (perhaps via Avian flu tranferring to humans) and this can still happen.

Thank you this

I knew scientists where testing for a vaccine on all diseases but only some go forward and it’s all to do with red tape and money

I’m cautious but not against.

I know in my area they are rattling through folks very very quickly which is I hope a good thing but we shall see as a lot think it’s a free for all and it isn’t not yet that’s for sure.

It is very important to know the facts.

The consequences of children not catching colds might be worse than CV19 running riot or may not - we need to continue research and get facts.

The role of germs is very important from children who play in dirt getting less asthma (I think from memory) to the massive role microbes in our guts play in keeping us healthy (stomach as second brain controlling how you even feel...... it's is all amazing this recent science)

So saying we are so lucky not to be catching the usual winter germs is not necessarily correct. It could be or it might not be.

Aren't people getting flu but just assuming
It's covid? Not everyone has a test

I thought they were being reported as one.
People are dying of flu just the same and pneumonia. But, many have had a positive covid test and it's recorded as covid.
The goal posts have moved so many times in order to cover the small amount of covid deaths.
Surely, folk can see this.

No flu 😳
no 'old man's friend'😳
what will we do with all the old men👀

If that’s the case Devlesko then we have a epidemic of whatever flu is going round.

We’ve had 50,000 deaths in two months and one and half months left of flu season. Good job we’re already taking precautions otherwise this ‘flu’ would be causing some real problems

There's been hardly any bronchiolitis this year. Been fantastic not to see wards full of babies struggling to breathe.

Afaik the relationship between viruses and gut microbes is more like comparing that dog with a potato... but yes, of course there needs to be monitoring of population level effects on changes in behaviour re hygiene. I'd take a bet projects are already underway.