Flu is highly transmissible via surface contact and covid much less so, so washing hands and hygiene measures along with masks stopped it cold. This also proves that covid is way more transmissible with airborne spread than flu. We never wasted our time with hand washing and sanitizing for covid, we saved thousands of lives by preventing a flu season.
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The Flu Vanished During the Pandemic. What Will Its Return Look Like? - The New York Times (nytimes.com)
There have been fewer influenza cases in the United States this flu season than in any on record. About 2,000 cases have been recorded since late September, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In recent years, the average number of cases over the same period was about 206,000.
As measures to stop the spread of the coronavirus were implemented around the country in March 2020, influenza quickly disappeared, and it still has not returned. The latest flu season, which normally would have run until next month, essentially never happened.
After fears that a
“twindemic” could batter the country, the absence of the flu was a much needed reprieve that eased the burden on an overwhelmed health care system. But the lack of exposure to the flu could also make the population more susceptible to the virus when it returns — and experts say its return is certain.
“We do not know when it will come back in the United States, but we know it will come back,” said Sonja Olsen, an epidemiologist at the C.D.C.
Experts are less certain about what will happen when the flu does return. In the coming months — as millions of people return to public transit, restaurants, schools and offices — influenza outbreaks could be more widespread than normal, they say, or could occur at unusual times of the year. But it’s also possible that the virus that returns is less dangerous, having not had the opportunity to evolve while it was on hiatus.
“We don’t really have a clue,” said Richard Webby, a virologist at the St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis. “We’re in uncharted territory. We haven’t had an influenza season this low, I think as long as we’ve been measuring it. So what the potential implications are is a bit unclear.”
Scientists do not yet know which public health measures were most effective in eradicating the flu this season, but if behaviors like mask-wearing and frequent hand-washing continue after the coronavirus pandemic is over, they could help to keep influenza at bay in the United States.
Much also depends on the latest flu vaccines, their effectiveness and the public’s willingness to get them. The recent drop in cases, however, has made it difficult for scientists to decide which flu strains to protect against in those vaccines. It’s harder to predict which strains will be circulating later, they say, when so few are circulating now.
What happened to the flu?
When the reality of the coronavirus pandemic set in last year, the country was still in the throes of the normal flu season, which had peaked in February. Then schools closed, travel halted and millions began working from home, and the number of new flu cases quickly dropped to historic lows, even as the coronavirus surged.
And the decline has not been because of a lack of testing. Since late September, 1.3 million specimens have been tested for influenza, more than the average of about one million in the same period in recent years.
The public’s history of exposure to influenza, scientists say, may partially explain why the flu virtually disappeared while the coronavirus continued to spread after safety measures were implemented.
“For something like Covid, where you have a fully susceptible population at the start of a pandemic, it takes a lot more work to slow the spread of the infection,” said Rachel Baker, an epidemiologist at Princeton University.
In other words — unlike with the coronavirus — the population has some natural immunity to the flu, from years of being exposed to various strains of the virus. People are susceptible to new strains of the flu each year, but less so than they are to wholly unfamiliar viruses.
The mere presence of the coronavirus may have also played a role in suppressing flu cases, said Dr. Webby, because there is often just one dominant respiratory virus in a population at a given time. “One tends to keep the other out,” he said.
And influenza was not the only virus that disappeared over the last year; there were also substantial drops in other respiratory illnesses, including the respiratory syncytial virus, or R.S.V., which is the most common cause of pneumonia in infants.
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