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Merged Will the coming influenza season produce few deaths? / Annual flu deaths

Caroline13 said:
We 'll never know the seasonal flu numbers because everything is lumped into this Covid mess. I've heard from a good source I trust that there are somewhere between 60K upward of deaths from seasonal flu but we won't hear a peep now since covid controls. And furthermore, I don't recall hearing about the deaths from seasonal flu over the years..
I do not take vaccinations, first grade I did, and tetnus I did and a couple flu jabs in my early 40's and that's been it.
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If only there were a way to look up such things:

https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/past-seasons.html

Summary: Between about 10k and 60k people die in America every year from influenza.
 
The twindemic that wasn't.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/health/me...vid-twindemic-that-never-happened/ar-BB1dtP87

The piece seems baffled as to why.

It's been pretty obvious why. R0 is much higher for Covid-19 (2.5 to 4) than Flu. NPIs have brought down transmission such that Covid-19 Rt has rarely been over 1.4 since last April. Flu's R0 is about half that of Covid-19 and transmission mechanisms are similar for the two respiratory viruses. The scattered instances of Flu are likely from animals which are a vector but human to human transmission is reduced by the NPIs.
 
marting said:
The twindemic that wasn't.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/health/me...vid-twindemic-that-never-happened/ar-BB1dtP87

The piece seems baffled as to why.

It's been pretty obvious why. R0 is much higher for Covid-19 (2.5 to 4) than Flu. NPIs have brought down transmission such that Covid-19 Rt has rarely been over 1.4 since last April. Flu's R0 is about half that of Covid-19 and transmission mechanisms are similar for the two respiratory viruses. The scattered instances of Flu are likely from animals which are a vector but human to human transmission is reduced by the NPIs.
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That's been obvious since the spring. I really felt I was wasting my time going for the flu vaccine in October but they were saying it was a dry run for the coronavirus vaccinations in the village and anyway why not.

But anyone who says they didn't expect this to be a no-flu year, or to affect puzzlement about why that is the case, is more than a little hard of thinking.
 
marting said:
The twindemic that wasn't.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/health/me...vid-twindemic-that-never-happened/ar-BB1dtP87

The piece seems baffled as to why.

It's been pretty obvious why. R0 is much higher for Covid-19 (2.5 to 4) than Flu. NPIs have brought down transmission such that Covid-19 Rt has rarely been over 1.4 since last April. Flu's R0 is about half that of Covid-19 and transmission mechanisms are similar for the two respiratory viruses. The scattered instances of Flu are likely from animals which are a vector but human to human transmission is reduced by the NPIs.
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Rolfe said:
That's been obvious since the spring. I really felt I was wasting my time going for the flu vaccine in October but they were saying it was a dry run for the coronavirus vaccinations in the village and anyway why not.

But anyone who says they didn't expect this to be a no-flu year, or to affect puzzlement about why that is the case, is more than a little hard of thinking.
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In hindsight it seems very obvious, but apparently Fauci and public health officials were worried about it. Marting's link cites an earlier article in the New York Times (published August 16th):

Fearing a ‘Twindemic,’ Health Experts Push Urgently for Flu Shots

The concern about a twindemic is so great that officials around the world are pushing the flu shot even before it becomes available in clinics and doctors’ offices. Dr. Robert Redfield, director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has been talking it up, urging corporate leaders to figure out ways to inoculate employees. The C.D.C. usually purchases 500,000 doses for uninsured adults but this year ordered an additional 9.3 million doses.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, has been imploring people to get the flu shot, “so that you could at least blunt the effect of one of those two potential respiratory infections.”

In Britain, Prime Minister Boris Johnson has been waging his own pro flu-shot campaign. Last month, he labeled people who oppose flu vaccines “nuts” and announced the country’s largest ever rollout of the shots. In April, one of the few reasons Australia allowed citizens to break the country’s strict lockdown was to venture out for their flu shots.
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I suppose that Boris can be given a pass since he is not an expert in these matters, but Fauci is supposed to be, as well as Robert Redfield. Presumably whichever UK experts were advising Boris also got it wrong.

Anyway, I did get a flu shot myself this year, as did my wife and kids, but maybe it was a wasted effort.

I wonder why all the experts were so wrong about this, even to the point of ordering more flu vaccines than in a typical year? They must have been anticipating a normal flu season in addition to the coronavirus pandemic worsening in the winter months.
 
I have read and seen this and I find it dishonestly attributed to increased vaccine usage. I actually havent looked into if the numbers reflect that but it feels.. wrong the way ive seen it reported.
 
In any case, this should be good information for epidemiologists to learn from.

It does conclusively put to rest the whole question of "Is this really any worse than the flu?" that was being asked last winter. It also shows just how effective the NPIs can be, not just for coronavirus, but for the flu and other similar respiratory diseases. Just imagine how bad it would be right now if everyone was just behaving as we did pre-pandemic. And if flu season had been normal this year, despite all of the NPIs, that would have been an indication that they were not very effective. I think we have some proof now of just how effective they can be. The proof being this flu season compared to the typical flu season.
 
rdwight said:
I have read and seen this and I find it dishonestly attributed to increased vaccine usage. I actually havent looked into if the numbers reflect that but it feels.. wrong the way ive seen it reported.
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The effectiveness of flu vaccines does vary from one year to another. But I agree that it's unlikely that increased rates of flu vaccinations are the primary reason.

Here's one such story from December:

Flu numbers are down this year due to higher vaccination rates amid COVID pandemic

That's the headline. The sub headline says "Experts say mask use and social distancing have also helped keep numbers low." I think they have it backwards though. But let's see what the story says:

Hospitals across the U.S. are nearing critical capacity due to the rise in COVID-19 cases just as the winter flu season begins to threaten the country. Public officials and doctors worry that the worst is yet to come, but increased rates of flu vaccinations this year may help us avoid a further catastrophic stress on our health care system.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's tracking of flu vaccine distribution over the years shows that so far in the 2020-2021 flu season, 189.4 million flu vaccines have been distributed in the U.S., compared to 174 million in the 2019-2020 season.

This, paired with stay-at-home orders, masking and social distancing, means there are fewer cases of the flu this year than ever before. Doctors are noticing less clinic visits and hospital admissions for the flu and pharmacies are filling fewer prescriptions for the antiviral medications physicians prescribe for influenza. Data analysts at Walgreens have tracked sales of antiviral medications for flu over the past seven years to estimate flu activity across the U.S. and 2020 has had significantly lower sales than in 2019.
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The numbers distributed don't seem very different to me. It's less than a 10% increase from the previous year. Furthermore, it's how many people actually got jabbed that I want to know, because distributed doesn't necessarily mean used. If we assume that they were used at the same rate, it would seem to be unlikely to make a huge difference. It is possible that this year's flu vaccine is more effective than last year's or than a typical year's, but that is only speculation.

I think Occam's razor points to the anti-pandemic NPIs as making the lion's share of the difference. Not flu vaccines.
 
Puppycow said:
Fearing a ‘Twindemic,’ Health Experts Push Urgently for Flu Shots

I suppose that Boris can be given a pass since he is not an expert in these matters, but Fauci is supposed to be, as well as Robert Redfield. Presumably whichever UK experts were advising Boris also got it wrong.
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I suppose things might have looked different in Aug. There was some decline in cases then and people thinking (hoping) that things might return to some degree of normality later in the year. By Sept. it was pretty clear that would not happen as Covid-19 was undergoing a third surge. In Nov. I decided to skip the flu shot as by then the evidence stacked up from the Southern hemisphere where flu was close to non-existent. Clearly the effect of NPIs combined with the relatively lower R0 of flu dropped the R under NPIs below 1.

I can go to any pharmacy and get a free flu shot today but it's darned hard to get a covid shot. And the web sites are simply atrocious. They show available dates but when you select one to make a reservation they are all full but you don't find that out until after filling out your info. Then you have to do the same thing over again later and find out they are still full. Just grossly incompetent.
 
marting said:
I can go to any pharmacy and get a free flu shot today but it's darned hard to get a covid shot. And the web sites are simply atrocious. They show available dates but when you select one to make a reservation they are all full but you don't find that out until after filling out your info. Then you have to do the same thing over again later and find out they are still full. Just grossly incompetent.
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And good luck if you don't have the Internet. This may be another reason why minorities in the US are lagging behind in vaccination rates despite being at higher risk. My sister-in-law made the appointments for my parents. They have a computer but they're old and not especially tech savvy since they didn't grow up using computers. I live in another country.
 
Puppycow said:
The effectiveness of flu vaccines does vary from one year to another. But I agree that it's unlikely that increased rates of flu vaccinations are the primary reason.

Here's one such story from December:

Flu numbers are down this year due to higher vaccination rates amid COVID pandemic

That's the headline. The sub headline says "Experts say mask use and social distancing have also helped keep numbers low." I think they have it backwards though. But let's see what the story says:



The numbers distributed don't seem very different to me. It's less than a 10% increase from the previous year. Furthermore, it's how many people actually got jabbed that I want to know, because distributed doesn't necessarily mean used. If we assume that they were used at the same rate, it would seem to be unlikely to make a huge difference. It is possible that this year's flu vaccine is more effective than last year's or than a typical year's, but that is only speculation.

I think Occam's razor points to the anti-pandemic NPIs as making the lion's share of the difference. Not flu vaccines.
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It really depends on the size of the Herd. While the US has 331 million people, the question is how many of those are in the group that is likely to encounter a flu virus, and then of that number how many got vaccinated.

If the 15 million+ increased the percentage of immunity above that required for Herd Immunity, that would certainly help.

The Flu has an R0 of about 1.3, so the actual percentage needed to prevent wild spread is like 32%, having an increase from perhaps 70% to 76% could actually do some good.

Not saying it's the only factor, but it's certainly one of them.

Regardless Vaccination is good. Herd Immunity via Vaccine, even better.
 
PhantomWolf said:
The Flu has an R0 of about 1.3, so the actual percentage needed to prevent wild spread is like 32%, having an increase from perhaps 70% to 76% could actually do some good.
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Maybe, but I think enough people are wearing masks, social distancing and so on, that that is what is decreasing the R0 more than a few percentage more vaccinated.

32% assuming 100% efficacy of the vaccine?

If the vaccine is 50% effective, then 64%?

For reference:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Influenza_vaccine#Effectiveness

It seems to range somewhere from 10% to 60%. (estimates from 2004-2019)
 
Rolfe said:
That's been obvious since the spring. I really felt I was wasting my time going for the flu vaccine in October but they were saying it was a dry run for the coronavirus vaccinations in the village and anyway why not.

But anyone who says they didn't expect this to be a no-flu year, or to affect puzzlement about why that is the case, is more than a little hard of thinking.
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I don't think it was a waste of time, at least not in general (in your case you may have been taking enough precautions to avoid the risk of 'flu as well as Covid). The NHS has been pushing the jabs this winter, and has been making them free for the over 50s (I think it's normally the over 60s). I was told that one reason was that there needs to be a gap of a few weeks between a 'flu jab and a Covid-19 jab. (By the time they got around to inviting me to have the jab, I'd already had one done privately).

While I'm sure the main reason for the reduction in the incidence of 'flu is the lockdown and precautions people are taking, I would think the vaccination levels are a factor too. Since resources needed to treat people with bad cases of 'flu are the same for Covid-19, and the vaccines are probably ordered in advance, it's surely good sense to vaccinate against 'flu to reduce the load on the NHS as much as possible.
 
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