Flu is harder to transmit and there is vaccine infrastructure available every year, despite that, it can still be very severe. Let's add a coronavirus with potentially greater severity than a flu, which has no vaccine, and has easier transmission, with a severe flu season this year and just watch the bodies pile up.

> with a severe flu season this year and just watch the bodies pile up.

There is no evidence of this and you are continually creating worst-case scenarios.

Please stop.

Do you know that this year will not be a difficult flu season? Do you know the ramifications of combined flu and COVID-19 infection?

If the flu season is severe, then it could be quite catastrophic when combined with COVID-19. We should definitely be preparing for worst-case scenarios, and not downplaying potential severity because it's inconvenient.

Influenza and Noro/Calicivirus (Winter vomiting disease) stats for Sweden this year. Social distancing and increased hygiene measures implemented mid March, about week 11, killed them off much earlier than usual.

Influenza: https://www.folkhalsomyndigheten.se/globalassets/statistik-u...

Calicivirus (Vinter vomiting disease): https://www.folkhalsomyndigheten.se/contentassets/0ad710ef37...

Technically that was "last flu season", not the upcoming flu season, and it was relatively mild. It is hard to predict if 2020-2021 will be similar, or 2017 levels, or 2009 levels. At minimum it will add more strain to medical services.

It shows that "okay" measures against COVID are strong enough to push the R_eff value for those viruses well below 1, unless something extraordinary happens. I.e. no extra strain for medical services.

As said, this hinges on social distancing and hygiene measures being kept enforced. If you open a country fully again and get two simultaneous peaks then you are in for a bad time.

I think we're on the same page here. My catastrophic scenario involved no mitigation steps and removal of lockdown. The goal was to dissuade people from thinking since things are "fine/better" right now, lockdown/mitigation is not needed anymore. We still need to get through this winter, and on to a vaccine.

"The southern hemisphere skipped flu season in 2020, Efforts to stop covid-19 have had at least one welcome side-effect"

https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2020/09/12/the-sout...

My point to jaywalk was that combined COVID-19 + severe flu w/o mitigations like a lockdown, could be catastrophic. Their post was anti-lockdown comparing COVID-19 to flu.

I am not surprised that measures to avoid COVID-19 also reduces the spread of flu.

I wonder whether skipping flu season is alike fire suppression in forests. When, not if, it eventually burns, it'll be that much more devastating.