For the reasons listed above, there were 3 potential outcomes, depending on the success of the public health measures to contain the spread of COVID:

1. A high number of COVID cases and a high number of flu cases.

2. A high number of COVID cases but low number of flu cases.

3. A low number of COVID cases and a low number of flu cases.

If flu and COVID were independent, there would be a fourth potential outcome (high flu cases and low COVID cases). Majromax is saying that it was largely predictable that this fourth outcome would not happen.

The thing that the news articles are warning about is outcome #1 which, if it had transpired, probably would have been quite bad. Note that the experts in the articles are warning about something that could happen, not saying that it will definitely happen. And the reason it didn't happen is at least in part due to the warnings that were issued.

We were warned of bad outcomes if precautions weren't taken. Precautions were taken, and the worst outcomes were avoided. This doesn't invalidate the prior warning.

I don't want to assume bad intentions on your part but I'm not really sure what you want us to conclude from these posts... elaborate?

That it wasn't predictable or obvious flu cases would go to near zero. These news stories are not about how if we do X then flu cases will go to near zero, and most operate under the assumption flu season is coming and will likely be a "twindemic" that needs to be mitigated/lessened. It didn't come and now we are pretending it was clear it was never coming.

Just tired of people using selective memories to pretend that the last year wasn't chaotic and full of many wrong predictions, from experts and novices alike. Some humility would be appreciated.

> That it wasn't predictable or obvious flu cases would go to near zero.

How could it not be predictable? I get the cold/flu when I or someone in the family is exposed to someone sick and it gets passed on.

If we're all staying in the house and not going anywhere for a year, by what mechanism could we possibly get sick? Seemed predictable to me.

In any case, it's been so awesome to not be sick in over a year. With elementary school kid, it used to be I was sick every few weeks all year long. Not looking forward to going back to that kind of normal.

And yet I really don't remember any discussion at all about how flu season was going to be nonexistent this winter in the media. No discussion about how if we socially distance flu deaths would drop almost 97% (22000 -> 600).

I guess no one decided to write a news story about it cause it was so predictable, dog bites man and all.

I recall articles about it last September. https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/69/wr/mm6937a6.htm

You're lumping the poster in with all the experts and novices. They're one person, saying one thing. You need a link to _them_ saying the opposite to substantiate your criticism of their statement.

Why would the conclusions drawn from the post indicate bad intentions?

The warnings you're referring to were predicated on a pretty generic and nondescript need to get people vaccinated. This was a widespread messaging campaign in the media, heavy on the threats but not specificity.

Instead of what was threatened all summer, what actually happened was that flu disappeared AND people were being chastised for poor compliance with local ordinances and vaccination.

Counter point: https://xkcd.com/2287/, from March 2020

Such cute naivety from Xkcd, kind of unexpected :-D

If we're using the WHO definition of a pandemic it's a pandemic.

If we're using the dictionary definition of a pandemic "(of a disease) prevalent over a whole country or the world." it's a pandemic.

If we're using the colloquial definition of a pandemic "a disease that spreads around the world killing lots of people" it's a pandemic.

If you want you can consider seasonal flu on the list of pandemics, fine, but you're simply wrong to consider covid not a pandemic and if you are trying to downplay how deadly covid is I'd say you're behaving in an ethically wrong manner too.

It was a pandemic. It's finished in Europe. Numbers have been back to baseline for a while already.

https://www.euromomo.eu/graphs-and-maps/

It's not an influenza virus.

That said, even if it was, a "very strong flu" with global transmission and impact _is_ a pandemic -- see the 1918 Flu Pandemic.

The death rate in 2020 in the US also surpassed that during the 1918 pandemic.

What I think we've learned is that the same measures used to slow the spread of COVID-19 are staggeringly effective against the flu, and that we now know how to prepare for the next particularly aggressive influenza variant.

Covid is caused by a coronavirus, not an influenza virus. They have similar transmission methods and symptoms, but they are still different things. Like cats and dogs are both of similar size, both carnivores, both kept as pets and both can bite you, but they are still different kinds of animals.

And of-fucking-course it's a pandemic. What do you think that word means?

When does a pandemic end in your definition, as the numbers seem back to baseline in Europe at least?

It's almost universally accepted that covid-19 is separate from, and significantly more destructive than seasonal influenza viruses.

I don't think mainstream virologists and epidemiologists have changed their minds after the past year.

It's disappointing to see this type of misinformation being spread on HN. All you need to do is look at all-cause mortality in 2020 compared to previous years to easily disprove this:

https://i.imgur.com/z9RsQ8e.png

I haven't seen this before, thanks for sharing. Do you know the original source?

Not the Parent but the orignal numbers come form the CDC but I'm not sure where the graph is from. Here are links to the last two years of data, embedded in a comment I made on HN recently:

From the CDC: In 2019, a total of 2,854,838 resident deaths were registered in the United States—15,633 more deaths than in 2018. In 2020, approximately 3,358,814 deaths occurred in the United States (Table). The age-adjusted rate was 828.7 deaths per 100,000 population, an increase of 15.9% from 715.2 in 2019.

ref: https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/products/databriefs/db395.htm https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/70/wr/mm7014e1.htm

Here is the one I look at (might need desktop version), https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid19/excess_deaths.htm

It was generated from the CDC data available here: https://gis.cdc.gov/grasp/fluview/mortality.html

It's not been a problem in a number of European countries.

https://oronu.wordpress.com/2021/01/29/mortality-statistics/

Scientists have sequenced the RNA for both covid and influenza, we know for a fact that they are completely different species of viruses.

Influenza is a specific thing. I'm not sure why you're trying to argue that COVID-19 is influenza when that's observably factually incorrect. Perhaps you're not aware that "the flu" is a specific thing and not just a way people say "people who get sick all at once from a thing"?

Covid is a completely separate thing from the flu, and this study shows that the excess death rate is not in fact on top of the normal flu, but that because of covid related precautions there were almost no flu deaths. So covid killed alot more people than the excess death rate would indicate.

Covid transmits the same way as flu but is more infectious.

Measures against Covid work against flu.

It’s nice to know that our flu deaths are declining. But our Covid deaths are many times more.

covid might not be more infectious, it might just be less people have any existing partial resistance to sars-cov-2. Each year the flu mutates but it still has overlap with prior variants.

As sars-cov-2 mutates seasonal covid might end up less bad than the seasonal flu. Though there is no way to tell.

That is likely to be true but doesn’t really mean anything.

Spanish flu killed millions before less deadly strains mutated and became what we now call flu.

I can’t advocate for any measure that kills millions in the short term, _especially_ without data for the long term.