News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

A comment on Flu has disappeared worldwide during the Covid pandemic. Parent comment

Re:Flu has disappeared worldwide during the Covid pandemic by adolph on Thursday April 29, 2021 @10:08PM (#26989152)
The difference might be in flu deaths being confounded by C19 deaths in vulnerable populations. An example might be a person with a weakened immune system. In an alternate timeline without C19 they would have died of flu. In the real world they caught C19 first and died of that instead.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Flu has disappeared worldwide during the Covid pandemic by darkerside on Thursday April 29, 2021 @11:53PM (#26989685)
This makes a lot of sense
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Flu has disappeared worldwide during the Covid pandemic by adolph on Friday April 30, 2021 @12:09AM (#26989750)
I would not claim that it accounts for all flu avoidance, but some nontrivial portion of missing flu deaths.

Additionally I would not be surprised if flu deaths remained lower for several years since C19 appeared to be more severe than flu in vulnerable populations. Future flu deaths were likely preempted by C19.

Paralleling the term herd immunity, this would be called culling the herd.

[ Parent | on HN ]