Re:This influenza lineage may have become extinct
by rsynnott on Friday October 01, 2021 @07:10PM
(#28724421)
Some of the cold viruses are extremely infectious, certainly moreso than boring ol' Original Covid or Alpha, and some possibly more than Delta.
R number for influenza is normally reckoned at well under 1.5; it's really not that infectious.
> why _only_ flu disappeared out of huge variety of respiratory viruses.
Some of the viruses which cause the common cold may well have become rare or outright disappeared; we probably wouldn't notice.
But if you assume that measures are equally effective against flu, cold and covid, you'd probably expect flu to be suppressed first, then ancestral and alpha covid, then most colds, then delta.
Re:This influenza lineage may have become extinct
by fy20 on Friday October 01, 2021 @08:48PM
(#28724968)
Case in point: This summer my family all came down with Norovirus, aka the "winter" vomitting bug. This is much more infectious than COVID, each year infecting roughly 685 million people.
R number for influenza is normally reckoned at well under 1.5; it's really not that infectious.
> why _only_ flu disappeared out of huge variety of respiratory viruses.
Some of the viruses which cause the common cold may well have become rare or outright disappeared; we probably wouldn't notice.
But if you assume that measures are equally effective against flu, cold and covid, you'd probably expect flu to be suppressed first, then ancestral and alpha covid, then most colds, then delta.