Just like that, the Flu is gone...yep. COVID has become the Flu. Hey Spike?! - looks like it literally is both COVID and the Flu now.
The missing flu riddle: 'Influenza has been renamed COVID,' maverick epidemiologist says
As influenza levels continue cratering, some cite COVID measures — even as COVID rates have multiplied nearly sevenfold since the spring in spite of enhanced mitigation policies.
Rates of influenza have remained persistently low through late 2020 and into 2021, cratering from levels a year ago and raising the puzzling specter of sharply reduced influenza transmission rates even as positive tests for COVID-19 have shattered numerous records over the last several weeks.
Where have all the flu cases gone?
Epidemiologist Knut Wittkowski thinks he can answer the riddle.
"Influenza has been renamed COVID in large part," said the former head of biostatistics, epidemiology and research design at Rockefeller University.
"There may be quite a number of influenza cases included in the 'presumed COVID' category of people who have COVID symptoms (which Influenza symptoms can be mistaken for), but are not tested for SARS RNA," Wittkowski told Just the News on Thursday.
Those patients, he argued, "also may have some SARS RNA sitting in their nose while being infected with Influenza, in which case the influenza would be 'confirmed' to be COVID."
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's weekly influenza surveillance tracker reports that the cumulative positive influenza test rate from late September into the week of Dec. 19 stands at 0.2% as measured by clinical labs. That's compared to a cumulative 8.7% from a year before.
The weekly comparisons are even starker: This week one year ago, the positive clinical rate was 22%, where now it stands at 0.1%.
Those low numbers continue trends observed earlier in the year in which flu rates have remained at near-zero levels. The trend is not limited to the U.S. Worldwide, health authorities have all reported sharply decreased influenza levels throughout what is normally peak flu season in the northern hemisphere. Rates in the southern hemisphere were also low this year.
its like everyone has forgotten that the regular flu mutates a bit each year, at different places around our globe; sometimes its worse than normal; sometimes less. whether it is a good or bad flu year, those with pre-existing conditions, like advanced age or respiratory issues, suffer much worse than average. Every year, infants, kids, young adults, middle-age folks have catastrophic flu related health issues that no one really cares about.....statistically.
A coronavirus is a flu-like virus that has flu like symptoms, and has much more dramatic effects on the old, and those with health conditions, even a few young folks. And a different, novel name that invokes fears in some folks.
Fortunately, we now have a vaccine to help save us from the Covid/Flu. Luckily, some sciency/pharma folks have been working on this problem for a few years ( that means whatever Covid is, it ain't that novel).
They said, back in ancient 2018:
"We’ve been making the flu vaccine in nearly the same way for 70 years. A new technology based on RNA could disrupt that.
Developing the flu vaccine each year is like a game of prediction."
and
"But Pfizer has recently entered into a collaboration with German biotech BioNTech to develop new RNA vaccine technology to create a better flu shot. The multi-year partnership will build upon BioNTech’s RNA technology and could significantly speed up the vaccine manufacturing process"
and
"they would monitor surveillance data on the current viral strains and use information on the genes of those strains to synthetically produce corresponding RNA. When a person is injected with the RNA, their own muscle cells would turn into vaccine “factories,” creating proteins that stimulate the immune response. “We predict that their cells will gobble up the RNA and start expressing the flu antigen,”*
https://www.pfizer.com/news/feature...gy_could_get_the_flu_vaccine_right_every_year
No worries:
"if we did get the strains wrong a new vaccine could be rapidly produced to specifically address the strain causing the outbreak.”
So no need to worry about the new strains occurring. And they get to test all this out on a global population that knows they need a new drug, er, vaccine.
Its like we are all guest starring in a sci-fi pharma drama/horror where the globe's entire leadership is begging for exactly what the nice German DNA experimenters have been cooking up.
I guess you can fool all of the people some of the time.
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