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Flu season basically disappeared this year


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    I remember about a year ago we were all being warned that there was high risk of getting the flu and the new one at the very same time. Having both simultaneously would put anyone at a much higher risk, no matter your health situation. Either one of the strains are dangerous, but both of them at the same time is something different that no one would be prepared for. But we're now passed the flu by a bit and that situation just never happened. It turns out that all the precautions we used like masks, social distancing, washing hands, etc, took common flu numbers way down. Obviously that's an enormous success and we should be extremely happy it turned out that way. It could have been much different.

    It looks like this past flu season (Oct 1st through Feb 1st) saw a 98% decrease in flu hospitalizations than the previous year. Only about 155 people were hospitalized for the common flu this year, compared to 8,633 for last year.

    I wonder what this means for future flu seasons. Is it just going to jump right back up to the numbers we were seeing before 2020?

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    TitanPillars Wrote:

    It looks like this past flu season (Oct 1st through Feb 1st) saw a 98% decrease in flu hospitalizations than the previous year. Only about 155 people were hospitalized for the common flu this year, compared to 8,633 for last year.

    That's amazing and very under reported I think. There have been advantages to social distancing for a year plus, and this is right up there near the top.

    I do think numbers will rise after we ease things up, but perhaps with what everyone has been through and now newly conditioned for, maybe it won't spring back up to old numbers; I'm thinking we will see more masks, hand sanitizer and distancing in action than we did years ago, going forward.

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    You know I never thought of this at all. I guess because like it was previously mentioned, that the flu took a backseat as far as news coverage was concerned. This should definitely be at the top of the list of positive outcomes for the past year.