
2020 has been a year without a flu season in the southern hemisphere - adenadel
https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2020/09/12/2020-has-been-a-year-without-a-flu-season-in-the-southern-hemisphere
======
jedberg
I didn't want to jinx it, but no one in my family has had even a sniffle since
March. And I have a 3 and 5 year old. Usually the sniffles don't stop.

I would love it if after this is over, masks were required in public from say
Nov 1 to Mar 1. No shutdown or anything, bars and clubs can be open, etc, go
eat and drink, whatever.

But when walking around or waiting for your food, have a mask on.

~~~
colechristensen
Your immune system evolved in an environment where it has stuff to do
constantly, when it doesn’t have stuff to do it gets bored and finds stuff to
do... from the mild inconvenience of allergies to deadly autoimmune diseases.

And when it comes down to it, government doesn’t have the authority to tell
you what to wear in public, inside a business during a pandemic probably, but
regularly? You’re going to find some real solid constitutional objections that
are better off not tested.

~~~
maxerickson
We literally make people wear clothes. Especially women.

~~~
whateveracct
Seriously how can someone think that mask requirements cannot be legal given
this precedent haha

~~~
colechristensen
Because covering your junk is based on judeo-christian morals which are
reflected in our law in ways that certain “obscene” things have historically
fallen outside of free expression rights... those are going away and you won’t
successfully argue that not wearing a mask is obscene.

~~~
pmoriarty
No one actually causes the death of someone else by not covering up an
"obscene" part of their body.

And, as in the case of Typhoid Mary, people have been deprived of their
liberty for being a threat to public health.

So I wouldn't be too sure about the courts siding with the anti-maskers.

~~~
colechristensen
Yes, quarantine has been successfully defended on individuals, small groups,
or specific areas. “Quarantine” on whole populations has not and would not be.

It has nothing to do with being anti-mask, your government just doesn’t have
the power to force everyone to wear masks for half the year because somebody
thinks it’sa good idea to prevent their kids from getting minor infections.

~~~
pmoriarty
The direct effect of COVID-19 on kids is not the issue, but the fact that they
can spread it to vulnerable adults, including their teachers, parents, and
grandparents, and whoever they infect could infect even more.

This has and will continue to cause lots of older people to die, even if the
kids themselves remain mostly unharmed.

As for the government's power, see what they did in WW2. They had major
propaganda campaigns to get everyone on board (like "Loose Lips Sink Ships",
Presidential "fireside chat" addresses, and propaganda posters everywhere,
etc), a united and determined Congress, and actual _leadership_ that helped
the entire nation become aware and engaged with the war effort.

If there was this kind of leadership, media effort, and peer-pressure today as
there was during WW2, along with laws and actual enforcement against non-
compliant anti-maskers, then you can believe there'd be a hell of a lot less
anti-maskers even trying to get out of wearing a mask, never mind staging mass
anti-mask protests (with Presidential encouragement!).

The political bickering, selfishness, and incompetency in the US has already
resulted in literally hundreds of thousands of unnecessary deaths, and will
probably cause hundreds of thousands if not millions more.

~~~
LargoLasskhyfv
While I'm not against mandatory wearing of masks while in public(when
necessary), I feel they should have been distributed by emergency services, or
placed on pallets in supermarkets, at gas stations, like it happened with
telephone books and yellow pages in the past. Same goes for disinfectant. Why
should I have to pay overblown prices for that stuff?

------
tmaly
Could it also be that they are counting flu as something else?

I am reminded of this quote from Demolition Man "In the future all restaurants
are Taco Bell"

~~~
mieses
The UK'S Office of National Statistics (ONS) just showed that since June, UK
influenza deaths are higher than Covid deaths. If this is true, then wearing
masks has no effect on deaths from airborne viral transmission. And it might
explain why The Economist is trying to shift the narrative.

[https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsde...](https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/deaths/bulletins/deathsregisteredweeklyinenglandandwalesprovisional/latest)

~~~
mlthoughts2018
The data you link would not support your conclusion. It’s not flu season in
UK, so the constant low rate is within normal variation, even if mask-wearing
_is_ impacting decreased flu transmission. You’re talking about ~100 deaths
for each covid and flu in the time period cited, and for covid (which so far
doesn’t have a cycle like flu) the effect on decreasing is very stark.

In other words, this particular data would have nothing to say. It’s
consistent with random variation of off-season flu, it’s also consistent with
masks having a big effect on reducing covid spread (especially with covid’s
much higher transmission rate and airborne properties), and it’s also
consistent with some third exogenous factor causing the covid reduction in a
way that has no bearing on flu.

~~~
mieses
If one of two airborne transmissions remains within normal variation while the
other drops significantly, then masks had an insignificant effect.

The more plausible explanation is that mask wearing had a tiny impact on both
covid and flu. The reduction in covid results from something else. Not
everything has to do with masks. Masks don't discriminate between flu and
covid.

~~~
mlthoughts2018
> “ If one of two airborne transmissions remains within normal variation while
> the other drops significantly, then masks had an insignificant effect.”

Statistically speaking, it’s a large error to assert this or draw this
conclusion.

There are too many confounders, the hugest being that it’s not flu season
there and the sample size is way too low to have confidence in any conclusion
based on the UK flu sample. Given the significance of the data in southern
hemisphere countries, it suggests there is an effect on flu transmission and
the UK data (by confounders and small sample) are consistent with that
possibility.

> “Masks don't discriminate between flu and covid.”

That’s right - suggesting a big effect on reducing both, with confounders that
would make such a comparison meaningless if you tried to make it in a country
like UK right now.

------
perlpimp
because R0 covid is 2 - 6 where flu is 1.4 < any measures made for corona
would stop it dead in its tracks. for posterity's sake here is a picture with
ranges: [https://cdn.the-
scientist.com/assets/articleNo/67690/iImg/38...](https://cdn.the-
scientist.com/assets/articleNo/67690/iImg/38474/uploads/what%20is%20r.png)

~~~
fersarr
Could it also be that due to all the attention that Covid gets and the
saturation of the health infrastructure, no one is bothering noting down the
normal flu numbers in those countries?

~~~
hannob
If anything probably the opposite. You're much more likely to get medical
treatment if you have some "undefined respiratory symptoms" right now, and
doctors will usually try to find out if you have covid or something else.

------
wobbly_bush
Will this have a lasting impact on the spread of the viruses or it's only
limited to the time when people are wearing masks and practicing physical
distancing?

~~~
macintux
Even if we managed to shut down the world simultaneously, the viruses can
linger in animals, so we’d presumably eventually be back to where we are
today.

~~~
phalangion
My hope is that, at least for some portion of society, this pandemic has
normalized the practice of wearing a mask if you must go out and are sick. So
even if diseases aren't totally eradicated, we can have significant reductions
in spread. Maybe a false hope, but a hope nonetheless.

~~~
DanBC
> has normalized the practice of wearing a mask if you must go out and are
> sick

This is one of the reasons people who are against mask wearing are against
mask wearing - they encourage people to break the rules that we have good
evidence for (self isolation) in favour of rules we have weak evidence for
(mask wearing).

Please do not go out and about if you have symptoms. That mask isn't doing
much to prevent the spread of your disease.

~~~
majormajor
> Please do not go out and about if you have symptoms.

This is hardly a rule that anyone follows, unless symptoms are severe. That's
one of the reasons COVID spreads more widely than the flu - mild symptoms
don't make anyone change behavior.

~~~
basch
That should be a call to arms for governments to build better support systems
for the sick and elderly, so they can receive care and supplies at home. Maybe
Amazon and Wal-mart will fill that need, maybe not.

It would be nice to have a "im sick" button that auto delivers some chicken
soup.

------
sharemywin
because masks work and social distancing works.

~~~
ghiculescu
Nobody is really doubting that. The question is, is shutting down the country
to avoid flu season a good trade off (in more normal times)?

~~~
spankalee
That's not actually a question anyone is asking.

~~~
fwn
At least in the German mainstream discourse the proportionality of specific
policies as well as it's costs and benefits are reoccuring, if not central
themes.

This is, of course, currently about covid-19, but I think that the political
arguments mostly apply to infectious diseases in general. ..once they gain a
certain significance.

I don't doubt your perception though. The discourse might vary greatly between
countries, languages, etc.

------
heavyset_go
This is the healthiest I've been in a long time because of social distancing.

~~~
chrisjs96
It's not healthy long term though because humans have to exchange bacteria and
get sick.

------
unreal37
The article itself is behind a paywall, so this might have been in the text.

But... could that be explained by all respiratory illnesses being called
"covid" this year? The numbers are simply hiding in another graph?

~~~
nuclearnice1
From the article

> In the first two weeks of August, the who processed nearly 200,000 influenza
> tests, and found just 46 were positive. In a typical year, the number would
> be closer to 3,500.

So sounds like this is based on a test, making misclassification unlikely to
be the root cause?

------
r721
Unpaywalled: [https://archive.is/VEQl7](https://archive.is/VEQl7)

------
noozirul
obviously we know why. they count the flu as covid. just like in the us where
you can get funding by classifying a death as covid.

