this post was submitted on 06 Oct 2023
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So, is an important being missed here? Was it COVID that killed off the flu strain, through some competetive effect, or the lockdowns? From memory the lockdowns where at least an important factor if not the major or only factor.
Seems pretty disingenuous to speak about this technically and not acknowledge at all that civil human actions can have such impactful public health effects as eradicating a virus, however "controversial" COVID lockdowns were/are.
The "bias" I bare here is that I lived through lockdowns which, multiple times, successfully eradicated COVID and allowed us to enjoy, in the middle of the pandemic and before vaccines, genuinely COVID free and open social activity without any need for masks etc. Only travelers from outside bringing in infections disturbed this and after a few lockdowns people clearly got over trying it. But having seen it first hand, a key lesson for me is that there is a version of human society, globally, that can completely handle novel viruses by deploying, amongst other measures no doubt, civil measures like lockdowns and completely eradicate them before they do anything like kill people, mutate and become permanent fixtures of human health and disease.
Just speculating but I think the social distancing and mask wearing during covid is what made that strain of influenza go extinct.
Oh for sure ... by "lockdown" I'm referring to the general suite of civil measures including masks etc ... basically anything other than a vaccine or preventative medicine.
And of course, an additional dimension here is that influenza is no slouch of a virus .... eradicating the flu would be significant for public health. So to my mind, kinda accidentally eradicating a strain of it should be a big "huh ... how did we do that again?" rather than just "now we need to adjust our vaccines".
Thanks for posting this. Most I read about these days is how it has never made any dent scientifically but maybe I‘m getting sucked into propaganda there.
What has never made a dent scientifically? The lockdowns during the pandemic? I mean that’s demonstrably false … fewer people got the virus without without the protection of a vaccine because of them. And some places managed to eradicate the virus with them, which saddens me because if we’d managed to limit infections and the amount of mutations and variants until vaccines came through, we could be in a different world now. Like, COVID could be extinct and no one talks about it.
I‘m actually not even sure where I heard this. Good that you mention it now. I‘ll be on the lookout. This is why it’s important to talk about stuff every now and then.