Flu could be ‘bigger problem than Covid in UK this winter’

Status
Not open for further replies.
Northerner

Northerner

Admin (Retired)
Relationship to Diabetes
Type 1
Flu could be a bigger problem than Covid-19 in the UK this winter, a senior government vaccine adviser has said, with low prevalence over the past months possibly leading to a drop in immunity among the population.

Prof Anthony Harnden, the deputy chair of the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation, said research was being carried out on whether flu vaccines could be given alongside coronavirus vaccines this autumn.

“I will emphasise that actually flu could be potentially a bigger problem this winter than Covid,” Harnden told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.

“We’ve had a very, very low prevalence of flu for the last few years, particularly virtually nil during lockdown, and we do know that when flu has been circulating in very low numbers immunity drops in the population, and it comes back to bite us. So flu can be really, really important this winter.”

www.theguardian.com

Flu could be ‘bigger problem than Covid in UK this winter’

Low prevalence of flu during pandemic may have led to drop in immunity among population
www.theguardian.com www.theguardian.com
 
So here we're well into our second season with no discernible sign of flu. Same in NZ.

I'm reluctantly willing to accept the possibility that "Learn to live with corona like we do with the flu" is maybe what we'll have to do. But first I really want an expert analysis of exactly why we can't eradicate both, taking into account the fact that we have actually done so locally in the short term.
 
Eddy Edson said:
So here we're well into our second season with no discernible sign of flu. Same in NZ.

I'm reluctantly willing to accept the possibility that "Learn to live with corona like we do with the flu" is maybe what we'll have to do. But first I really want an expert analysis of exactly why we can't eradicate both, taking into account the fact that we have actually done so locally in the short term.
Click to expand...

You've had to cut yourselves off from the rest of the world to be able to do it and there's no guarantee that it'll be sustainable. You're still seeing lockdowns and restrictions in parts of the country so I'm not even sure it's worked in the short term.
 
The annual flu jab for the U.K. is usually tailored to the strains that have been prevalent in Australia in their previous winter, so what are they going to concoct for us this year, I wonder?
 
pm133 said:
You've had to cut yourselves off from the rest of the world to be able to do it and there's no guarantee that it'll be sustainable. You're still seeing lockdowns and restrictions in parts of the country so I'm not even sure it's worked in the short term.
Click to expand...
It's certianly has worked locally in the short term. The little outbreaks are spillages from quarantine.

Of course there's no guarantee that it's sustainable. The interesting question is what level of border control do you need to make it sustainable, in what kinds of global contexts. Nobody knows for sure - as in "knowing" rather than just generic uninformed "there'll always be flu" blah blah blah. And it may well be that the economics don't make sense, but once again that's a matter for informed analysis.

Some top tier virologists believe that a couple of the main flu strains may already have been eliminated: see eg https://www.statnews.com/2021/06/02...diverse-simplifying-task-of-making-flu-shots/ You can't draw a direct line from that to bigger conclusions, but it's interesting.
 
Robin said:
The annual flu jab for the U.K. is usually tailored to the strains that have been prevalent in Australia in their previous winter, so what are they going to concoct for us this year, I wonder?
Click to expand...
Whatever they're handing out, I've had it and it's worked so far 🙂
 
Eddy Edson said:
It's certianly has worked locally in the short term. The little outbreaks are spillages from quarantine.

Of course there's no guarantee that it's sustainable. The interesting question is what level of border control do you need to make it sustainable, in what kinds of global contexts. Nobody knows for sure - as in "knowing" rather than just generic uninformed "there'll always be flu" blah blah blah. And it may well be that the economics don't make sense, but once again that's a matter for informed analysis.

Some top tier virologists believe that a couple of the main flu strains may already have been eliminated: see eg https://www.statnews.com/2021/06/02...diverse-simplifying-task-of-making-flu-shots/ You can't draw a direct line from that to bigger conclusions, but it's interesting.
Click to expand...

I noticed this on a Twitter link. This just looks like a dystopian nightmare and it's a reasonable question to ask how long Aussies are going to tolerate this type of disruption and blind panic.

Also, I noticed that just 3.5% of people are fully vaccinated in Australia. That is a sobering number if true. It looks like complacency is going to be a major hurdle for you guys to get back to a fully normal life. I suppose it's to be expected - why get vaccinated if nobody has the virus. Vaccines must be a difficult sell under those conditions.

https://twitter.com/x/status/1406785145684869122
 
Last edited:
Panicking about a flu epidemic is ludicrous. We already get flu vaccines - all we need to know is the type,. We have never had lockdowns, mask wearing, or social limitations during a flu epidemic, and we have accepted the few thousand deaths each year.

The death rate is the key. Far higher than the death rate with the Delta variant of Covid which is affecting the non vaccinated younger people. Flu will always be a greater threat than that. That’s why we get vaccinated.

It’s the price we pay for being human and living. We accept a couple of thousand deaths on the roads, but we don’t stop driving. Do we ban alcohol? 7,234 deaths caused by alcohol in England and Wales last year.

Get real, folks. Being alive is always risky.
 
mikeyB said:
It’s the price we pay for being human and living. We accept a couple of thousand deaths on the roads, but we don’t stop driving. Do we ban alcohol? 7,234 deaths caused by alcohol in England and Wales last year.
Click to expand...
In a good year flu kills 7000 or so, and I guess they're thinking this next winter it might be 20 or 30 thousand. (Depending on how good the vaccine turns out to be, amongst other things.) And the worry is that we'll have Covid on top of the other respiratory infections and that might be a problem in hospitals. (Remembering that non-urgent surgery was postponed in the 2019 winter (or at least there were plans to do so) even before Covid was known about.)

It doesn't seem silly to consider whether we can reduce flu deaths, and how annoying and effective various options would be. (Just as people consider what might be done to reduce road deaths and alcohol related deaths.) We might well decide not to do anything, but it's worth someone thinking about it.
 
It would seem sensible to me to vaccinate as many people as possible against both flu and covid and to carry on a culture that if you’re ill you stay at home instead of carrying on life and infecting other people. Plus wearing masks and washing hand would be helpful against many viruses.
 
It’ll also be interesting to see the flu figures this winter, as we don’t know how many people who might have died of flu this coming winter have already died of Covid.
 
Eddy Edson said:
Too funny! Efficient TTI around a handful of cases, with a very limited mask mandate = "dystopian nightmare".
Click to expand...

When you finish laughing, perhaps you can tell us all when Australia will be able to remove all restrictions and open all borders again?

I ask, because we're about to do that in 2-3 weeks time barring another variant causing panic in the corridors of power.

It's beginning to look very much like Australia is going to be condemned to spending years coming in and out of lockdown at the current vaccination rate. Businesses having to open, close, open, close every time a single case appears anywhere. Endless struggles for anyone wanting to travel abroad or come home or visit family. International trade perhaps irrepairably damaged. Hospitality industry ruined. THAT sounds like a dystopian nightmare to me to be honest.
 
Thebearcametoo said:
Plus wearing masks and washing hand would be helpful against many viruses.
Click to expand...

I suspect masks will be dropped like a hot potato by the general public the second the government makes it advisory rather than mandatory to wear them. Rightly so in my opinion but doubtless some will still choose to wear them as is their right.

We are a nation of compliers. We are very good at obeying laws but terrible at following advice. That seems to be hard-wired into our culture and I can't see anything changing that.
 
Robin said:
It’ll also be interesting to see the flu figures this winter, as we don’t know how many people who might have died of flu this coming winter have already died of Covid.
Click to expand...

It shouldn't have disappeared entirely because despite all the restrictions, there were more than enough people milling around and working in offices and taking public transport for flu to have still been around.

So where the hell did it go?

Maybe people who had flu also had covid and as we know, covid is king? Once you have that diagnosis, who is going to also look for flu? Are the symptoms of flu amongst those who end up in hospital with respiratory problems really that different from covid? Were these patients always tested for covid? If not, could some of them have been flu? I expect that some people admitted to an ICU and then dying will not have been tested. There wouldn't have been time. Maybe there's something in that, and maybe not.
Does the covid test also give a positive result for flu? Is it possible we have been wrongly labelling all flu and covid cases as "covid"?

This is all beyond my expertise so I'm not sure about any of it but on the face of it, it seems implausible that it just disappeared entirely.
 
pm133 said:
This is all beyond my expertise so I'm not sure about any of it but on the face of it, it seems implausible that it just disappeared entirely.
Click to expand...
It hasn't. It's just down a lot. (By about 95%, this story suggests https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/where-did-flu-go-during-covid_uk_6017d359c5b6bde2f5c114dc )

And no, we're not mistaking flu for covid (we're doing a sequence for a large proportion of positive test results, and I feel sure someone would have mentioned if many of them came up as flu rather than Covid).
 
Shame nurses don't have to cite the Hippocatic Oath before being admitted to the job, 'First, do no harm.' What they SAY can cause as much harm if not more, than some of the remedies ........
 
pm133 said:
When you finish laughing, perhaps you can tell us all when Australia will be able to remove all restrictions and open all borders again?
Click to expand...
Well, we'll probably continue to treat it like ebola rather than flu for a while, coz that's resulted in eg a mortality rate < 2% of the UK's, a vibrant economy, no restrictions for most of the time, and so on. People generally seem to have embraced the dystopia, giving 90%+ approval ratings to state governments composed of the usual twits, maniacs and stooges for property developers, purely on the basis of how quickly they slam borders shut and go into crisis mode in response to any risk.

Of course, the federal govt has screwed up the vax program, but when you look at the people involved it's surprising they can put their trousers on the right way round in the morning. It'll get sorted over the next few months but it should have been a lot faster - as is the case for Japan, South Korea, NZ etc, our peer group of countries which have also managed to deal with the pandemic without tanking their economies or letting huge numbers of their people get killed by it.
 
It's Brexit tanking our economy if anything is. in fact, there seems to be a post Covid boom in the economy (not to pre Covid levels yet) but the speed of recovery is worrying the Bank of England, for one.

And it only takes one person to arrive in Australia with the Delta variant, which could cause an epidemic that outraces your TTI. Your government really ought to get their trousers on the right way round and get the vaccines out and about a sight quicker, or your economy, imports and exports, may dry up.
 
Last edited:
Amity Island said:
Hi pm133 news today says similar thing.

Click to expand...

I think it's very easy for people to be cocky about these things when these restrictions don't affect them.
Not so easy when you are trying to run a business or need to leave your own borders. There are people who can't get home to visit dying loved ones because of quarantine rules despite there being almost no cases in the entire country. It's barbaric. The main population are so content with their beers, their beaches and their barbies that they can't even see the bigger problem looming right on their doorstep and getting ever closer.

I read somewhere that New Zealand has panicked because of a single case arriving from Australia and has locked down a big part of the country.

Neither of these countries will ever be able to open up again until they vaccinate everyone and I can't see how they are ever going to persuade enough people to do that when so many people in both countries are seemingly quite content to live the rest of their lives on the beach with a beer.

And all that isolation won't necessarily protect them anyway. It might only take a single case to get out of control and all of a sudden you have something like the Indian variant sweeping through an unvaccinated population with no natural immunity. That could be absolutely catastrophic. That Indian variant is trying its damnedest to get a foothold and it will almost certainly succeed unless the Aussies believe they can magic up some unique charm to protect themselves when every other country is struggling with it. Anyone who thinks the Aussies have this covid thing licked simply isn't paying attention to what is happening in the world.

Looking from the outside at the storm fast approaching their shores is chilling. The word dystopian is a good description.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top