The Briefing Room
General Category => Editorial/Opinion/Blogs => Topic started by: mystery-ak on May 06, 2021, 01:57:28 pm
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May 6, 2021
The Incredible Vanishing Flu
By Brian C.Joondeph, MD
Seasonal influenza, also known as “the flu,” visits America every year, similar to tornados, thunderstorms, heat waves, and snowstorms. As tracked by the CDC, over the past decade symptomatic flu cases ranged from 9 to 45 million cases per year in the US. Hospitalizations varied from 140 to 810 thousand, and deaths from 12 to 61 thousand, depending on the particular year, strain of influenza, and effectiveness of the vaccine.
This year, “flu activity is unusually low at this time” according to CDC surveillance. Since late September 2020, they recorded only about 2000 cases, a minute fraction of the tens of millions of cases in past years.
Hospitalizations this flu season are minimal with only 224 confirmed influenza hospitalizations from September 2020 to mid-April 202, nowhere near the hundreds of thousands of hospitalizations in past seasons.
Deaths are harder to measure since the CDC conveniently changed how deaths are characterized this past year. Instead of pneumonia, influenza, and COVID being in separate categories, now it’s called PIC, lumping the three entities together.
more
https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2021/05/the_incredible_vanishing_flu.html
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May 6, 2021
The Incredible Vanishing Flu
By Brian C.Joondeph, MD
Seasonal influenza, also known as “the flu,” visits America every year, similar to tornados, thunderstorms, heat waves, and snowstorms. As tracked by the CDC, over the past decade symptomatic flu cases ranged from 9 to 45 million cases per year in the US. Hospitalizations varied from 140 to 810 thousand, and deaths from 12 to 61 thousand, depending on the particular year, strain of influenza, and effectiveness of the vaccine.
This year, “flu activity is unusually low at this time” according to CDC surveillance. Since late September 2020, they recorded only about 2000 cases, a minute fraction of the tens of millions of cases in past years.
Hospitalizations this flu season are minimal with only 224 confirmed influenza hospitalizations from September 2020 to mid-April 202, nowhere near the hundreds of thousands of hospitalizations in past seasons.
Deaths are harder to measure since the CDC conveniently changed how deaths are characterized this past year. Instead of pneumonia, influenza, and COVID being in separate categories, now it’s called PIC, lumping the three entities together.
more
https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2021/05/the_incredible_vanishing_flu.html
If you can't manipulate the data, render it useless.
The last refuge for scallywags...
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"Did we just now discover hygiene? Was last year the first time that Americans washed their hands and used hand sanitizer? We have always done these things."
Actually, no we haven't - and after speaking with dozens of physicians (which is part of my job), I have concluded that the incidence of colds and flu has diminished for just this reason.
It's not the masks (which are largely useless) - it's the simple fact of people having gotten into the routine of washing their hands after public contact, and using hand sanitizer.