I am still surprised that I hear this one on occasion since it’s so easy to see the difference. I’ve previously addressed this from a clinical standpoint, but maybe an illustration using some data would show how profoundly ignorant a claim like this truly is. One really would have to reject a TON of evidence to say it, but the disinformation campaign out of Russia is likely working quite well for Putin.
The US doesn’t collect influenza hospitalization data anywhere near as widely as it does for COVID. For influenza, a representative sample is taken from some hospitals in 14 states to assess influenza activity.
Here is a graph of influenza admission in that surveillance system stratified by age combined with COVID admissions (in green) by epi week.
Where is influenza on this? It’s barely visible at the bottom. Remember that this is only a sampling of influenza admissions though to identify national trends. Regardless, it still will work for the point I want to make by changing the scale of the y-axis. You can line up the drops and peaks in COVID admissions vertically since the horizontal scales are not changed in any of these graphs. You may even want to scroll up and down for the rest of this to see some of the points I’m making.
Since influenza activity is still difficult to see, one more zoom in should provide a clearer picture. I didn’t use this view because the COVID admissions are almost meaningless without some context.
So where did influenza go in the area that I marked with a triangle? That’s really quite easily explained. First, influenza activity can be predicted for the US based on activity in the southern hemisphere during our summer. Influenza activity was very low there due to mitigation measures. Second, infectious disease spread follows exponential growth patterns. If it starts with low numbers because of low seeding from the southern hemisphere, influenza activity generally won’t grow as much. Third, we were using the same types of measures here in 2020 and 2021, but it’s easy to see how the gradual easing of measures such as mask mandates and other restrictions started letting influenza enter the picture again in the 21-22 season.
One thing that is particularly interesting in the 21-22 season is the bifurcated waves, which is really unusual. I’m going to suggest that it was due to behavior driven by the original omicron COVID wave. The first wave of influenza that season was at exactly the same time. Since media was reporting the incredibly high number of cases, I think people took that to heart and started taking more precautions on their own, which also reduced influenza spread. Once that surge was ending, people became lax again about respiratory protection causing that second influenza wave.
The anti-science crowd likes to claim that influenza “magically disappeared,” trying to make a false point that COVID simply was influenza rebranded to “control people.” If that were really the case, then why have influenza admissions returned to pre-pandemic levels during the 22-23 season?
It’s simple. Respiratory protection works…but only when it gets used.
