Adding key ingredient to vaccine may stimulate broad protection against viruses scienceblog.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from scienceblog.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Rates of influenza have remained persistently low through late 2020 and into 2021, cratering from levels a year ago and raising the puzzling specter of sharply reduced influenza transmission rates even as positive tests for COVID-19 have shattered numerous records over the last several weeks.
Where have all the flu cases gone?
Epidemiologist Knut Wittkowski thinks he can answer the riddle.
“Influenza has been renamed COVID in large part,” Wittkowski, the
former head of biostatistics, epidemiology and research design at Rockefeller University, told the outlet.
“There may be quite a number of influenza cases included in the ‘presumed COVID’ category of people who have COVID symptoms (which Influenza symptoms can be mistaken for), but are not tested for SARS RNA,” he added.
Select Page
What happened to “flu season?” In the age of COVID, “the flu” has been reclassified as coronavirus, says epidemiologist
A few months ago, some infectious disease experts began warning that it would extremely difficult, as the COVID-19 pandemic lingered into the fall, for frontline healthcare providers to determine if sickness was due to the novel coronavirus or good, old-fashioned influenza.
The reason, they said, is that in many respects, flu symptoms could and would mimic COVID-19 symptoms.
But according to one epidemiologist, that problem has been solved by the ‘powers that be’: Simply
reclassify flu cases as COVID-19 illnesses that way, “flu cases” will go down this year while Joe Biden’s authoritarian Democrats get to continue ‘justifying’ perpetual lockdowns and theft of our liberty and freedom.
Rates of influenza have remained persistently low through late 2020 and into 2021, cratering from levels a year ago and raising the puzzling specter of sharply reduced influenza transmission rates even as positive tests for COVID-19 have shattered numerous records over the last several weeks.
Where have all the flu cases gone?
Epidemiologist Knut Wittkowski thinks he can answer the riddle.
“Influenza has been renamed COVID in large part,” Wittkowski, the
former head of biostatistics, epidemiology and research design at Rockefeller University, told the outlet.
“There may be quite a number of influenza cases included in the ‘presumed COVID’ category of people who have COVID symptoms (which Influenza symptoms can be mistaken for), but are not tested for SARS RNA,” he added.
Date Time
Myeloid immune cells in blood tied to severe COVID-19
Individual variations in how the immune system responds to SARS-CoV-2 appear to impact the severity of disease. Researchers at Karolinska Institutet have now been able to show that patients with severe COVID-19 have significantly elevated levels of a certain type of immune cells in their blood, called myeloid-derived suppressor cells. The study published in the Journal of Clinical Investigation may bring an increased understanding of how early immune responses impact disease severity.
Anna Smed Sörensen. Photo: Ulf Sirborn.
Most individuals with COVID-19 develop mild to moderate symptoms and recover without needing hospital treatment. In severe cases, however, COVID-19 can lead to respiratory failure or even death. It is not yet known why the severity of disease varies so much between patients.