As most are aware, there has been no flu season this year, with many people mistakenly attributing this to Covid control measures (which work for flu but not covid, apparently).
Indeed, the WHO flumart surveillance shows the flu disappeared in late Winter 2020 across all of the Americas and has not yet re-appeared:
Similarly, all of Europe and Northern Africa show an almost complete lack of flu, starting right when the Covid pandemic took off in these regions:
The same is true in West and Southern Asia, as well as Oceania. No flu since early 2020:
But, this is not a truly global phenomenon. The flu has returned in East Asia as well as sub-Saharan Africa.
Could it be a coincidence that these are also the regions which have been completely spared from Covid?
The one area of sub-Saharan Africa which follows the global pattern is Southern Africa - which also happens to account for nearly all Covid deaths on the continent:
So, what is going on? A clue can be found from the CDC's 2009 flu activity report which shows that as soon as pandemic H1N1 emerged, all other flu strains disappeared:
When a novel pandemic virus emerges, it outcompetes similar viruses; Covid outcompeted the flu nearly everywhere - except central Africa and Eastern Asia.
So, it CAN NOT be that masks or other mitigations protected Asia, the only reasonable answer is prior immunity.
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The Japan Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare has released final birth and death estimates for 2020, which show that Covid-19 did not cause any excess mortality in Japan:
Focusing on just this century's data, it is evident that there were between 8K and 30K fewer deaths than expected in 2020, depending upon the trend period chosen (there were an approximately equal number of missing births):
Japan never had a national lockdown; public mask compliance is lower than in Europe or the blue states in the USA, gyms and restaurants remained open, people continued to commute on crowded trains, and most children continue to go to school.
I hiked up Angel's Landing in Zion NP a few days ago. For the first mile of the hike, ~60% wore masks. By the end of the second mile, it was down to 20% masks. At the summit, there were exactly zero masks worn.
I also visited a mini-mart near St. George, UT and watched as person after person walked in with their mask on, looked around at the maskless faces, and immediately took the mask off.
Southern UT, despite the statewide mask mandate, appears to be as open as FL or SD.
I also spent time hiking and climbing in Nevada - and the variance to UT could not have been more stark.
In NV, you are never unaware of Covid. Retail/restaurants are open but operate under capacity limits. Many people wear masks outdoors. Public health posters are everywhere.
In 4 weeks, cases worldwide have fallen by 40%; this is worldwide phenomenon - with one notable exception. One nation remains with stubbornly high cases counts - in fact, the very highest cases per capital in the world....
Israel currently has higher cases per capita than any other nation with more than 7 million people and their case count appears to have plateaued while every other nation sees cases rapidly declining or already very low:
Israel's high case count comes despite a hard lockdown and the world's best, by far, rate of vaccination:
I like how NPR "explains" that cases have fallen in India because of masks, while also stating that mask mandates were in place before cases rose and that serioprevelance indicates almost 60% of urban populations have already had Covid.