HCoV-OC43 and especially HCoV-NL63 continue to roar back. HCoV-229E rising now too.
CDC hasn't updated its HCoV data yet this week, but note that the drop at end of charts I shared last week was a glitch -- they had a row of zeroes in the source table. cdc.gov/surveillance/n…
Florida. Schools open all year. No lockdowns since September. Rhinoviruses and some adenoviruses but nearly no flu; PIV has reappeared. RSV now above baseline and still rising. floridahealth.gov/diseases-and-c…
Sweden week 12. No masks, no lockdowns, no school closures under age 16 -- and nearly a full year with no Flu A, Flu B, or RSV. HCoVs continue to rise. karolinska.se/globalassets/g…
Germany: Still no influenza. HCoVs up (despite strict lockdowns); SARS-CoV2 down.
It wasn't masks, which were never used in many countries where flu disappeared and have also been shown to be ineffective for stopping influenza in many, many studies.
Japan masks every year, and pushed masks hard in 2019 with no apparent effect. But in 2020-21 flu disappeared with low stringency COVID intervention. apps.who.int/flumart/Defaul…
The idea mitigations worked but unmitigated SARS-CoV2 just has a higher R (popular now among the same crowd that said twindemic! when flu had been gone for months) is way too facile.
Outside of testing ramp up, I don't think we've seen R > 2, even in places without NPIs.
Rhino bounced right back despite lower R and RSV was gone until recently with comparable R to SARS-CoV2.
HCoVs were gone until SARS-CoV2 declined but are now surging even with lockdown.
Plus, as Biden adviser Dr. Michael Osterholm points out, our mitigation just hasn't been very effective. Maybe in places like Australia and New Zealand where mitigations stopped SARS-CoV2 they also stopped other viruses. But in countries where SARS-CoV2 went wild? No.
Osterholm: "There is this viral interference"
Viral interference is a well-known (but poorly understood) phenomenon. Interference from rhinovirus is generally thought to have ended the swine flu epidemic in 2009. thelancet.com/journals/lanmi…
Pediatric internships and residencies have to be extended because they just didn't have enough patients to gain the normal amount of clinical experience.
But we did keep the hospitals busy -- with children in psychiatric distress.
We're seeing reports like this from all over the country. The empty pediatric wards usually used for respiratory disease have been converted to child psych overflow.
The bottom line is many places locked kids out of school during the *safest* respiratory season (everywhere, including the places schools never closed) for children ever recorded. It's a disgrace.
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American Psychological Association Stress in America™ pandemic survey shows 42% of U.S. adults report undesired weight gain, with an average gain of 29 lbs. apa.org/news/press/rel…
75% of parents say they could have used more emotional support than they received, 32% received treatment from a mental health professional, and 24% were diagnosed with a mental health disorder since the pandemic started. apa.org/news/press/rel…
75% of essential workers say they could have used more emotional support than they received, 34% received treatment from a mental health professional, and 1 in 4 (25%) was diagnosed with a mental health disorder since the start of the pandemic. apa.org/news/press/rel…
MILESTONE from @BurbioCalendar: a majority of U.S. public K-12 students are in schools offering full-time, traditional instruction for the first time in a year.
% US K-12 students attending "virtual-only" schools = 18.1% (from 20.8% last week)
% US K-12 students attending "traditional" in-person/every day schools = 51.2% (from 49.1%)
% US K-12 students attending "hybrid" schools = 30.7% (from 30.1%)
We knew New York would be very bad -- because why else would they refuse to ever report age in their state data? -- and they are. 48th, ahead only of Alabama and Hawaii.