#Flu in #Queensland, week to 03JUL2022
😷Total numbers have continues last week's decline (2 in a row)
🔵current data point(s) change in the subsequent week as outstanding results are finalised and reported
😷Percent positive with a moving average.
🤧Steadily declining.
😷Hospital admission numbers because of #flu, broken up by region of Qld, with historical context.
🤒Drop in admissions for another consecutive week
😷Can't conclude much current detail about subtyping from such low numbers.
YTD A/H3N2 dominance from eth data we have
😷Ian's take-home messages...
📢Get #flu vaccine if you haven't already
📢Flu seasons pass-a good mask, worn properly, indoors increases your chances of missing this one
📢Stay home if sick (=new: cough, sneezing, headache, fever, fatigue)
📢Stay away from the elderly if sick
For the AJ Leonardi fans recent quote posts of me (he blocked me, so it took others to point them out🙏; I've returned the favour now), I'll add that the definition of "immune" or "immunity" does not imply never getting infected. It's a term scientists use & it can differ from..
..that used by you in the wider community.
To us, if I can speak for all scientists (!I can't🙂), it means your body has mounted an immune *response*. That response - such as the one _most humans_ mount to SARS-CoV-2 after infection (whole virus) or vaccination (mainly Spike...
..protein) generally make future infection by the same thing, less severe. Having immunity (producing or 'mounting' an immune response) protects you from serious disease (hospital-level stuff) & death. It may protect you from less severe disease too. Not all vaccines are as..
#COVID19 in Australian hospitals over the last 12 months.
Creeping up from the lowest base over that period.
But what is the State of Queensland doing?
I don't think anywhere else in Aus has had this strange little peak and drop at this time.
If look at the entire pandemic in Australia, we see there's still a *long* way to go before we see a 'flu-like' pattern of a between-peak drop to a baseline of basically zero hospitalisations.
If it ever drops to that of course.
😷Respiratory virus data in these tweets are from Sullivan Nicolaides Pathology (SNP) lab weekly report.
😷They service #Queensland, northern New South Wales and wider Darwin area and Alice Springs
•Reports: snp.com.au/clinicians/res…
•SNP locations:snp.com.au/our-locations/
😷A reminder that whatever respiratory signs & symptoms bring a patient in for a test/Doctor's visit - many very different respiratory viruses can cause that disease. Only a good pathology laboratory test has a hope of identifying a cause.
🧬Detailed public-facing PCR data from a private lab in Queensland, Australia (thankyou🙏) showing #Flu % positivity around 6%↔ (about 1 in 16 samples tested are FluA or FluB positive).
•FluB showing its spiky face but FluA dominating
•RSV and rhinovirus number⬆
"Equatorial Guinea said on Wednesday that it had registered the "unusual epidemiological situation" over the past weeks in Kie-Ntem province's Nsok Nsomo district that caused nine deaths in two adjacent communities over a short period."
🔅What follows is not to minimise serious impact of COVID-19. Because many things are true at once. 🔅
Pre-pandemic, excess deaths from heart & other issues were associated with respiratory virus seasons-Flu, RSV, MPV etc.
Cleaned air & 😷 will also reduce risk of those harms
We've never succeeded in removing those harms or, in many nations, made serious non-vax efforts to reduce the risks, although a well matched flu vaccine likely helps them for flu.
But now SARS-CoV-2 has added more harms to the pile.
We have plenty of evidence of airborne spread for all respiratory viruses. Including SARS-CoV-2. We have plenty of evidence of how to interfere with that without needing to lockdown.
Yes, even masks (despite some poorly thought out studies) have a role.
We are all playing Covid roulette. Without clean air, the next infection could permanently disable you.
-a pretty full summary of the worst of it all. 1/7 theguardian.com/commentisfree/…
"Do we really mean to sit and watch as this infection encroaches on our freedom to be well, brutal winter after brutal winter?"
🦠Of course "No", but I can't square that with the fact that in my lifetime, there's been no action but a vaccine for the same question about influenza
Because we prove again & again that we have short memories. We'd rather fight than learn/progress.
We're easily distracted & don't care about the death of our elderly (we do seem to care about neonate & infant deaths)
Not very hard to see why we *must* have leadership.
3/7