Covid, Seasonal Flu Update -- January 6, 2023

Updates

Flashback, January December 6, 2022: this didn't hold up well. A lot of hysteria. A lot of misinformation. Headline and story from Vox:

In fact, unless there's a second spike, this was one of America's mildest years for "seasonal flu." That's how I saw it; not everyone would agree, but one can look at the CDC data without having others interpret the data. Comparing the number of "positive flu tests" is only one metric.

Original Post

The most recent CDC data for "chest colds" has been released, for the last week of 2022.

The data shows:

• seasonal flu appeared early this year, spiked quickly, and subsided quickly:
• if no second wave, one of the shortest seasonal flu seasons in years
• is seasonal flu being "pushed out" by Covid?
• were Covid precautions helpful in controlling seasonal flu?
• was the seasonal flu vaccine better this year than some previous years?
• big question: why did seasonal flu peak earlier than ever?
• seasonal flu is particularly dangerous for infants, toddlers, and youngsters
• is there a higher incidence of immune disorders in this cohort?
• as a percent of PIC deaths, Covid is increasing as we went into the end of the year but the Covid data from other data bases does not show any alarming trend, even with the new variant.
• all-in-all, unless there's a second wave, this was one of the earliest and shortest seasonal flu seasons on record.

Seasonal flu, vaccinated vs unvaccinated:

Meanwhile, Covid continues to surge in Asia: Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, and Hong Kong. Link here.

This table ranked according to "new cases," as of two days ago:

 
And look at yesterday:

Per capita, new cases:

• Japan, reporting about 200,000 new cases daily, population, 125, 000,000: 160 / 100,000.
• US, reporting about 50,000 new cases daily, population, 335,000,000: 16 / 100,000.
• what did the US do differently than Japan
• which country had a more "severe" lockdown policy?
• how much had to do with population density?