{"id":1635,"date":"2021-10-13T08:58:57","date_gmt":"2021-10-13T12:58:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/covidqanda.org\/?p=1635"},"modified":"2021-10-13T08:58:57","modified_gmt":"2021-10-13T12:58:57","slug":"flu-season-was-so-mild-last-year-will-this-year-be-mild-too","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/covidqanda.org\/?p=1635","title":{"rendered":"Flu season was so mild last year. Will this year be mild too?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">Question:\u00a0<\/span><\/strong>With flu season approaching, I was curious to know how widespread flu was in the southern hemisphere this year? Last year was so mild for flu, will this year be too?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">Answer:\u00a0<\/span><\/strong>When it comes to the Southern Hemisphere, a news piece published about 6 weeks ago in\u00a0<em>JAMA<\/em>\u00a0perfectly addresses your question. The report,\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/jamanetwork.com\/journals\/jama\/fullarticle\/2783644\">Influenza\u2019s Unprecedented Low Profile During COVID-19 Pandemic Leaves Experts Wondering What This Flu Season Has in Store<\/a>, states &#8220;influenza remained scarce this summer for the second consecutive flu season in the Southern Hemisphere.&#8221;\u00a0 It goes on to describe the unpredictability of the flu, quoting infectious disease expert, Dr. William Schaffner, \u201cI don\u2019t think anybody is willing to put down their dollars and bet&#8230; because flu is so darn fickle.\u201d\u00a0 The whole article is worth the read.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">More recent\u00a0trends also show lower flu activity than is typically expected.\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.who.int\/teams\/global-influenza-programme\/surveillance-and-monitoring\/influenza-updates\/current-influenza-update\">WHO&#8217;s latest influenza update<\/a>\u00a0of September 27th states, &#8220;Globally, despite continued or even increased testing for influenza in some countries, influenza activity remained at lower levels than expected for this time of the year.&#8221;\u00a0 When it comes to the United States, CDC&#8217;s most recent\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.cdc.gov\/flu\/weekly\/index.htm\">weekly influenza surveillance report<\/a>\u00a0shows that flu activity is minimal to low across the country (<strong>Figure 1<\/strong>). So far, things are looking up for a mild flu season, but it&#8217;s still early and things can change! Plus, now is still the perfect time to get your flu shot, so go on and get that added protection!<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Figure 1. Flu Activity across the USA, week 39\u00a0<\/strong>(from\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.cdc.gov\/flu\/weekly\/index.htm\">CDC<\/a>)<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"723\" height=\"500\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/covidqanda.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/10\/image-4.png?resize=723%2C500&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-1636\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/covidqanda.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/10\/image-4.png?resize=1024%2C708&amp;ssl=1 1024w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/covidqanda.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/10\/image-4.png?resize=300%2C208&amp;ssl=1 300w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/covidqanda.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/10\/image-4.png?resize=768%2C531&amp;ssl=1 768w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/covidqanda.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/10\/image-4.png?w=1505&amp;ssl=1 1505w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/covidqanda.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/10\/image-4.png?w=1446&amp;ssl=1 1446w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 723px) 100vw, 723px\" \/><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Question:\u00a0With flu season approaching, I was curious to know how widespread flu was in the southern hemisphere this year? Last year was so mild for flu, will this year be too? Answer:\u00a0When it comes to the Southern Hemisphere, a news piece published about 6 weeks ago in\u00a0JAMA\u00a0perfectly addresses your question. The report,\u00a0Influenza\u2019s Unprecedented Low Profile [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[35,47,46],"tags":[230],"class_list":["post-1635","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-influenza","category-states","category-trends","tag-flu","has-post-thumbnail","fallback-thumbnail"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/covidqanda.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1635","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/covidqanda.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/covidqanda.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/covidqanda.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/covidqanda.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1635"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/covidqanda.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1635\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1637,"href":"https:\/\/covidqanda.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1635\/revisions\/1637"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/covidqanda.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1635"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/covidqanda.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1635"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/covidqanda.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1635"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}