The WHO has recommended dropping a component of many flu vaccines because the viruses it protects against appear to have been driven into extinction in the Covid pandemic.
The WHO has recommended dropping a component of many flu vaccines because the viruses it protects against appear to have been driven into extinction in the Covid pandemic.
For anyone who just wants to know what component: they want to drop the influenza B/Yamagata variant of the flu virus since it appears to have gone extinct in the wild.
And it didn’t just go extinct by luck. It’s a good case study of how to control and/or eliminate a virus (e.g. COVID):
“The rapid and global implementation of social distancing measures, masking, and the profound early reduction in international travel resulted in a substantial reduction in flu transmission.”
Shame that it worked for the flu and not for covid. In a way to me tho Covid just replaced variants of the flu.
Better than nothing though.
If we can get the world to agree to do 2 years of social distancing and masking in public places every 10 years maybe we can get rid of a lot more.
Probably would have gotten rid of a lot more if certain people weren’t adamantly against masks for that 2 year period.
I was all in for social distancing and so on for the time when covid was new and we didn’t have vaccines etc., but it also did a lot of damage to young people, me somewhat included. That idea has a good intention, but it will do more damage in other sectors than it does good in that sector.
Yes it did!
I teach kids from ages ranging 12 to 18 and all the teachers agree there are skills missing from kids who had online classes during the pandemic.
Kids close to 12 have difficulty reading Kids around 14 have serious gaps in computer knowledge.
These seem like skills that can easily be caught up on. I would be worried more about the social anxiety the isolation brought to children in early puberty. It’s heartbreaking to see them like that.
That’s definitely worse. However, we haven’t noticed much of that.
I would even argue that kids were eager to get reunited with their friends.
It made the world so lonely.