The Government should treat the flu similar to how it has treated Covid, the Economist has argued. Here’s an excerpt:
The Government’s plan is to deal with [COVID-19] in a “similar way to other existing respiratory illnesses” such as the flu. In practice, that means less surveillance, fewer vaccinations and a greater willingness to accept infections and deaths. This trade-off seems reasonable to many (though less so to clinically vulnerable people). But dialling down the response to be more like the approach to flu is not the only option. Another would be to treat flu more like Covid. “There is a fatalism about flu,” says Professor Ajit Lalvani of Imperial College London. “Every year the winter flu season overwhelms the NHS. Applying the lessons learnt through Covid could help.”
If ever there was a time to think differently about the disease, this is it. Epidemiologists worry that two years of low exposure to flu may have caused immunity to wane to low levels. That may result in an extraordinary number of cases this winter, at a point when huge waiting-lists will still clog up the National Health Service (NHS).
Before asking how things might be done differently, start with how things usually are. Pre-Covid estimates based on serological surveys suggest that as many as one in five Britons contract the flu each year. The vast majority of people get a relatively mild illness but for some a trip to the doctor will be needed. A study in 2007 estimated that flu results in some 800,000 visits to family doctors each year. Unlike Covid, it particularly affects the very young as well as the elderly: children under 14 accounted for two-thirds of visits.
If a respiratory infection worsens sufficiently, treatment at hospital is needed. As many as 40,000 people are hospitalised each year with breathing difficulties caused by the flu; the average total in-patient cost is £7,500 ($9,360). Because respiratory infections are slow to shift, patients stay for 11 days on average. Occupancy of the NHS’s 100,000 hospital beds rises from about 88% to over 95% during the winter; flu plays a big part in that.
Official data suggest that, on average, around 500 people died from flu each year in the decade to 2020. But since flu infections are not systematically diagnosed, that number is a massive undercount. To estimate the true number of deaths from influenza, epidemiologists model excess winter mortality, disaggregating flu infections from cold snaps that also lead to death. On this basis an average of 10,000 died each year from flu in the ten years to 2020; in the winter of 2014-15 as many as 29,000 died.
The leading business and current affairs magazine suggests that this could mean widening the vaccination programme, including to children, increasing surveillance and testing, and encouraging those infected to isolate and wear a mask while symptomatic. It also says failure to go further than this, while likely, “may have consequences” come the winter.
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I’m sure they’re already working on Flu viruses in Big Pharma’s clandestine Labs right now, wonder when they will release one?
The Global elite is desperate to maintain their authrority they wouldn’t care if it took a few milllion innocent lives to force another lockdown to buy them some more time, after all, they’ve proven they’re cetainly evil enough to contemplate it.
With Boris having already trashed our economy and peoples’ lives with covid these idiots want more of the same!
The problem with economists is that they don’t live in the real world.
In my experience flu was worse than covid. But … the doctor (by phone) just said rest, you’re fit and healthy, it’ll pass. Bloody horrible it was, couldn’t walk for 2 days.
Where is the drive from government, academics (with a few notable exceptions) and the media to get the population healthy so they aren’t so susceptible to illnesses such as flu, Covid etc and also type 2 diabetes probably the biggest drain on NHS resources? It makes me so angry that people queue up for the vax and have the gall to denigrate the unvaxed but are not prepared to do something to improve their own health.
People need time to be able to devote to exercise, cooking from scratch and being social (in person) if they want to be genuinely healthy. Unfortunately TPTB like us all to be at work as much as possible, keeps us out of their hair and making money for big business. You can’t work full time and have a family and maintain your health, there’s just not enough time. And pushing up the cost of living means work hours can’t be reduced without risking not being able to pay the bills. All planned, you see.
‘But since flu infections are not systematically diagnosed, that number is a massive undercount.’
Deaths from influenza normally are estimated with reference to excess Winter deaths compared with rest of year. So it cannot be a ‘massive undercount’. The reason for this is because fit healthy people do not usually die of ‘flu, it is elderly with comorbidity who are the bulk of its victims – just like CoVid.
The people who die, don’t die of ‘flu or CoVid, they die because they would die anyway. Why is this so difficult for some to understand?
Had CoVid deaths been estimated the same way, the number of deaths would have been very small and in the same range as Winter deaths due to Colds and ‘flu in other years.
Since we have been managing ‘flu quite nicely for 100 years, why the need to change and increase the death toll from restrictions and vaccine injury?
’Flu vaccines aren’t effective either.
The lessons from covid are that there is almost nothing that government can do, and the huffing and puffing of supposedly intelligent people demanding “something must be done”, just makes it worse.
Beginning to think masks, surveillance, vaccines, restrictions and fearmongering are all combining to form an end in themselves, rather than a means to an end. If their pie-in-the-sky goal was to control viruses through suppression, then by now there would be some kind of concrete evidence that all their so-called suppression tactics had worked to exert some kind of control.
The only concrete evidence there is so far, is that viruses of any shape or colour will track their own bell curve, or “wave” of building, peaking and receding regardless of any request by the state to radically alter our lifestyles.
And therefore we can safely assume that the goal that they hope to achieve by pulling out of the bag all of the same pointless tools must be something OTHER than a public health objective.
You don’t have to be a conspiracy theorist to see the validity of this logic.
“Treat the flu like Covid”? No – treat Covid like the flu.
Is this what might be described as a “Trial Balloon”? The idea is to make a seemingly outrageous proposal and see how it runs, not with the general public of course, but with the unelected who actually hold power. I like the comment in a post below that flips this absurd idea on its head by suggesting that we should have treated Covid like ‘flu, not ‘flu like Covid.
Lockdowns once a year, one way arrows, masks, social distancing, business closures, NHS restrictions and all the rest?
If it wasn’t needed before why do they think it’s needed now. Unless of course you don’t care about all the negative consequences of such actions.
If every year the Notional Health Service is “overwhelmed” by flu, why don’t they do something about it? Also, the coof is basically a respiratory disease, like flu. Booyah!
So, the Economist would like to have the economy further ruined by seasonal flu, to finish the job started by the Wu-flu Panic?
Another criminal piece of dirt subverting Britain from within. Im sick of these scumbags being given airtime. Imperial College is just a nest of Gates funded charlatans who impress noone with a functioning brain. The notion that the liars at The Economist care about peoples health is a joke. They couldnt care less about anyone but their own little clique.
Another example of the criminals in the media peddling lies to cover up for the fact that the jabs have wrecked peoples biology (turning billions of cells into factories of a toxic synthetic lab designed protein as a way to make peoples health improve is so obviously dumb its beyond words – but apparently our “health service” is full of dumbasses who think this is all good) and that more and more people will become more and more severely ill as the reality of this genocidal convid injection programme becomes more significant.
Wrong way round. Should have treated convid like flu. Stick to economics, Economist.
sure, why not take the same interventions that worked so perfectly with covid19 and use them against a similar viral disease?
great thinking…
Also my first reaction.
It makes more sense to treat covid like the flu.
After the antics of Professor “Pants Down, Lockdown” Ferguson, would in their right mind would give any credence to anything that is said by any Imperial College academic?
My conspiracy theory: A patent for a genetically modified SARS virus was filed by Chapel Hill University over 20 years ago (fact). There have been over 70 other patents filed since (fact). In 2019 Pfizer filed a patent and a few days later a patent for a vaccine for that virus (fact). I believe the release of the virus was well-rehearsed by the world governments.
” Epidemiologists worry that two years of low exposure to flu may have caused immunity to wane to low levels. That may result in an extraordinary number of cases this winter”
Just exactly what did they think would happen when the country was shut for covid. Why is it we all knew it would happen and they, the experts, didn’t.
Covid symptoms are the same as getting the Flu, however if you self isolate, as directed, that ensures that the Coronavirus/Flu which you caught, potentially becomes Covid, which is what the medical establishment want, so they can inflict you with their rMNA vaccines, however this is an easy fix and what I have been doing from the outset – no vaccines for me ever (for 29 years now): 3 minutes from preparation to job done!!
Everything else you have read, or heard, is totally irrelevant – how simple is that?
Covid Crusher: Mix one heaped teaspoon of Iodine table salt in a mug of warm clean water, cup a hand and sniff or snort the entire mugful up your nose, spitting out anything which comes down into your mouth. If sore, then you have a virus, so continue morning noon and night, or more often if you want, until the soreness goes away (2-3 minutes) then blow out your nose and flush away, washing your hands afterwards, until when you do my simple cure, you don’t have any soreness at all, when you flush – job done. Also swallow a couple of mouthfuls of salt water and if you have… Read more »
Their ‘Green’ world means that we use less of everything, except Pharmaceuticals
“…except Pharmaceuticals…” which are largely synthesised from fossil fuels. Like face masks. And testing kits. And smart phones running vaccine passports. What have I missed?
The manufacturing process is moot (to them) the sales are not
Shortly to become ‘Soylent Green’ world.
I’ve long advocated, privately (of course), that there should be mobile collection units that tour the streets and invite representatives of the lower orders aboard for a chat. Electric stunner, a whiz through the macerator into the tank below, and off to the processing plant. Can’t be that far away now. Can it?
I find it hard to believe the around 500 flu deaths figure. NZ has that many (normally) with a population on 5 million.
People die now …. off’
A somewhat confusing article which greatly exaggerates the number of ‘flu’ cases. ‘Mild flu’ is of course the common cold, though this is complicated now by the existence of Covid. In either case, admission to hospital marks the change in definition.
You know what, treating the flu has become a yearly fear among the elderly. Why?? Because the pharmaceuticals created that fear by saying 60yrs and upwards should have a yearly flu jab. This creates an atmosphere of anxiety.
Flu has been around since humans started to congregate in large cities and towns. Most people would stay at home if the became ill. With the push of yearly flu vaccines people thought they could carry on as usual. Even with a runny nose and a cough. They thought they were ‘safe’. We now have health fear and over reliance on pharmaceuticals.
It’s crazy. Stop running to the doctor or A&E for the least problem. Take responsibility for your health and STOP worrying. Stress levels go down, the body heals itself with rest.
They seem to be saying that the measures taken in response to covid have lowered our previous herd immunity to influenza. Their conclusion is that we should do more of it in order to lower immunity even more. That’s pretty stupid even before considering the damage that such measures do to mental health, the economy, social cohesion, education and so on.
And yet their readers will lap it up.
If people actually have the ‘flu, they feel far too ill to go out and engage with other people. This is just encouraging hypochondria.
Very true. From personal experience (flu twice over the years) I would say there’s no way you could even get to the doctor’s surgery you feel so crap.
They have learnt nothing. It’s still https://dailysceptic.org/2022/01/04/its-the-economist-stupid/
As true now as it was then. Good article, David.
Oh yes, and let’s furlough everyone from October to April every year too. Heck, why not just lock down the world permanently?
No. Stop trying to play God. Infections have been part of life for millions of years. Our bodies have learned how to deal with them, and we need to keep that process going. Stopping people getting infected is madness.
By all means give people advice on how to stay as healthy as possible by eating good food and taking plenty of exercise, but drugs and unnatural interventions are not a long-term solution. In the end, they would kill us all.
‘Treat the flu like covid’
Translation – next time you have a flu an NHS Docotor will try to put you in an induced coma and wreck your lungs with a ventilator, and if you are double plus lucky he/she/they will also put you on a known toxic dose of HCQ just to prove that a known toxic dose of HCQ will kill you.