Flu largely disappeared during 2020 and 2021, giving rise to ideas among some sceptics that it was being missed and wrongly classified as Covid.
Recently, some Covid number-crunchers – Martin Neil, Norman Fenton, Jonathan Engler and Nick Hudson – have given this theory a fresh lease of life with articles on Substack and in TCW Defending Freedom.
Their central claim is that U.K. flu surveillance was failing to pick up signals of what was in reality a normal flu season with ordinary influenza prevalence:
Our investigations into flu surveillance use in the U.K. suggest they were either not picking up signals that were in fact present or were (intentionally?) deactivated for the duration of what would have been a normal flu season in 2020-2021.
Their articles examine a number of data sources. However, a key one missed out is the “Respiratory DataMart weekly positivity for influenza” found in the ‘Weekly national Influenza and COVID-19 surveillance report‘ from the UKHSA. The following chart is from August 2022 (p12).
The data in the chart are based on thousands of clinical samples sent each week by hospitals to labs for testing for a variety of common viruses (in week 33 of 2022, for instance, 33,059 respiratory specimens were reported through the Respiratory DataMart System). It can clearly be seen that influenza positivity from these samples was near zero throughout 2020 and 2021, before a return to moderate levels in spring 2022.
This shows that testing of clinical samples for influenza continued throughout the pandemic at a rate of thousands per week and that the proportion of these samples which came back positive remained close to zero throughout. This is compelling evidence that influenza was genuinely absent as there is no other plausible way to explain these near-100% proportions of negative test results in thousands of surveillance samples. If influenza was present at normal levels, why are all these thousands of samples each week coming back negative?
This allows us to be confident that influenza really did largely disappear during 2020-2021 and was not merely being missed or misclassified.
The most likely explanation for influenza’s disappearance is viral interference, whereby more infectious viruses outcompete less infectious strains. This is the process by which new Covid variants completely displace older variants in a matter of weeks, and it appears that it can also operate between viruses. Plague Chronicle author Eugyppius has spotlighted the science behind this process. He draws our attention to an article in Science that cites some recent research on the topic. From Science:
In one of the largest, longest, and most comprehensive studies of respiratory virus infections in humans, Murcia and colleagues used a PCR assay that can identify members of 11 viral families to probe nasal and throat samples from more than 36,000 individuals who sought care from the National Health Service in Glasgow over nine years. Among other examples of viral interference, their data clearly showed rhinovirus and influenza A peaked at different times… demonstrating a “negative interaction” between the two viruses, the group concluded in the December 26th 2019 issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
The Science article also cites a 2020 Lancet study that found that out of 1,911 samples positive for rhinovirus or influenza A virus, only 12 had both viruses.
Eugyppius discusses the potential biological mechanisms behind the phenomenon, noting the remarkable fact that overall prevalence of respiratory illness is relatively stable over time even as individual viruses wax and wane.
The claimed interference mechanism, as always, is interferon. This is an antiviral protein released in response to virus infection, which limits the capacity of other infecting viruses to replicate for a refractory period that may last as long as a month.
I’m sure that interferon plays an important role, but it’s probably only one of multiple factors at work here. To begin with, there’s one of my favourite hardly acknowledged virus facts, namely that “the overall prevalence of any viral respiratory infection among patients with respiratory illness is relatively stable over time, despite strongly varying prevalences of individual viruses”. Relatedly, we know from fever gauge data that overall rates of respiratory illness appear to be capped at around 10% of the whole population, and that rates of infection tend to collapse directly after reaching this ceiling… While the rate of virus infections remains relatively constant, the mix of viruses is always changing.
The phenomenon of viral interference thus seems to supply a plausible explanation for the temporary disappearance of influenza during 2020 and 2021.
There are a couple of other problems with the Neil et al. article that are worth noting. In the summary on Substack the authors state that “The NOMIS system shows that for the whole of 2020 there was no significant change in the number of deaths in the U.K. caused by flu (20,130), compared to previous years”. However, lower down it becomes clear that these are “Influenza and pneumonia” deaths, not just flu deaths, so may include pneumonia deaths with COVID-19, meaning the figures do not necessarily denote the presence of influenza.
Secondly, on Substack the authors write that “In January 2021 the ONS reported that there were almost as many deaths involving flu (7,610) as there were involving COVID-19 (5,719)”. In TCW these figures are switched: “In January 2021 the ONS reported that there were almost as many deaths involving flu (5,719) as there were involving Covid-19 (7,610).” Either way, though, the ONS data supplied with the weekly deaths bulletins show at least 30,157 deaths with Covid in England and Wales in January 2021, so I am unclear on the source of the much lower figures in the articles.
In sum, there are solid reasons to believe that the influenza virus really did drop to negligible levels during 2020-2021. Weekly U.K. surveillance testing of thousands of clinical samples consistently found zero or negligible percentages coming back positive for influenza. There is no other plausible way to explain this than that influenza was absent from the samples, and thus from the clinical picture. The most likely explanation is that it was outcompeted by the more infectious coronavirus.
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A few flu and pneumonia cases may have been rebranded as Covid19 by mistake but there is a reason flu temporarily disappeared. Viruses interact and compete with each other. The flu virus temporarily disappeared because the more dominant Sars-Cov-2 had interacted with it as explained in an article by MG Sunde PhD. https://medium.com/illumination-curated/the-unexpected-case-of-the-disappearing-flu-64fd1fa5e909
And why hasn’t CoV 2 replaced influenza in 2021/23 considering (we are told) we are still almost drowning in new variants (so keep up the jibby-jabbing) each of which, we are told, is even more transmissible (gasp) than the last, and in which case should be keeping influenza viruses out?
But… bottom line… it’s all very well quoting this data, but I don’t believe a single number from a Government source. They have consistently lied about data (and everything), misrepresented it, distorted it, hidden it, changed it often with the complicity of the medical profession.
I’m going to stick with my conspiracy theory.
Same. I’m just going to await the inevitable article appearing from Profs Fenton and Neil et al in response to Will’s theory. I’m sure whoever comes across something can share it for the rest of us. I’m inclined to believe flu never went away though because to accept a virus we’ve always had left 100 countries at the same time is just asking too much.
I had the flu in December 2019. The usual wet flu. 3 weeks later I had something much much worse and painful – probably the Rona. It was not the flu. I have never had the flu 2x in a month (no one has). So the flu did not disappear.
It was relabelled Rona. As were deaths from cancer, dementia, fibrosis, respiratory ailments, hit by a car…..
Does it matter much? Aren’t they very similar, in terms of societal impact?
….was about to the say the same…
so two ‘diseases’ which are pretty comparable in IFR and in the age cohorts they affect….and which also have the same or near similar symptoms…..
but we all had to panic because they are not caused by the same pathogen?…and it’s a big deal because one thing was supplanted by the near exact same thing??
OK!
In societal terms you might want to look at the total number of severe respiratory disease cases and compare with previous years to see whether you were in a different ballpark, and perhaps look at resource allocation for dealing with the effects, but the breakdown of the pathogens should only have been of interest to those working directly in relevant fields – medicine, pharmaceuticals, “public health”.
In previous years we would have had headlines for a day or two “terrible new flu strain on the way” and then it would be replaced by some other piece of news.
What I’ve never understood though is, I’d never even heard of Ivermectin until the Covid mania kicked off, so if Covid, or at least some of it, was really just flu, how come Ivermectin ( and HCQ tbh ) has never historically been shown to be effective against flu? People have always died from flu, Ivermectin has existed for decades, how come no doctors put 2+2 together before now and used this cheap, safe and effective drug as prophylaxis or early treatment against that particular resp virus? Could Ivermectin also have been saving lives from flu all this time?
I tend to believe covid exists and from what I’ve understood at least the Wuhan variant killed people in a different way to flu, a way that Ivermectin helped with as it damps down the immune response which in some people overloaded when presented with covid.
It’s also possible that a cheap treatment has been ignored because of perverse incentives.
Dr Mike Yeadon todaysTelegram channel:
1. There is no evidence of a pandemic.
2. Therefore there wasn’t any respiratory virus either.
I cannot fault that.
Mike Yeadon is wrong.
Yes of course it was a scam from the very start but to say SARS-CoV-2 doesn’t exist is ridiculous.
Mike Yeadon has also praised the work of the charlatans Lanka, Kaufman, Cowan, Bailey et al who say that NO viruses exist including the common cold.
These people have been totally debunked by many people including Steve Kirsch and Frank Visser many, many times.
Mike Yeadon hasn’t even mentioned the excellent work that Ron Unz has done with his compelling circumstantial evidence that SARS-CoV-2 was created in a US lab as an economic bioweapon against China and Iran and perhaps even Russia too with all the US biolabs in Ukraine.
Mike Yeadon maybe an expert in hayfever but SARS-CoV-2 and it’s variants have 29,903 base pairs which have been laboriously whole gene sequenced (it takes 4 to 5 days and NOT computer generated) and uploaded to the GISAID Initiative over 15 million times.
I am totally onboard with Covid being blown out of all proportion and it is only a mild virus no worse than flu for most people.
I also haven’t had any “vaccine” for 40 years and at 67 years old I don’t intend to start now.
However, Mike Yeadon is wrong, SARS-CoV-2 exists and was used to control humankind for nefarious means.
95% of what Yeadon says is correct but he totally discredits all his hard work by suggesting that SARS-CoV-2 does not exist.
My response to your final question Mogs – YES.
Wouldn’t it be nice if we knew the precise biomolecular mechanisms behind virus – of which there are about 40 million, apparently, in a cubic metre of air and about 380 trillion in each one of us.
Nobody really knows –
How they “interact” – whatever that really means,
The purpose of 99% of them,
How they cause “disease” ( I know the classic theories but these have never been observed or proven in vivo to actually cause the sought after disease) – is it the virus or is it something wrong with the immune system?
Terrain theory anyone? The only certainty is that without them we’d be dead.
If only Bechamp had triumphed over Pasteur the showman, the health of humanity would be in a much better place.
No money for bigpharme in that though.
Viruses have been shown to infect cells “in vitro” in countless experiments.
If you want to test it yourself “in vivo” then get someone to cough and sneeze all over you and see if you start coughing and sneezing yourself in a few days time.
Simples.
Not simples. Been around plenty of sneezing wheezing coughing snotting people and nothing happened to me. Simples.
You were lucky.
Not so.
Medical history is literally littered with failed attempts to infect none infected with various pathogens.
Snot etc. up the nose of volunteers to catch colds.
For some unknown reason it didn’t work.
Why.
Peoples immune systems are different.
You’ll be telling us next that SARS-CoV-2 doesn’t exist.
This is what it’s all about. Thank you Will for bringing your knowledge and perspective to the conversation. Equally I’m sure that the other “good guys” like Norman and Martin will take this on board.
All the more evidence that the reaction to Covid-19 was inappropriate, if one cross balances the reduction in ‘flu against the increase in novel respiratory infections. And we’re not there yet, with the negative health effects arising from the economic damage caused by it all.
There was never something unusually horrible going around.
The spike in deaths in Spring 2020 was the result of government murder/manslaughter/criminal neglect/ordered NHS uselessness beyond normal levels/propaganda.
What complete and utter claptrap. Who in their right mind believes figures from UKHSA? I’d put more trust in something Boris Johnson said than them and I wouldn’t touch him with someone elses hands let alone throw him.
The NHS, UKHSA, Government all consistently lied to us. It is well known the NHS were adding Flu to Covid figures – they even told us they were! How can Flu suddenly disappear from all shores overnight and don’t give me that nonsense about Covid was mightier; it was barely a whimper let alone a Hurricane of Death and Pestilence.
What I’d like to know is what is the author of this crap gaining? We have all learnt to ask “Who is paying for this then?”. Over to you Will Jones, who did pay you to write this nonsense?
I worked there – HSA – Data Architect for da Rona reporting. Bottom line – they had no f*ing clue about the real data, the IT systems and subsystems were / are / always will be a bloody mess. No data checks, validation etc. But lots of money for IT contractors – billions in fact to prolong the misery of malfunctioning and inadequate systems.
Safety Integrity Level = 0 (zero), by the look of it, on a system like that.
There is an added factor here: if Flu disappeared why did the NHS announce it was adding Flu figures to the made up Covid figures? How can you add figures for something you claim is not there? Is the NHS really the National Houdini Service?
National Hoax Service?
Maybe.
There is another very possible explanation however. During the pandemic, anyone with respiratory problems was immediately tested for covid. If they were positive, I very much doubt whether the doctor would then have bothered to test for influenza.
This would mean that patients for influenza testing would have been selected based on their not having covid. If influenza were being branded as Covid, then, you would have been effectively selecting patients for influenza testing based on their not having influenza. No surprise in that case of none of them tested positive for influenza!
Statistics is a minefield…
The gene sequence for the flu virus is different to the SARS-CoV-2 virus.
This all presumes that testing was done accurately using the usual parameters, and the results were not fiddled by government diktat to increase the fear factor for Covid. We know they did that for other data, so why not this? I regret the whole Covid fiasco has caused me and many others to lose faith in information from government agency sources.
Personally who gives a f…! I mean Flu -headache, temperature, cough, sneezing, snotty nose generally feeling sh1te!
Supposed Covid – headache, temperature, cough, sneezing, snotty nose generally feeling sh1te!
How could they tell the difference? Oh I know “that” test – yeah right.
Does anyone trust any of these statistics anymore?
What flu tests were used? How accurate are those tests?
What covid tests were used and what cycle thresholds were used?
There is a massive erosion of trust in the hitherto highly respected health professional community as a consequence of the attitude of so many of them concerning the covid fiasco……
Absolutely.
Interesting article, Will, as always. But Fenton and Neil have now responded with counter-arguments. So could you now respond to that please?
Sorry, here’s the link:
https://wherearethenumbers.substack.com/p/the-daily-sceptic-are-absolutely/comments
What is the use of testing?
Does it add any value to treating obvious respiratory symptoms?
Isn’t it yet another racket to loot the taxpayers?
My thoughts exactly.