Fear Influenza More Than Coronavirus

The headline of a January 27, 2020 Slate article by Matthew Davis reads, “Is This Year’s Flu More Fearsome Than Coronavirus?” While still too early to definitely know so far the answer appears to be yes. Normally during the flu season influenza A strains hit first followed by influenza B strains. Yet, this year the influenza B strain has hit especially early and especially hard.

An early strike of influenza B is problematic for a few reasons. First, influenza B is notably impactful on the young. By hitting so early in the flu season, influenza B now has that much longer to infect people when compared to its normally late arrival. Second, the influenza B strain that is currently impacting the United States is not a good match with the flu vaccine that was administered this year.

The second bit of bad news is there is still time for two other influenza A strains to significantly impact the human population of the United States. The first is H3N2, a common but harsh strain of the virus and, H7N9, a rare strain of influenza A but one that has killed over a third of the 1,500 people who have been infected with it the last few years. While the “H7N9 virus is not well suited for human to human transmission,” if the virus mutates and maintains its lethality while improving its ability to go from human to human the results could be devastating. To put things into perspective, “the last time the U.S. had a bad flu season, in 2017–18, about 61,000 people died, including 643 children (that’s some 20,000 more than die each year from breast cancer). Yet even a bad season like that generates nowhere near the all-hands-on-deck action like we are seeing with the coronavirus.”

Citation: Davis, Matthew. “Is This Year’s Flu More Fearsome Than Coronavirus?” Slate, 27 January 2020. https://slate.com/technology/2020/01/flu-season-a-strain-b-strain-deadly.html. Accessed 27 January 2020.

Post by Richard Hackmann