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[EN] Influenza or cold

This time I going to do a short analysis, or rather a small report.


During these last months, there was the talk about the seasonality of COVID [1], it is seasonal, it is not seasonal, on what it depends, etc.

My assumption is that it is indeed seasonal, but here I am not interested in talking specifically about that, but what type of behavior it has. Will it be like the flu or the cold? Some people insinuate that as other coronaviruses [2], it will behave rather like a normal cold.


For many this aspect has no importance, from my point of view it does have importance, given that knowing how it behaves, one can lie and manipulate to the population and opinion with much ease and assurance.


With this type of information, one can base the use of restrictive measures and justify its severity under the pretext that people’s behavior has the most impact on the spreading of the virus [3]. During the first wave it was clearly demonstrated that neither the people is to blame neither the restrictive measures have an effect on contagion. Multiple demonstrations after the first wave are evidence that outbreaks have nothing to do with such massive gatherings and that not using masks do not increase the spreading.


What would be the big difference if COVID behaves like the normal cold instead of the flu? The answer is that, instead of only one wave each winter, there will be two, one at the beginning and one at the end, between both takes place the wave of influenza. To show this effect I refer to Germany’s surveillance [4].

In the reports presented by this surveillance we can see graphics of the detection of respiratory viruses on a weekly basis, to present this information I extracted the graphics from calendar week 39 of the last six years, given that in previous years it was not present:


These are the reports from 2015 [5], 2016 [6], 2017 [7], 2018 [8], 2019 [9] and 2020 [10]. In every graphic can be seen without fail how the activity of all viruses goes down, between calendar week 1 and 20, when influenza activity rises. Specially rhinoviruses (the light blue line) show a curve describing such behavior.


In what sense could this be used to manipulate the population? If we see what is happening in France [11], Spain [12] and Italy [13] for instance:




These graphics show how in these three countries, where number of positive tests began to rise a few months ago, it slowly starts falling. In Germany, the same could happen and in January the positive tests could begin to fall. One can use this as follows, a hard lockdown gets implemented before the imminent natural reduction of positive tests and then say the lockdown worked. Later during the influenza months, when these viruses do not show a strong activity, the restrictive measures get relaxed and with the wave of influenza gone and the positive tests begin to naturally rise again, one uses this to blame it on people’s irresponsible social behavior to then implement the restrictive measures again to “reduce contagion”. Automatically, naturally, weeks later this activity begins to slow down, and the number of positive tests fall. This way, then again one says the measures were effective, even if the first wave showed with total clarity it is not the case. This time they are better prepared to force all this and take credit for a completely natural process. Obviously, all this only if COVID really behaves like the virus of the normal cold. To the contrary, if it were like the flu virus, then between January and April we will have extremely high numbers, as long as the number of weekly tests remains stable, something the Robert Koch Institut already recommended not doing, when the said the testing strategy should be changed and reduce the number [14]. As always, what never fails is the vaccine. The vaccine, that does not prevent contagion, does not immunize and may just reduce symptoms [15], is the only thing that will somehow influence the virus [16][17][18].

Federico Eduardo Ferraris Sánchez 12/19/2020

List of links:

1- Seasonality of SARS-CoV-2: Will COVID-19 go away on its own in warmer weather? https://bit.ly/3nDS8nm

2- Epidemiology and Clinical Presentations of the Four Human Coronaviruses 229E, HKU1, NL63, and OC43 Detected over 3 Years Using a Novel Multiplex Real-Time PCR Method https://bit.ly/2LTSxEr

3- Why COVID outbreaks look set to worsen this Winter https://go.nature.com/3ar72tr

4- Arbeitsgemeinschaft Influenza https://bit.ly/3ktjcnL

5- Influenza-Monatsbericht 2015-39 https://bit.ly/38dpF1a

6- Influenza-Monatsbericht 2016-39 https://bit.ly/2KkbZcY

7- Influenza-Monatsbericht 2017-39 https://bit.ly/3atEksa

8- Influenza-Monatsbericht 2018-39 https://bit.ly/2WtYhXg

9- Influenza-Monatsbericht 2019-39 https://bit.ly/3regLcM

10- Influenza-Monatsbericht 2020-39 https://bit.ly/38i9rUJ

11- Worldmeters coronavirus France https://bit.ly/37yDrMK

12- Worldmeters coronavirus Spain https://bit.ly/3pb6wEi

13- Worldmeters coronavirus Italy https://bit.ly/3rg3Mac

14- RKI ändert Teststrategie: Wer wird jetzt auf Corona getestet? https://bit.ly/34w0gij

15- The UK Government's Vaccine Taskforce: strategy for protecting the UK and the world https://bit.ly/3esJR25

16- COVID-19 will eventually become seasonal, researchers predict https://bit.ly/38A1H0D

17- COVID-19 may become a seasonal virus https://bit.ly/38jTptw

18- COVID-19 will probably become seasonal, but... https://bit.ly/37ALOr6


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