Funny, I’m a Family Practitioner (30 years come June) working in an urgent care/primary care practice and of the 40-60 patients per site per day about 75% of them are for covid testing. Travel, “exposure” (like someone at the warehouse a week ago had covid diagnosed but nobody was within 6 feet for 15 minutes as per CDC definition of “exposure” so the whole shop is told by the owner’s nurse wife that EVERYONE needs to get tested), follow up testing (unnecessary per health department guidelines, but again, fear, panic, anxiety and lawyers drive up the test counts) and not only are we seeing from 4-6 covid positive tests a day (about 8 to 10 percent of tests done), we’re still seeing 1 or 2 flu cases a day.
Now, this is ONLY 13 clinics in the greater Baltimore-Washington region and there are hundreds of urgent care practices, maybe ten times as many private practices if not hundreds all doing testing, and I’ll venture to say NONE of us is reporting influenza cases to the health dept. or CDC directly.
As a matter of fact, we have been told by management after conferring with local infectious disease consultants AND the manufacturer to IGNORE influenza-positive tests on the Quidel Duo (SARS/influenza) test as they are ALL false positives.
But we’re to believe the SARS test result is accurate?
If 2/3 of the test is INaccurate, how am I supposed to believe in the value of a positive test for the other 1/3?
So CDC is going it’s own surveillance, and I think it’s bullshit.
There’s a LOT of influenza going around - last summer, 2020, I was seeing influenza B cases every day, but CDC’s website/MMWR data stopped doing surveillance and reporting on flu in May, IIRC so they can happily report “flu season is over.”
Funny thing about viruses. They don’t understand seasons, borders, passports, immigration and customs and just travel anywhere anytime they “want.” Four common strains of coronavirus cause what, 15-20% of ALL “head colds” worldwide, year-round?
And Sydney, Australia to BWI airport is only what, 17 hours? Time enough to incubate, then spread among the passengers and to someone just sneezed upon - or near - in the hallway heading to the men’s room.
Asymptomatic shedding is a thing, despite WHO, CDC and St. Anthony Fasci lying to us about it for so long last year.
Influenza, parainfluenza, RSV, enteroviruses of several types, coronavirus, all can and do cause syndromes virtually indistinguishable from “COVID19” - but our infectious disease specialist tells us, although there are over 200 known strains of virus that cause URI/LRI and viral syndromes (common cold”), we’re now treating everything as if it’s SARS-CoV-2 (COVID19).
Something definitely stinks in Atlanta, and Bethesda, and The Hague.
Two weeks to flatten the curve, a year to accept communism.
Or else.
Interesting. Thank you for your “on the ground reporting.”
Thank you for your professional opinion/report.
And, I notice that....as a busy, practicing physician you don’t have the time to post half hourly/hourly/daily on a chat forum....especially on China Flu threads :-)
I’m sure your patients appreciate that, very much!
Finally. I was wondering if FR had any actual medical folks. So far all I have seen are LARP-ers who think they are funny, and folks who work for Chyna and Jao Bai Den.
Thanx for that...
The Southern Hemisphere’s latest flu season also experienced the same lack of flu cases we are experiencing.
Their season is mostly the opposite of ours. May-ish to September-ish.
It was reported here and mostly ignored.
https://www.qwant.com/?q=southern%20hemisphere%20flu%20season
Last season, CDC stop tracking flu the week of 04/04/2020.
https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/preliminary-in-season-estimates.htm
Note that CDC deals mostly with estimates. They don’t know what they don’t know.
Get the flu, stay home for a week. Don’t see any health professionals - how do you get counted - you don’t.
They have also changed how they rate the efficacy(I now hate that word)of the flu vaccine.
Limited areas of the country with a limited number of patients.
Don’t know the algorithm to get the numbers extrapolated at a national level.
They now break it down by how effective it is for what strain and by age\race\sex. So it might suck overall but be great for seniors for “A”.
CDC web site has become ridiculous for finding stuff.
This history of flu vaccine effectiveness is an eye-opener.
https://www.cdc.gov/flu/vaccines-work/past-seasons-estimates.html
Some of us did the dig on this and gave notice of most of this as it happened and nobody much cared because...COVID.