The coming flu season can be a doozy. here’s why

It is not entirely clear why. Many experts believe that measures taken to help control the coronavirus have also prevented the spread of the flu. It’s also possible that the coronavirus has somehow supplanted or interfered with the flu.

Either way, Webby and other experts believe the lull in influenza activity is only temporary. They fear that when the flu returns, probably this fall, it will be with a vengeance.

“The worst flu season we have ever seen may be coming,” said Webby.

“When he returns, it will be a one-season doozy,” agreed Aubree Gordon, an epidemiologist who studies influenza at the University of Michigan’s School of Public Health.

One of the reasons that the coming flu season is likely to be bad can be explained by human behavior. People tired of lockdowns, of wearing masks, of staying away from others will want to celebrate the freedom offered by the vaccines that protect them from the coronavirus and the decline of the pandemic.

They can do too much.

Travel is already on the rise, restaurants are filling up, and schools are planning to reopen with in-person classes.

But while people flock to resorts, bars, and family gatherings may be much more immune to the coronavirus, they aren’t immune to the flu or other respiratory viruses that are spreading. in the same way as the coronavirus: in the air, in droplets and on surfaces.

“I think with more people not wearing masks and less social distancing, there is definitely going to be an increase in the common respiratory infections that we see seasonally,” Allison Aiello, who studies the spread of infectious diseases at the University of North Carolina’s school of public health, told CNN.

Aiello says North Carolina is already seeing an increase in respiratory illnesses.

“We should expect increases, especially in the fall, as the kids go back to school,” she said.

Virus spread at school

“It’s not just the flu. It’s all the other respiratory viruses,” Webby said. These include not only the flu, but respiratory syncytial virus or RSV, adenoviruses, strains of coronaviruses that cause colds, rhinoviruses, and others.

“I certainly think the mitigation measures we’ve put in place for Covid are diminishing and the kids are going back to school in person and we’re all going back to traveling, especially overseas, we know all kinds respiratory viruses are going to have a lot more opportunities for spread, ”Lynette Brammer, who heads the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s national influenza surveillance team, told CNN.

“And we certainly expect the flu and all the other respiratory viruses that have been weak over the past year will return,” she added.

“In some ways, we’re back to normal. You start rounding up kids and you’ll get viruses.”

However, Brammer is cautious when it comes to making predictions.

“The flu is always unpredictable, and I feel like right now it’s more true than ever,” said Brammer.

There is a second reason to believe that the 2021-2022 flu season could be bad. There is a theory, little documented, that the human body’s immune response is naturally stimulated by repeated annual exposures to viruses such as influenza. These exposures may not be enough to make people sick, but they are enough to remind the immune system to maintain its defenses.

“The longer you go without exposure, the more likely you are to be symptomatic and the more likely you are to get sick,” Gordon said.

“We know that the longer you go without being exposed to the flu, the more symptomatic you are. People who are sicker lead to more severe cases. We absolutely know that.”

The same goes for RSV, non-Covid-19 coronaviruses, and other infections. “I would generally be worried about all of them. All of them can cause serious illness. All of them can cause pneumonia,” Gordon added.

RSV, in particular, wreaks havoc in babies and very young children. It kills around 100 to 500 children each year and 14,000 adults, mostly over the age of 65.

Many of the estimated 4 million infants born during the pandemic will be exposed for the first time to RSV and other viruses when they go to daycare for the very first time. “We don’t know what the effects will be of all these young children delaying their first exposure to RSV,” Gordon said.

“There are probably going to be very large outbreaks of RSV. “

Aiello is less certain of the possible effect of avoiding germs for about a year. “It’s a short period of time,” she said. Several years of exposure avoidance can be expected to have an effect, but the 15 or so months that most people have socially distanced, worked from home, or stayed out of classrooms don’t may not have been long enough to affect the immune system.

Two years of viruses bundled into one

But the fall respiratory flu season can be worse, even if it isn’t, Aiello said. At the very least, many children will accumulate two years of exposure to a range of viruses in a single season.

“When a person hasn’t been sick for a while, it may seem like you have more robust symptoms,” she said.

The flu will be the only virus that will be measured. Doctors don’t test people for most other respiratory viruses – mainly because there’s no specific treatment for them – but the CDC tracks the flu.

The flu kills between 12,000 and 61,000 people a year, depending on the season, according to the CDC.

It indicates that the 2019-2020 season was moderate in which 38 million people in the United States became ill with the flu, 18 million saw a health care provider for treatment, 400,000 were sick enough to be hospitalized and approximately 22,000 have died.

About 8% of the U.S. population gets sick with the flu each season, with a range of between 3% and 11%, depending on the season, according to the CDC.

Much will depend on the number of Americans who will be vaccinated. Each year, just under half of the population gets a flu shot, even though the CDC recommends an annual flu shot for almost everyone over 6 months of age.

One thing the CDC knows for sure: Influenza activity is impossible to predict.

“I don’t know what to expect. I don’t know,” Brammer said. “We’re just going to have to wait and see.”

Brammer has known every flu season for decades, and each is unique.

“Every time you think you know what’s going to happen, it will do something totally different,” she said.