[HN Gopher] This influenza lineage may have become extinct ___________________________________________________________________ This influenza lineage may have become extinct Author : perihelions Score : 32 points Date : 2021-10-01 20:55 UTC (2 hours ago) (HTM) web link (www.nature.com) (TXT) w3m dump (www.nature.com) | endlessvoid94 wrote: | I'm reading about the history of smallpox and it seems like it | takes a herculean effort to actually eradicate an infectious | virus from the planet. Obviously smallpox is far more virulent | than influenza, but still....it seems premature to declare | extinction just because we haven't found any in awhile. | m463 wrote: | I can imagine lots of ways old viruses can be reintroduced. | | Blood banks, dead bodies, mosquito bites, experiments in secret | underground laboratories... | [deleted] | owenversteeg wrote: | Worth reading the actual article, but for those who won't: The | article is referring to the B/Yamagata lineage of influenza | becoming extinct, which is only one of the four main lineages of | influenza. The other lineages circulate in animals thus will be a | bit harder to eradicate. Also, this lineage was also already on | the way out, lacking the genetic diversity of the other lineages. | | Still, interesting news! | whoisjuan wrote: | This is not surprising at all. I haven't had anything that feels | like a cold or a flu, since COVID started. I think this can be | mostly attributed to the sudden increase of mask usage and hand- | washing. | | I believe influenza was very vulnerable to this change of | behavior given its seasonal nature, shorter incubation period and | generally weaker virality. | Negitivefrags wrote: | In NZ we had a period of lockdown during which colds and flus | were non-existant and then we went completely back to normal | life for a while. | | In that winter after the lockdown we had an absolutely | ferocious amount of colds and flus all of a sudden. | | I had 6 back-to-back. It was 12 weeks of hell. Every other | person I know had at least 2. Parents (such as myself) all had | 4+ colds/flus in a 3 month period. | | There was a lot of speculation that the spread was | significantly worse because it got into a population entirely | made of people who had not been sick for a while. | | So you might have that to look forward to. | subsubzero wrote: | same, I have not had a cold/flu in 2 years now which is a | record for me, usually I am getting sick 4-5 times a year. | Natsu wrote: | I haven't had a cold or flu since Covid, either. This is | probably the longest I've ever gone without one, usually I'd | get one every couple of years or so. | thatswrong0 wrote: | I don't know if I'll ever take public transit / fly without | a mask on again. Same. | berberous wrote: | I'm not sure how effective that will be if the sick | person isn't also masked. | mensetmanusman wrote: | N95s are designed to protect the wearer from situations | like that, even for 8 hours of contact. Cloth masks will | not work in that situation though if the sick person | isn't masked. | ImaCake wrote: | It actually appears that influenza is very close to extinct in | Australia for now. It will be interesting to see if influenza | returns with the opening of borders this summer. | | >There has not been a death certified due to influenza in the | first six months of 2021. The last death certified as being due | to influenza occurred in July 2020. | | 0. https://www.abs.gov.au/statistics/health/causes- | death/provis... | subsubzero wrote: | I use this dashboard to see influenza spread in my state, scroll | down to the state by state activity monitor to see how your state | is doing. | | https://www.cdc.gov/flu/weekly/index.htm | version_five wrote: | What role does the "this" at the beginning of the title play? I | actually thought it said "the" at first scan. | MaxBarraclough wrote: | So I'm not the only one who notices this. | | The unnecessary _this_ prefix strikes me as a sort of | clickbait-adjacent red flag. I 'm fairly sure it wasn't | anywhere near this common 10 years ago. | genericone wrote: | Good point, the title of the article is: "Influenza lineage | extinction during the COVID-19 pandemic?", I don't know how the | HN headline came to be ("This influenza lineage may have become | extinct"), but it does seem like a very very light form of | clickbait. | perihelions wrote: | It's a quote from the abstract. I found "influenza lineage | extinction" difficult to parse, but the abstract expands it | into plain English. | dmd wrote: | The word "this" is used to identify a specific person or thing | close at hand or being referred to (in this case, a specific | influenza lineage). | | If the word "the" were used instead, the headline wouldn't make | sense. | bawolff wrote: | Personally i think using "An" would be better than "this" or | nothing at all, but i also think this entire thread is very | nitpicky. | [deleted] | blfr wrote: | I read a speculation somewhere that coronaviruses may have | occupied the niche flu took over for a while with the 1918 | pandemic and we're just going back to the norm. | | (No sources will be provided.) | IfOnlyYouKnew wrote: | I've seen similar, and don't doubt it. I just keep wondering: | how does that work, mechanistically? A coronavirus infection | doesn't protect me from influenza: it should be perfectly | possible to be infected by both. How do they compete? | FatalLogic wrote: | Influenza and coronavirus 'compete' by forcing people to | alter their behavior, thus removing potential carriers from | the general population before the other virus can reach them. | The more infectious virus wins this competition. | space_fountain wrote: | Just because this is the top comment right now, I'd like to | point out that the conventional explanation works fine too. The | interventions taken against covid worked even better against | the flu and because diseases are exponential you only have to | get the reproduction rate a bit below 1 to see huge impacts. Oh | and also covid is currently a more dangerous disease so it | would still be pretty bad if flu was replaced by it | shmel wrote: | Yeah, right, why do we still have a bunch of common cold | viruses then? Any argument referring the interventions has to | also explain why _only_ flu disappeared out of huge variety | of respiratory viruses. | stan_rogers wrote: | We're talking about _a_ flu, not _the_ flu. There are still | plenty of influenza viruses out there, alive, well, and | waiting. The difference with this particular lineage is | that it seems to be human-only, with no known animal | reservoir. | bink wrote: | I thought these viruses had reservoirs in common farm animals and | that's why they were so hard to eradicate. Is there reason to | believe they've disappeared from those populations as well? | pfg wrote: | The article mentions that the influenza B virus has no known | animal reservoir. | Scaevolus wrote: | Not this strain. From the article: "With circulation of IBV | only in humans and no established animal reservoir... The | considerable reductions of influenza circulation globally due | to COVID-19 may have already precipitated the extinction of the | B/Yamagata lineage." ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2021-10-01 23:00 UTC)