[HN Gopher] This influenza lineage may have become extinct
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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."
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