Have you seen the flu stats this year? It turns out that masks, social distancing and 20 million more flu vaccines than last year are great ways to fight the flu. This is the lowest flu activity in 25 years. The stats are incredible. For example, over the last three years, there were an average of 177 pediatric deaths from influenza. This year? One.
The same number of tests were performed as in a normal year but only a tiny fraction of them are coming back positive so it’s not like they’re just getting reported as COVID instead. The CDC pages show the numbers by type of testing lab and each one tells the same story but I wanted to see the numbers all up so I pulled the raw data and made my own charts. The first chart shows the number of tests being run for each season (the series title is the year of the start of the season and each new season starts on week 40 of the year). Obviously the current series isn’t complete yet but up to this point, we’re running a comparable number of tests.
And of those tests, here are the counts of positive tests. I can’t figure out how to show the current season on the same chart as the others. The counts are so tiny compared to previous years.
There also aren’t nearly as many flu visits as normal this year either.
This is some feel good data! It’s fun to flip through these charts and see how much the flu season was stopped in it’s tracks while we fight back against COVID. If you want to dig through the data yourself, here are some links: source, source, source.
Flu Who?
Have you seen the flu stats this year? It turns out that masks, social distancing and 20 million more flu vaccines than last year are great ways to fight the flu. This is the lowest flu activity in 25 years. The stats are incredible. For example, over the last three years, there were an average of 177 pediatric deaths from influenza. This year? One.
The same number of tests were performed as in a normal year but only a tiny fraction of them are coming back positive so it’s not like they’re just getting reported as COVID instead. The CDC pages show the numbers by type of testing lab and each one tells the same story but I wanted to see the numbers all up so I pulled the raw data and made my own charts. The first chart shows the number of tests being run for each season (the series title is the year of the start of the season and each new season starts on week 40 of the year). Obviously the current series isn’t complete yet but up to this point, we’re running a comparable number of tests.
And of those tests, here are the counts of positive tests. I can’t figure out how to show the current season on the same chart as the others. The counts are so tiny compared to previous years.
There also aren’t nearly as many flu visits as normal this year either.
This is some feel good data! It’s fun to flip through these charts and see how much the flu season was stopped in it’s tracks while we fight back against COVID. If you want to dig through the data yourself, here are some links: source, source, source.