Cold and flu infections reduced during COVID

[specialmom]

How about you and your family?  Did you experience a LOT fewer colds this year and flu? I guess it is masking and social distance (and that I take a cleaning wipe in everywhere I go so I don't touch anything) is preventing the normal cold and flu season. Feels like a good thing but then I wonder if that means we'll be in for a worse season of these common colds/flu later . ..   thoughts?

[AnnieBrooke]

At our house, we haven't had one cold this whole last year, and it's almost like our state didn't even have a flu season due to the flu shot and wearing masks and all. I don't think we'll have a worse cold and flu season if Covid is defeated and we stop wearing masks, I think it will just revert to the past levels of colds and flu. If we have to mask indefinitely for Covid because of new variants, it will certainly help the world not get a lot of colds and flu. But unless for some reason there is 100% compliance the world around for masking, distancing and washing the hands, unfortunately they'll be sure to come back.

[YSI]

I had Covid and it drags on forever but was not scary for me...but Influenza is excruciatingly painful (and RSV was not painful but is the only virus I went to an ER fearing death.)  I fear Influenza so much I have been doing masks and Listerine for years but all it takes is that one exposure (RSV) during a lapse in following my own advice. I am curious whether Influenza could be eradicated in the future.

[AnnieBrooke]

If you had Covid and it was not scary, it's kind of surprising that you fear death from RSV, usually considered to be a mild virus (often compared to a mild cold). Have you actually had RSV and had a bad time with it, or are you just frightened of it?

[Paxiled]

I'm kind of confused, I guess.  If Covid dragged on forever, that means you had long covid, and that means you could have had long-term consequences.  I'm glad it appears you didn't, but we've all had the flu and I don't get where it is excruciatingly painful.  It's not at all painful.  Yeah, you're tired and might have a headache (or not) and you're pretty sick for a few days, but unless you have some severe underlying conditions it's, well, just the flu for most of us.  A bad cold is pretty much the same as the flu.  If you're healthy, again, the flu is benign.  It only severely affects the very old and sick and the very young who don't yet have developed immune systems (which ironically seems to protect most of them from getting bad covid).  Dying from the flu is widespread, but again, only for those two groups of people, and there are no long-term adverse consequences.  If you had something that was excruciatingly painful and you're a healthy person, I'm not sure what you had was the flu.  Also not sure how Listerine helps -- probably doesn't even help with your teeth.  So color me very confused.  The sickest I've ever been with things like this was tonsilitis, actually, but again, it wasn't "excruciatingly" painful, it just left me without any energy and I just felt really lousy for a full two weeks when I was a healthy strong college student.  With the flu, I didn't even usually miss work.  I know different people have different experiences and different immune systems and recover at different rates of speed and take different things they've found to shorten illness, but I'm sticking to colored confused here.

[YSI]

RSV B (that panel of potential viruses on the lab report was alarming by itself!)  When I arrived at the (empty) ER front desk receptionist I said 'I think I have pneumonia.' The girl replied 'Do you suffer from anxiety? I repeated 'I think I have pneumonia.' Blank face. Then I said loudly 'I have crackles.' At that point the nurse came out and whipped me back into a private room. The female resident in the ER was quite dismissive of me-I was not wearing a bra and said to her 'Why would I want to strap a girdle on my chest when I can't breathe?' Thank God for her mature staff dr-wonderful man! My oxygenation rate was 85% and I suspect it was lower before I went thru the exertion of getting to the ER (taxi) etc.  Oxygen and nebulizer helped alot and I declined admission. But I was ill for 3 weeks and have never before or since expelled so much junk from my lungs. I did enjoy that the resident had to call me to let me know my lab results.

[Paxiled]

From the experts I've been listening to, true.  Masking and distancing has prevented colds and flu.  Also, not having kids in school and not going to work.  I also would guess more of us got the flu shot -- I got my first one ever.  If masking does go away and distancing does go away, and that isn't going to happen any time soon, I imagine that yes, these diseases will come back.