Was the Flu Abnormally Bad During December and January?

A Chinese propagandist tweets unsubstantiated rumors to imply coronavirus was here earlier.

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The deputy director general of the information department in China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Lijian Zhao, continued to promote the Chinese government’s propaganda that coronavirus originated in the United States. He tweeted Sunday:

Zhao was quoting a Twitter user who goes by the name “the lizard king.” Meanwhile, the less regal, but likely more reliable, CDC disagrees with every aspect of his tweet. The claims may ring true anecdotally to some, but overall the increase in flu cases in December and the effectiveness of the flu shot this year are in keeping with historical trends.

The CDC estimates that the flu shot during the 2019-2020 season has had an overall 45 percent effectiveness rate. That may seem like a low number, but it is well within the typical annual range of 40 percent to 60 percent effectiveness. For comparison, the last flu season, the shot had an effectiveness rate of only 29 percent. In fact, the flu shot this season is estimated to have an effectiveness rate higher than each of the last three seasons according to CDC data.

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  1. Avatar photo
    td12212

    It appears US intelligence were warning DNI that a virus was appearing in Wuhan China in November of last year that would be cataclysmic if it got to our shores. I also saw an interview with a scottish english teacher living in Wuhan who was one of the earliest to catch this disease. He said he came down with it on November 10th. He was hospitalized in china. For our intelligence services to have generated a warning back in November the disease must've already been causing havoc there back then.

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    Everett Zabriskie

    I really do not want to comment on this article but rather to suggest that Alec Dent do a fact check on a current editorial in the WSJ. https://www.wsj.com/articles/private-industry-mobilizes-against-the-coronavirus-11585091775?mod=hp_opin_pos_3 Saying a good word for business is always welcome, but I wonder whether the numbers mentioned in this editorial have any connection to the real world.

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    Earl King

    It is entirely possible that earlier cases might have occurred, to dismiss is completely is ignorant. The Chinese spoke up I believe around Dec.13th....Couldn't not have Chinese citizens been traveling and spreading the disease around that time? As a Paramedic, an elderly person presenting with pneumonia like symptoms during flu season would not have alarmed anyone to Cover-19...as we didn't know it existed.

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    1. Avatar photo
      Nick H

      Is it possible that the virus was here in the US before the first official case? It's not only possible, it's close to guaranteed. As early as December? Maybe, but if so I would expect that once we started testing we'd have found clusters much larger than could be explained by initial infections happening in January. But the Chinese government is pushing theories like this to try and deceive people into thinking that the virus didn't start in China. That is 100% not true. Even if the virus showed up here earlier than we currently think, it was still due to someone who was first infected in China.

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    cheerio

    I know my hospital had a really bad flu year but the flu is not Covid. I think the reason why people might be questioning it is because the Rapid tests for flu performed poorly with a 60% accuracy rate and many people were falsely tested negative.

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