On February 24, 2020, the first documented U.S. case of community transmission of Covid-19 was reported from a specimen collected by the Seattle Flu Study. The Seattle Flu Study was designed as a surveillance of persons reporting respiratory symptoms. In a normal year it detects high rates of influenza, particularly during winter months—most years, influenza sickens hundreds of thousands of Americans and kills 30-50,000. But this has been anything but a normal year. Even as the surveillance system has been picking up Covid-19 cases, of the thousands of nasal swabs the research team has analyzed, an extraordinarily low number have tested positive for influenza.
Covid-19, like influenza, is a virus that moves through the air. We might have expected that with so much Covid-19 around, flu would be a fellow traveler, likewise infecting millions of Americans. But the only virus that’s had a successfully infectious year in 2020 was the new Covid-19. Other respiratory viruses have been rarer this season too, such as respiratory syncytial virus, parainfluenza, and even other coronaviruses that cause common colds. It’s not easy to find people with the coughs, running noses and fevers, typical this time of year, who are not singularly infected with Covid-19.
Read the full piece on The Turning Point.