The WHO has recommended dropping a component of many flu vaccines because the viruses it protects against appear to have been driven into extinction in the Covid pandemic.
I read about one strain of flu that hadn’t been detected since lockdowns last year. Pretty cool side-effect.
Don’t worry, the freedumb people will find a way to bring it back stronger than ever.
It’s pretty amazing that we as a species have the ability to wipe out diseases. Smallpox, polio, now a flu virus.
You’re really going to pat us on the back for letting COVID get so bad it drove a fly strain to extinction? That’s an extreme reach of a flex.
Also this:
But a leak from a manufacturing plant could theoretically reintroduce B/Yamagata viruses into the world
I’m feeling optimistic today
Polio is not gone.
We wipe out other forms of life all the time, be it by accident, wilfull neglicence or malice. Why not bacteria/viruses. Gotta have some good with the bad, right?
That’s pretty neat
Bye bye influenza B/Yamagata
The most interesting thing about this result is that it was achieved thru behavioral change (masking, hand washing, distancing, isolation), and not technologic advancement. We have the capability, with cooperation to significantly alter the infectious disease landscape.
Unfortunately it looks like influenza B and C aren’t actually all that common in the first place with A being in animals and causing most pandemics. This dead virus is a half of influenza B. It’s neat if we killed it off, but probably not any benefit to public health.
I don’t know. I give up!
Well WHO is it?
It’s the plumber, I’ve come to fix the sink.
