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Filippo facci
There are news to be interpreted, and it would be that the “common” seasonal flu seems to have disappeared from our country: to say that it is the Istituto Superiore di Sanità (Iss) according to which practically no virus other than Covid-19 was reported in our country. The figures are insignificant: in the last week around 92 thousand similar influences have been registered that are “stably below the basal threshold, with a value of 1.5 cases per thousand attended” (total 1,265,000 cases). Whereas in recent years, how was it? In the weeks that corresponded to him, we were in 3.9 cases per thousand attended. To understand: to date, Trentino Alto Adige, Sardinia, Campania, Basilicata and Calabria have not even activated the usual surveillance for influenza yet, and whoever activated it has registered incidences of up to 3.03 cases per thousand (in a range of 0 to 4 years) and for all other ranges nothing that deviates from the comma.
Basically nothing. Of the 90 clinical samples analyzed in the last week, the positive ones for influenza were these: zero. We are not the only ones who do this type of monitoring, and even in Europe and the United States flu viruses have practically disappeared compared to the average. Now we begin to clear the most trivial and obvious considerations. One is that bad money drives away the less bad, ergo: anyone who had a “simple” flu (even if the flu could theoretically kill) a year ago would have complained and gorged on drugs, pestering doctors and pharmacists: today On the other hand, someone who has the flu or flu symptoms or the so-called colds (an incorrect expression) breathes a sigh of relief, and perhaps does not even say it, for fear of the panic that even a banal cough generates. The common flu is a concern for well-being, also because well-being generates small hypochondria that dissolve when there are more serious health problems: during the war and in the immediate post-war period, few went to the doctor for a fever , loss of tone, mild depression or other syndromes.
PREVENTIONS
Another obvious but less trivial consideration: prevention measures against the spread of Covid-19 (mask, distances, no meetings, no promiscuity) have tended to isolate any other virus that spreads in the same way, typically seasonal flu. Limit example: that of Sicily. The island has become free of flu: from November to today there has not been a single case of contagion, and we are talking about things that every year sent dozens of elderly people to resuscitation, but which also protected children: gastrointestinal viruses they also disappeared. and respirators that blew up pediatric hospitals. Obviously, lockdowns and flu shots also play a role (65 percent of staff have been vaccinated against flu in hospitals compared to 10-20 percent in previous years) but considerations made for example by Professor Francesco Vitale, Director of the Laboratory of Clinical Epidemiology, also sounds a bit free of serenity: “Even after Covid we must continue to take care of hand hygiene, coughing in the bend of the elbow or wearing a mask in crowded places.”
A dystopian future perspective, to which we must add that if we all locked ourselves individually in a hyperbaric chamber – as the maniac Michael Jackson, the singer, did every day – perhaps we would get even less sick. But it is still true that “in our laboratory”, says Vitale, “swabs arrive from all over Sicily and out of 3,000 test tubes analyzed there have been no cases since the beginning of the flu season”. Perhaps cholera would also reduce cases of the common flu, but overall, there is good news. The scientific journal Nature has also quantified on a global scale how the pandemic has wiped out influenza and many other respiratory diseases, and this, as mentioned, mainly due to preventive responses given to Covid-19, including improving personal hygiene and travel reduction. . The nature is detailed, explaining that the huge and growing vice versa spread of minor viruses like the cold suggests that they could be a protection against Covid.
One thing that little is known, in fact, is that colds and the flu have persisted since the dawn of mankind but still hold many mysteries: they are not yet said to represent self-defense of the immune system rather than a sign of its weakening. Instead of pointing out a bit in a generic way that “the heat makes the viruses go down” (a phrase that scientifically does not make sense), it could be noted that colds and Covid-19 go down in summer, and not for temperature reasons: one Paradoxically, one of the places in the world where you never catch a cold is Antarctica or the Arctic: it is an executioner of the cold, but there is no one who can infect you. It is the reason why the recommendations of grandmothers and mothers (cover yourself or you will get sick) do not make sense except for a sore throat. In essence, even the very lengthy Nature article suggests an unattractive future that indicates the best way to prevent all pandemics, not just Covid-19: not travel or do it as little as possible.
COLD
It must be said that there are hundreds of viruses that cause respiratory symptoms similar to those of the common cold, and most have been distributed throughout the world. It also happened with the so-called syncytial virus (RSV) that causes 5 percent of deaths in children under five years of age worldwide. In Australia, say, it fell 98 percent, even though schools were open. There is only one cold that has not stopped: the common one, the “rhinovirus”, of which there are more than a hundred strains. Several studies indicate that they could provide partial cross-protection against Covid-19: if this were true, “universal” vaccines against all coronaviruses could be studied, but there are also studies to the contrary. Scholars have become quite passionate about the subject, and it is generally considered “a very likely scenario” that common colds help contain the spread of Covid-19. But it is also true that virologists have shot many so far. The conclusion is bittersweet. Getting sick a little, perhaps, will help you avoid getting seriously ill. Second, stopping living, isolating yourself, not traveling, not dating, helps you not die.
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