, Columnist
What If Covid-19 Measures Killed Flu Season?
Masks and social distancing seem to have stopped a disease the tactics weren't even targeting. Maybe we can learn from that.
Fighting off influenza
Photographer: Mario Tama/Getty Images
This article is for subscribers only.
The Covid-19 pandemic is meeting many of the worst expectations that public health experts in the U.S. and Europe had for fall and winter. There’s one thing they worried about that doesn’t seem to be happening, though: a devastating “twindemic” of Covid and seasonal influenza.
Instead, the flu is AWOL — so far at least. In New York City, which publishes a handy daily count of emergency-room visits for influenza-like illnesses and other conditions, numbers are running at less than one-third of the recent norm for the first half of December.