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During the annual flu season, many people experience the usual symptoms: a runny nose, sneezing, body aches, and fever. Flu can also be deadly. In the United States alone, influenza viruses cause hundreds of thousands of hospitalizations and tens of thousands of fatalities each year. During the pandemic, however, a drastic change occurred: there was a precipitous drop in infections with influenza and other respiratory viruses—and in some parts of the world, some of these pathogens are nowhere to be found.
“It’s really dramatic how the flu disappeared this year,” says Ellen Foxman, an immunologist at Yale University. At Yale-New Haven Hospital, where Foxman works, there were around 3,000 confirmed flu cases in the first three months of 2020, Foxman tells The Scientist. “This year, from the first of January until now, there’s zero.”
Mask wearing, social distancing, and other restrictions implemented to stave off SARS-CoV-2 ...
