Frankly, there’s nothing to worry about right now. The concern is the potential for a new flu variant to emerge that the public has little to no existing immunity for, however that variant has not emerged and is not very likely to emerge, there just exists a small chance that it may. The only thing you should be doing is keeping your distance from birds and getting your flu shot.
This specific death happened to an elderly person with a bunch of other health conditions, which is common for the flu. Thousands of people die from the flu every year, and it doesn’t make the news. What you can be sure of is that H5N1 stories are generating clicks for the media.
This is incorrect. I linked the data in my comment. '21-'22 saw the fewest flu deaths in recent memory, but there were still almost 5000 documented cases.
Edit: Totally missed that '20-'21 was missing from this data. Turns out the CDC didn’t issue estimates for that season
Frankly, there’s nothing to worry about right now. The concern is the potential for a new flu variant to emerge that the public has little to no existing immunity for, however that variant has not emerged and is not very likely to emerge, there just exists a small chance that it may. The only thing you should be doing is keeping your distance from birds and getting your flu shot.
This specific death happened to an elderly person with a bunch of other health conditions, which is common for the flu. Thousands of people die from the flu every year, and it doesn’t make the news. What you can be sure of is that H5N1 stories are generating clicks for the media.
Well, not every year. Not 2020.
Because of masking for COVID.
This is incorrect. I linked the data in my comment. '21-'22 saw the fewest flu deaths in recent memory, but there were still almost 5000 documented cases.
Edit: Totally missed that '20-'21 was missing from this data. Turns out the CDC didn’t issue estimates for that season
Do “cases” equal “deaths”? I’m genuinely curious.
Please refer to the link in my first comment
Gotcha, thanks. I should have read that better.
However, you might note that they skipped 2020-2021. Because the flu deaths for that season were insignificant.
You’re correct, the CDC didn’t issue estimates that year because their sample size of hospitalizations was too low