• As per my post a while back upthread, anecdotally bad ‘reactions’ (<24 hrs flu-like symptoms) seem to be common, especially with Pfizer, happen after the first dose generally if you’ve had Covid or after the second if you haven’t, and are less prevalent in older people. It’s been suggested that this is due to your body mounting an immune response to the protein that the Pfizer vaccine makes you produce, and as older people have generally weaker immune systems the response isn’t as strong.
    Regarding flu, it’s a droplet-spread respiratory virus so it follows that the restrictions that stop Covid (also a droplet-spread respiratory virus) also stop flu. It’s remarkable how flu seems to have been stopped in its tracks, but the large-scale PHE data is reflected in what’s going on on the ground - my trust haven’t had a single flu case so far this flu season, where they’d normally expect to have whole wards of flu-positive patients for a lot of the winter.

  • Hopefully we’ll take a page from South Korea and wear a mask in public if we have the flu.

    I doubt it will happen, but one can hope.

  • IANA virologist, but yes I’m sure it will as I think it’s probably the whole range of measures that have helped this rather than one in particular, and most of those will be stopped/eroded over time. Will be interested to see if the precautions in hospital that we now have to take make any difference to in-hospital flu transmission, as I can’t see them being lifted any time soon.

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