Covid, China and a Tripledemic?

If you have not been paying attention lately a lot has changed with Covid.

Cases are soaring in China compared to what has been reported in the past.

Covid cases per million people in China are still a fraction of what is being seen in countries such as Australia, Germany, Japan and the United States.

However, the ability of China to maintain low case numbers has come at a tremendous loss of freedom to the Chinese people under the Zero Covid policies of the Chinese Communist Party.

The significant question to be answered over the next few weeks is whether China will be able to continue to pursue the lockdowns and mandates associated with its Zero Covid policies in the face of emerging protests by the masses.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2022/11/26/china/china-protests-xinjiang-fire-shanghai-intl-hnk

What is also interesting is that each of the biggest global adversaries of the United States (China, Russia and Iran) are embroiled in large protests by its citizens related to government policies.

These are authoritarian governments.

It takes real courage to take to the streets and protest what government leaders are doing. It literally could be the last thing that you do.

It shows the level of frustration and anger boiling beneath the surface with the people in these countries.

Could the United States find some way to take advantage of this situation and give these people some hope for freedom?

Color me less than optimistic with the current administration in charge.

In the meantime, in the United States, influenza and the respiratory virus RSV are much more prevalent after being almost undetectable for the better part of the last two years.

For example, hospitalizations for influenza for those age 65+ were almost non-existent for weeks 40-45 (red line in the chart below) in 2020 and 2021.

That is no longer the case. 

The traditional flu season is yet to come. However, flu cases are already exploding. Will this trend continue or is this season just early this year?

A similar pattern is seen in RSV hospitalizations.

There were very few hospitalizations in the 2020/2021 (blue dotted line) and 2021/2022 (thin green line) seasons but there has been an explosion in RSV thus far this season (bold green line)

 

Why?

Did viral interference with Covid outcompete these other viruses in the last two years and they have no come back with a vengeance?

Did Covid policies such as lockdowns, masking etc. result in immune suppression such that the immune systems of people are not as well primed to fight off the flu and RSV as before?

Did the Covid vaccines cause some type of immune suppression that is making vaccinated people more vulnerable to other diseases?

A Midwestern Doctor discusses the possibilities in a substack post that might be of interest.

While the flu and RSV are in a resurgent trend, Covid has thus far settled down in the United States compared to the last two years at this time.

If you look again at the chart above comparing cases in Australia, Japan and Germany you will also see that the United States case counts are much better than in these other counties.

It should be noted that all of these countries also have much higher vaccination rates than the United States.

That makes it difficult to argue that the lower case counts are due to vaccinations.

It seems much more likely that natural immunity has been more responsible for the decline.

New reported cases are now about 50% of what they were at this time last year and 25% of what they were two years ago.

Of course, cases surged in each of those years in December in the wake of Thanksgiving gatherings and colder weather causing more people to stay indoors.

Will we see a tripledemic of Covid, influenza and RSV in the coming months?

Dr. Fauci and Biden Covid Advisor Dr. Ashish Jha have hit the airwaves hard over the last week warning about a possible tripledemic this winter.

Source: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/nov/27/white-house-fauci-jha-covid-vaccines

It seems that the only real advice they have is for everyone to get vaccinated with the new bivalent Covid booster and a flu shot. There is no vaccine for RSV.

To be fair, Dr. Fauci did tell everyone that they should take a Covid test before going to any Thanksgiving gatherings. How many of you did that?

Source: https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2022/11/22/anthony-fauci-urges-americans-to-get-covid-tests-before-thanksgiving-everybody-should-be-vaccinated/

Of course, when Fauci says "everybody should be vaccinated" he is talking about the full five doses, including the new bivalent Covid booster, and this year's flu vaccine.

The American people don't seem to be buying what they are selling.

Only 11% of Americans have gotten the new Covid booster.

The number of flu doses administered is the lowest it has been in recent memory,

Only 42 million doses had been administered by the end of October according to the CDC. By comparison, 62 million doses of flu vaccine had been administered by that time in 2020.

What has caused this change?

Could it be that our public health authorities have lost a substantial amount of credibility over the last two years with ineffective, and what turned out to be inaccurate statements, about our Covid response and the efficacy of the vaccines?

Will we see a tripledemic?

I have no doubt that we will see all three surge at some point this winter.

However, I doubt we will see all three peak at the same time. My belief is that viral interference will prevent all three from being dominant simultaneously.

An increasing number of epidemiologists subscribe to that view.

That was very much a minority view when I first advanced that theory as to why the seasonal flu had seemingly disappeared with the emergence of Covid in 2020.

You may recall that in October, 2020 Dr. Fauci was warning that we would be facing a twindemic in the 2020/2021 season caused by Covid and the flu.

I questioned that view based on the data I was seeing around the world, most particularly in the Southern Hemisphere, that was just coming out of its winter flu season. Flu had practically disappeared there while Covid was present.

I wrote the following on October 19, 2020 regarding viral interference.

It will also be interesting to see if we see a twindemic in the United States that Dr. Fauci and other experts are predicting.

This data indicates to me that Covid may be in some way blocking the flu virus from replicating in the population. It is almost as if Covid is bigger and stronger so that the flu cannot get established in the community when Covid is present.

As always, we will find out together what happens in China with Covid and the United States with any tripledemic.

I am not a betting man but I would not wager much on whether Dr. Fauci and friends are any better at predicting a tripledemic than they were a twindemic.

Or anything else that he was so famously wrong about over the last three years.

I wish Dr. Fauci a very happy and healthy retirement.

He says he is merely transitioning to another chapter in his career.

Perhaps he is thinking he can lend a hand to the Chinese.

It seems he might have had some experience in doing that previously.

Source: https://nypost.com/2021/10/21/nih-admits-us-funded-gain-of-function-in-wuhan-despite-faucis-repeated-denials/