Sky News, among others, claim: Lockdowns and new health habits help number of flu sufferers fall to 130-year low, but, this fails to explain why the very same lockdowns and restrictions have failed to stop Coronavirus, when the two are so similar.
You can't have it both ways.
Sky claim: Out of 3.9 million patients at 385 GP practices across England last week, only 35 had the flu and state The number of people suffering from the flu in England has plunged by more than 95% to levels not seen for 130 years.
It goes on to say: Data experts at the Royal College of General Practices (RCGP) said that in the third week of January - usually a peak time for the flu - the number of flu-like illnesses reported to doctors was 0.9 per 100,000 people compared with a five-year average of 27.
Out of 3.9 million patients at 385 GP practices in England monitored by the RCGP, only 35 had the flu last week.
And The Sunday Times reports that in the second week of January, the flu positivity rate - a standard measurement of flu in the community - was 0%. Not one of the 1,894 samples tested positive.
Simon de Lusignan, a professor of primary care and clinical informatics, and director of the RCGP's research and surveillance centre, told Sky News he believed the combination of travel bans, social distancing and hand-washing had all had a "really positive effect on the normal winter transmissions".
Interesting, and almost plausible. But wrong.
If these measures were even half as effective as they claim then they would have had a similar or the same effect on Coronavirus, and, according to their own methodology, they have not, not even close. The 'experts' often claim that the two viruses are entirely different and cannot be compared, but Neil Ferguson's original computer model that plunged us into this nightmare in the first place was designed for flu. Again, you can't have it both ways.
Closer examination of the data shows that the pattern of infection now follows almost exactly that of seasonal flu. in fact, remove the headers and you would find them indistinguishable.
2018-2019 flu season.
There is a long-forgotten concept in science called Occam's Razor which many in the WHO, CDC, and UK Public Health would do well to remember, it suggests that if two explanations exist for an occurrence it is the one that requires the smallest number of assumptions that is usually correct. Another way of saying it is that the more assumptions you have to make, the more unlikely an explanation. We have to make an awful lot of assumptions to conclude that lockdowns, mask wearing and social distancing has been 95% effective in wiping flu viruses from the entire face of the planet, and yet has failed to do even a fraction of that for it's cousin Covid-19 which they claim is still running rampant everywhere.
You can't have it both ways.
Hospitals have been full of flu patients every winter since records began , with the NHS always reporting they are 'struggling to cope'. Only in December the NHS were claiming flu deaths weren't down, then claimed they weren't collecting the figures, and now claim they are, and are attempting to take some sort of credit for their demise.
This does not suggest that Covid-19 doesn't exist, nor does it suggest that it is not a serious illness in the elderly or those with comorbidities, but the truth is that many cases, probably tens of thousands, are being counted as Covid-19 when they are what the NHS used to classify as flu or the other category now forgotten "other flu-like illnesses" - an actual category in Public Health statistics.
What must be understood about Government statistics is they are never a record for a record's sake, they are always collected, counted and presented to fit a narrative. All of them. The ONS is laughingly called 'the gold standard' but five minutes reading the vague, biased and woolly analysis that accompanies their data will dispel that myth.
The truth is that clinicians have no way of knowing what is flu and what is Covid because the test don't work. The PCR and Lateral flow test are so inaccurate that a fragment of any antibody, from your immune system fighting any type of virus, including colds and flu, is almost certain to give a covid positive result. This means tens of thousands of people who have had the flu have wrongly been diagnosed with Covid-19.
Dr Mike Yeadon, a world renowned expert of virus detection methods, has stated that the Coronavirus is so similar to that of other coronaviruses like the common cold and seasonal flu, that it is almost certain to be misidentified in lab tests. Particularly when the sample is taken in 'a windy carpark, under a tent' and not lab conditions that complex biology needs for accuracy. Those with vested interests in the pandemic have mounted a campaign to discredit him but Yeadon does not have a dog in this fight, unlike those that have attempted to discredit him, again, impartiality is the key to the credibility of his statements.
An impartial analysis then must conclude that Flu hasn't disappeared, it's just been counted as Covid.