Virtually nobody is bringing it in. Even if they are people are wearing masks etc. It’s got to be a dead flu season, no?
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That’s what I was thinking. Was thinking about getting the shot, or not?
Getting a shot seems pointless to me. No joke intended.
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Well, you can still hear people coughing and sneezing and sniffling in the restaurants and cafes. A few weeks something got me. Felt like a rhinovirus.
How can it get in?
Isn’t it always around, and mutating?
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That’s the solution.
- Seasonality : 85 percent of Asia’s population lives in tropical or subtropical regions with no distinct winter, allowing continuous transmission of endemic flu strains and more opportunities for evolution of new strains.
Most of Taiwan is subtropical and part of the south is tropical.
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I didn’t know that. It’s continually dormant but it only kicks off when it’s cold?
Weird stuff. Taiwan effectively closing its borders can’t stop it. I thought people had to bring it in.
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No, it’s endemic and constantly capable of mutating. If enough people catch one strain of it or get vaccinated, herd immunity slows or prevents that strain from spreading more. But if it mutates, the new strain will start to spread. If the vaccine predicts the right emerging strains, you get a mild season if enough people get vaccinated early.
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Yeah, it would have to come from somewhere, right? So it’s always existing somewhere. In my limited understanding there a number of strains that kind of mix and match, hence H1N1 or whatever. Maybe we’ll get a more limited number of prevalent strains this season?
It’s either in Taiwan now or it isn’t. If it isn’t, then it can’t get in.
My understanding was that it was in the northern hemisphere in the winter, then people took it south.
It is stuck in people’s bone marrow or something?
I never knew that if so! I assumed it was uh, floating around? Somewhere? In animals or something? I don’t know.
I’d like to here a medical expert about this. Does flu lie dormant? Are we going to still get it even with closed borders?
Is this trick question? Of course we will get more affected when environmental factors weaken our bodies and/or stimulate their production. Would you expect anything.else?
I assume you’re responding to me. There is no trick question.
If Influenza cannot enter Taiwan, will there still be Influenza in Taiwan? Is it a dormant virus or not?
Have you been outside of the city? Aside from Taipei and Kaohsiung, mask wearing nowadays ranges from nonexistent to sporadic. If it’s here it will spread like in any other year.
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How does it get here?
Maybe it’s spread by witches.
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Isn’t it that the virus is endemic and being passed around all the time, but that cases increase by 1-2 orders of magnitude during flu season because of people spending more time indoors with less ventilation and the colder, drier air increasing the susceptibility to infection of mucous membranes in the nose and throat?
Just realized though - I guess it’s gonna be a lot harder to track down and isolate coronavirus cases if/when people do start getting flu. For the countries that don’t have the former under control by then, that probably won’t be fun, especially if people start getting both at the same time.
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If it’s not been in Taiwan for almost a year, how’s it going to be here now?