How did the southern hemisphere do this winter? They are done with winter. Was Australia, Argentina, etc. (not near equator) higher or lower due to winter?
I thought I remember flu season in the southern hemisphere was much more mild due to Covid protocols.
In South America, most have done far worse in their "winter" with COVID than they did in their "summer/fall," with fairly low case/death rates through April, but then many of them skyrocketing after that, with some significantly greater than the US during parts of May-August (but not consistently at the same time), as per the graphic below, which is cases per capita (per 1MM). However, there are oddballs, just like in the US, i.e., Uruguay (pretty far from the equator) and Venezuela (on the equator) are doing far better than Brazil, Chile, Peru, Argentina, etc. If being warm/humid was very helpful, that didn't help Peru or Colombia or Ecuador, at all, while Australia and many African/South Asian countries near the equator have done very well so far. The data really show no obvious relationship to climate at all.
My opinion (and that of most experts) is that COVID outbreaks, so far, have had little to do with seasonality and much more to do with a bit of "luck" with regard to their starting point (i.e., how many "seeds" did they have and how many cases before they started testing much) and the effectiveness of their interventions, especially early in any outbreak, like NY, NJ, UK, Spain, Italy, France, etc. that were all hit very hard and very early and had no interventions when they were hit, unlike South Korea, Vietnam, Japan Taiwan, etc., which were hit early/hard but responded very quickly, minimizing the outbreaks. Having said all that, assuming all things being equal, our move into the fall/winter, with more indoor activities, is certainly likely to increase cases at least somewhat (it's just not the biggest driver, IMO).
As an aside, what I'd love to see is a map of travel from China to every country in the world during Dec/Jan and how that relates to how quickly countries started to see major outbreaks (and then secondary travel, like from Europe to the US, after Europe had unknown big outbreaks going on (we know a huge source of the outbreaks in NY/NJ was extensive travel from Europe in Feb/Mar).
With regard to your question on influenza in the southern hemsiphere, yes, cases are way down vs. normal in most of these countries, as per my post from late July (I assume this hasn't changed, but I haven't checked). This is not surprising, since COVID is much more contagious than the flu, meaning that masking/distancing will be much more effective for the flu than for COVID.
It's very much a residual of the 20th century work construct. Now that many office workers are capable of working from home, this shouldn't even be an issue that comes up. Unless I'm completely bedridden, I work from home when sick...and my group knows that. So they never have an issue if I...
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