When we live in a normal world, our annual flu date started around January, peaked in February, and died out in March. There could be variations: there were always earlier waves and later waves; but every year the scenario was more or less the same. The thing is, we no longer live in a normal world.

The disease that signals the end of the pandemic. At the beginning of March, the monitoring services of the national health system began to see something move. A disease that had been inactive for two years, reappeared in our lives with an “almost vertical” increase in incidence within a few days and began to flood the hospitals: the flu is back.

At the time, the news was documenting society overtakes with its return. actual Pandemic. Fear and precaution had dropped enough for the flu to strike again: this was the beginning of what we saw next, the end of major covid measures.

yeti in the spring. What we didn’t know for sure was whether there would be a short peak and then seasonality would do the same and stifle the evolution of the epidemic; or, conversely, if we were to find ourselves only two months later with a displaced, manual epidemic flu. Finally, it was the latter. The wave started in March, peaked in April, and has already started to decline (though it is growing again in some areas, such as Seville, due to the crowds due to the April Fair).

A new planet in the epidemiological system. It’s not such a rare thing. In epidemiology, it is often said that just as the presence of one planet changes the orbits of others, the presence of a new disease changes the behavior of others. It makes sense for the flu to seek a new way to travel the world: What we don’t know is whether it’s a temporary thing or whether we’re facing an epidemiological “new normality.”

At the moment, the answer may only be speculative: it’s not clear whether SARS-CoV-2 will produce annual flu-like outbreaks, and of course we’re not sure if these waves will overlap (if so) or they will come one after another like this year. What is clear is that reality has just begun the relatively boring annual epidemiological calendar, and this will have significant health, economic and social implications. Moreover, if, as everything indicates, the weather (which is what produces some of the seasonal effect) goes wild.

Image | li lin