How coronavirus lockdowns stopped flu in its tracks

How coronavirus lockdowns stopped flu in its tracks

Measures aimed at slowing coronavirus spread are affecting other communicable diseases. (Leon Neal/Getty)

Lockdowns stopped flu in its tracks Social-distancing measures aimed at slowing the spread of coronavirus seem to have shortened the influenza season in the northern hemisphere by about six weeks. A shorter flu season could spare tens of thousands of lives But the net impacts on global health will be hard to tease apart from the large number of deaths from COVID-19 as well as other causes in 2020 and beyond. Nature | 4 min read CDC muddies US testing numbers The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)’s new dashboard was meant to offer the public insight into the progress of the country’s outbreak — now the biggest in the world. Instead, the agency has caused confusion by lumping together antibody tests along with tests for active COVID-19 infections. Several states are making the same mistake, reports The Atlantic. Testing is a crucial pillar of outbreak control, and mixing the two numbers — people who are not infected now, and people who probably haven’t been infected in the past — renders the statistic “uninterpretable”, says public-health researcher Ashish Jha. The Atlantic | 8 min read First book to tackle COVID-19 economics Economist Joshua Gans has taken a brave shot at an impossible task: publishing the first book explaining the economic thinking that should guide policy in the time of COVID-19. With the situation and knowledge changing daily, the book is useful, but inevitably limited, says reviewer Philip Ball. Nature | 6 min read

45% The proportion of 200 million tweets about the coronavirus that were probably from fake accounts designed to sow disinformation, according to an as-yet-unpublished analysis. (NPR | 4 min read)