Editorial: Take steps to stop flu-covid season

Keep your distance. Wash your hands. Cover your mouth. Stay home if you are sick.

These are the rules of the new world. The coronavirus world. They are the rules intended to keep covid-19 at bay and slow its march, minimizing a tidal-wave crash on hospitals and potential loss of life.

They seem hard for some to follow. They shouldn’t be. These rules are nothing new.

These are the same rules that are circulated every year by doctors’ offices and hospitals. There are reminders from the health department and from school districts. Newspapers get press releases and share articles reminding people of the danger of communicable respiratory diseases and how to limit the spread.

It isn’t because there is a new virus every year. It’s because there is an old one — so familiar as to be background noise.

Yes. It’s flu season again.

Influenza isn’t the same kind of virus as covid-19, but it shares so many of the attributes. Spread easily through personal interactions, it could start with a little cough. It might be nothing but a minor annoyance to this person. That one might only take something from the cold and flu aisle at the drugstore. Someone else could end up in the hospital. Another could die.

In the 2018-19 flu season, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 35 million people got sick and 16.5 million saw the doctor. There were 490,600 hospitalizations and 34,200 deaths. It was a moderately severe year for the disease, with its peak coming from November to February.

The CDC hasn’t published final numbers for 2019-20, but it’s a fair assumption that after states started with lockdowns, the disease’s trajectory was radically altered. The week of March 14 — the same week Pennsylvania shut down schools — there were more than 30 states and territories with flu activity designated high or very high. Two weeks later, those numbers were cut by two-thirds. By April 18, most of the country was in the minimal range.

But a new season is about to start. Experts are starting the annual reminders about precautions including flu shots, with the additional urgency of the coronavirus pandemic.

“With the potential for flu and covid-19 co-occurring, we need everyone to take steps to prevent overrunning our health systems,” said state Department of Health spokesman Nate Wardle.

Taking those steps puts the power to keep the flu at bay in the public’s reach every year. This year, that potential is even more significant.

Since March, more than 6 million Americans have been diagnosed with covid-19 and almost 200,000 have died. In Pennsylvania, there have been nearly 8,000 deaths.

Disagreement and dissension over restrictions versus economic impact have a valid place in discussions of public policy. Has the president taken the right steps? Has the governor? Have the guidelines been too strict or too slack?

What is unquestionable however is that if everyone acts responsibly and respectfully of the same science we have been asked to follow regarding seasonal disease for decades, it can absolutely make a difference.