“What Will Happen When COVID-19 and the Flu Collide This Fall?”

Caroline Hulbert

10.5.20

Hesman Saey, Tina. “What Will Happen When COVID-19 and the Flu Collide This Fall?” Science News, 23 Sept. 2020, www.sciencenews.org/article/covid19-coronavirus-flu-season-fall. 

For this current event, I decided to review the article “What Will Happen When COVID-19 and the Flu Collide this Fall?” by Tina Hesman Saey. The author begins the article by discussing the average impact of the flu each year. She describes the “perfect storm” that will likely occur this flu season. The factors that will make this season particularly dangerous include the fact that people will be spending more time inside, become exposed to seasonal influenza, and become increasingly fatigued with wearing masks, social distancing, and cleaning routines. Additionally, symptoms of the flu and COVID are similar, and one would require testing for each virus, though COVID test results currently have slow turn-around times. It is also possible for a person to become infected with both viruses at once, increasing the severity of their symptoms. The author then describes how flu seasons in other regions of the world can be used to predict the outcome of the US’s flu season this year. The Southern Hemisphere tends to begin seeing flu cases towards the beginning of summer, lasting until October. Australia, South Africa, and Chile together reported a flu test positivity rate of 0.06 percent, lower than previous years, whose average positivity rate was 13.7 percent. It is believed that the flu season may have been cut short due to measures to prevent the spread of the coronavirus. However, it is worth noting that COVID cases have skyrocketed in these regions.

This article is extremely relevant to society as the coronavirus continues to kill hundreds of thousands of people. Having this information available to the public is especially important to teenagers, who have begun to return to school and ignore social distancing guidelines outside of school. With more knowledge and predictions about what this fall will look like, it will hopefully convince people to be especially careful. It also highlights the importance of getting flu vaccinations, which would help slow the spread of the flu.

This article was very well-written and informative about current issues. The author included insights from numerous medical experts in different fields and locations about the upcoming flu season. She described contrasting viewpoints regarding what the season will look like, each supported with reliable information. I thought that the author could have done a better job making the article more relatable to readers. If readers were able to connect more to the article, they would be more likely to follow its recommendations. This connection could have been achieved by including examples of specific people impacted by COVID-19.