Hacker News Reader

This is just wrong. Vastly more tests were done for the flu during the covid pandemic than have ever been done.

This is absolutely wrong. Labs in all the largest cities in the US, simply stopped accepting samples for anything other than COVID. Source: wife is RN working as triage nurse and interacting daily with the largest testing sites in NY, CA, NJ, IL, etc.etc.etc.

> And the decline has not been because of a lack of testing. Since late September, 1.3 million specimens have been tested for influenza, more than the average of about one million in the same period in recent years.

Source: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/04/22/science/flu-s...

My wife is also an ER doctor and agrees that there were times that they didn't perform many/any flu tests--mostly in the spring of 2020 and after none of the flu tests were returning positive for a while. But this past winter people have definitely been tested for the flu. Rapid influenza tests are also usually performed first, only sending to labs when confirmatory testing is desired.

Hmmm, interesting. Wonder what the source of this 1.3 million flu tests is. It makes no sense. Why would doctors send off flu labs to such a statistically higher degree, in a year when they're not seeing any flu?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com