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The fate of Japan's influenza season has interested me, so I put down some simple thoughts based on the Japanese data available. https://sigma1.wordpress.com/2020/04/02/what-happened-to-japans-influenza-season/
Basic points are:
1) MHLW regular weekly reports from fixed institutions show in December 2019 it looked like a really bad year for influenza in terms of both incidence and hospitalizations.
1) MHLW regular weekly reports from fixed institutions show in December 2019 it looked like a really bad year for influenza in terms of both incidence and hospitalizations.
Then in January, both influenza incidence reports and hospitalization reports dramatically drop well below the previous years (see graph in above tweet also)
Even looking at hospitalizations requiring greater care shows a robust reduction (below is ICU admissions, but similar trend for respirator use and for use of CT scan/MRI/EEG)
National Institute of Infectious Diseases has another tracker that show significant concern in December about deaths from influenza and pneumonia being much greater than expected, but that the situation improved through January and February.
One further interesting point is that total influenza hospitalizations were relatively similar to previous years for age groups under 60, but this year saw a major trail off in over 60 hospitalizations for influenza.
Why? I'd be interested to hear some ideas. Staying away from hospitals? Or staying away from everyone because of COVID-19? Something else?
Basic conclusion: whatever took place in January and February probably saved lives. So the inconveniences endured have been for something, even if a state of emergency declaration is imminent for Japan.
Full explanation, data at my blog here: https://sigma1.wordpress.com/2020/04/02/what-happened-to-japans-influenza-season/
