“It also gives us an opportunity to have really frank and honest conversations with substitute decision makers and loved ones,” says the ICU physician and lead researcher from Lawson Health Research Institute. How aggressive would they need us to be?
If backed up with extra analysis, the dual research might result in higher therapies for a new illness that’s about to converge with a acquainted foe. What occurs when COVID and flu collide?
Dr. Douglas Fraser. Photo by Lawson Health Research Institute
Some have referred to as the prospect of duelling epidemics a Dickensian catastrophe. Others are taking some consolation within the Southern Hemisphere’s freakishly gentle flu season. “They’re testing really aggressively in Australia and they’re just not finding cases,” says Dr. David Buckeridge, a professor in McGill University’s School of Population and Global Health.
The Southern Hemisphere’s expertise is, in some methods, “a good reflection that all of the good public health measures that people are continuing to practise, the hand washing, the physical distancing as much as possible, the use of non-medical masks and so on that help prevent or limit the transmission of COVID-19, would also work equally well for other respiratory infections, including influenza,” Dr. Howard Njoo, Canada’s deputy chief public well being officer, mentioned this week. Others aren’t satisfied we’ll get off so simply, noting that peak flu season within the Southern Hemisphere occurred when most colleges had been closed. In Canada, lecture rooms are simply beginning to reopen. “Influenza is predictably unpredictable,” mentioned Dr. Mark Loeb, a professor of pathology and molecular drugs at McMaster University.