On a conservative forum I frequent, there was a big hub-bub a week or so ago because according to them the CDC stated that it wouldn't be reporting influenza deaths this season (or something like this) and they blew it into a conspiracy theory that the deep state wants to make it impossible to separate flu and covid deaths.
For what it's worth, CDC has never counted influenza deaths in the US in the past.
I'm not certain why (lack of uniform testing? testing error rates?). Perhaps, medical professionals on this forum can provide insights on this subject.
Instead, CDC has always relied on the estimates for counting instances of influenza illnesses, hospitalizations, and deaths. Details, including methodology for deriving those estimates, is here:
https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/past-seasons.html
- enough people are doing enough isolating/mask wearing/sanitizing so as to create historically low Flu infection rates,
- we are in the middle of an upswing of COVID-19 with daily new infection rates higher than anything we've seen, even in the early days when no one was wearing masks,
In our area (NJ), we've hit the 2nd highest monthly infection rate this October, since April.
In April, all kids were already 100% schooling from home, and virtually all non-essential employees were working from home.
Now, the 2/3rd of the school districts have opened back up for full, or part-time schooling. Virtually everyone I know, including all my neighbors up and down the street (all professionals), are back to going to work part-time or full-time.
Every week, I've been getting an email from the school district that reads: "another kid tested positive for CV19, but wasn't infected on school grounds, and contact tracing did not identify any likely infections in school".
Every adult I know who has gotten CV19 this fall, got it either at work, or (most likely) on the way to work. Then immediately spread it within the family.
Many in the US are taking more precautions, including wearing masks (though not everyone, and clearly not those attending political rallies), but we are DEFINITELY not socially isolating as much as we did in the spring.
And that's in New England / Yankee land.
In many other cultural regions, folks are putting more trust into politicians who claim that "Doctors are inflating Covid deaths", and that "we are rounding the corner".
And they are acting accordingly.
So does a sizeable proportional of TRF participants.
Thus we get what we've got.
US is tracking 5x cases/1M pop and 2.65 x deaths/1M population vs. Canada.
Mexicans are also better off than US citizens w.r.t. Covid-19 outcomes.
But Peruvians and Belgians are worse off, so hooray to us !
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/
You can blame our leaders, or our Doctors, for the above.
Take you pick.