Social media posts claim low influenza numbers in the United States in 2020 were due to cases being misrepresented as Covid-19. But the diseases are distinct and are tracked separately by US health authorities, who say that strict safety measures undertaken to stop the spread of Covid-19 likely also reduced flu cases.
"'The US flu season has arrived on schedule after taking a year off.' The flu didn't take off last year. It was called Covid," says a December 28, 2021 Facebook post.
The first sentence of the Facebook post echoes the headline of an Associated Press article, the second paragraph of which addressed the potential role of Covid-19 prevention efforts in reducing flu cases.
Screenshot of a Facebook post taken on December 29, 2021
The social media claim -- which comes as the Omicron variant sweeps through the United States, breaking records for case counts, renewing the stress on testing infrastructure and exacerbating the strain on hospitals in some places -- also appeared on Facebook here and here, and on Twitter here.
False claims that Covid-19 and the flu are equivalent, or that health authorities have disguised one as the other, have circulated since the beginning of the pandemic, and experts have repeatedly refuted them.
The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) addresses the difference between the two on its website: "Influenza (flu) and Covid-19 are both contagious respiratory illnesses, but they are caused by different viruses. Covid-19 is...
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