Influenza: “The Great Opportunist”

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Louisiana is facing an extreme flu season this year, and with the threat of coronavirus dominating headlines, the similarities between Covid-19 and influenza means learning about one can help understand the other.

Both the flu and Covid-19 are respiratory viruses, and according to the Louisiana Office of Public Health, the state is facing a particularly bad flu season as of Feb 27, 2020: 10.1% of all cases show flu-like symptoms as opposed to 6% in the rest of the US.


“Very few people actually die of the flu, but we call the flu ‘The Great Opportunist,’” said Dr. Frank Welch, Medical Director for the Bureau for Community Preparedness for the Office of Public Health. “Because it makes any other medical condition worse, and that’s typically how it kills people.”


There were 10’s of thousands of hospitalizations, and upwards of 1,000 to 1,500 deaths caused by complications to their health brought on by the flu in Louisiana every year, according to Welch.

Dr. Joseph Kanter, Assistant State Health Officer for the Louisiana Department of Health said that, while these statistics were of complications caused by the flu, separating the deaths directly from the illness, apart from those caused by complications as a result of the illness, is splitting hairs.


“Whether it’s the flu or coronavirus, you get sick, you land in the ICU, you start going into multiple organ failure,” said Kanter. “So what kills you in the end, in some ways, is irrelevant because it’s the virus that put you in there.”

Healthy people tend not to get too sick, explained Welch, but because of the flu’s robust nature for change, each person it infects is an opportunity to change. Changes in a virus’s makeup allow it to bypass the immune system’s defenses, become new strains, and more.


Viruses have been described as “basically, a strain of nucleic acid with attitudes – and a protein overcoat,” by Cosmos and Culture: Cultural Evolution in a Cosmic Context. They inject the nucleic acids into living cells to reproduce.


Vaccines are created from these protein overcoats, called antigens. By exposing the immune system to these proteins, it will create antibodies and respond faster to the virus, eradicating the virus before it can establish a foothold in the body.

Each year, vaccines for the flu are produced by collecting three or four of the most prominent flu strains – strains: A,B,C, and D. Because they are created in preparation for the flu season, said Kanter, they are essentially a best guess. While a virus isn’t technically a living organism by definition, it reproduces and each time it replicates there is a chance for variation. The predictive nature of the vaccines, coupled with the rapid rate of change the flu virus undergoes as it infects new hosts, makes the flu virus a difficult challenge.

This year’s flu season, which is not complete, has been atypical for Louisiana. In an average year, said Welch, one strain of the flu dominates the season, but this year, strain B flared up in the beginning and currently strain A is hitting hard.


“Back in November and December we just had a terrible flu season with Influenza Type-B, and just as that has tapered off in January, Influenza-A, the old H1N1from 2009, reared its ugly head and is spreading at pretty high levels as well,” said Welch. “So we’ve kinda had a double hit of influenza this year and unfortunately even if you had influenza type B back in December, it doesn’t protect you, you can get Influenza Type-A now.”

Flu season usually spans November until March, but according to Welch, there’s no definite schedule such as the most serious month of H1N1 was in August.

“The flu decides when it wants to go away, but in a typical year it starts to die down by March,” Welch said. “I’ve been at this about 25 years, and the only thing you can predict with the flu is that it will be unpredictable.”


There are preventative methods people can use to limit their chances of contracting or spreading the flu virus, these include: washing hands, covering their face when they cough or sneeze, cleaning door handles and surrounding areas. These are equally applicable to any respiratory virus, including Covid-19.

According to Kanter, the Center for Disease Control expects Covid-19 to follow a similar pattern to the flu season and also die down in March; however, as it is a new challenge this is only an estimation of its behavior.