Experts say that focused planning and forecasting efforts helped avoid some of the worst-case scenarios. But there was still a significant number of severe outcomes, and there are still key areas of improvement – especially around vaccination.
In 2020, all the precautions that helped people avoid Covid had an unexpected benefit: An entire branch of the flu’s family tree, a B strain that geneticists call the Yamagata clade, disappeared, and it hasn’t been detected since.
Officials generally are pleased if a flu vaccine is 40% to 60% effective.
The shots tend to do better when they are well matched against the circulating flu strains. Officials say that’s what’s happened during this — relatively typical — flu season.
