{"id":11562,"date":"2026-03-04T13:37:43","date_gmt":"2026-03-04T19:37:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/?p=11562"},"modified":"2026-03-04T13:37:45","modified_gmt":"2026-03-04T19:37:45","slug":"flu-was-again-worse-than-covid-this-winter-is-that-pattern-here-to-stay","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/2026\/03\/04\/flu-was-again-worse-than-covid-this-winter-is-that-pattern-here-to-stay\/","title":{"rendered":"Flu was again worse than covid this winter. Is that pattern here to stay?"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"panel body-content\"><div class=\"panel__container\">\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/health\/2026\/03\/04\/flu-covid-differences-variants\/\">Washington Post<\/a> Flu has overtaken covid in infections and hospitalizations during the winter respiratory virus season, and their virulence is becoming similar. Heard about a lot of people getting flu this winter but not much about covid?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It\u2019s not just you. For the second winter in a row, the United States has faced a punishing flu season, with covid as a more muted threat.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Early in the covid pandemic, coronavirus proved&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/health\/more-evidence-emerges-on-why-covid-19-is-so-much-worse-than-the-flu\/2020\/05\/21\/e7814588-9ba5-11ea-a2b3-5c3f2d1586df_story.html\" target=\"_blank\" aria-label=\"far more transmissible, opens in a new window\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">far more transmissible<\/a>&nbsp;and deadly as it ripped through the world than the flu typically was. Flu was almost nonexistent that first pandemic winter in 2020-2021.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Now that SARS-CoV-2 is no longer a novel virus sweeping through a population with little immunity, covid and influenza illnesses are\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/health\/2025\/01\/25\/covid-flu-winter-virus\/\" target=\"_blank\" aria-label=\"becoming more similar,\u00a0, opens in a new window\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">becoming more similar,\u00a0<\/a>with a key difference: Coronavirus circulates year-round and ticks up in the summer, when flu is gone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/health\/2026\/03\/04\/flu-covid-differences-variants\/\">Continue reading<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Washington Post Flu has overtaken covid in infections and hospitalizations during the winter respiratory virus season, and their virulence is becoming similar. Heard about a lot of people getting flu this winter but not much about covid? It\u2019s not just you. For the second winter in a row, the United States has faced a punishing [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[42],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11562","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-influenza"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11562","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11562"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11562\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11563,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11562\/revisions\/11563"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11562"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11562"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11562"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}