Yeh, those are all factors but in addition a massive, massive number of people are already at home or have no workplace or school to go to. Before the epidemic, if you wanted to leave your workplace or school to recover from the flu for a few days you more less felt obligated to get a flu diagnosis to add an air of legitimacy to it, maybe you were even required to get a diagnosis. Now, if you wake up and feel like crap, many people are are able to just shrug and think "WTF, I am already basically home as though I am sick and who knows if my clinic is even open or not, and if I think I have covid, I will get a covid test at the drive-thru."
Not a lot of calling in sick these days and telling the school or your boss that you need to stay home. Ahh..errrr......you are already at home, duh. You don't need a diagnosis for that. And you often don't need to worry about losing your job. That went a long time back.
Also, the obvious, that many cities and towns are up to their arse in fighting covid and their health care workers are thusly engaged. Not sure that if you live in LA that that little local clinic that was hustling your flu business last year wants to see you or your kids with the flu or that that it is open or if there are any workers who have not been assigned to covid. One of the key metrics in assessinThat cuts down on flu reports considerably, eh. Your local medical care places, hospitals, nursing homes, included, were/are always great places to catch the flu too because their infectious disease control was/is so sloppy. Thank god that some are getting slapped around a bit for that of late.
One may think that the CDC just looks at the number of flu diagnoses to determine flu season severity but they actually use a complex model that includes per cent of visits to doctors, clinics etc for "flu-like" illnesses, so on and so forth. All of those things have been dislocated by the focus on covid and shutting down of facilities.
