Episode 9 - Pasi Penttinen - Everything You Wanted to Know About the Flu (But Didn't Ask)

ECDC: On Air

European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control

Science

5 • 3 Ratings

🗓️ 13 October 2021

⏱️ 27 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

On this episode, we speak with Pasi Penttinen, ECDC expert on coronavirus and influenza. Pasi discusses the reasons why there have been hardly any cases of flu recently, what to expect from the upcoming flu season, and whether the COVID-19 pandemic is really ‘just like a bad flu season’.

“In the worst years, we have more than 200,000 people dying in Europe as a result of influenza. Is this really something we should accept as a society?”

Please visit the dedicated ECDC pages for the flu here.
You can find additional information via Flu News Europe.

Transcript

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0:00.0	ECDC On Air
0:05.2	The podcast of the European Center for Disease Prevention and Control
0:08.9	Keeping up to date with European Epidemiology
0:14.2	Hello and welcome my name is Nicholas and I'm your host for today's ECDC on air podcast
0:19.6	The podcast of the European Center for Disease Prevention and Control,
0:22.9	which is recorded from my headquarters in Stockholm, Sweden.
0:25.9	In this episode, you will learn more about influenza, how much of a threat it is to people's health,
0:31.2	if the COVID-19 pandemic is really comparable to a bad flu season,
0:34.8	and what we can expect of the upcoming flu season.
0:56.3	Thank you. to a bad flu season and what we can expect of the upcoming flu season. With me today I have Pousypentinin, who is an infectious disease expert here at ECDC with a specialization in influenza and respiratory diseases.
0:59.4	Well, thank you so much for having me.
1:01.8	It's a pleasure to be here.
1:03.4	Can you maybe just start off by presenting yourself?
1:07.0	What's your background?
1:08.1	What do you do here at ECDC?
1:10.0	I'm a medical epidemiologist trained in
1:12.3	Finland. I started off my career with actually environmental epidemiology working on the
1:18.5	health effects of respiratory particles in ambient air. And pretty soon after that, I moved into
1:24.3	infectious disease epidemiology, communicable disease control, through a program
1:28.7	which is actually currently housed by ECDC. At the time, ECDC didn't exist, but the program was there,
1:34.2	the so-called EPIET program, which is a European program for intervention, epidemiology training.
1:41.1	And that really got me hooked into this world of communicable disease control and
	...

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