This year’s flu shot will be missing a strain of influenza it’s protected against for more than a decade.
That’s because there have been no confirmed flu cases caused by the Influenza B/Yamagata lineage since spring 2020. And the Food and Drug Administration decided this year that the strain now poses little to no threat to human health.
Scientists have concluded that widespread physical distancing and masking practiced during the early days of COVID-19 appear to have pushed B/Yamagata into oblivion.
It wouldn’t have worked. You’d never have gotten every single last case and then the exponential growth would have started again. Or, if that had somehow magically worked, the virus would have come back from outside.
There were no simple solutions.