Check out the graph on the CDC weekly influenza report: https://www.cdc.gov/flu/weekly/index.htm. Find it by scrolling down to the "Percentage of Visits of Outpatient Illness etc" graph. The numbers across the x-axis are the number of weeks in the year. You can see that influenza spikes the highest when we hit the epidemic line right between Thanksgiving and the Winter Holidays in the US. Like, uh-oh. Asymptomatic people on airplanes and traveling by car and trading lovely viruses at big group dinners.
The red triangles are this year. We are just about to hit the dashed line, which means epidemic. The pink line is last year, way below the dashed line. Everyone is sick of isolation and quarantine and they are quitting.
But really, wear the damn mask. Masks work. Masks work WAY better than no mask. I wore a mask in clinic all day every time I had a cold for the last DECADE because I hate killing my 90 year olds and the emphysematous 60 year olds and the guy who just had a quadruple bypass. They are vulnerable, as I am too.
Influenza can cause lung swelling. Influenza can kill on its own, but it often kills by exhausting a person who then gets a bacterial pneumonia. Add Covid-19 to that. Really, now, if someone has Long Haul Covid-19 for the last 8 months, does anyone want to give them influenza and kill them? Not me!
And for those who say "There are too many people anyway," well, what are YOU doing for Covid-19 and for first responders and for the lonely elderly in your neighborhood and so forth? Maybe you are a saint, but I don't know too many saints who are down with people suffering.
Anyhow, I am reading about people on ECMO for 8 months or more and surviving. Don't give them influenza. Don't even give them a cold.