Decline of Influenza Mortality in Canada since the Spanish Flu
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Influenza has long been an important source of mortality worldwide. However, the historical patterns of death due to this disease are still poorly understood. We present the first analysis of the long-term patterns of annual influenza mortality in Canada, covering nearly the entire period since the Spanish flu pandemic of 1918. The death rate due to influenza showed a clear exponential decay from 1922 (the earliest year accurate statistics are available) until 2003. In addition, a log transformation of the influenza specific death rate data revealed a rise in influenza mortality above the long-term trend during 1998-2000. There was no strong evidence of periodicity in influenza mortality, with the time series showing only weak positive autocorrelation. We compare the decline in influenza mortality to historical patterns in death due to pneumonia and other infectious respiratory diseases. The observed decay in influenza deaths could have been due, in part, to improvements in population health, public health practice, and the treatment of infectious diseases. However, we also argue that such a decline may have been due to improved, long-lasting, individual and population-level immunity to influenza.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.003 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.002 | 0.004 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".