Had this paper been submitted 15 months ago, it wouldn't have been novel/interesting enough for NEJM. Sad state of affairs and a reminder that timing is everything in our field.

There's now a great brand new feature in @eurosurveillance.org : a graphical summary for each article. Nice!!

Better not eat cherry tomatoes in or from Italy.

In Europe we had a huge flu season last winter and flu circulation is currently quite low. I am not sure whether sooner vaccination is the optimal strategy. Personnally I prefer to wait another month to improve protection for late winter when the flu peak is more likely.

What about Emerging infectious diseases. Are they also impacted?

That's true. But the real question is how fast this happens, ie. timescale of waning vs genetic adaptation. Prior to 2023 we saw a whole array of distant variants emerge "randomly" (compared to say flu). Only since end of 2023 have we been in more antigenic drift scenario. Why? Still unpredictable.

Against severe disease yes, not against reinfection.

Big wave in 23 was due to little underlying immunity following emergence of BA.2.86 and subvariants (JN.1, ...) during summer of 2023 (>30 spike mutations compared to earlier variants). Current circulating variants (XFG) are still fairly similar descendents of what was circulating back then.

Isn't that just what politicians are doing to win votes?

Nice graph, but to gauge & compare recent dynamics in early autumn to previous seasons, it would make sense to show data as normal calendar year starting week 1.