Flu season is wretched, but it’s not the worst
A fierce flu season that started early seems to be hitting almost every corner of the country and sowing anxiety nationwide. The epidemic is far from over and may be among the worst in several years, health officials said.
But an update from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention does not indicate an epidemic of historic or rare proportions — just one that could approach the severity of the most recent moderately severe season, in
2014-2015.
The flu is always dangerous. It causes 9 million to 35 million illnesses,
140,000 to 710,000 hospitalizations and 12,000 to 56,000 deaths in the USA in a typical year, the CDC says.
In a very atypical year, exactly 100 years ago, the USA saw the first waves of the worst modern flu pandemic, one that killed about 675,000 Americans. Here’s what you need to know:
Question: Is there anything unusual about this year’s flu pattern?
Answer: CDC officials said flu season started early, in November. In late December and early January, the epidemic appeared to strike almost everywhere in the country at the same time — giving the agency’s flu map an unusually uniform look.
The illness remained “widespread” in 49 states and Puerto Rico (but not Hawaii, Guam or Washington, D.C.) as of Jan. 13. Geographic spread is not a measure of severity, but most states were seeing moderate to high flu activ-