Alright. You’ve enjoyed the aesthetics of the cold months long enough. Time to pack up the cutesy cozy bullshit and get down to brass tacks: this flu season is going to suck. That news comes to us from researchers studying the early flu data, though they didn’t quite say it that way.
Speaking to NPR, Richard Webby of St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital says signs are pointing to a “big season.” And the first warning flare didn’t even go up here in the US. It came from the Southern Hemisphere, which acts as a kind of meteorological canary in the coal mine since, if you remember your basic Earth science, it was experiencing winter while we in the Northern Hemisphere were enjoying our sweaty summer. Down there, flu activity saw a major spike that lingered for a long time.
Now the United Kingdom is getting walloped by the flu, which usually means the U.S. is next in line. Making matters worse is the hot new virus of the moment: H3N2. Historically, it brings higher case numbers and nastier outcomes. The last time it dominated was the 2016–2017 season, and of course, it would because that was generally not a great year for anything, and like other things that happened in that year, we are somehow still feeling the repercussions of it.
On top of that, a new H3N2 variant has recently risen to dominance in the U.S., after mutating just enough to slip past some of our immune defenses. Caitlin Rivers, an epidemiologist at Johns Hopkins, says this could make the flu shot a slightly less perfect match but not useless, so don’t use that as an excuse to go unvaccinated this season. U.K. data shows the vaccine is still offering strong hospitalization protection for kids and moderate protection for adults. In the world of flu protection, that’s still a win. Remember: the flu virus kills between 12,000 and 52,000 people. As the old safety motto used to go, Don’t Become a Statistic.
It will be an uphill battle, though, thanks to baseless public skepticism of vaccines and US public health officials who are openly anti-vaxx for reasons they can’t explain without sounding like conspiratorial, tinfoil hat-wearing maniacs.
Vaccines are safe, they work, and they keep people out of the hospital. Go get them.
The post U.S. Braces for a Rough Flu Season appeared first on VICE.
