influenza

We are living in a very scary time.

I have what you might call a complicated relationship with viruses.  In graduate school, I did virology research, and my first important publication described the discovery o

Influenza, “the flu,” is more than a bad cold.  Seasonal outbreaks yearly cause not only tremendous misery and debility but huge numbers of hospital admissions and deaths.

I've been in science communication for over 8 years. If there's only one thing I learned, it's this: People don't respond to facts.

By Matthew Motta, University of Pennsylvania;

We had a really bad flu season this year. The CDC just announced that about 80,000 Americans were killed.

Our current vaccination rate is around 38%, despite a flu season last year that took 80,000 lives.

Making the rounds in the news media is a serious medical condition called acute flaccid myelitis (AFM). It predominantly occurs in children causing among other symptoms weakness in the extremities.

The Spanish Flu of 1918, which caused a pandemic, is estimated to have killed about 2% of the world population, a death toll greater than the military deaths of World

The one silver lining from this truly awful flu season is that the worst just might be over.