Flu Season

I would have known it was a bad flu season even if I hadn't seen the surveillance reports from CDC each week.  There are the people missing work because they're sick or they are home with sick children.  There are the long-planned events, cancelled due to illness of critical participants.  There are the press reports of overwhelmed hospitals, and of the deaths of children and young adults, who had been healthy but then they got influenza and unexpectedly and tragically died.  Less dramatically, last week when I checked into a hotel, there was hand sanitizer with the shampoo and body lotion.

Yesterday it was texts from one of my kids, achy and miserable, who was tested positive for influenza and is now on oseltamivir.  

And then there's the weekly report from the CDC.  Here's a few excerpts from the report, posted on Friday, January 19, which covers the week of January 7-13, 2018.

For the second week in a row, every state but Hawaii is reporting widespread influenza activity.  This is unusual; last week, when they saw it the first time, the people at CDC who put these maps together said they hadn't seen this before.  And now, of course, it's two weeks in a row.

CDC also reports what proportion of doctor visits are for something that looks like influenza.  It might not be flu -- there are other viruses circulating, too, and some of them cause something that looks and feels like flu -- but it is one way to measure the level of misery at the state level.  And the level is high in 32 states.

And there are the deaths.  There often are delays in reporting these but last week ten -- ten -- pediatric deaths were reported, most of them deaths that actually had occurred earlier in the season (the new reports are the ones in turquoise).  We aren't even seeing, for the most part, the deaths that actually occurred during January 7-13.  Most of those will show up later.

CDC also monitors overall deaths due to pneumonia and influenza -- they aren't all influenza-related, of course, but many of them are, and the model allows for the seasonal variation in other respiratory illnesses.  This is the first time this season that the red line crossed the black line -- the "epidemic threshold" -- and because death can be a delayed outcome, the impact of the disease that was happening January 7-13 will mostly show up in coming weeks.  But it is not looking good.

I have gotten an influenza vaccine every year for decades, and I make sure that my husband and kids get a shot every year, too.  The vaccine won't prevent every case, but probably makes illness milder when if fails to prevent it altogether (the child that is currently ill and on oseltamivir was vaccinated, and probably would be much sicker without that vaccination).  If you have not gotten a flu shot yet, go do it.  Do not wait.  In most places teens and adults can get flu shots at a pharmacy without a prescription.  Go do it.  It will take some time for your immune system to respond, but in two weeks there still will be flu circulating -- so go do it. 

If you get sick and it turns out to be influenza, your doctor may prescribe an antiviral.  This is especially important for people with underlying conditions that make them more likely to get really sick or die when they get the flu.

And if you are sick, stay home and keep your viruses to yourself.  "Going viral" is not a good thing when we are talking about actual viruses that can kill people.

When I was in college, I got what I am sure was influenza, although there wasn't a test that was widely used back then.  I lived by myself and felt like I was too sick to be alone.  I remember talking to my mother on the phone (this was back when we only had landlines and had to pay for long distance calls, and I didn't talk to my parents frequently by phone) and she asked if she needed to come stay with me.  I told her no, that I'd go to the student health center.  It was February, and there was snow on the ground, and I walked the mile and half there (this also was pre-Uber, needless to say) and promptly collapsed on arrival.  I was admitted to the infirmary for a couple of days and had to come back for a chest x-ray, meaning they were concerned enough that I might have pneumonia that they wanted to make sure whatever abnormality they had seen when I was admitted had completely cleared up.  This is the only time in my life I have been admitted to a hospital for illness.  That's what influenza does -- it takes perfectly healthy people and can make them so sick that they end up in the hospital, or the morgue.

Influenza is a serial killer, and right now, it is pretty much everywhere. Take it seriously.  Take the vaccine.  Take antivirals if your doctor prescribes them.  And take to the sofa if you're sick.