Flu season is here and it’s shaping up to be a bad one.
Cases of the flu are rising sharply across the country – and that’s when looking at data collected right before the holiday.
In the U.S., the CDC estimates 7.5 million flu cases so far this season, with 81,000 hospitalizations and more than 3,000 deaths. So far this season eight children have died from flu-related causes according to the CDC, with five of those deaths reported this week.
According to CDC data for the week ending on December 20, 32 states reported high or very high levels of illness with flu symptoms, up from 17 states reporting that level of flu activity the week prior. New York, New Jersey, South Carolina, Louisiana and Colorado are the states with the most extreme levels of flu-like illness, with many neighboring states also reporting very high levels.
New York just broke a record by reporting its highest load of flu cases in a single week. “It’s the hospitalizations right now that are getting my attention,” New York State health commissioner James McDonald told Albany’s CBS6. “The weekend of December 20 we reported over 3,600 people in the hospital from the flu in New York state. Why that’s important is that was more than the peak of last year.”
“What we’re seeing with this strain of flu is more contagious, more severe disease,” McDonald said, adding that it isn’t too late to get the flu vaccine, especially children and older adults. In New York, 40% of people hospitalized from the flu are older than 75, but infants are the second largest group requiring hospitalization.
Part of what is making this season shape up to be a brutal one for the flu is the emergence of a new variant of the virus, known as “subclade K” (a subclade refers to a subgroup of a strain of a virus). Subclade K is a newer subtype of influenza A/H3N2 that emerged over the summer, complicating the protection from the flu vaccine, which was formulated using different reference strains of the virus from subclade J. Still, that situation isn’t completely uncommon – the vaccine and the dominant strain sometimes mismatch from year to year.
While the term “super flu” is getting tossed around already, the vaccine formulation still likely provides some protection against the dominant subclade K form of the virus, as well as offering a buffer for the better-matched but less dominant strain.
A perfect storm
Seasonal illness spikes around the holidays each year as people travel to see loved ones and gather inside to celebrate. This year is no different, and the flu is joined by a lineup of other seasonal illnesses that includes COVID and norovirus, which causes vomiting and diarrhea. Other serious and extremely contagious illnesses like whooping cough and measles are also on the uptick in the U.S. this year, as waning vaccination rates take their toll on public health.
Vaccine skepticism, once a fringe belief, now sits much closer toward the center of political beliefs in the U.S. Avowed vaccine skeptic Robert F. Kennedy Jr now shapes U.S. health policy from the very top, after building a career from promoting lucrative anti-vaccine causes.
Another top Trump health official, Dr. Mehmet Oz, referred to the flu vaccine as “controversial” in an appearance on Newsmax this week, pointing viewers toward “MAHA” tips like taking zinc, eating well and coughing into the crook of your arm to protect against a flu infection. Oz called sleep the “most important tool of all” in protecting against a flu infection, failing to recommend the flu vaccine to the network’s viewers.
“Flu is always a problem. Every year there’s a flu vaccine. It doesn’t always work very well. That’s why it’s been controversial of late,” Oz said. “But like many illnesses, the best news out there is if you can take care of yourself, so that when you do end up running into the flu, you can overwhelm it.”
An explosion of vaccine misinformation in recent years coupled with Covid-era fatigue has created the perfect storm for a public health crisis in the U.S., and we’re only just beginning to see the consequences.