Ordinary Flu Season So Far

Posted on January 6, 2006

A WebMD article says the flu is widespread in seven states but it is an average flu season so far according to the CDC.

Influenza has become widespread in the Southwestern United States, though health officials Friday still classified the disease's spread this winter as fairly typical.
Seven states -- California, Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico, Utah, Colorado, and Texas -- now show what scientists classify as widespread flu activity. The number is up from four states two weeks ago, according to data released by the CDC.
In all, the agency has received 63,104 reports of persons contracting flu-like illness as of Dec. 31, placing the 2005-2006 flu season at about average for yearly U.S. flu activity.
"Basically, activity is increasing as you'd expect for this time of year. This [season] is lighter than some, but activity is staring to pick up," says Lynnette Brammer, an epidemiologist who oversees domestic flu surveillance for the CDC.

This is the regular flu and not the feared bird flu but people still need to remember that regular flu is a killer as well. The elderly, young children and people with existing health problems are the most vulnerable to the flu. A CDC flu fact page provides these statistics:

5% to 20% of the population gets the flu;

more than 200,000 people are hospitalized from flu complications, and;

about 36,000 people die from flu.

It would be interesting to know if the 36,000 average includes the fatalities from the 1918 flu season when over 600,000 people in the U.S. were killed by an influenza outbreak. That one year at 600,000 could really make the average deaths estimate jump.