The flu season is almost over. So how bad was it?

Flu season is still technically not over, but the tail end is the perfect time to look back and ask: how bad was it? Everyone wants the answer to this question when the peak is happening—is it worse than last year? When was the last time it got this bad? How can we be better next year?



These are all important questions, but they’re difficult to answer during flu season. All the data you need lags a couple weeks behind, because doctors have to report flu cases and then someone needs to process and analyze all the information. Often, by the time the Centers for Disease Control has figured it out, everyone else has moved on.

So—now that you’ve likely already forgotten how freaked out you were about the flu just a few weeks ago— here’s a look back at what made this season so bad and what we can do about it in the future:

We heard about it more
Normally the flu virus spreads in patches across the country, hitting certain cities and states at different points over the course of several weeks. This year, we got hit all at once. Dan Jernigan, Director of the CDC’s Flu Division, says this season felt so intense partly because we were simply more aware of it. “The season did happen essentially everywhere at once, so it became a national phenomenon rather than a local one.” Many seasons don’t peak as high as the ‘17-18 season, but instead have longer periods of elevated illness levels.

Overall hospitalizations and deaths might not be so different in sum, but peaks feel more dramatic as they occur. Pediatric deaths, one of the metrics the CDC uses to track flu severity, weren’t all that different from 2014-15 (though we’ll get more data in the coming weeks), but this year still seemed more dangerous.

READ MORE AT: https://www.popsci.com/how-bad-was-flu-season-2018#page-2

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