It’s flu season. At state health departments and academic medical centers, and at the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, epidemiologists are intently watching two sets of data: the number of flu cases and the number of Americans taking flu shots.
So far, the balance between them looks good. In most of the US, the occurrence of illnesses that look like the flu—ones that cause a fever and sore throat but haven’t been confirmed by a lab test—is low. Out of the viral samples taken from sick people and sent to labs for confirmation, only 2 percent have turned out to be flu. And at this point, more than
→ Continue reading at Wired - Science