Excerpted
Health officials say this year’s correctly shot targets the strains that are making Americans sick, including one causing most of the illness, a Type A H3N2 flu virus. But exactly well it is working won’t be known until next month.
The same virus was the dominant flu bug last winter, when the flu season wasn’t so bad. It’s not clear why this season — led by the same bug — is so much more intense, some experts said.
“That’s the kicker. This virus really doesn’t look that different from what we saw last year,” said Richard Webby, a flu researcher at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis.
It may be that many of the people getting sick this year managed to avoid infection last year. Or there may be some degree of mutation in the virus that hasn’t been detected yet, said the CDC’s Dr. Dan Jernigan, in a call with reporters Friday.
Based on patterns from past seasons, it’s likely flu season will start to wane soon, experts say. There are some places, like California, where flu season already seems to be easing, CDC officials said.
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Dunno if it’s accurate, but I’ve heard this season is worse because the media hyped the “only 10%” effectiveness of the vaccine so much (based on the flu season in Australia) that more people than usual decided to skip it here in the U.S.
Lately I’ve been seeing estimates that the vaccine is 30-40% effective.
The flu last year went through our office like lightning.
Every single employee caught it. We were down to 1 or 2 people manning the place out of a dozen employees.