Home

On:

The flu bug let us off easy last winter, but experts predict that this coming flu season will be a different story. ?We usually do not have mild years back to back,? says Dr. Kristin Nichol, an influenza researcher at the Minneapolis Veterans Medical Center. ?I can?t explain why it is biologically, but I would certainly encourage people not to expect another mild season.?

Kris Ehresmann, an epidemiologist who tracks the influenza virus for the Minnesota Department of Health, agrees. ?We are expecting more disease activity this year than what we had last year,? and adds that the flu strains expected to predominate are the type that make people the sickest.
read more

On:

Today, the flu is something that causes you to feel lousy and miss work for a week, but in 1918, a global flu pandemic killed 40 million people. Scientists are warning it could happen again.

“The natural history of influenza suggests it is only a matter of time before another influenza pandemic occurs,” says Dr. Martin Meltzer of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. He says that in the U.S. it would kill 89,000 to 207,000 people. There would also be 3214,000 to 734,000hospitalizations, 18 to 42 million outpatient visits and 20 to 47 million additional, untreated, cases. The economic cost would be $71.3 to $166.5 billion.
read more