¡Influenza!

Despite my best efforts, I’m sick. I was hoping not to miss any school days this year, but no such luck. I’ve fought off a couple of minor colds, but the flu seems to have found me. I didn’t get a flu shot this year, which is a bit silly considering I’m around sneezing students every day.

Still, the flu is not a big deal – it essentially hits a giant “pause” button on my life. I can’t do much since my brain doesn’t work quite right when I’m sick (and the cold meds aren’t exactly helpful here) so my ability to read/learn or get projects done is diminished. I basically drink ginger ale and watch television until I’m better. Boring, but hardly anything to get too upset over.

Nobody likes getting the flu, but we really must consider ourselves lucky that the current strains of flu virus aren’t too potent. The flu pandemic of 1918 (called the Spanish flu, though it actually appeared elsewhere first) killed between 20 and 50 million people. Most modern forms of influenza are descendants of this virus (influenza-A, also known as H1N1). The last pandemic was the H1N1 “swine flu” in 2009, which was a big deal in the media but did not cause a large number of deaths (though it should be remembered that the “regular” flu kills up to a half a million people each year worldwide, mostly those in relatively poor health).

Interestingly, the flu seems to be widespread throughout the United States at the moment, according to this CDC map. I would have expected warmer states to show less flu, since influenza tends to strike in the winter (both in the northern and southern hemisphere, which have winter at different times of year). The flu appears even in tropical places, though it’s less seasonal in balmy climes. It seems that scientists aren’t quite sure why the flu is worse in the winter, and predicting when the next deadly variation will arrive is mere guesswork.

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