This Winter's Hottest Accessory Better Be a Face Mask!!
LatestThe New York Times just ratcheted up flu season panique with this piece detailing how this year’s flu season is on track to be worse than 2009’s swine flu epidemic. Here are your options: get a flu shot; read this book and then get a flu shot; or get ready to spend the next few months wearing a face mask.
“A what?” you ask. “A face mask? For why would I need such a thing?” Let the paper of record slap some sense into you.
More people fell ill during the 2009 “swine flu” pandemic, but that was a new virus. This year’s dominant virus, H3N2, has been circulating for 50 years — it emerged as the “Hong Kong flu” in 1968 — but it is usually the most lethal of the seasonal strains.
H3N2 also was responsible for bad seasonal flu years in 1997-1998 and 2003-2004, Dr. Jernigan said.
This year’s intensity is high by several measures that the C.D.C. uses. For three weeks straight, the health departments of 49 states — all except Hawaii — have reported “widespread” flu activity.
Don’t get the flu! The flu is bad! Children and old people die from the flu! Use hand sanitizer, cover your mouth when you cough (into your ELBOW), wash your hands a bunch, and if you don’t want to do any of the things I just mentioned, get READY to strap on winter’s hottest accessory—a surgical face mask so that you do not spray your grubby and gross germs into the airspace of your fellow humans!