Influenza: Vaccinating Kids Could Save Thousands of Infants and Seniors
 |
| Adapted from Flick Image by Immer_Lebend |
Flu season arrived early this year and is turning out to be a particularly bad one, with several states (including New York) having already declared public health states of emergency. As usual, only a small fraction of Americans have been vaccinated. Yet seasonal influenza continues to be one of the deadliest diseases in the world, killing an average of 35,000 people per year in the U.S. alone, while every 20-40 years, a particularly deadly new pandemic variety of influenza evolves killing far more than this. The 1918 pandemic was the worst, with worldwide mortality estimated at 50 million.
A similar deadly outbreak could happen again at any time and scientists predict that such an