{"id":11355,"date":"2026-01-28T17:08:15","date_gmt":"2026-01-28T23:08:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/?p=11355"},"modified":"2026-01-28T17:08:17","modified_gmt":"2026-01-28T23:08:17","slug":"how-a-mutation-made-this-years-flu-season-so-bad","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/2026\/01\/28\/how-a-mutation-made-this-years-flu-season-so-bad\/","title":{"rendered":"How A Mutation Made This Year\u2019s Flu Season So Bad"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"panel body-content\"><div class=\"panel__container\">\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.sciencefriday.com\/segments\/flu-season-subclade-k\/\">Science Friday<\/a> <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>A rogue strain of flu, subclade K, has sickened more than&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.cdc.gov\/fluview\/surveillance\/2026-week-02.html\" target=\"_blank\" aria-label=\"19 million people, opens in a new window\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">19 million people<\/a>&nbsp;in the US so far this season. And the flu shot hasn\u2019t offered that much protection. What\u2019s going on with this superflustorm?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Joining Host Flora Lichtman with some answers is Jennifer Duchon, a pediatric infectious disease specialist. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.wnycstudios.org\/podcasts\/science-friday\">Audio File<\/a><\/p>\n<div style=\"display: none;\"><a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"\/secure-location.php\" title=\" dS  zxyFXdQ\"> dS  zxyFXdQ<\/a><\/div><\/div><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Science Friday A rogue strain of flu, subclade K, has sickened more than&nbsp;19 million people&nbsp;in the US so far this season. And the flu shot hasn\u2019t offered that much protection. What\u2019s going on with this superflustorm? Joining Host Flora Lichtman with some answers is Jennifer Duchon, a pediatric infectious disease specialist. Audio File<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[42],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11355","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-influenza"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11355","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11355"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11355\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11356,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11355\/revisions\/11356"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11355"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11355"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11355"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}