{"id":11468,"date":"2026-02-18T14:17:17","date_gmt":"2026-02-18T20:17:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/?p=11468"},"modified":"2026-02-18T14:17:20","modified_gmt":"2026-02-18T20:17:20","slug":"flus-seasonal-fury","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/2026\/02\/18\/flus-seasonal-fury\/","title":{"rendered":"Flu&#8217;s Seasonal Fury"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"panel body-content\"><div class=\"panel__container\">\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.medpagetoday.com\/opinion\/parasites-and-plagues\/119903?xid=nl_secondopinion_2026-02-17&amp;mh=07f73d99b2b546c079b0b5a2312d87b1&amp;zdee=gAAAAABm4uVVa0noffRIJqPd2rsKKgBm5ZURWXfuJljHxkA5SxaiDrFhpdNSLVuatrcndghIUJbdB8i3tZ00Sf5MYAfngC1RuyQP-n6FrYFzvROxn-4_blA%3D&amp;utm_source=Sailthru&amp;utm_medium=email&amp;utm_campaign=SecondOpinions_021726\">Medpage Today<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Influenza can sicken and kill. Vaccines are our best defense. <em>Why&#8230;? Why&#8230;? Why&#8230;?<\/em>&nbsp;Jasper whimpered, not just once or twice, but repeatedly. It was January 2026. For one awful week, my friend&#8217;s 21-month-old grandson was practically inert, spiked fevers to 103<sup>o<\/sup>, and barely ate or drank, all the while voicing his single word of despair.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Meanwhile, his mother and grandmother, who are both physicians in Boston, worried about dehydration, viral pneumonia, even a bacterial super-infection. They were also grieved to see a normally joyous toddler so psychologically distressed. This year, some version of &#8220;Why does my body feel so horrible?&#8221; entered the thoughts of many children fighting a\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.medpagetoday.com\/infectiousdisease\/uritheflu\/118723\" target=\"_blank\" aria-label=\"newly-mutated strain, opens in a new window\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">newly-mutated strain<\/a>\u00a0of H3N2 influenza A that surged early &#8212; and hard. Although its final toll will not be tallied for months,\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.cdc.gov\/fluview\/surveillance\/2026-week-04.html\" target=\"_blank\" aria-label=\"data released by CDC, opens in a new window\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">data released by CDC<\/a>\u00a0on February 6 confirmed that 60 U.S. youngsters had already perished this season. Five of them were in Massachusetts, a state that last saw a child die of flu in 2013.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.medpagetoday.com\/opinion\/parasites-and-plagues\/119903?xid=nl_secondopinion_2026-02-17&amp;mh=07f73d99b2b546c079b0b5a2312d87b1&amp;zdee=gAAAAABm4uVVa0noffRIJqPd2rsKKgBm5ZURWXfuJljHxkA5SxaiDrFhpdNSLVuatrcndghIUJbdB8i3tZ00Sf5MYAfngC1RuyQP-n6FrYFzvROxn-4_blA%3D&amp;utm_source=Sailthru&amp;utm_medium=email&amp;utm_campaign=SecondOpinions_021726\">Continue reading<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Medpage Today Influenza can sicken and kill. Vaccines are our best defense. Why&#8230;? Why&#8230;? Why&#8230;?&nbsp;Jasper whimpered, not just once or twice, but repeatedly. It was January 2026. For one awful week, my friend&#8217;s 21-month-old grandson was practically inert, spiked fevers to 103o, and barely ate or drank, all the while voicing his single word of [&hellip;]<\/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-11468","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\/11468","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=11468"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11468\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11469,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11468\/revisions\/11469"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11468"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11468"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11468"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}