This just in! According to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention Influenza levels in the U.S. have hit “epidemic” levels and are continuing to rise! So much for the Ebola frenzy and media scare from earlier this year even though Fox News still has their Ebola map and timeline updating live on their website with 19,570 cases worldwide. However, They even have an influenza outbreak map up now for the United States…it’s basically just a map of the U.S. colored completely red…because the flu, unlike Ebola, is everywhere! And can affect anywhere from 5 to 20% of the total U.S. population…annually!
Already this year the proportion of deaths reported in 122 American cities from flu and pneumonia so far has surpassed the typical level for late December at 6.8 percent which is the “epidemic threshold” set by the federal health agency. That means that 6.8% of all those who have the flu are dying from the flu…that’s some very sobering info when you consider that 3 people with Ebola had Americans running for cover and politicians calling for quarantines worldwide. On average, there are about 36,000 flu deaths per year in the United States alone!