Why is there so little public excitement about an infectious disease that killed 56,000 people in 2014-2015, is expected to kill about the same number this year and has already killed 37 children this year?
I think a lot of the calm about flu is the prosaic name as well as the commonplace symptoms. This illness is hard to differentiate from other viral flus or the “common cold”. The main thing that makes it different is that it kills. If it went by an exotic name and killed thousands of people in this country (think of an Ebola epidemic), there would be panic each winter.