This Is Why Flu Season Is So Bad This Year

This Is Why Flu Season Is So Bad This Year According to the CDC, every part of the United States is currently suffering from a more-active-than-normal flu season. “This is the first year we had the entire continental U.S. be the same color on the graph, meaning there’s widespread activity in all of the continental U.S. at this point.” H3N2, this year's main flu strain, is causing more serious cases of the flu than average. The CDC says that H3 viruses are behind two of the more severe flu seasons in recent years, in 2012-13 and 2014-15. Right now, the CDC has classified this version of the flu as an epidemic, though the flu meets that classification almost every year. "We’re at the peak of it now, and we’ll probably see it go below the baseline in several months.” Despite CDC estimates that the flu shot is 30 percent effective this year, they still recommend getting it because there are still 13 weeks left in flu season.