Here are some interesting facts & statistics regarding the flu virus:

• Influenza has an “attack rate” (meaning those within a population who fall ill) of 25% to 40% in many years. (Szabo, 5-14-2009)

• Obese people are contagious with the flu 42% longer than those who aren’t obese. (Hilten-Andersen, 2020)

• Flu results in around 87.1 billion a year in economic costs. (Manning, 2009)

Flu death statistics & the # of people killed each year by the flu

• In a typical year, the flu kills about 36,000 people in the US, roughly 100 of them children. More than 90% of flu deaths involve those over the age of 64. In addition, 200,000 people are hospitalized for flu-related complications, and of these, roughly 20,000 are children. (Sternberg, 9-29-2008; Manning, 2009)

• Eighty-percent of the 180-some kids who died from the flu in 2017 were unvaccinated. (CBS World News, Oct. 15, 2018)

• The CDC currently ranks H7N9 as the flu virus with the highest potential to cause a pandemic.

Flu epidemics

• An investigation into the 1918 influenza pandemic that killed up to 100 million people worldwide in the span of 18 months revealed that the culprit was a type of H1N1 human flu that had infected pigs and then circulated back to humans. (Garrett, 2009)

• The 1918 pandemic that killed tens of millions of people and sometimes wiped out entire families had a fatality rate of 2%, showing it doesn’t take a lot of lethality to cause serious problems. (Garrett, 2009)

• On average, around half a million people die worldwide from the flu each year.