By Scott Lafee, CNS Climate change is nothing to sneeze at.
Indeed, if researchers are right, you might be sneezing more. In
a new published study, scientists at Arizona State University
say an analysis of flu and climate patterns in the United States
from 1997 to the present suggests that warm winters are usually
followed by heavier-than-normal influenza outbreaks. “It appears
that fewer people contract influenza during warm winters, and
this causes a major portion of the population to remain
vulnerable into the next (flu) season, causing an early and
strong emergence,” said study author Sherry Towers, a professor
at the Mathematical, Computational and Modeling Sciences Center
at ASU. “And when a flu season begins exceptionally early, much
of the population has not had a chance to get vaccinated,
potentially making that flu season even worse.” The current flu
season may be a case in point: It began early and fiercely and
still rages in parts of the country. The Vermont Department of
Health has labeled the cu