Every winter in the US has its share of flu cases, but this season is shaping up to be particularly bad. Early this week the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention put the flu season<\/a> in the \u201cmoderately severe\u201d category, with an estimated<\/a> 11 million illnesses, 120,000 hospitalizations, and 5,000 deaths so far. Here in New York, where I live, the city kicked off 2026 by setting records<\/a> for flu-related hospitalizations.<\/p>\n While what we\u2019re experiencing is not a \u201csuper flu,<\/a>\u201d it is a particularly bad one, thanks in part to the emergence of a subgroup<\/a> of the well-established H3N2 flu virus called subclade K<\/a>. It carries a bunch of mutations that seem to have rendered the current flu vaccine somewhat less effective. (Though far from completely ineffective \u2014 more on that below.) Nor does it help that only around 44 percent of US adults have taken the flu shot<\/a> so far, well below vaccination rates before the Covid pandemic<\/a>. The decline has been particularly sharp for children, who are more vulnerable to the flu, which has resulted in higher than normal pediatric hospitalizations<\/a>.<\/p>\n As bad as this season is shaping up to be, chances are most of us will suffer through it and then forget until the next year comes around. After all, it\u2019s just the flu, right? But even normal influenza is far more than just a seasonal nuisance. The World Health Organization estimates<\/a> that there are around 1 billion flu infections in a given year, which can lead to as many as 5 million severe cases and up to 650,000 flu-related respiratory deaths per year, mostly among the very young and the very old.<\/p>\n The burden of flu goes beyond those numbers: CDC research indicates<\/a> that flu infections can raise the risk of heart attacks and strokes. Plus all those sick days add up<\/a> to as much as 111 million lost work days in the US alone, while childhood infections lead to more school absences<\/a> and a knock-on effect for parents forced to stay home.<\/p>\n Oh, and chances are decent that the (inevitable) next global pandemic will come from a mutant flu virus, just like past pandemics in 2009, 1968, 1957, and the granddaddy of them all, 1918, which killed at least 50 million people<\/a> around the world.<\/p>\n So that\u2019s the bad news. The good news? There are ways to protect yourself right now \u2014 and even more promising, glimmers on the scientific frontier of a world without flu.<\/p>\n What works \u2014 and what doesn\u2019t \u2014 with the flu shot<\/p>\n The simplest way to keep safe is, of course, to get your flu shot. Like right now \u2014 even though the flu season is well underway, it\u2019s worth getting your shot if you haven\u2019t yet. Early data from the UK found<\/a> protection rates against hospital admission of 70 to 75 percent for children and 30 to 35 percent in adults. That\u2019s normal: The standard flu vaccine isn\u2019t great at preventing cases, but it is very effective in reducing the severity of illness. Throw in the fact that you can now easily get an at-home flu test<\/a> and secure the antiviral Tamiflu early in an illness, and you do have the power to ensure your case is milder.<\/p>\n But it is true flu shots are not our most effective class of vaccine. That largely has to do with the nature of the flu, and how the shots are made.<\/p>\n Influenza is what you might call a \u201cpromiscuous\u201d virus. Strains are constantly evolving, and can easily swap genetic material through a process called reassortment to create new, potentially more dangerous viruses. Because of that, international health officials have to create a new vaccine strain every year, hoping that it will match the strain actually circulating months later when vaccines are available for distribution.<\/p>\n If the dominant strain changes during those months, the vaccine will be less effective. And any vaccine that has to be taken over and over again on an annual basis is going to be a harder sell to the public, even before taking into account rising anti-vax sentiment<\/a>.<\/p>\n There\u2019s already progress being made to reduce the time between when a vaccine strain is selected and when it can be produced, chiefly by using rapid mRNA platforms<\/a> rather than growing vaccines in eggs, as has been done for decades. But even better: What if it were possible to create a flu vaccine that was effective against a wide variety of different flu strains?<\/p>\n The dream of a universal flu vaccine<\/p>\n A \u201cuniversal\u201d flu vaccine<\/a> is one that would be at least 75 percent effective against influenza A viruses and provide durable protection for at least a year (though ideally longer). In other words, it would be a vaccine that would act more like the almost perfectly protective measles vaccine<\/a> and less like, well, a flu shot.<\/p>\n Such \u201cuniversal\u201d flu coverage would not be one single breakthrough, but a portfolio of strategies for outsmarting a virus that mutates faster than our annual vaccine calendar. The first bucket is universal (or universal-ish) vaccines<\/a>: instead of training antibodies mainly against flu\u2019s fast-changing hemagglutinin (HA) \u201chead,\u201d researchers are trying to steer immunity toward viral targets that mutate less.<\/p>\n One major approach focuses on the HA stem or stalk<\/a>, a region of the virus that changes more slowly; early human trials of stem-focused designs suggest these vaccines can be safe and elicit broadly reactive immune responses. Another vaccine strategy uses mosaic\/nanoparticle displays<\/a> that present HA antigens from multiple strains at once, aiming to teach the immune system to recognize flu\u2019s common features rather than this year\u2019s exact variant; the government\u2019s FluMos program<\/a> is an example now in early clinical testing.<\/p>\n A third line<\/a> leans on broader immune mechanisms: targeting neuraminidase (NA) (the N in HN flu viruses), or boosting T-cell responses to internal proteins that rarely change, which may not always prevent infection but could make illness far less severe when the virus drifts.<\/p>\n There\u2019s also the \u201cuniversal without a vaccine\u201d lane: prevention and treatment that don\u2019t depend on your immune system\u2019s memory. Cidara, a San Diego-based biotech company, has developed<\/a> a long-acting preventive designed to provide season-long protection by chemically linking multiple copies of a neuraminidase inhibitor to a long-lasting antibody. Preclinical work has shown broad resistance to influenza A and B, and the company\u2019s approach is promising enough that it is now in the process of being acquired by pharma giant Merck<\/a>.<\/p>\n Even more sci-fi: using gene editing to create all-purpose flu treatments. Scientists in Australia are working on using the gene editing tool Crispr to develop<\/a> an antiviral nasal spray that could shut down a wide variety of flu viruses.<\/p>\n We shouldn\u2019t have to live with the flu<\/p>\n Historically, the US hasn\u2019t allocated<\/a> nearly enough money to universal flu prevention research, though in May the Trump administration surprised scientists with plans<\/a> to spend $500 million on an approach that relies on older vaccine technology. Except in those rare years when a flu pandemic boils over, we tend to treat flu as something we just have to suffer through.<\/p>\n But hundreds of thousands of people globally each year won\u2019t survive their bouts with the flu, and millions more will suffer because of the viruses. We\u2019ve managed to all but knock out past killers like smallpox, the measles, and the mumps (Well, provided we agree to take our vaccines.) There\u2019s reason to believe that influenza can be next.<\/p>\n
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