The end of flu is closer than you think, and this bad season shows why

Let's start with the bad news.

There is a good chance perhaps up to 11 percent If you are not vaccinated, at some point this winter you will be overcome by chills, followed by extreme fatigue, body aches and cough, culminating in a sudden spike in fever. Congratulations: you have the flu.

Flu cases occur every winter in the United States, but this season is expected to be particularly bad. Earlier this week, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Set the flu season in the “medium difficulty” category with an estimate So far, 11 million cases, 120,000 hospitalizations and 5,000 deaths. Here in New York, where I live, the city began in 2026 Setting records for flu-related hospitalizations.

While what we are experiencing is not a “superflu,“It is particularly bad, also thanks to the Creation of a subgroup the well-known H3N2 flu virus Subclass K. It contains a number of mutations that appear to have made the current flu vaccine slightly less effective. (Although far from completely ineffective – more on that below.) It also doesn't help that only about 44 percent of adults in the US got the flu shot so far well below vaccination rates before the Covid pandemic. The decline was particularly sharp among children, who are more susceptible to the flu, which led to this higher than normal pediatric hospitalizations.

As bad as this season may be, chances are most of us will suffer through it and then forget about it until next year comes along. It's just the flu, right? But the normal flu is much more than just a seasonal plague. The World Health Organization Estimates that there is nearby 1 billion Influenza infections in a given year, which can result in up to 5 million severe cases and up to 650,000 respiratory flu-related deaths per year, primarily in the very young and very old people.

Burden of flu goes beyond these numbers: CDC research shows that flu-like infections can increase the risk of heart attacks and strokes. Plus all the sick days add In the United States alone, up to 111 million work days were lost while childhood infections occurred lead to more absenteeism from school and a knock-on effect for parents forced to stay at home.

Oh, and chances are the (inevitable) next global pandemic will come from a mutated flu virus, just like past pandemics in 2009, 1968, 1957, and the granddaddy of them all, 1918, which killed people at least 50 million people around the world.

So that's the bad news. The good news? There are now ways to protect yourself – and the scientific evidence for a world without flu is even more promising.

What helps and what doesn't with the flu shot

Of course, the easiest way to protect yourself is to get a flu shot. Like now, even though flu season is in full swing, it's worth getting vaccinated if you haven't already. Early data from Great Britain found Protection rates against hospitalization of 70 to 75 percent for children and 30 to 35 percent for adults. This is normal: The standard flu vaccine doesn't particularly protect against cases of the flu, but it is very effective at reducing the severity of the illness. Add the fact that you can now Just do a flu test at home and secure the antiviral Tamiflu early if you become ill, and you have the power to ensure your case is milder.

But it's true, flu shots are not our most effective vaccine class. This largely depends on the type of flu and the way vaccinations are administered.

Influenza is what one might call a “promiscuous” virus. Strains are constantly evolving and can easily swap genetic material through a process called “reassortment” to create new, potentially more dangerous viruses. That's why international health authorities must develop a new vaccine strain every year in the hope that it will match the strain actually circulating months later when vaccines become available for distribution.

If the dominant strain changes during these months, the vaccine will be less effective. And any vaccine that has to be given over and over again every year will be harder to sell to the public, even if it's not considered rising anti-vax sentiment.

There is already progress in shortening the time between the selection of a vaccine strain and its production, primarily through using fast mRNA platforms instead of growing vaccines in eggs, as has been done for decades. But even better: What if it were possible to develop a flu vaccine that would be effective against a variety of different flu strains?

The dream of a universal flu vaccine

A “universal” flu vaccine is one that is at least 75 percent effective against influenza A viruses and provides lasting protection for at least a year (but ideally longer). In other words, it would be a vaccine that works more like that almost perfectly protective measles vaccine and less like a flu shot.

Such “universal” flu coverage would not be a single breakthrough, but a portfolio of strategies to outsmart a virus that is mutating faster than our annual vaccination calendar. The first bucket is universal (or universal) vaccines: Instead of training antibodies primarily against the flu's rapidly changing hemagglutinin (HA) “head,” researchers are trying to direct immunity toward viral targets that mutate less.

An important approach focuses on the HA stem or stalka region of the virus that changes more slowly; Early human trials using strain-focused designs suggest that these vaccines may be safe and elicit broadly reactive immune responses. Uses a different vaccination strategy Mosaic/nanoparticle displays that present HA antigens from multiple strains at once and aim to teach the immune system to recognize the common features of the flu rather than this year's exact variant; that of the government FluMos program is one example currently in early clinical testing.

A third line relies on broader immune mechanisms: It targets neuraminidase (NA) (the N in HN flu viruses) or boosts T-cell responses to internal proteins that rarely change, which may not always prevent infection but could make the disease far less severe if the virus drifts around.

There is also the “universal without vaccine” variant: prevention and treatment that do not depend on the memory of your immune system. Cidara, a San Diego-based biotech company, has developed a long-acting preventive agent designed to provide seasonal protection by chemically binding 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's approach is so promising that it is now in development acquired by the pharmaceutical giant Merck.

More science fiction: Using gene editing to develop universal flu treatments. Scientists in Australia are working to use the gene editing tool Crispr to develop an antiviral nasal spray that could kill a variety of flu viruses.

We shouldn't have to live with the flu

Historically the USA was not assigned Almost enough money for general flu prevention research, although the Trump administration surprised scientists with it in May Plans Spend $500 million on an approach based on older vaccine technologies. Except in the rare years when a flu pandemic is rampant, we tend to think of the flu as something we just have to endure.

But hundreds of thousands of people around the world will not survive their bouts of flu each year, and millions more will suffer from the viruses. We've almost managed to eradicate previous killers like smallpox, measles and mumps (assuming we're willing to get vaccinated). There's reason to believe the flu could be next.

A version of this story originally appeared in the Good News newsletter. Register here!