The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says that nationwide, the number of people going to doctors with things like the flu, RSV, and COVID is high and surging.

So what better time to check in with epidemiologist Caitlin Gentilina, who writes the popular substack newsletter, Your Local Epidemiologist.

Caitlin, is what we're seeing now sort of the standard respiratory virus season, or is there

something unusual going on now?

Yeah, I mean, like you said, there's no doubt it's ugly out there, right?

There's a lot of sick people with coughs, fevers, sore throats, especially in the south and the west with

very high levels. Soon, the entire country will be in the red. But these levels aren't unusual,

right? We are actually seeing the same level of sickness that we would be seeing them pre-pandemic times.

I will say, though, what is unusual is that COVID's not necessarily dominating.

The main culprit right now is flu. So it includes accounting for many more emergency departments,

as well as hospitalizations, compared to RSV and COVID, for example. And this is definitely

a shift from the past four years. What do we know about booster shots and flu shots last fall and what effect that's having now?

Yeah, well, unfortunately, vaccination rates are suboptimal.

Only one in four U.S. adults have the COVID vaccine and less than 50% of Americans have the flu vaccine.

This is far lower than our goal of 70%. I think what's even more concerning is that fewer and fewer children are getting the flu vaccines every year.

And this is a trend we're seeing across all types of vaccinations.

But lower flu vaccination rates, for example, means more disruptions for parents, more strained hospital systems, and more pediatric deaths.

Last year was one of the worst years for flu deaths among kids in the past decade.

And so there's no doubt that more vaccinations would certainly help our systems.

One other ingredient in this viral stew this season is the norovirus. Is that what's commonly

called the stomach flu? Yeah. So norovirus, think nausea, diarrhea, throwing up. It is not fun.

It is also unusually high right now. We're seeing far more outbreaks than usual. We don't really know why this is the case, but typically when

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