If you're noticing a lot of sick people around the area -- it's more than your imagination. The flu is hitting especially hard this year.
This go-round is especially rough. Chances are you know someone who's been hit hard, at work, at school, at home. It's spreading like wildfire.
Milwaukee’s Ben Sevener observes, “Lately at work a lot of people have taking off sick and trying to stay away from other groups in the department. So, we all know it’s going around. We’ve just got to make sure we don’t spread it around.”
Carissa Dezwarte from Plymouth says, “A lot of family members have been getting it. I had it, and my dad and my mom has had it, my brothers have had it.”
The Centers for Disease Control claims it's an epidemic now, widespread in 37 states, including Wisconsin.
Our mild weather may’ve made things worse
Dr. LuAnn Moraski from Your MD, in part, blames the weather, “This winter we’re having a little bit of a problem because Fall lasted until Winter. So all of our Fall viruses lasted a little bit longer and then boom, we’re hit with the Winter viruses before people could recover.”
She thinks preventing the virus in the first place should be top priority.
Moraski has some advice to do just that: Number one, get the vaccine. Number two, wash your hands, soap and water first, then hand sanitizer second. Number three, no sharing common things you share in households - water bottles, silverware, cooking utensils, those sorts of things. Next, clean shared things in your workplace, like phone systems.
Unfortunately, things may get worse before they get better. In Wisconsin, we're still three to four weeks away from the virus's peak.
Be sure and try our new SNOWCAST APP! It is the "snow equivalent to STORM SHIELD" - a great new product that gives you high resolution snow forecasts for any part of the nation! It has just been introduced for iPhones, but we are working on the Android version! Just search SNOWCAST in the App Store or click here.
