Subject: At least we have someone ...
... with a proven record on handling these kinds of things.

https://www.bbc.com/news/artic...
The number of people with flu in hospital in England has quadrupled over the past month and is rising "at a very concerning rate", NHS chiefs have warned.
Latest data shows there were 5,000 patients with the virus being treated in hospital at the end of last week - almost 3.5 times higher than the same week in 2023, although not as high as in 2022.

The head of the Royal College of Emergency Medicine told the BBC that pressure on hospitals is "unacceptably awful" and flu is pushing them to breaking point.

https://www.newsweek.com/human...
News reports and social media posts are warning of a new outbreak of a little-known virus called human metapneumovirus (HMPV) in China, but officials are yet to confirm this.

Instead, official reports from the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention indicate that rates of multiple flu-like illnesses are on the rise in China, according to data up to the last week of 2024.

That data suggests that influenza is leading the outbreak, with 30.2 percent of tests coming back positive for it—an increase of 6.2 from the previous week—and 17.7 percent of people hospitalized with a severe respiratory illness testing positive for it.

However, that same dataset indicates that rates of HMPV are ahead of other flu-like diseases—such as COVID-19, rhinovirus and adenovirus—linked to 6.2 percent of positive respiratory illness tests and 5.4 percent of respiratory-illness hospitalizations in China.

https://www.cdc.gov/bird-flu/s...
WHAT TO KNOW
• H5 bird flu is widespread in wild birds worldwide and is causing outbreaks in poultry and U.S. dairy cows with several recent human cases in U.S. dairy and poultry workers.
• While the current public health risk is low, CDC is watching the situation carefully and working with states to monitor people with animal exposures.
• CDC is using its flu surveillance systems to monitor for H5 bird flu activity in people.</