Flu, and You: The Basics

By at 1:23 pm Wednesday, Oct 7

UPDATE: The server for the Science-Based Medicine blog is now back online, so the link in this story does work now. Hooray!

It seems like just yesterday we were all freaking out together about the discovery of H1N1. And now, here we are at flu season and our little pandemic is all grown up. In the meantime, there's been a lot of good work done on clearing up the questions surrounding this illness, but misinformation still abounds.

If you, or a loved one, are suffering from flu confusion, I prescribe this handy primer on the basics. Written by Dr. Joseph Albietz, Assistant Professor of Pediatrics at the University of Colorado, Denver, and The Children's Hospital, it starts at the very beginning (seriously, the first question is, "What is Influenza?") and provides a great overview of the flu in general, and H1N1 in particular.

Even if you feel like you've successfully graduated from Flu 101, there's a lot of great higher-level discussion and Q&A going on in the comments of this post. Enjoy, and happy learning!

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Maggie Koerth-Baker

I do the Twitter, the Google+, and (to a much lesser extent) the Facebook.

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