THE GREAT AMERICAN NON-CRISIS - EBOLA VS THE FLU

As the current hysteria, fanned by the media, moves to quarantine health workers with no Ebola symptoms, I presume people are dying from the flu or flu related causes like pneumonia, but is the shot mix designed  last February working?  Did they guess right?  I did hear one news flash some time ago that the flu season arrived early this year.

Now we have some answers after nearly one month of  the 2014-2015 flu season that officially started September 28 (http://www.cdc.gov/flu/weekly/).  There has been one pediatric death recorded so far (in the previous season, there were 109 pediatric deaths reported for the whole season). It was in North Carolina, but we are still in the beginning of the flu season and not yet in the peak period for ILI symptoms  occurs as early as early December (2012-2013) to as late as late February (2010-2011) (http://www.flu.nc.gov/data/) though the 2009-2010 flu season peak for happened early and had already occurred by October 23rd.

 Note that the 2010-2011 ILI visits is missing from the figure above.

 Figure: Annual ILI trends from the Influenza-Like Illness Network (ILNet) for 2010-2015.  Note that the 2009-2010 year is missing from the above figure.