New research identifies the various ways in which we’re most likely to come into contact with communicable diseases at airports. Turns out that toilets are surprisingly clean, but the same cannot be said for those plastic bins used at airport security, which are absolutely covered in viruses.

Hey, don’t freak out or anything, but Bill Gates thinks there is a new flu epidemic lurking just around the corner and we are woefully unprepared for it. The billionaire philanthropist warned Friday that there is a “significant probability of a large and lethal modern-day pandemic occurring in our lifetimes.”

If you’ve shirked your societal responsibility by not getting vaccinated against influenza and managed to avoid getting sick, congrats! You’re probably out of the woods now. The latest surveillance report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention indicates this especially severe flu season is finally…

In a speech made to Congress Thursday, US Food and Drug Administration chief Scott Gottlieb took stock of how his agency handled the ongoing, record-breaking flu season this winter, as well as discussed the future of flu vaccination in the US. Among other tidbits, Gottlieb made clear that it’s going to be a long while…

Finally—finally!—it looks like the U.S. has gotten through the worst of this winter’s record-breaking flu season, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. But there’s still a bit longer to go before we can get the all-clear.

By the time everything’s said and done, this winter’s flu season may very well be the worst in several years, and by some metrics it may even surpass the 2009 pandemic. Some experts have blamed the intensity of this year’s flu in part on a particularly poor vaccine, which was mainly based on research in Australia,…

On Friday, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention provided the latest updates on how this winter’s flu season is continuing to shape up. And much like anything else these days, it’s a pile of gloom and doom.

As one of the worst flu seasons in years continues to sicken people across the U.S., one of its most striking aspects are the untimely deaths it’s caused: A 21-year-old bodybuilder; a 12-year-old boy; a 40-year-old marathoner. Infants, the elderly, and immunocompromised people are always at higher risk of dying from…

Hold onto your butts (and tissues), folks. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, in a press conference held Friday, announced that the current flu season is still raging, with no signs of letting up yet. Not only that, but assuming things hold, the flu could cause more illness than it has in nearly a decade,…

In the face of the Purge prequel we’re living out right now, it should come as a tiny bit reassuring that not every federal agency has closed—at least not completely—during this government shutdown. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention will keep fighting and tracking the flu virus, which is important,…

Aside from getting vaccinated (which everyone should), an important strategy to evading the flu is regularly washing your hands and avoiding contact with the sneezes, coughs, and snot of sick people. The logic behind this simple advice is that the influenza virus requires reasonably close contact with the fluids of a…

The flu tends to be the leaky basement pipe of disease: It’s easy enough to avoid doing something about it, right up until the point it completely bursts and ruins your month. But the flu is much more deadly than a flooded basement. Even at its weakest in recent years, the virus killed at least 12,000 Americans during…

It’s still flu season, but a preliminary report by the US Centers for Disease Control suggests this year’s flu shot is nearly 50 percent effective at reducing a person’s chance of getting sick. This is actually pretty good considering that, just two years ago, the flu shot’s effectiveness was down at a paltry 19…

Researchers from the University of Washington are the first to visualize the insidious way that the flu virus latches onto a cell and plows its way inside, causing an infection.

San Francisco is bracing itself to host the 50th Super Bowl, but Denver and Charlotte are going to be seeing a real uptick in mortality rates. It seems that if your team is playing in the Super Bowl, your chances of catching a deadly flu go up, albeit slightly.