Delayed Flu

Just when it looked as if the danger of flu was safely over, an epidemic struck. Last week the U.S. was in the grip of an unseasonable wave of influenza. Starting early in March, two months after the usual seasonal peak for the disease, the epidemic had risen to some 50,000 cases a week, was still going strong.

Most of the flu was type A, ordinarily mild. But this year's A-brand was exceptionally virulent; the death rate from flu and its complications was higher than last year's. There were other peculiarities: the epidemic had struck four times as hard in Texas (81,860 cases) as anywhere else, had followed a comparatively flu-less winter (the season's total--239,637 cases--was less than half that in the 1945-46 epidemic).

What had caused the belated outbreak? U.S. Public Health Service epidemiologists refused even to guess. About flu epidemics they know only one thing: they are always unpredictable.

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