| Summary: | Influenza gets plenty of media attention. Every autumn there are stories about the upcoming "flu season" -- will it be a bad year, will there be enough vaccine, will it be effective? Even when it's not flu season, influenza shows up in the news when there are outbreaks of "bird" or "swine" flu, raising fears that the new strain will find its way into humans. What is it about the influenza virus that makes it such an ongoing concern? After all, it's "just the flu." In this report, you will learn how the virus comes back year after year, what the influenza vaccine can and cannot do, and why animal viruses can become a human public health concern. It all has to do with this tiny virus's extraordinarily flexible set of evolutionary strategies
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