It’s not easy to push the explosive terror of norovirus out of the public square. It takes another virus that’s even more worrying and even more adept at spreading suffering around the world.

I speak, of course, of influenza.

This winter’s influenza season came early to the Northern Hemisphere and made a splashy debut. By the end of last week, the Centers for Disease Control reported widespread flu in 47 out of 50 states in the U.S. Some stocks of vaccines were running out. Some parts of the U.S. show signs of having hit their peak, but other places, like California, haven’t yet really experienced the full wallop of flu season. So we could be looking at several more weeks