Seasonal flu is a bit of a guessing game. A very scientific, high-stakes guessing game, but still. We can never know for sure exactly how a flu season will play out, so scientists make predictions based on the season in the opposite hemisphere of the globe, and use their best guesses of which virus strains will proliferate when formulating vaccines. The rest of this article is behind a paywall. Please sign in or subscribe to access the full content.

This season was forecast to be slightly less severe than the brutal one of 2024-25, which saw among its grim milestones the most pediatric deaths in a non-pandemic year since 2004. But an emergent flu strain could put paid to any optimism experts might have been feeling. It’s called subclade K.

Subclade K is a variant of H3N2 influenza, wh

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