Sometime midway through the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic, when it still wasn't clear if vaccines would arrive or even work, I found a page in an old reporting notebook that stopped me cold. It was a scribbled-down idea from 2017, a pitch that never came to fruition, but I hoped to write up for a national outlet. I wanted to ask the question: Why don't Americans wear masks during flu season?
Flu is something I never took seriously growing up, despite some of the worst illnesses I've ever had being flu-related. I'm quite certain that without medical treatment, H1N1 would have killed me in 2013. Every year, thousands of Americans aren't so lucky. An estimated 12,000 to 52,000 people die from flu each year, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Those who die tend to be society's most vulnerable: children, the elderly and immunocompromised people.
