If this cold and flu season seem especially sneezy-coughy-fevery to you, it is not your imagination. Flu is surging in 45 states and outpatient doctor visits for flu-like symptoms are the highest they’ve been since we started keeping track of the data.

It’s not like the flu is new: Literally every year we have to navigate cold and flu season. And yet here we are in 2026, plagued with these respiratory viruses again. What’s making this year especially difficult?

We pose those questions to epidemiologist and science communicator Katelyn Jetelina on this week’s episode of Explain It to Me, Vox’s weekly call-in podcast. “What we typically see every winter is just this rise in respiratory viruses, whether it’s the common cold or the flu or Covid or RSV,” she told Vox. “Cold weather really causes viruses to spread very quickly and these viruses just keep mutating.”

Below is an excerpt of our conversation, edited for length and clarity. You can listen to the full episode on

© Vox