I work in the central business district of Brisbane in a university so I
have lots of opportunities to get infected from all those passing people
(and their kangaroos). I've been observing my colleagues and our students
dropping like flies from the flu in their hundreds every day. We've had to
bring in special squads to dispose of the bodies, specially trained kangaroo
body-retrieval squads! :-)

Seriously we haven't had a bad year for flu this year. Last year (2007) was
a bad year for flu but even so I think "hundreds" dead would be a gross
exaggeration. Individual deaths made headlines so while there were deaths,
they were still at quite low levels in absolute terms. A search of our
local Australian newspapers revealed the last article that mentions H3N2
says

http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/sto...53-661,00.html

and even that wasn't in a Brisbane newspaper. The last reference to H3N2 in
a Brisbane newspaper was before our winter commenced:

http://www.news.com.au/couriermail/s...003402,00.html

I think the fact that there was no need to mention H3N2 through the winter
rather supports my impression that it wasn't a bad year for flu at all.

Nor do I believe that H3N2 had any particular connection in Brisbane. It
didn't start here. It wasn't particularly worse here than anywhere else. I
think you are just seeing sensationalistic journalism at its worst.

In any case, we are now in spring not winter. Temperatures are already over
30 degrees C on some days so the flu season (such as it wasn't) is now well
and truly over. So come on down ...

Kerry