The world is not a safe place. You are, we trust, already doing what you can to protect yourself against the regular flu, but while you've been washing your hands until the skin on your knuckles begins to crack, the flu has been busy reinventing itself.

While the people you follow on Twitter have been eager to let you know how warm it is today, it looks like we're in for a long, hard winter. Why's that? Well health officials say we're already seeing a spike in flu cases, several months early.