Russian president Vladimir Putin, who has not been seen in public since March 5 and is feared in some panicky circles to have died or worse, has the flu, a CIA source tells Gawker. Or at least that's what the CIA thinks.

Yes, the flu season is really bad this year. No, it's not entirely due to "people use too much Purell nowadays" or whining about what's probably just a cold, either. The CDC reports that more than 200,000 people are hospitalized from "flu-related complications" every year. Sometimes, especially in the winter, people will use the word "flu" to describe any condition they want, but this is not the flu's fault and you should not blame it.

How bad is this year's flu season? Here's a Google map that estimates how bad the flu is across the country based on aggregated Google search data. No matter where you live in the U.S., you're facing "intense" or "high" flu activity — unless you live in Connecticut, in which case you're only looking at "moderate" activity (but you're suffering enough).

Doctors in Great Britain have successfully tested a flu vaccine that—by targeting proteins common to all flu viruses—works against all strains of influenza. So, we might not all get wiped out by some mutant bird flu after all!