Flu season arrived months early. Get vaccinated now, experts say

This year's flu season started months early and in an unexpected part of the country, according to health officials. The unusually early start to the season has prompted local health officials to urge people to get their flu shots as soon as possible. In Los Angeles County, flu activity began rising in September, ahead of its typical early-November start, Dr. Dawn Terashita told The Times on Wednesday. That isn't a major surprise, said Terashita, associate director of the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health's Acute Communicable Disease Control Program. Flu tends to be "very unpredictable," she said, due to the ways that it mutates. But another unusual factor was that the flu season started this year in the Western states. Typically, the flu starts in the South and Southeast, Dr. Helen Chu of the University of Washington School of Medicine told Huffpost.