I don't know if what I had for the first week of January was a minimized case of the flu or another generalized virus (I had a flu shot early this year) but this part of Texas has been particularly hard hit this year. The painful part of my illness was that I had taken the week after the holiday as vacation days but was sick (and they won't let you change them over to sick leave).
Link corrected to lead to intended flu vs cold chart, not a general search on Twitter, though in fact Google tracks flu outbreak information by looking at places like Twitter for flu mentions. ---mudelf