Influenza Fears: An Early Warning From Colorado

Joseph Williams, a third-grader from Wellington, Colo., who loved fishing and bow hunting, went to school healthy on Friday, Nov. 21. Three days later, the 8-year-old son of Scott and Carrieann Williams died of respiratory failure at Poudre Valley Hospital in nearby Fort Collins. The cause of his sudden death: infection by the Type A strain of the influenza virus. Joseph is one of four Colorado children who have died in a flu outbreak that has hit the nation's Western states unusually hard and unusually early--raising concerns among some health officials that this flu season could be one of the worst...

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