Perhaps the oddest consolation prize of America's crushing, protracted battle with the coronavirus is the knowledge that flu season, as we've long known it, does not have to exist.

It's easy to think of the flu as an immutable fact of winter life, more inconvenience than calamity. But each year, on average, it sickens roughly 30 million Americans and kills more than 30,000 (though the numbers vary widely season to season). The elderly, the poor, and people of color are all overrepresented among the casualties. By some estimates, the disease's annual economic cost amounts to nearly $90 billion. We accept this, when we think about it at all, as the way things are.