This nasty flu season is finally starting to subside, with data out Friday (February 23rd) from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention showing that visits to the doctor with flu-like symptoms and deaths caused by the flu decreased for a second week in a row, after appearing to plateau the previous week.

The numbers are, however, still at epidemic levels, during a season in which reported flu illness early this month was as high as at the peak of the 2009 swine flu epidemic. This flu season was particularly bad because of a predominant strain of the virus that was uncommonly resilient, and because this year’s flu vaccine wasn’t very effective against it.