East Tennessee is well into January, well into what is normally considered peak flu season.
But, so far, it seems like area residents are getting a lucky break.
"We have seen a few people with some fairly low-grade fevers and some viral illness, we've seen some bronchitis and things like that, but we've really not seen the cluster of body aches and high fevers that make us think about flu," said Dr. Amy Rosine, a family practitioner at Fountain City Family Physicians.
Dr. Rosine said when patients do come in with flu-like symptoms, she can do a quick test for the virus in the office, but there's hasn't been much need for that either.
"We always worry after the holiday season about people traveling across the country and kind of intermingling that we're going to see a little bit of a flare after that, but so far, we've not seen that," she said.
A spokesman for East Tennessee Children's Hospital said the hospital has had only five confirmed cases of the flu since November. That number is much lower than in years past.
The story is much the same across the state and across the country.
"Usually influenza is most active in January or February, but really influenza viruses are very unpredictable, and we can see flu season peak as late as April in Tennessee," said Dr. Kelly Moore, Medical Director for the Immunization Program at the Tennessee Dept. of Health. "The fact that we've had very little flu so far this year doesn't necessarily mean we're out of the woods just yet."
Dr. Moore points out that predicting the flu is next to impossible, and pinpointing the reasons for this mild flu season are difficult, too.
While some have pointed to the nice weather getting people outdoors where they're less likely to pass germs as they might in confined spaces, she cites 2009's flu pandemic which broke out in the fall.
"We might have a light season, but we might have a good bit of activity yet to come later in the winter, so the main message is, if you haven't been vaccinated, you should go ahead and get it because the virus is a great match for the vaccine this year, and we'll just consider ourselves lucky that we haven't seen very much flu yet," Dr. Moore said.