Flu season is here and it’s already shaping up to be a pretty intense one. Illness is predicted to spread faster, infect more people and put higher-risk groups at greater chance of being seriously ill or hospitalized. Doctors and public health experts are warning people to take precautions, including getting this year’s flu shot.

For RNA viruses, such as influenza, survival is equivalent to replication. Every time the virus replicates in a host cell, it presents an opportunity for a mutation to emerge. While viruses are technically not alive, it is their nature to mutate and evolve. Through these mutations, they can become more contagious, evade immunity, and become deadlier. This past summer, as flu season cooled down in the Northern Hemisphere, it intensified in the Southern Hemisphere,

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