Get your hand sanitizer and surgical mask ready before you read this fact: About 13,000 Americans have died of complications from the flu just since January. The Centers for Disease Control fully expects the death toll from this seasonal plague to exceed 35,000.

This was news to Vice President Joe Biden, who angrily declared he "would have never been riding Amtrak all these years" if he had been informed such a deadly epidemic was already in our midst.