> The flu will bind you to your bed for at least a week and you will need 3-6 weeks to recover. It can, but this isn't a given. Tens of millions of people get

> The flu will bind you to your bed for at least a week and you will need 3-6 weeks to recover. It can, but this isn't a given. Tens of millions of people get influenza yearly in the USA, and there's a wide range of estimates of asymptomatic cases, with 50% being a reasonable baseline to work from. See, e.g. Seasonal Incidence of Symptomatic Influenza in the United States: https://academic.oup.com/cid/article/66/10/1511/4682599 https://academic.oup.com/cid/article/66/10/1511/4682599 > Estimates of the percentage of influenza infections that are asymptomatic include a common approximation of 50% [33], 33% in 1 review [34] and 4%–28%, 0–100%, and 65%–85% in another review [35]. Both asymptomatic and symptomatic infections are captured in serological studies. The commonly cited “5%–20%” figure came from a serological study [5], and so represents both symptomatic and asymptomatic disease among a mix of vaccinated and unvaccinated persons. If 50% of influenza were symptomatic, this would correspond to “2.5%–10%” with symptomatic disease, which is very similar to the range that we report.