First up, coughing, sneezing, fever, running nose, there is nothing unusual about that staff this time a year. But, if it feels like you can't go anywhere without seeing these symptoms of sickness, you might be right, flu seasons here and from what we're seeing, it's a bad one. Check out this map, all those states in red, that's where officials are reporting widespread outbreaks of the flu. There are more than 14 states dealing with that, normally flu season hits its peak around late January, early February, by the end of December, more than 2200 people had checked into the hospital with flu like symptoms. Doctors say it's hard to predict just how bad the flu season might get. But some are concerned that there are so many cases this early in the season. A couple of weeks, I sat down with CNN's Dr.Sanjay Gupta, he is our chief medical correspondent to talk about the flu. One of thing I asked him is, how do you know when you're too sick to go to school. With what symptoms should students stay home, like you wake up, you're not feeling well, at what point should you say I'm not going to school.

"Yeah, I think you know, fever is going to be one of the things that's going to be a hallmark, usually talking about fever, above 101.3, 101.4, that area, that's really a true fever. If you have some of the classic symptoms including sore throat, but also specifically muscle aches, or something that distinguish flu from a regular cold. If I stay home with both, that's one way you can tell the difference."

"How effective is a flu shot?

"Flue shots can be very effective, you know there is a number of that vary every year, but it's in the 70% to 80% range, and not a 100%. But it is pretty good, really the best thing that we have."

Alright, Dr.Gupta and I talked a lot about more regarding the flu, we discussed how the flu spreads, how to keep it from spreading, there is something you can do and it's pretty easy. Check out the full interview, it's in the spot light section of our home page, that's cnnstudentnews.com.