The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention today released new details on why the toll from last year’s was particularly high, with almost 80,000 deaths. One key reason? The vaccination rate among adults was less than 40 percent. Of the 183 children who died from the flu, 80 percent had not been vaccinated. To help you best prepare for the coming flu season, The Conversation is bringing medical and scientific expertise to readers in a special flu-themed newsletter.

The single best thing you can do is to get the flu shot. Even if you do come down with the flu, chances are it will be a lighter viral load if you have been vaccinated, writes Patricia Schnabel Ruppert, citing a study that found a hospitalized flu patient who was unvaccinated was two to five times more likely to die than someone who had been vaccinated. Indiana University microbiologist Patricia Foster describes how the mismatch between last year’s vaccine and the strains of flu that people encountered explains part of the severity of that flu season. Handwashing and cleaning surfaces are also very important, as our experts explain.

We’re a century out from the global influenza pandemic of 1918, which killed tens of millions of people around the world. Read about what scientists have figured out since then about the virus and how best to protect people from this ever-evolving threat.