I was saying weeks ago that this was going to be a bad flu season in the US, because flu cases in China , Japan , Canada and the UK were all skyrocketing.

And three weeks ago WHO said

Although global activity remains within expected seasonal ranges, early increases and higher activity than typical at this time of year have been observed in some regions. [...] Since August 2025, there has been a rapid increase of [new variant] viruses detected from several countries

So even if you don't trust the CDC (and I would argue that you might not be able to trust the heads of CDC and FDA but most of the workers believe in their public health missions), it's well within plausibility that flu cases are skyrocketing across the US.