The Journal of Infectious Diseases has issued a study that has identified the germs linked to the 2004 outbreak of influenza-like illness in New York State. Employing a new diagnostic tool called MassTag PCR—which is faster, cheaper and more sensitive than traditional respiratory specimen collection and culturing—researchers performed a genetic test that found nine previously undiagnosed germs: six viruses and three bacteria. Approximately 30 percent of the patients involved in the study were found to have some type of rhinovirus, a family known for causing the common cold and other upper respiratory infections … but this rhinovirus was unlike any other. (Cue the eerie music.) So what now? Well, downing antibiotics can quickly cure the bacterial infection blues, but is useless against a virus. So while the study seems to have helped doctors and scientists figure out the causes of certain respiratory diseases, what they will do with that information is still unclear. Let’s all hope that come winter, when our fair New York City inevitably becomes a germ cesspool, doctors will have something more reassuring to tell us than, “Yep, you’ve got the rhinovirus.”