Flu Season
Flu Season: 10 Things Everyone Needs to Know This Year
Doctors continue to recommend getting a flu shot this year, but the nasal spray vaccine is no longer advised.
“The cold and flu season really begins when school starts in September, and continues all the way through the spring season,” said Dr. David Topham, professor of microbiology and immunology at the University of Rochester.
No one likes getting sick, but the flu is particularly nasty. The virus can be deadly, and even in mild forms it disrupts work and family life while making its victims miserable. Here's what you need to know to protect yourself this season.
1. The best protection against the flu is getting vaccinated.
Doctors say this repeatedly, but it can’t be reiterated enough. Despite some spurious conspiracy theories about flu shots and even some mainstream skepticism about their effectiveness, there’s no better way to protect you and your family from the harmful virus than getting vaccinated.
“I acknowledge that it’s not perfect,” Dr. Paul Sax, clinical director of the Division of Infectious Diseases at Brigham and Women’s Hospital said of the vaccine. “In most years, it’s least 60 or 70 percent effective. And there’s even some evidence that even if it doesn’t prevent flu 100 percent, it might make cases of flu that occur less severe.”
He continued: “I get the flu vaccine every year, and so do my colleagues.” Talk to your doctor or your insurance company — you should be able to get it for cheap or even free.
“No vaccine is 100 percent safe, but the benefits far, far outweigh the risks,” Sax said.
Topham agreed about the value of the vaccine, saying, "The downside is negligible."
2. The flu can be deadly even for healthy people.
Getting the vaccine is particularly important because the flu can be deadly.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, it’s very difficult to know how many people die annually from the flu. Its estimates range from 3,000 to 49,000 depending on the year. At the high end of the estimate, the flu would be responsible for more deaths than either gun violence or automobile crashes.
Most of those who die from flu have preexisting medical conditions, such as asthma or muscle weakness; pregnant women, children and the elderly are also particularly vulnerable. But on occasion, people who are otherwise perfectly healthy can die from the flu.
“We don’t know which are the previously healthy people that may get a severe complication from influenza,” said Dr. Aaron Milstone, an associate professor at Johns Hopkins University.
This uncertainty makes it all the more important that everyone takes the flu seriously.
3. Common-sense hygiene habits also significantly reduce your risk of catching the flu and other viruses.
Aside from getting the flu vaccine, which experts agree is the best defense against the virus, basic hygienic behaviors also significantly reduce your chances of getting sick.
“Hand washing is actually one of the best countermeasures against influenza,” said Topham. “Even though in some settings influenza can spread through the air, that’s actually not always the primary way people contract the virus.” Many people contract the disease from surfaces or touching other people, and cleaning your hands frequently can cut down on this route of infection.
Milstone also noted that, especially for those who are sick, “respiratory etiquette” helps reduce the risk of spreading any illness. This means sneezing and coughing into your sleeves rather than your hands and making sure you wash your hands after touching your nose or mouth.
4. This year, the CDC is not recommending the use of the nasal spray vaccine.
For the past few years, many doctors have recommended a nasal spray version of the flu vaccine, as a replacement for the injection. Many kids preferred this method to getting a shot.
But people who received the nasal inoculation in recent years showed little if any benefit from it. No one is quite sure why it didn’t work, but the CDC does not recommend the nasal vaccine this year.
“The intranasal flu vaccine, for whatever reason, didn’t seem to work last year,” Sax said. “There are some studies that show it did work in some years.”
There may even be reason to believe that in certain regions and for certain people, the nasal vaccine was effective last year; so if researchers can figure out what went wrong, we may have the nasal spray option again in future flu seasons.
5. The flu changes every year, which is why we need annual vaccines.
Influenza viruses, of which there are many strains, mutate very quickly, so the protection that the vaccine provided one season may not work in the future.
6. Some seasons, the flu vaccine is relatively ineffective — but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t get it.
By examining influenza infections around the world, researchers try to predict which forms of the virus will be prevalent in the upcoming season.
“We have to choose the vaccine strains and start production fairly early in the year,” said Topham. “The choices for this season were made last February. It takes six months or more to make the stocks of vaccines.”
Sometimes, these predictions are wrong, which results in the flu vaccine being relatively ineffective. Last year, the vaccine was a good match, but the year before it wasn’t. There’s no way to know for sure how much protection the vaccine will provide this season, but the experts still agree that you’re much better off getting it than not.
Might there ever be a flu shot that lasts for multiple years or indefinitely?
“There’s research ongoing to do just that: Try to come up with a universal vaccine that will give lasting protection,” said Milstone. “That’s the Holy Grail.”
7. The flu shot does not give you the flu.
One common misconception people have about the flu vaccine is that it can actually cause the infection itself.
“The flu vaccine does not give people the flu. It’s been studied,” said Sax. “It doesn’t have any live virus in it.”
However, people tend to get their flu shots as the flu season begins, and many of those people are bound to get cold viruses, or possibly even the flu itself, shortly after getting the vaccine. This can confirm the misguided idea that the vaccine can cause illness, but it is most likely to just cause soreness at the site of the injection.
8. Stay home when you’re sick, if at all possible.
If you do get the flu, it can be tempting to try to power through it and go to work anyway.
Resist that temptation.
By going to work, you risk spreading the virus to others. And unnecessary exertion may tire you out and prevent you from getting better. If your case is serious, visit your doctor, but stay away from your office.
And if your kids come down with the flu, don’t let them go to daycare or school if possible, Milstone said: “Keep them home so they don’t get other kids sick.”
9. Vaccination benefits the whole community.
Experts are clear that getting a flu shot is in your best interest — it helps you avoid getting an extremely unpleasant illness and avoid the most dangerous consequences of the infection.
But getting the flu shot also helps the community more broadly, particularly people with compromised immune systems, or those, like infants 6 months old or younger, who can’t get the vaccine. This benefit is called “herd immunity” — as long as a significant portion of the population is inoculated against a virus, even those without immunity will be protected.
Families with young infants, especially, should make sure that every member who is eligible gets vaccinated.
10. The flu penetrates deeper into the body than other viruses.
Why is influenza so much worse than other common colds and coughs that we get all the time? The main reason is that it penetrates much more deeply into our respiratory system than these other viruses.
Unlike common cold viruses, the flu can replicate in the lungs, where it can cause dangerous secondary infections such as pneumonia. It’s these secondary infections that are particularly dangerous and are most likely to cause complications or death.
source: www.patch.com
Comments
Post a Comment