We remember a time when the flu shot was for people whose immune systems were compromised. That typically meant the elderly. And then across the years, the flu shot was recommended for everyone, the young, the old, the healthy and the not-so-healthy.
A lot of people don’t get a flu shot. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says that fewer than half of Americans get one. There are a lot of reasons that people claim as evidence for not getting a shot. A few of those reasons were included in a story published recently in The Commercial, chief among them being that getting a flu shot gives you the flu.
Nope, it doesn’t. You can believe a lot of things about flu shots, but they don’t give you the flu. They may make you feel a little rough for a day or two, but that reaction is not the flu.
Another flu shot myth is that getting a flu vaccine will open the door to getting covid-19. That sounds like something right out of a social media “news” feed, and no surprise, it’s also false.
“This is also not true, and there is no evidence that getting a flu vaccination increases your risk of becoming ill from a coronavirus, like the one that causes covid-19,” Bryan Mader, assistant professor for the U of A System Division of Agriculture and an extension nutrition specialist, said in the story.
Independent reporting for Pine Bluff & Jefferson County since 1879.
There are other spurious reasons for dodging the flu shot.
You got one last year so you don’t need another this year. False. The flu strain changes so last year’s shot probably won’t do you much good this year.
It’s just a bad cold. A lot of people roll with this excuse. And for some people, a bad cold can be the extent of their flu symptoms, although being too sick to get up out of bed and go to the doctor, a la the flu, seems like a long way from anything referred to as a cold. But this excuse also gets a thumbs down if you consider that the flu is deadly and kills thousands of people every winter.
The flu shot isn’t 100% effective so there’s no point in getting the shot. Actually, no medicine is perfect, and the flu shot is no different. But it can be 50% effective, and if that keeps you from getting the flu and spreading it to grandpa, then the shot is worth getting.
More precisely, Arkansas had 40,000 cases of the flu last winter, and it killed 118 people, including three children. When you look at it from that perspective, shaving the numbers down by half makes a lot of sense.
Some people are adamant about not getting a flu shot, and changing their minds on the subject would be nigh impossible. We imagine, though, that many people just never get around to getting one from one part laziness and one part I’ve never had the flu so I don’t need to get one. For whatever reason, this is a good year to break your streak of not getting one and roll up your sleeve.
Dr. Mader didn’t get into angle, but covid-19 is far from done with us. On Friday, for instance, Arkansas had an astonishing 1,870 new cases of covid-19. That comes at a time when, not long ago, 1,000 new cases was a lot. It also comes at a time when 80,000 cases on the national level was a record number, and on Thursday, there were a staggering 121,500 new cases.
The problem is that if you come down with something, it could be one thing or the other or both. The two maladies can exacerbate each other, and the symptoms can mimic each other, making it hard to tell if a person has the regular flu or covid-19.
The point is that by getting a flu shot, you and you and you can, collectively, take quite a bit of pressure off of the medical community, which, with flu season coming and the pandemic getting worse, will have its hands full already.
Next year, go back to your lazy ways if you must, but this year, take one for the team. The flu you don’t come down with is the same flu you won’t spread to someone else and the same flu you won’t have to drag yourself to the doctor to be seen for and maybe hospitalized for.
We all win, and with the prospects for the winter looking grim, we will need some W’s.