I haven’t seen anybody talking about it yet, but this flu season is off to a bad start and experts are concerned it’s going to get worse. If you have any insurance at all, flu shots are free at places like CVS, Walgreens, and Target, and at a low-cost out of pocket. They are absolutely worth getting, even at limited effectiveness, to prevent contraction and/or limit severity of illness. If it is at all possible for you, it’s a good idea to get your flu shot ASAP.
Even if you don’t care if you get sick, get the flu shot. People with compromised immune systems rely on us to maintain herd resistance.
Even if you “never get sick”, get the flu shot. Asymptomatic does not mean that you can’t transmit a disease, it just means you feel okay. That means you are more likely to spread it.
This years sucks for flu and even though I got my shot, whatever’s been mutating up on campus is probably what gave me pneumonia. If more people had gotten shots, I almost certainly wouldn’t have gotten as sick, if at all. Please get your flu shot! Even now you can save yourself or someone else!
I’m a doctor. I just got my flu shot, and got them for the kids, too.
You’ve probably heard of people who get the flu after the flu shot. Some people might even say they get the flu *from* the flu shot, however the flu shot cannot give you the flu.
The shot is made from killed virus, basically just a swamp of different proteins for your body to recognize and create antibodies to. There is no way that the particles can organize into infectious virus, enter the cell, and start replicating. It is physically impossible for the shot to *give you* the flu.
However, there is a dormant, prodromal period before you start developing symptoms. It also takes up to 6 weeks for the flu shot to take full effect. So if you get infected around the time of your shot, you can still get full blown flu. The timing will be suspicious, but I promise, it is NOT the shot that got you sick.
Some people feel crappy immediately after the shot, with a low grade temperature, aches, and maybe some runny/stuffy nose or cough. This is your immune system responding to the vaccine, and NOT the flu. It should go away in 1-2 weeks, and should not make you sick enough to miss work.
Other people get the shot, but it isn’t 100% effective, and so they still end up getting the flu. This happens. The shot is anywhere from 60-80% effective in any given year. It’s a guessing game on which viruses to include in the shot, and sometimes we get the wrong one, like with the Swine Flu in 2009. Sometimes we have the right one but whatever proteins we put in the virus don’t create enough immunity. It happens. But people who get the shot, and then get the flu later (>6 weeks later), tend to have a shorter, milder course of the flu than people who have not been vaccinated.
There is no such thing as herd immunity with the flu shot. There needs to be 80% immunity in a population to provide herd immunity, and there is a zero percent chance of the shot being able to provide that any time soon.
HOWEVER, the flu shot is our best defense against a disease that we don’t have a lot of tools for. So go get your shot.
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