Tag Flu Season

An old fashion shoot ‘em up

Michael 11 Comments

I have to be honest at with you. This post was to be a critique of the debate. There was just so much ammunition. Enough to fill a year’s worth of blog posts. From hidden communication devices (Trumpican: She was wearing magic earrings to help her. Normal Person: How did her earrings make him say stupid shit?) to dinner menu choices (Trumpican: They are eating dogs and cats. All high and mighty one says so. Normal Person: He would know. He is a dirty dog who never skip a chance to grab some pus…..) …umm, but all that’s been done and it’s way too easy anyway.

So instead, I’m doing a normal person version of a public service announcement just in time for a real potential disaster. Cold and flu season and a return of covid.

It’s been a long time since I’ve encouraged people to get their flu shots. It’s pretty much not been necessary. Since 2016, flu vaccine rates have increased with some stagnation in 2020 and 2021 when a good chunk of the population was getting its medical information and recommendations from politicians and future billionaire social media platform owners. Even with those idiots attempting to sabotage the then new covid vaccine, flu vaccination rates remained stable.

Unfortunately, the actual flu vaccination rate has never reached the Office of Disease Prevention (of the Department of Health and Human Services) goal of 70% of the population. Most years, the actual percent of population receiving the seasonal flu vaccine is in the 50-56% range. Not good enough!

The flu vaccine repeatedly prevents 67% of potential hospitalizations. Extrapolating for the number of people who go unvaccinated, 44% of those hospitalized for flu do so unnecessarily. According to CDC data, over 18,000 patients were admitted to hospitals during the 2023-2024 flu season. This was the highest rate since 2010-2011. It may not seem like a lot of people, but these are those admitted admitted for flu, not those admitted for other conditions like pneumonia exacerbated by the flu virus.

Why are people still reluctant to get a flu shot? Not understanding the severity of the disease has always been a factor in noncompliance with available, effective vaccines. The emergence of antiviral medications to treat flu symptoms also gives people false confidence in being able to treat the flu if they get it. These are effective but only in a very specific window of virus activity, within 48 hours of infection which may leave only hours after symptoms appear.

If you’re older than 6 years old, there is a flu vaccine for you. Go get one.

Flu shots aside, there are other vaccines this season to seriously consider. The first is covid. Yes, since the pandemic has cooled, little has been heard of covid and only those most susceptible have routinely availed themselves to the annually updated vaccine. Although a large percentage of the population has some immunity to covid, that immunity is likely effective against earlier variants, no later than the delta variants. New strains of the omicron variant have been noticed with increasing frequency in at-risk patients, the young, the old, the immunocompromised. If you don’t know if you are in one if those groups, you probably are.

How bad is the new covid strain. Over 10 million Americans over 65 were treated in hospitable emergency rooms in June. That’s twice as many as last June. Over 60% of those presenting to an ER with covid symptoms are hospitalized and of those 10% die within 24 hours. But those who survive experience few immediate complications. The current most significant risk is developing long-covid and experiencing long-term respiratory problems, GI symptoms, and mental and cognition disturbances.

Regardless of how convincing the charts posted to social media seem to be in differentiating between flu and covid, in life, the differences are not so obvious. The best predictor of infection, and which infection, are home tests. If you are achy, tired, and running a fever, take a test. If you can’t tell if you have a fever, don’t go by the “if it’s not over 100°, it’s not a fever.” If you feel good right now, take your temperature. Do that a couple times a day for a couple days. That is your average normal temperature. If you take your temperature and it is 2° higher than your average normal temperature, you have a fever.

Now there is one more risk for my at-risk friends. RSV (Respiratory Syncytial Virus). RSV has been with us a long time. When I was a young pharmacy resident (yeah, that was a long time ago), we started seeing RSV in pediatric ICUs. Now it is responsible for the hospitalization of 240,000 Americans of all ages. Many  of those are still under 5 years old but now the highest demographic are those over 60. The CDC calls those most at risk are children under 6, adults over 75, adults with immunologic conditions or pulmonary disease over 65, and those routinely in contact with at-risk populations. Finally, a vaccine is out there. Let’s use it.

Those closes this year’s public service announcement. I now return you to your regularly scheduled routine.

flu

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It’s time to shoot up again

Michael 4 Comments

There’s so much happening in the world, in the country in the state and I can’t do anything about it. Really, I’ve tried and the world/country/state hasn’t budged. But I can do something about me, for me, and help the world/country/etc/etc/etc at the same time. I can see it in your eyes! You know where I’m going!! Yes, you are 100% right. I’m going to get a flu shot. Much more fun than getting the flu. Trust me, I’ve had both. I was going to write a whole new post about flu shots but I’ve already done did that a dozen times or so, so I reached back to 2016 and pulled this one out. It’s still good stuff. Then after you read it, go get your flu shot. It’s about that time again!

Just Shoot Me

(From October 24, 2016, slightly edited to remove unnecessarily big words)

I’ve been shot. I suppose it was about 10 days ago now. I got my flu shot. I can probably count on one hand the number of years I didn’t get a flu shot all the way back to when I can remember doctors keeping lollipops on their desks for the good boys and girls who got their flu shots.

For years I worked in a hospital and getting a flu shot was just something you did every year. It went along with doing annual evaluations, decorating for Halloween, and renewing your parking permit. Everyone grumbled about it but everyone did it.flu

Now that I’m not working I have to remind myself to get a flu shot. And while I was busy reminding myself I thought I’d remind you. Get your flu shot.  If you are a southern hemisphere resident hold that thought for 6 months.

I never understood people who would come up with a dozen different reasons not to get a flu shot when it’s so effective at preventing the flu and when getting the flu can be so devastating. No, you won’t get the flu from the flu shot. You can’t get the flu from a flu shot any more than a zombie will eat your brains. The virus in the flu shot is dead – even more dead than an undead zombie. It can’t come back to life and infect you. What can happen is that you can get a cold or a fall allergy or a seasonal bacterial sinus or respiratory infection at the same time you get the flu shot but it’s not the flu.

You can get the flu in the same year that you get the flu shot if you don’t get it at the right time. Now is the right time. The flu shot doesn’t start working the instant the needle pierces your skin. It takes about two weeks for the vaccine to work its magic on your immune system so it is at its peak in protecting you against a live flu infection. You should schedule your shot about a month before the anticipated beginning of the flu season. If you wait too long to get a flu shot and you are exposed to the flu virus before your body can adequately prepare enough antibodies to repel an assault you can get the flu. The high dose version of the flu shot may provide effective resistance a bit sooner but should not be used as an option to timely inoculation.

You can also get the flu late in the season even if you got a flu shot if the circulating viruses mutate more quickly than expected and if your immune system is weakened by age or compromised by other diseases or conditions. For individuals with compromised immune systems the flu vaccine should be active for about six months. If you have weakened immune system and the active flu season in your area is expected to last past March or April you might consider asking your physician if you should repeat the flu shot six months after your initial vaccination.

Sorry if this post sounded too much like a public service announcement. It’s probably just a result of those years I spent in public service

Just Shoot Me

Michael Leave a comment

I’ve been shot. I suppose it was about 10 days ago now. I got my flu shot. I can probably count on one hand the number of years I didn’t get a flu shot all the way back to when I can remember doctors keeping lollipops on their desks for the good boys and girls who got their flu shots.

For years I worked in a hospital and getting a flu shot was just something you did every year. It went along with doing annual evaluations, decorating for Halloween, complaining about getting a lousy turkey for a Christmas bonus, and renewing your parking permit. Everyone grumbled about it but everyone did it.flu

Now that I’m not working I have to remind myself to get a flu shot. And while I was busy reminding myself I thought I’d remind you. Get your flu shot.  If you are a southern hemisphere resident hold that thought for 6 months.

I never understood people who would come up with a dozen different reasons not to get a flu shot when it’s so effective at preventing the flu and when getting the flu can be so devastating. No, you won’t get the flu from the flu shot. You can’t get the flu from a flu shot any more than a zombie will eat your brains. The virus in the flu shot is dead – even more dead than an undead zombie. It can’t come back to life and infect you. What can happen is that you can get a cold or a fall allergy or a seasonal bacterial sinus or respiratory infection coincidentally to when you get the flu shot but it’s not the flu.

You can get the flu in the same year that you get the flu shot if you don’t get it at the right time. Now is the right time. The flu shot doesn’t start working the instant the needle pierces your skin. It takes about two weeks for the vaccine to work its magic on your immune system so it is at its peak in protecting you against a live flu infection. You should schedule your shot about a month before the anticipated beginning of the flu season. If you wait too long to get a flu shot and you are exposed to the flu virus before your body can adequately prepare enough antibodies to repel an assault you can get the flu. The high dose version of the flu shot may provide effective resistance a bit sooner but should not be used as an option to timely inoculation.

You can also get the flu late in the season even if you got a flu shot if the circulating viruses mutate more quickly than expected and if your immune system is weakened by age or compromised by other diseases or conditions. For individuals with compromised immune systems the flu vaccine should be active for about six months. If you have weakened immune system and the active flu season in your area is expected to last past March or April you might consider asking your physician if you should repeat the flu shot six months after your initial vaccination.

Sorry if this post sounded too much like a public service announcement. It’s probably just a result of those years I spent in public service.

That’s what I think. Really. How ‘bout you?