The flu is highly contagious. While most people with a healthy immune system will be able to get over the flu in less than two weeks with home remedies, about one in four sufferers will develop complications, including pneumonia. Each year, about 35,000 people die from the flu in the United States.
Of those who are at the highest risk of developing complications from the flu, which can lead to hospitalization and death, age plays a significant role. The elderly and infants and young children (especially under the age of 2) are most likely to have complications from the flu. Other risk factors include:
● Chronic illness, such as heart disease
● Weakened immune system, from medications (such as chemotherapy) or HIV
● Pregnant women
● Working in healthcare
● Working in childcare
● Living or working in a nursing home
Your Best Defense Is a Strong Offense
The best line of defense against the flu is an annual flu vaccine, even though the vaccine isn’t a perfect solution. In fact, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommends that anyone who can get a flu vaccine should, especially those who fall into high-risk categories.
Despite this across the board support for the flu vaccine, there are still many misconceptions and myths surrounding the flu and the flu vaccine that need to be addressed to increase prevention:
Myth: You should be more afraid of Ebola than the flu.
Fact: The flu kills more people each year in the United States alone than Ebola has killed in the history of its existence. For the 35,000 people who die annually in the United States from complications from flu, Ebola has claimed 5,021 deaths. Worldwide, the World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that 250,000 to 500,000 deaths occur as a result of influenza and complications. If that isn’t scary enough, consider that the infamous 1918 flu epidemic killed approximately 50 million people worldwide.
While Ebola certainly has a higher mortality rate once you’ve caught the disease, because it is only spread by direct contact with fluids and not airborne, the risk of contamination is far lower. And an outbreak is far easier to contain, especially in Western countries with a strong healthcare infrastructure.
Myth: You got a flu vaccine last year, so you should still be okay this year.
Fact: There is no one-size-fits-all vaccine for flu. The flu vaccine is formulated each year to protect against three (trivalent) or four (quadrivalent) strains that the WHO believes are the most likely to circulate during that flu season. Because the strains of influenza circulating last year are not necessarily the ones that will be circulating during this flu season, it’s important that you get an annual flu shot so that your body has a chance to develop the right antibodies against the proper strains of flu that are circulating in these communities.
Myth: People die from reactions to the flu vaccine.
Fact: There have been no deaths attributed to the flu vaccine, despite media coverage from Utah, where a mother claimed that her son died as a result of getting this injection. While it is a very small possibility that the vaccine was responsible for the death of this otherwise healthy 19-year-old man, experts believe that there was another cause of this young man’s death, which will remain unknown, because his mother refused to allow an autopsy.
There are risks associated with the flu vaccine, including an anaphylactic reaction to gelatin, which occurs in about one in every 2 million people, but even those patients typically do not die. There are also people with egg allergies who should opt for a cell-based or recognizant flu vaccine, in which the virus has not been cultured in egg.
Myth: People don’t die from influenza unless they have an underlying condition.
Fact: Healthy people die from the flu every year. They include otherwise healthy adults who had no other conditions until contracting the virus, and children with no underlying conditions. In 2013, studies show that 90 percent of the children who died from the flu had not been vaccinated against it. And while the number of lab-confirmed flu deaths for children is not high, many of these deaths would otherwise have been preventable with a flu vaccine.
There are also many times that healthy patients don’t have influenza listed as a cause of death on a death certificate because their illness led to a secondary complication, such as pneumonia.
Myth: The flu shot doesn’t work for me because I got it last year and got the flu anyway.
Fact: Getting a flu vaccine isn’t a guarantee that you won’t catch the flu. With thousands of variations of this virus circulating, it’s impossible to guarantee that you won’t be exposed to a strain against which you haven’t been vaccinated. However, it does reduce your risk of catching the disease and may mean that you develop a milder case of the illness than if you hadn’t been vaccinated against it in the first place.
Myth: I can avoid the flu with diet, supplements and hand washing.
Fact: Whether or not you’ve been vaccinated, these three steps (healthy diet, daily vitamins and/or supplements for things like vitamin C, zinc, vitamin E, and garlic, and regular hand washing) are all important for minimizing your risk of contracting and reducing the severity of your symptoms if you do contract influenza. However, because flu is an airborne virus, these steps won’t guarantee that you won’t be exposed to the flu vaccine, especially if you take mass transit, have school-aged children or spend time in public places where an infected person may sneeze near you and pass the infection on to you.