Originally published on the Hideaway Lake News September 1, 2019
Doctors Laura and Anthony Sidari’s 4-year-old son, Leon, died from the flu on Christmas Day 2017, less than 48 hours after he started feeling sick. Sadly, little Leon had an appointment to get a flu shot on Jan 3. According to the CDC, Leon was one of 185 US children who died in the 2017-18 flu season, 80% of them were unvaccinated.
The US overall death toll from the flu in 2017-2018 was more than 80,000 and over 900,000 were hospitalized. In Texas alone, more than 11,000 people died from the flu and its complications during the same period. To put it in perspective, a little over 51,000 people in the US died of colorectal cancer in 2017, the second leading cause of cancer death in men and women combined.
While many more people died from the flu than from colorectal cancer in 2017, many of us are willing to get a colonoscopy in the hospital but won’t go get a simple flu shot at the drugstore.
Even if the vaccine is not very effective against a particular strain in a given year, it still makes sense to get the shot. If you end up getting the flu after being vaccinated, there is enough overlap among flu viruses that the vaccine lessens the severity of symptoms and significantly reduces the chances of death and hospitalizations.
The flu season peaks December through February. It takes two weeks after the flu shot to make your antibodies and 6 weeks for them to peak. So to protect yourself from the high season which starts in December, you should get your shot by October.
Remember, the majority of people who die from the flu are unvaccinated.
The flu shot reduces death from the virus even if the vaccine is not a good match.
Get your flu shot by the end of October for maximum protection.
Don’t let yourself or a loved one become a flu statistic this year.
By Sue Royappa, MD, MPH