If you want to get Miranda Hawker’s hackles up, tell her you’re thinking of skipping your flu shot this year.
Administrator for Florida Department of Health in Indian River County, Hawker makes no bones about what she sees as everyone’s top priority this time of year. “Now is the time for people to get vaccinated,” Hawker insists, “as it can take up to two weeks for the vaccine to become effective.”
“Vaccination,” Hawker continued, “is the most important step people can take to stay well.”
Just about three miles up the road from Hawker’s office, Kimberly Piakis is more than happy to help folks follow that advice. Piakis is the pharmacy manager for the Publix store at 5230 U.S. Hwy. 1 and she’s enthusiastic about her work.
Piakis and her husband both grew up in Vero Beach and now she sees to it that their children get flu inoculations every year, too.
About 550 miles north of Vero, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Atlanta echoes both Piakis’ and Hawker’s stance. The CDC says that though the timing of a flu outbreak is unpredictable at best, the “flu season” actually begins in October and can run as late as May in some years.
To most people the flu means aches, pains, fevers and chills along with an urgent need for an industrial-sized supply of tissues. In other cases, however, the flu can be a stepping-stone to far more serious complications including bacterial pneumonia and the worsening of chronic conditions including asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.
Though it is frequently confused with the common cold, the flu is actually a viral infection attacking the nose, throat and especially the lungs and it spreads easily.
How easily? According to the Florida Department of Health, the Sunshine State is particularly vulnerable to infectious diseases like the flu. Visit Florida, for example, estimates that 75 million people will have traveled to this state in 2014 via Florida’s two Interstate highway systems and its 13 international airports. The odds are that a large number of those visitors carried an influenza virus with them.
Those viruses are most commonly spread when someone breathes in the tiny droplets from the coughs or sneezes of a previously infected person or when touching something that has the virus on it and then touching their own mouth, nose or eyes.
The CDC estimates that during the 2013-2014 flu season, more than half of all children and adults age 65 or older did get flu shots but that more than two-thirds of adults aged 18-64 elected to skip getting vaccinated and they ended up accounting for nearly 60 percent of all flu-related hospitalizations last year.
Risky business, that! On average, about 36,000 people in the United State will die each year from influenza and 114,000 will require hospitalization as a result of flu infections.
So, what’s the best shot to stave off the flu? No one really has a definitive answer. Flu vaccines are formulated on the best educated guesses of infectious disease experts about which strains of flu will be most likely to appear in a given year. That said, public health officials all agree that any vaccine is better than no vaccine and the sooner that vaccine is given, the better.
The basic flu shot is injected into the arm. The majority of flu vaccines for 2014-2015 are “trivalent” in that they protect against three strains of flu: Influenza virus A of the H1N1 type, influenza virus A of the H3N2 type and the influenza B virus. The vaccine is made by growing flu viruses in chicken eggs and then killing the viruses to make the necessary antibodies. There can be some issues for people with egg allergies, so ask questions first.
Then there’s the “quadrivalent” vaccine which adds one more layer of protection for a second influenza B virus. It is also an egg-based product.
Next is the nasal spray. This is another “quadrivalent” vaccine and is generally recommended for children between the ages of two and eight years. Unlike the others, the nasal spray actually uses a live – but weakened – virus and studies have found it more effective for children than adults. Egg allergies do not apply to the spray.
Finally there is a “high-dose” vaccine that is sometimes recommended for seniors. Containing up to four times the anti-viral punch of the standard flu shot, it has been shown to be especially effective with seniors who have less responsive immune systems. The New England Journal of Medicine reports this worked a whopping 24 percent better at protecting seniors than the standard shot.
Whichever option you decide on, it is nearly impossible to drive more than a mile or two along Vero Beach area roads without seeing signs like the one at Piakis’ Publix promoting flu shots. The trick is to stop and get one because the Florida Department of Health estimates that without the shot, you’re far more likely to join the up to 40 percent of the population that will become sick with the flu this year than you are to spend your winter flu-free.
