It’s that time of year; flu shot time. You be thinking, “No! It’s too early! I want it to last all winter.” Well, it’s not and it will.
The flu vaccine has recently become available to practitioners and there will soon be a big push for the public to get vaccinated. There is a widely held myth that the flu shot should be reserved for October or even November. The fear behind this myth is that, getting it any earlier will leave you unprotected later in the season. However, these concerns have been shown to be unwarranted.
Timing of vaccination is important.
It takes nearly a month for the body to develop resistance to the flu once vaccinated. Since flu season runs late September/early October through March/April, getting vaccinated in early to mid-September enhances one’s protection of developing the flu. If exposed to someone with the flu, we need our body’s immune system to be fully prepared to fight off infection. Having adequate time for the immune system to build up helps assure the best possible response to exposure.
The concern about a vaccine not lasting throughout the flu season has been rebuffed by scientific data and published in medical literature. In fact, it has been shown that the flu vaccine provides resistance to the flu virus for at least 12 months before titers drop below an effective level. This argument, coupled with the fact that it takes up to a month for immunity to develop, argues benefits of vaccinating before the flu season hits.
As a healthcare provider, I have also heard the argument that someone got the flu from the flu shot. The educated response to this is simply that this argument is wrong.
The injectable flu shot is actually derived from a killed virus. Once a virus is killed, it can no longer cause the flu. Simply put, it is impossible for the flu shot to cause the flu. Instead, there are myriad explanations for what the person experienced in the past.
While I am not arguing that the individual got sick after receiving the flu shot, it is entirely possible that the individual’s immune system is responsible for the symptoms. In such a case, the body recognizes a foreign “substance” has invaded it, e.g., the flu shot. The body has an amazing ability to repair itself. In doing so, the body may respond with an elevated temperature and swollen glands as the lymph system responds, and the feeling of fatigue as a result of the body directing its energy towards fighting the foreign invader. While these symptoms may mimic the flu, they’re typically not of the severity of the flu and don’t carry the same risk of debilitating illness or death.
Another explanation for the symptoms is that the person truly does develop the flu. However, knowing that the killed virus in the flu shot simply can’t cause the flu and the fact that it takes nearly a month to develop immunity after being vaccinated, another explanation is obviously to blame. Simply, that individual was exposed to before or shortly after being vaccinated, such that there has not been adequate time for immunity to develop before a full-blown case of the flu develops.
A final explanation that I will offer (and there are many more) is that the person got sick but didn’t develop a true case of the flu. Over the course of the last few generations, the public has come to call nearly all symptoms of the respiratory track “the flu” when, in fact, it is not truly a case of the flu. Severe colds have been “unprofessionally” diagnosed as the flu with such frequency that many people assume they have the flu when it is, in fact, not. While it doesn’t make one feel any less sick knowing that they have a severe cold and not the flu, it is an important distinction to be made when blaming the flu shot for an illness.
Another point that should be addressed is that the flu shot typically contains just 3 or 4 different flu strains.
These “flu strains” are virus strains and there are hundreds, if not thousands, of virus strains that can cause the flu. The strains in a given flu shot are a “best guess” effort on behalf of the CDC and the strains typically change from year to year. The CDC uses various mapping patterns to predict the most likely stains to cause flu infections that year and has those strains incorporated into that year’s vaccine. Typically the CDC gets it right but every once in awhile, a strain flares up that wasn’t predicted, such as the H1N1 strain a few years ago. If this happens, occasionally a second vaccine can be administered to protect against the flaring strain. However, because it takes months to develop the strains for a vaccine, a second vaccine is not always an option and practitioners are left with no option but to treat the flu after a person has developed it.
For the sake of clarity, it is necessary to point out that getting the flu shot does not guarantee that an individual will not develop the flu.
Instead, it is likely the person won’t become as sick from the flu as they would if they hadn’t received the vaccine. The vaccine is truly intended to decrease morbidity and mortality; that is, debilitating illness (lost productive days) and death. I can speak from personal experience that it is possible to receive the flu shot and still develop the flu later in the flu season. This is not unexpected for a healthcare provider who is constantly exposed to sick individuals on a daily basis. Thankfully, my time off work was minimal.
Cory
