Shepherd Of The Gurneys: Public Service Announcement

Sunday, October 20, 2013

Public Service Announcement

Yesterday into this morning, I had an experience for the second time in the last 5 years:
fever, chills and body aches, coming on rapidly, which subsequently went away with no further ill effects within a day.

Being a health care professional, getting an annual flu shot has become a non-optional event, and this is thus the second time I can attest that this year's shot works, as evidenced by someone giving me one of this year's strains, my immune system kicking in, and the total disappearance of symptoms within a day.

There are two vaccines out this year: a tri-valent and a quadra-valent brew, hopefully good against three and four possible strains, respectively. (I got the tri-valent recipe.) Every year the flu virus mutates, and the CDC et al try to guess which way the prevalent strains will jump, and then concocting, for example, a vaccine that'll kill African B, Asian Q, and European X (all pulled out of thin air to illustrate the point) strains. Some years they hit nothing, some one, occasionally two, and rarely all three prevalent strains.

But I can tell you three things this morning:
1) School is in session, so it's flu season. There's nothing like millions of children sharing their cooties by sticking their fingers into each others' mouths to breed and propagate the annual epidemic when they bring it home each day.
2) At least one (or more) of this year's virus(es) are covered by this year's shot, based on my personal anecdotal evidence.
3) Flu shots work. If you're anti-vaccination, I'll talk with you when you show me Jenny McCarthy's Ph.D. in biochemistry. Otherwise you're a lunatic Luddite, and deserve a week or two's intestinal misery.

Get your flu shot.

2 comments:

LOctober 20, 2013 at 10:01 PM
Amen.
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AnonymousOctober 23, 2013 at 10:41 PM
There have already been two confirmed influenza cases at my workplace. If you work there, and can't/won't get a flu fax, you will wear a procedure mask when in patient care areas (pretty much the whole place). People are bitching. Too bad. If you or I contract the flu, it's not great, but imagine the effects on a person with a depressed immune system. Just step into the ICU sometime. Folks need to grow up about this. Sorry for the rant, just thankful for all the flu vax I've had over the decades....and puzzled why getting one is such a big hairy deal for some folks.
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