Influenza

Influenza is a viral infection that affects your respiratory system. In order to become infected, you have to breath in the virus from droplets in the air. The person beside you who just coughed may have just been coughing flu viruses into the environment. Yikes! The flu virus can also be transmitted indirectly through fomites. For example, you may have just touched a handle to open the door and then subconsciously rubbed your eyes. Little did you know that the person before you had just coughed the virus into his hand and grabbed the same door knob.

There are two types of influenza that cause disease in humans: Influenza A and Influenza B. Some typical signs and symptoms include a fever, achiness, sweating, and coughing. While most people are able to get over the flu virus, it is still a pretty serious disease. Children, older adults, and those who are hospitalized are at risk of further complications like pneumonia since they are not always able to get the vaccine. Therefore, I strongly recommend that everyone gets the flu vaccine every year! It cannot hurt you, it can only help! When creating the vaccine, scientists use flu viruses that are not active and therefore cannot harm your body. This vaccine helps develop an immune response in your body, so if you come in contact with the flu, it could potentially fight it off on its own.

When the flu vaccine is being created, researchers have to try and match the vaccine to the virus that is going to be circulating. Since the influenza virus is constantly changing, it is hard for them to predict what this year’s strain is going to be like. Therefore, the vaccine does not always match the virus. An example of this lies in this year’s flu vaccine. The vaccine proved to be pretty effective for influenza A, but the flu virus that is currently going around is influenza B. So, this year’s vaccine is not a very good match for Influenza B. According to the CDC, there have been between 12,000-30,000 deaths this year! It is very important for healthy individuals to get the flu vaccine. Not only will it protect them, but it will protect other people in the community who are immunocompromised. I can’t stress this enough- GET YOUR FLU SHOT!!