We understand that you may be tired of contemplating viruses and vaccines but, despite the recent pandemic, the flu is still making its rounds each year. Between 2010 and 2020, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reports that the flu has claimed an average of more than 33,000 lives in the United States each year.
To protect yourself and your family against the flu, Dr. Scott Lafferty offers quick-and-easy flu shots at Lafferty Family Care.
If you’re wondering which members of your family can benefit from this important protection, read on.
The CDC recommends that any person over the age of six months should get an annual flu shot. When we say any person, we’re including:
In fact, there are stronger flu shots that we can give to people over the age of 65, as they’re considered a more at-risk segment of the population.
The rare exception to these recommendations is people who have an allergy to any ingredient in the vaccine, but this does not include egg proteins.
The best time to get a flu shot is before flu season begins, which is usually in October or November. This means that September and October are ideal months for getting the vaccination.
That said, if life gets in the way and you miss this window, it’s never too late to protect yourself, and you can still benefit from a shot later in the winter months.
The influenza virus is constantly mutating so there’s a different strain that presents itself each flu season. That means your protection doesn’t carry over from year to year. To properly protect yourself, you should get a flu shot at the start of each flu season.
The shot you receive each year is different and is designed to protect against the strain that’s most likely to strike. To determine this, there are 142 flu data collection centers in 113 countries around the world.
These data collection centers track the flu each year and report to five world health organizations, including our own CDC. These major health organizations then meet twice a year to decide which strain they believe will emerge, and they send this information to vaccine manufacturers.
What we’re getting at is that your annual flu shot is far more than just a guess and is created only after extensive research and tracking.
If you want to get a jump on the flu season this year, please contact our office in Bentonville, Arkansas, to schedule your flu shot.
