As you head out to the pool, lake, or a BBQ with friends, flu season may not exactly be top of mind. After all, everyone is enjoying themselves outdoors and there’s no real threat of passing around a respiratory virus.
But fall and winter are right around the corner, so it’s time to start thinking ahead about protecting your family with the flu shot.
If you’re undecided about this important immunization, Dr. Scott Lafferty and the team here at Lafferty Family Care want to provide you with a few pros and cons about the annual flu shot.
We want to first point out that the annual flu vaccination is far from a shot in the dark. The flu virus is ever evolving and new strains make their rounds each year. There are dozens of facilities around the world that track the virus each year to figure out which strain will have the greatest impact during flu season.
These facilities send this data to five global health organizations, including our own Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), where scientists and researchers get together to figure out which vaccine will work best.
So, there’s a good deal of research and data to back up the flu shots that people get each year.
Thanks to the research we outline above, annual flu shots can reduce the risk of illness by 40% to 60%. This means that a flu shot can prevent you from getting the flu, as well as minimize its effects and the risks for serious disease if you are infected by the virus.
We recommend annual flu shots for everyone in your family who is 6 months old and older. In fact, flu shots are especially important for the very young and the elderly, as these two opposite age groups are often struck harder by respiratory viruses like the flu.
Getting a flu shot when you’re pregnant is not only possible, it’s advisable. The last thing you want when you’re carrying a child is to be laid out by the flu, and this vaccination can certainly protect you. Going a step further, there’s evidence that your flu shot can protect your newborn to some extent, at least until they’re able to get their own flu vaccination.
Once we get the new flu shot vaccine, you can schedule an appointment with us in the fall. In just minutes, we can protect your whole family from the flu.
Not everyone loves needles and getting injections, and the flu shot is often delivered via needle. There are flu vaccinations that come in nasal spray form, too. So if you or a member of your family wants to avoid needles, please let us know and we’ll see whether the nasal spray is a good option.
Flu shots are great at protection when researchers have identified the right viral strain. There are years when the flu strain doesn’t match up with research though, and then the vaccine may be less effective.
As you can see, we feel that the benefits of getting annual flu shots for the entire family outnumber and outweigh the cons.
If you have more questions about the flu shot, please don’t hesitate to contact our office in Rogers, Arkansas.
