All things Flu! I teamed up with Ed at @deplatformdisease to bring you a thorough summary of influenza virus, vaccine design, types of vaccines, recommendations, and treatment. The more you know, the better, right??
As flu season is upon us it is important to get your seasonal vaccine. With an extra respiratory virus in our midst, it’s even more important that we try to keep flu levels as low as possible by lowering transmission.
There are several different flu vaccines available but most of them are very similar and indicated for the majority of the population. Only if you have a history of allergic reaction to the flu shot or are more than 65+ years old is there really a reason to be looking out for a particular vaccine and a pharmacy/provider that can give it to you (discussed in more detail in the post).
One particularly challenging accept of flu vaccines is that the influenza virus is very prone to mutation (both antigenic drift and antigenic shift) and there are also multiple groups of influenza that circulate the globe. Scientists work to try and predict which 4 strains will be the most dangerous/prevalent for an upcoming season. Vaccine manufacturing, containing antigen against these 4 predicted strains, begins 6 months before flu season. This means that the efficacy of the flu shot any given year varies pretty dramatically depending on how good the prediction is for that year. Work toward new methods that improve this prediction, or create a more broad vaccine (covering more strains) is constantly underway.
Try to schedule the flu shot into your upcoming schedule!