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Fear of the flu shot
USA Today‘s Liz Szabo talked to infectious disease and vaccine safety experts about some of the common misconceptions people have about the flu and the vaccine — this in response to a recent Consumer Reports survey that found only 30 percent of people think this year’s flu shot is safe.
Misinformation about flu shots runs rampant, meanwhile influenza kills more people in developed countries than any other vaccine-preventable disease, a Wake Forest pediatrician told Szabo. In the U.S., it sends 200,000 people to the hospital and kills 30,000 a year.
5 Myths about the flu: Continue reading »
One shot, lifetime immunity?
As we know, the flu is a slippery virus. It mutates quickly, and we’re supposed to get a vaccination every year to prepare for what’s out there.
The seasonal flu vaccine is usually a mix of the three strains of the virus that are most likely to hit us in that particular year. But scientists have long been trying to figure out a way to create a universal flu vaccine that would, like the vaccine for measles or mumps, provide decades of protection from the flu virus with just one inoculation.
Sounds pretty great, right? Only one shot for you and your kid. Today, a new study published online in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, shows for the first time, that this universal flu vaccine might actually be possible. Continue reading »
The good news is that getting a flu shot will be easier than it was last year when the swine flu pandemic peaked before the vaccine was widely available.
About 30 million doses are already available through doctors’ offices, pharmacies and other retailers. That’s the first of a total of 165 million flu vaccine doses which are being shipped to the United States, according to USA Today.
The even better news it that thanks to the federal Affordable Care Act, this is the first time that Medicare and private health insurance companies are offering flu vaccine without co-pays or deductibles. Under the federal Vaccines for Children program, even uninsured children are covered for flu shots.
So you ready for the bad news? Continue reading »
A lot of people might look at the anti-vax folks and wonder why it matters if those folks don’t get their kids vaccinated. If their kids get sick because they aren’t protected, it’s no skin off anyone else’s nose, right? Wrong. A new study shows exactly the opposite: vaccinating kids protects the entire community.
New evidence shows what health authorities have known all along – H1N1 is disproportionately hard on young adults and children.
Since April 2009, the pandemic flu virus has killed 17,000 Americans – far less than a typical flu season. But up to 13,000 of those were adults under 65, and 800 to 1,800 of them were children.
H1N1 infected, in all, up to 57 million people. Those numbers are based on computer modeling, since there’s no accurate way to count flu cases.
In a different study, researchers were surprised to discover a rare heart infection occurred in four children with H1N1 in less than a month.
Standing in line for the H1N1 shot last fall were parents, grandparents, and other caretakers of newborn infants.
Because there is no flu shot — H1N1 or seasonal — approved for infants under six months, and because infants are at high risk for complications if they do catch the flu, the next best thing is making sure that everyone around the infant is vaccinated.
But a new study out of the University of Washington, Seattle suggests that seasonal flu vaccines may be safely used in infants as young as six weeks old.
When I asked our kids’ pediatrician about the swine flu vaccine, he said that it was up to us, but that he wasn’t getting it. That’s telling, given that we figure he’s about 90 years old — he was my wife’s pediatrician too — and is thus a prime candidate. He said felt that the government and the media had made more of the disease than was appropriate. Given that he’s been practicing for more than 50 years, I tend to listen when he says something. But lest you think he’s been practicing a little too long, he is not alone in his assessment of the situation.
Continue reading »
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