Not only does the flu make you feel terrible - it can kill you. Concrete numbers are hard to come by, but it’s estimated that the flu kills about 20,000 people a year, more or less. Sure, most of those deaths are among the very old or the very young, but there are news stories every year about perfectly healthy normal teens who die from the flu.
A classmate of my daughter died of the flu. She was a perfectly healthy normal second-grader when she died. I have gotten an annual flu shot ever since.
I generally get mine in October, but I’ll be getting one again this year. I never got one until about 15 years ago, but now get it regularly each fall. I’m a believer.
@raulhumber2
“Handling” it is not the issue. What do you even mean by that? It’s likely (but not 100% definite) that you would recover from a flu infection, but you would not want to be that sick. Who would want to be that sick?
By the way, it’s flu, not flue. Flue is the duct in your fireplace.
Our local CVS said they only have the quad-valent version & my insurer will cover 100%. Last year, insurer refused to pay for my quad-Valent flu shot, tho my pulmo said I should get it.
bad luck getting vaccine yesterday. minute clinic showed 90+ minute wait on line(they show wait times by clinic now)
supermarket pharmacy had them but weekend pharmacist not certified to give them.(come back monday) walgreens getting them in this week and cvs pharmacy(24 hour store just not the pharmacy … pharmacy open for reduced hours sunday) ,separate from minute clinic closed for the day. I shall try again after work today.
All of us have asthma. DH can no longer get the flu shot because he had a bad breathing reaction after getting one a couple years ago. So the rest of us get one so we don’t get the flu and then pass it on to him.
@zobroward, you may want to wait a month till the end of Sept to get the vaccine. The peak of the flu season is Jan, Feb and the immunity wanes after 5 months or so.
My H who is a doc, hasn’t had his yet.
My doc always wants us to get ours at the earliest opportunity, so we have appointments to get ours on Friday. I am in charge of a 200-300 person event in a few weeks and we will be going on an international trip in October, with lots of bus travel and I don’t want to get the flu, so it makes sense to use to get the shot ASAP.
We all will get our flu shots by mid-September. My H and I have been getting them for many years as have both of our Ds. If you have ever really had the flu you would not hesitate getting the shot!
The problem is, so many people call all kinds of feverish illnesses “the flu” that they underestimate how serious the real flu is. Such underestimation can cause people to reduce important getting the flu vaccine is to them. E.g. they remember having “the flu” (actually a minor feverish illness rather than the real flu) and remember that it was not so bad, so they think it is not worth bothering with the vaccine.
You can also spread the flu without getting sick. The vaccine helps prevent this kind of spread.
My last bout of flu spread through my college a cappella group while we were in Vermont in January, 1999. Several of us were immobile by the time we got back to campus, and our youngest member was so sick she had to get a spinal tap to make sure it wasn’t meningitis. I’ve never skipped the shot since then.
I had H1N1 my senior year of high school. I was case 0 and eventually the school shut down for a few days because so many people got it and they basically disinfected the whole school.
If you’ve ever had the flu… the REAL flu… you’ll never forget it.
I think people who don’t get vaccines for “personal choice” reasons are some of the most selfish people on the planet.
One of my daughters had H1N1 too, in the first week of September! It was particularly bad at striking previously healthy young people and giving some of them severe respiratory distress. Really scary. We were washing constantly and no one else caught it and the rest of us got the vaccine as soon as we could (which wasn’t for another month or so).
ETA - This poor daughter had a few days of feeling well and then came down with Mono. Apparently the flu weakened her immune system and Mono took advantage. Senior year too.
Our doctor’s office does not yet have any flu vaccines, and does not expect to get the quadrivalent ones, so I called around to check pharmacies. Our health ins. (through dh’s employer) will not pay for flu vaccines unless they’re administered at an in-network doctor’s office. Last year I paid about $36.95 for the vaccine. This year I happened to see a flu shot sign at Target and asked if they carry the quadrivalent. Not only did they have it, the pharmacy tech was very nice and offered a discount coupon so the cost was just under $25. Also, Target’s pharmacy is offering a $5 GC with any flu shot which I was able to use for my store purchases today.
Now I just need to persuade dh to stop by Target on his way home this week.
I’ve been getting the flu shot for years, ever since I got the flu about 20 years ago. I thought I was miserable then, but nothing compares to how I felt when I got H1N1 in 2009. I have never, ever felt so awful. I caught it from my son. It was going all through his campus. He called me one morning at 6 to ask me to come and get him. I drove 6 hours round trip and took him straight to the doctor’s office. Not only did he have H1N1, but he also had pneumonia. He ended up in the hospital for a few days.
Not only do I not want to get the flu again, I don’t want to pass it on to anyone else. The flu is just plain nasty.
I suggest anyone who is hesitating about whether to get the flu shot for themselves or their child read the vignettes on the left side of the page in post #34. They are truly horrifying, even those for the kids who pulled through. Kids who came home early from basketball practice and were dead 2 days later. Kids who felt a little off at a friend’s party and ended up in the ICU with multiple organ failure. Kids spitting up blood, soiling themselves, moaning, undergoing amputations, brain damaged.
This site should be mandatory reading for anyone who says, “I’ve never had the flu before so I’m not worried.”
Every October I have to go to a conference with about 20-30k attendees. I cram myself into an airplane surrounded by several hundred people breathing mostly recirculated air (thank you for that rule change allowing less fresh air FAA). Then I cram myself into crowded rooms with hundreds if not thousands of people from all over the world who’ve been exposed to God knows what. I sit elbow to elbow with people sniffing, coughing, sneezing, hacking, and snorting. I endure this 8 hours a day for 4 days.
Heck yes I get the flu shot every year! If there was a common cold vaccine I’d take two!
My next door neighbor got H1N1 a couple years ago and was in the hospital in a coma for 6 weeks and then in a rehab facility for several months. He was around 50 when he got it and he can no longer work or drive as a result of it.