Get your flu shot, folks

I could’ve sworn the air was fizzing as it’s that time of year again, Gusties. Flu season is right around the corner, and I’m here to encourage anyone and everyone to please, if you haven’t already, stop by Health Service’s handy dandy flu shot clinic to get vaccinated. Now, given that I’m requesting you get a needle poked into your arm, I feel obligated to explain why it’s worth it.
But first, I should probably tell you what a flu shot is. Or rather, Certified Nurse Practitioner (CNP) at Health Services Nissa Fell will tell you because she’s much more credible than I am. According to Fell, a flu shot is an annually-offered immunization that prevents the viral illness of influenza.
“[The vaccine] triggers our antibody response in our body, so if we come in contact with influenza… our body knows how to react,” Fell said.
For some illnesses, you only need to get vaccinated once or twice and you’re set for life, but influenza is different.
“Our immune response wanes or lessens over time with the flu shot, [thus] the flu shot we get each year,” Fell said. This is why the fall season is also known as flu shot season.
So why should you get a flu shot? Well, I’ll give you the most compelling argument first: getting sick sucks.
“I don’t want to get sick, especially during uncertain times like these,” Junior Chris Ortiz said.
Not only would the flu condemn you to up to a week of fever, cough and body aches, but in the COVID-19 era, that’s served up along with two weeks of quarantine.
“The symptoms between influenza and COVID-19 are very similar, so… we’ve been trained to treat all things like COVID-19 until we can prove otherwise,” Fell said.
I don’t know about you, but if I can avoid all that, I’ll let a Health Services staff member poke a needle in my arm any day. Vaccines don’t just protect your personal health, they allow society to control viral illnesses and prevent pandemics like the one we are living in right now.
“[A population has] to have enough immunity to an illness for it to not be problematic anymore,” Fell said.
This might happen in one of two ways: natural immunity, where enough people catch the illness, or an effective vaccine. Since the former takes too much time and involves too much suffering, the vaccine is our best bet. In the case of influenza, flu shots are our saving grace.
“There’s enough immunity with flu shots that we aren’t as worried about it, even though it is a very deadly and very serious illness,” Fell said.
We all know now what it’s like when a virus rips through a susceptive, non-immune human population, so let’s each do our part to contribute to the community-level immunity that helps prevent it.
“Getting a flu shot is important because you aren’t just protecting yourself, but also others around you. Especially with this pandemic going on, we should do as much as we can to keep ourselves and others safe,” First-year Piper Otto said.
Speaking of the pandemic, that leads us to yet another strong motivator to get a flu shot: avoiding hospital overflow. Even in pre-COVID-19 times, flu season was a busy season for our medical institutions, hospitalizing thousands of people and killing thousands more each year. That combined with the already overwhelming number of COVID-19 cases makes for a deadly combination in a few months. But, according to Fell, flu shots can help.
“The more we can vaccinate, the fewer hospitalizations and deaths we can have, and that takes the load off our medical system [and] the people treating the severe illnesses, so they are able to focus on COVID-19,” Fell said.
Our healthcare workers are already overwhelmed, so let’s give them a hand by getting our flu shots.
At this point, I think it’s fair to say that getting your flu shot is in the best interest of your personal health, your community and that of healthcare workers and the fight against COVID-19.
I understand that some people might still have reservations, but I believe that getting your flu shot is so critical that I’m going to try to predict what those reservations might be.
Potential Reservation #1: What if the flu shot gives me the flu?
It will not.
“It’s an inactive vaccine that we give, so there’s no live virus, so you can’t get influenza from our vaccine,” Fell said.
You might get mild, flu-like symptoms, such as a runny nose, as a side-effect of your body creating an antibody response, but that is not equivalent to an actual influenza case.
Potential Reservation #2: I got the flu shot last year, but I got the flu anyway, so what’s the point?
Are you sure it was the flu? According to Fell, the stomach bug, or gastroenteritis, is often mistaken for the flu. Did you have a high fever, cough, and body aches for five to seven days? That would be the flu. However, if you suffered from nausea and diarrhea, that was the stomach bug, which is completely unrelated to the flu shot.
So now that you’ve read this article, I’m sure you’re wondering how you can get your flu shot. Well, that can be taken care of in a five-minute appointment at Health Service’s next flu shot clinic on Tuesday, Oct. 13.
To sign up, just use your Gustavus login to access your Health Portal on the Gustavus Health Service website, click on “Appt. Scheduling,” select the date “10/13/2020,” and choose the time that works best for you. After that, high five yourself for a job well done. Trust me, your body and your community will thank you for getting your flu shot.