Get a flu shot

[lauradi7dw]

    WGBH radio has a daily talk show with the uncreative name "Boston Public Radio."  I only listen to bits of it.  Today Juliette Kayyem was being interviewed about all the Secret Service screw-ups.  They chatted for quite a while, and then it was the end of her segment.  She asked to make one last statement to the listening audience.  It was "Get a flu shot."  The hosts were confused about the connection.  She said that things are falling apart all over (might not have phrased it that way), and we really don't need a flu epidemic on top of it.  The next guest was medical ethicist Art Caplan, talking about Ebola, mostly.  At the end of his segment, he said "Get a flu shot."  In this case, it's because Ebola often begins with  flu-like symptoms, so if lots of people get the flu, the amount of Ebola panic would increase.
     I got mine last week.

Comments

[tudorpot.livejournal.com]

Many of your fellow USAians will die of the flu - sadly some due to lack of health care related to costs/lack of insurance. Worrying about Ebola is out of proportion to the risk to the population at large.

[lauradi7.livejournal.com]

There have been a number of psychological studies about why people worry more about (for example) being bitten by sharks than by being hit by a car while crossing the street to the beach. Our media don't help with this, sensationalizing the outlier threats.
I know a lot of people who seem proud at their refusal to get a flu shot, including those who are scornful of anti-vax folks in other contexts. It's a mystery to me - are they proving how tough they are, or how much smarter they are than the people who decide (months in advance) which strains to include? People who should know better often seem convinced that they will catch the flu from the shot (not possible, although apparently it's possible from the nose spray). And everybody knows people who have had the flu and been fine after a couple of miserable weeks. I've known elderly or already ill people who have died of pneumonia, but don't know anyone who has died of the flu., and I expect that's true of most people. That doesn't mean that I don't think it's dangerous, but it makes it harder for the CDC to convince people that it can be deadly.
Despite the Ebola patient in Texas, I think the currently trendy disease to worry about is enterovirus D68 - a little girl with that ailment died yesterday in Massachusetts, so all feverish or lethargic children in the US will cause panicky reactions for a while, I expect.