So that flu shot you got isn’t going to be 100% effective this year…
That doesn’t mean that you didn’t make a great decision getting your family vaccinated and protected! Or that you shouldn’t still take the time to go out and get a flu shot if you haven’t yet.
The flu vaccine works, even if it isn’t perfect.
Benefits of the Flu Shot
What good is the flu shot if it doesn’t completely eliminate your risk of catching the flu?
How about the simple fact that even if doesn’t completely eliminate that risk 100%, a flu shot does decrease your risk of getting sick with the flu?
But it doesn’t end there.
Other benefits of a yearly flu shot include that it can:
- reduce the risk of flu-associated death in children with underlying high-risk medical conditions by just over half (51%)
- reduce the risk of flu-associated death in healthy children by just over two thirds (65%) – this is important, because despite what most people believe, many of the kids who die with the flu each year don’t have any underlying health problems
- reduce how sick you get, even if you do get the flu, reducing “deaths, intensive care unit (ICU) admissions, ICU length of stay, and overall duration of hospitalization among hospitalized flu patients.”
- reduce the risk of the babies getting hospitalized in their first 6 months when pregnant moms got a flu shot
- reduce asthma attacks leading to emergency visits and/or hospitalizations in people with asthma
Getting vaccinated can also reduce the risk that you get sick with the flu and get someone else sick.
Considering all of these benefits, it is hard to imagine why anyone wouldn’t get a flu shot, even in year’s when it might just be 60% or even 40% effective.
I mean, it isn’t like the flu shot is actually going to give you the flu or anything…
Have you gotten your flu shot yet this flu season?
What to Know About the Benefits of the Flu Shot
In addition to helping you avoid getting sick with the flu, getting a yearly flu shot has many other indirect benefits, so that even if you get the flu, it can help you avoid getting really sick and ending up in the hospital, ICU, or getting so sick that you don’t survive.
More on the Benefits of the Flu Shot
- Why Do Kids Die With the Flu?
- I’m Not Anti-Vaccine, I Just Don’t Believe in Flu Shots
- What Are the Benefits of the Flu Shot?
- Are Flu Deaths Exaggerated?
- Were More Than Half of the Kids with Severe or Fatal Influenza in California Last Year Vaccinated?
- Are Vaccinated Children Dying from the Flu?
- Updated Recommendations to Prevent and Control the Flu from the CDC
- Warning Signs of a Severe Case of the Flu
- Treating the Flu and Hard to Control Flu Symptoms
- Ask the Experts about Influenza Vaccines
- Study – Influenza-Associated Pediatric Deaths in the United States, 2010–2016
- CDC – Study of Flu-Related Deaths in Children Shows Healthy Children at Risk
- CDC Reports About 90 Percent of Children Who Died From Flu This Season Not Vaccinated
- Comment – Have you herd? Indirect flu vaccine effects are critically important
- Study – Influenza Vaccine Effectiveness Against Pediatric Deaths: 2010–2014
- Study – Influenza Vaccination Modifies Disease Severity Among Community-dwelling Adults Hospitalized With Influenza
- Study – Influenza vaccine given to pregnant women reduces hospitalization due to influenza in their infants
- Study – Influenza Vaccination of Pregnant Women and Protection of Their Infants
- Study – Effectiveness of Influenza Vaccines in Asthma: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis
- Study – Effect of mass paediatric influenza vaccination on existing influenza vaccination programmes in England and Wales: a modelling and cost-effectiveness analysis.
- 147 Kids Died From Flu Last Year. My Scarlet Was One of Them
- Why Get A Flu Shot?
- The flu vaccine does not cause the flu
- If I Had Gotten the Flu Shot
- CDC – What are the benefits of flu vaccination?
Last Updated on January 14, 2020