Hey everyone, welcome back to my blog! I hope you guys are ready for blog 2 because it is an important one! This week I will be discussing the flu, yes, the flu. I know many people are thinking “why the flu? this happens every year, I want to hear more about the novel coronavirus.” My answer is that the flu is an epidemic that kills thousands of people in the US, and worldwide, annually. If that doesn’t sound important to talk about, I don’t know what does! So let’s jump right into this 2019-2020 flu season and what we know about the vaccine and the disease itself!
Every year, the CDC plans for the flu season by determining what strains of the flu could be the most prominent and infectious. This flu season, the CDC has made a vaccine with four different strains that they predicted would be the most common and therefore, what we should be protected against. The CDC says that it is still early on in the flu season and so they don’t know for sure how effective the vaccine is yet, since they aren’t sure which strains are the most infectious yet. The CDC did say, however, that everyone should get the vaccination if they are able to because the vaccine could still help reduce severity, even if the spread strain isn’t the same exact strain as the one in the vaccine. I think this is a very important point that the CDC has in its flu information this year because often times, people don’t get the flu vaccine. Many people believe that there is no point in getting the flu vaccine if it doesn’t protect you. But, it is important to emphasize that even a little protection is better than none, and could make a big difference in the symptoms and outcome someone could possibly face. So everyone, please get the flu vaccine if you can, so that you have the best possible outcome if you get sick with the flu.
According to the news source CNN, this flu season is supposed to be one of the worst in years. Already, 19 million people in the United States have been infected and more than 10,000 people killed. These numbers are high and I believe that many Americans forget that the flu is this deadly, which causes more people to forgo a vaccination, contributing to the higher number of cases. Many deaths are caused by secondary infections. When someone is fighting off the flu their immune system is weakened and therefore other infections have an easier time getting in and growing inside the person. This point that CNN made further emphasizes the importance of protecting yourself from the flu because it is important to have as strong of an immune system as possible. Vaccinations are important so that you can protect yourself and your community the best you can.
Influenza often goes through antigenic drift, which mutate the strain in different ways making it harder for the CDC to predict which types will be the most common each year. As I mentioned earlier, the vaccine will still be able to offer partial protection in these cases. CNN has said that although antigenic drift is common, antigenic shift is not as common. Antigenic shift is much more dangerous to us because a completely new strain of the virus appears, which leaves people without immunity altogether. After reading through both of these sources on the flu this year, I can see that this could be a potentially dangerous flu season and that we all need to get prepared. I recommend to all my readers that you get the flu vaccine and if you get the flu to please stay inside and rest so you get better and don’t infect others.
As you can see, I feel very strongly about how important getting the vaccine is because we need to protect ourselves and our community. This flu season could potentially be worse than past seasons and we need to be as prepared as possible. So, as I have been saying in every blog post thus far, GET VACCINATED!!!!!
Thank you loyal readers and I will see you next week with a new blog post–stay tuned!
as promised, more memes for your reading pleasure:
Microbiology 