Commentary: Inoculating against flu-season myths

This season, you could protect yourself from the flu by holding your breath on elevators and avoiding touching handrails, doorknobs, faucets, arm rests, keyboards, money, mail and anyone wishing to shake your hand.

Or you could get the flu shot.

Vaccines are now stronger and more reliable than ever, and a shot taken today could offer protection until the end of the flu season, which usually fades around April or May. Unfortunately, too few of us are getting vaccinated.

Between 3,000 and 50,000 people die from the flu each year in the U.S., depending on the severity of the season, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. To put that in perspective, as of October, one person in the United States died from the Ebola virus.

The CDC recommends that everyone 6 months of age and older gets vaccinated against the flu every year, with rare exceptions. But fewer than half of eligible people got the flu vaccine last year. If 70% of them had received the shot, the CDC estimates, about 4.4 million illnesses and 30,000 hospitalizations might have been prevented.

The reason for the poor showing? It turns out that myths are just as communicable as the flu. As misinformation spreads from person to person, it wreaks havoc on public health.

Myth No. 1: Getting the flu shot will give you the flu

The flu shot does not cause the flu.

It takes about two weeks after receiving the flu shot for the body to produce the antibodies needed to fight off the flu. So if you get sick during that time, it could mean you were already coming down with something.

Myth No. 2: The flu shot doesn’t protect against the current flu strain.

While it is true that the flu can be hard to predict, we base our vaccine choices on surveillance: When it’s summer here, it’s winter in Rio, and we keep an eye on what bug is plaguing the Southern Hemisphere.

Myth No. 3: Hand washing is more effective than the vaccine.

Hand washing is an important part of flu prevention, but it only takes you so far. Every year, Hoag Hospital urgent care facilities are filled with flu patients who relied on Purell alone.

The vaccine is low-cost or free. It is safe, effective and widely available.

So to avoid the flu, you could hide from humanity between October and May. Or you could roll up your sleeve and protect yourself from a preventable, and miserable, disease.

PHILIP ROBINSON is medical director of infection, prevention and epidemiology at Hoag Hospital.