iHola!
The biggest motivation behind this blog, as you know, is bringing this community together in solidarity. With everything that has been happening in this country for the past few years, and the government barely doing anything effective to protect us in the moment, our best defense is taking care of each other.
As humans, we are social creatures, not all that unique to homo sapiens. For example, paleoanthropologists have actually found evidence from Neanderthal communities of care in their burial rituals.
We have been so conditioned to believe that individualism is the best way to survive, complete with institutions breaking up what concept of community we can still manage (all of which I will be ranting about in future posts), so working towards that goal is very important. However, because of everything I just said, it’s a challenge, and I hope to direct my audience to small acts they can take to support the community.
As I mentioned Saturday, science is kind of hard for the layperson to understand. In fact, I would go back to school for exercise science and/or neurobiology if I didn’t know my own limitations. There are certain facets of science that only continue to be true in medicine, and one of them is vaccination, specifically messenger RNA vaccination.
Vaccines have several different methods to protect against illness, but mRNA contains a copy of a virus in order to trigger an immune response to that virus. For the flu shot, common side effects for the standard shot include tenderness at injection site, nausea, headache, fatigue, fever, and muscle aches. For the nasal mist, common side effects also include runny nose, wheezing, sore throat, and cough. It is very heavily noted that although you may catch the illness the standard week-and-a-half they take to kick in, vaccines DO NOT cause illness.
In particular, the flu shot has specific objections.
One that I actually bought into for a while was that having to get it every year was an inconvenient pain in the butt. Its inconvenience isn’t exactly inaccurate, but there’s a very good reason for it.
Every virus has the potential to mutate. In my very personal opinion, partially because people especially don’t like getting their flu shot and never really have (even before Covid), the influenza virus tends to mutate quite a bit. That is why the shot doesn’t perfectly protect every flu season, but more importantly, influenza viruses are generally quite different year-to-year.
Virology scientists for the Center for Disease Control and Prevention track viruses and their make-up every year, and make an educated guess as to which ones are most likely to cause illness in the fall. From there, they develop a vaccine replicating those viruses.
Another cause for hesitation is that the science behind vaccines isn’t always trusted. You all know how I feel about using our ignorance to justify speaking over people with knowledge, so I won’t harp on that too much. However, as I mentioned, the science behind using messenger RNA for vaccines and medication has been studied quite a bit. I may have also written an article or two on this topic in the past. That is how I personally know some about that particular bit of science, and it’s why I now look forward to getting my influenza vaccine every year.
The last hesitation is that there are some people with immune systems that genuinely cannot handle vaccination. According to Dr. Kate Kirley, a physician and director of chronic disease prevention at the American Medical Association, the biggest risk for the flu vaccine is an allergy to the different components. Beyond that, it is strongly recommended for anyone over six months of age.
Another consideration, and the biggest one in my opinion, is because some people cannot get a vaccine to prevent the flu. If their immune system can’t even handle the usually inactivated shot, how likely are their systems to react to a full-blown illness, which killed 25,000 people last year?
As far as I know, every pharmacy in town has had the flu shot since at least late last month at no charge. However, from family experience, Walgreens may run out of vaccine early, so try to either walk-in or set an appointment by 10 in the morning.
Here are the pharmacies in town.
Flu season runs from October to May, and the vaccine can be administered any time during it. For best results, aim to get yours by Halloween. (I got mine late last month *shrug*)
Until Thursday,
Salud!
No responses yet