Flu season is upon us. It starts in October and typically lasts until March. Meagan Garibay, a Nurse Practitioner at Lawton Community Health Center, said now is the best time to get vaccinated to be protected throughout this flu season.
“We start talking about it in October because that’s when all of the respiratory viruses really start ramping up,” she said. “There are others besides the flu, but the flu is one of the ones that we have a vaccine for, so that’s why they start the really big push in October.”
She said the main reason they encourage people to get vaccinated is not to prevent them from getting the flu but because they want to keep people from suffering from severe cases.
“Thousands of people die every year from the flu, still, in 2024,” Garibay said. “The majority of those people are unvaccinated, so when we tell people to get vaccinated, it’s because we want to prevent serious complications from occurring that could lead to their death.”
Garibay said a big misconception is that you can get the flu from getting a flu shot.
“There’s only one version of the flu vaccine that is what we call a ‘live vaccine’ that is the only one that would be capable of giving you the flu, and that is the nasal spray, that is not commonly used,” Garibay said.
But, she said it can cause an immune response in some, where they feel fatigued and get body aches, but that usually goes away in 24 to 48 hours and isn’t nearly as severe as what you’d feel if you had the flu.
She said it takes two weeks for it to reach its full effectiveness.
“So, we really encourage people to get their flu vaccine no later than the first week of November, that way, they are fully vaccinated by the time the holidays roll around and they start seeing relatives,” she said.
While Garibay encourages people to get the shot sooner rather than later she says they’ll still give it in December or January and it will still take a few weeks to be fully effective and you won’t be protected going into the holidays.
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