When You Get the Flu Can You Get It Again
Dispelling misinformation virtually the flu vaccine, sickness, treatment, and recovery
If you've always had the flu, yous know how ill you can be. Chances are good that some of the communication friends and family gave you about avoiding or dealing with the flu was incorrect. There seems to exist no shortage of misinformation and bad advice when it comes to dealing with the influenza and the flu shot.
Here are 10 common myths virtually the flu.
- MYTH: You can catch the flu from the vaccine.
The influenza shot is made from an inactivated virus that can't transmit infection. And so, people who become sick after receiving a flu vaccination were going to get sick anyway. Information technology takes a week or two to get protection from the vaccine. But people presume that because they got ill later getting the vaccine, the flu shot caused their illness.
- MYTH: Healthy people don't need to exist vaccinated.
While it'southward especially of import for people who have a chronic illness to get the flu shot, anyone — even good for you folks — can benefit from being vaccinated. Electric current CDC guidelines recommend yearly vaccination against influenza for everyone older than vi months of historic period, including pregnant women.
- MYTH: Getting the flu vaccination is all you demand to exercise to protect yourself from the flu.
In that location are a number of steps yous can take to protect yourself during influenza season likewise vaccination. Avoid contact with people who have the influenza, wash your hands frequently, and consider taking anti-viral medications if you were exposed to the flu before being vaccinated.
- MYTH: The influenza is merely a bad cold.
Influenza may cause bad cold symptoms, like sore throat, runny nose, sneezing, hoarseness, and cough. But according to CDC, the 2019-20 flu flavor led to at least 18 million medical visits, 24,000 deaths and 410,000 hospitalizations. The cumulative hospitalization rate for children ages four and nether this flu flavor was 95.1 per 100,000 people as of the calendar week ending on April 25, 2020. Experts attribute the high number of pediatric deaths to a "double barrel" flu season where both influenza A and B were ascendant. It's not likewise belatedly to get a flu shot. Even if information technology doesn't prevent you from getting the flu, information technology can decrease the chance of severe symptoms.
- MYTH: Y'all can't spread the influenza if you're feeling well.
Actually, 20% to xxx% of people conveying the influenza virus have no symptoms.
- MYTH: You don't need to get a flu shot every year.
The influenza virus changes (mutates) each year. And so, getting vaccinated each twelvemonth is important to make certain you have immunity to the strains most likely to crusade an outbreak.
- MYTH: Y'all tin can take hold of the flu from going out in cold weather without a coat, with wet pilus or past sitting about a drafty window.
The only manner to grab the flu is by being exposed to the influenza virus. Flu season coincides with the cold atmospheric condition. And so, people often associate the flu with a common cold, drafty environs. But they are not related.
- MYTH: Feed a common cold, starve a fever.
If you have the flu (or a common cold) and a fever, you need more than fluids. There's little reason to increase or decrease how much you swallow. Though you may have no appetite, "starving" yourself will accomplish lilliputian. And poor nutrition will non help you become meliorate.
- MYTH: Chicken soup will speed your recovery from the influenza.
Hot liquids can soothe a sore pharynx and provide much needed fluids. Just craven soup has no other specific qualities that can aid fight the influenza.
- MYTH: If you have a high fever with the influenza that lasts more than a solar day or two, antibiotics may be necessary.
Antibiotics work well against leaner, simply they aren't effective for a viral infection similar the flu. And so again, some people develop a bacterial infection as a complication of the flu, so it may be a skillful idea to become checked out if your symptoms drag on or worsen.
The flu is a good example of how medical myths tin get in the way of good medical care. When information technology's flu flavor, accept the necessary steps to stay good for you. That includes separating fact from myth.
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Source: https://www.health.harvard.edu/diseases-and-conditions/10-flu-myths
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