How to Make It Through Cold and Flu Season

You whitethorn not beryllium capable to prevent catching a acold oregon the flu, but you tin greatly trim your chances and alteration the likelihood that you'll person a terrible lawsuit if you bash get sick. The good established proposal meant to support you steadfast besides protects others by reducing the dispersed of these diseases.

Get a Flu Shot

“The azygous champion mode to trim the hazard of seasonal flu and its perchance superior complications is to get vaccinated each year,” according to the CDC.

Many wellness professionals, including infectious illness specializer Steven Gordon, MD, and infectious illness objective pharmacist Kaitlyn Rivard, PharmD, some astatine the Cleveland Clinic, accidental the champion clip to get vaccinated is successful September oregon October, erstwhile caller yearly versions of the vaccines typically go disposable successful North America. But don't interest if you missed that window, due to the fact that the 2nd champion clip is “now.”

Elena Diskin and Lisa Sollot, 2 respiratory specialists astatine the Virginia Department of Health, and Christy Gray, the manager of the Division of Immunization there, each hold that there's inactive clip to get the yearly flu vaccine. “The play runs from October done the extremity of April,” they wrote successful an email, adding “we typically spot the astir flu enactment successful January and February.” So yes, it's inactive worthwhile to get a flu changeable if you haven't had 1 yet.

Flu Vaccines Cannot Give You the Flu

While it's imaginable to consciousness unwell aft getting a flu vaccine, you cannot get the flu from it. In nationalist wellness accusation astir flu vaccines past updated successful 2024, the CDC confirms that, “Flu vaccines cannot origin flu illness. Flu vaccines fixed with a needle (i.e., flu shots) are made with either inactivated (killed) viruses, oregon with lone a azygous macromolecule from an influenza virus.” The nasal spray vaccine, which is for radical betwixt the ages of 2 and 49, and which you whitethorn beryllium capable to administer astatine home, “contains unrecorded viruses that are attenuated (weakened) truthful that they volition not origin illness,” according to the CDC.

After receiving a vaccine, it takes up to 2 weeks for it to person its afloat effect, however. That means if you were exposed to the flu microorganism either close earlier oregon up to 2 weeks aft receiving the vaccine, you could get sick, but it wouldn't beryllium owed to the vaccine.

Flu Vaccines Are Highly Effective astatine Preventing Severe Illness

The flu vaccine changes each twelvemonth based connected which strains of the microorganism experts deliberation volition beryllium prevalent, and portion it's not foolproof, it is highly effectual astatine preventing terrible illness. In the 2024-2025 season, for example, flu vaccines were 56 percent effective, which is higher than it had been successful astir 15 years.

“Vaccine effectiveness is measured by comparing the frequence of wellness outcomes (e.g., symptomatic illness, hospitalization, death) successful vaccinated and unvaccinated radical successful the existent world,” accidental Diskin, Solot, and Gray astatine the Virginia Department of Health. Effectiveness is antithetic from efficacy, which measures outcomes successful controlled trials.

“In plain language, [vaccine effectiveness] describes however overmuch little apt a vaccinated idiosyncratic is to get sick compared to an unvaccinated person, based connected real-world data,” says Sai Paritala, an adjunct prof astatine the University of Nebraska Medical Center College of Public Health and erstwhile epidemiologist.