Knock Out the Flu With the Patient Safety Authority

This short video explains why everyone should get the flu shot every year, and why it's more important now than ever—to help protect you and your loved ones from getting influenza alongside COVID-19.

Narration: Cora Colwell
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Influenza, or “the flu”, is a contagious respiratory virus. It can be mild or severe and can sometimes lead to death. Up to 62,000 Americans died from the flu and 56 million were infected.

The good news: Many of the things we’re doing to prevent the spread of COVID-19 also help prevent the flu. Things like wearing a mask, social distancing, and washing your hands often. But the best thing you can do to protect yourself is to get a flu shot.

Even if you get a flu shot, you might still catch the flu. But your chances of getting really sick from it are a lot lower. So are your chances of dying from the flu. It also makes you less contagious, or less likely to infect someone else. That’s why getting the flu shot is so important.

There are two types of illnesses that we can vaccinate against: ones caused by bacteria, or tiny, living microorganisms that are too small to see; or viruses, even smaller germs that are not living, and cannot survive without a host, or someone to infect. Once they find a host, viruses invade cells in the host’s body. Those cells then reproduce, making more infected cells, and spread the infection throughout the host, making them sicker and sicker.

Bacteria has DNA. And when it reproduces, it makes an exact copy of itself. So when scientists make a vaccine against a bacterial infection, like pneumonia (pneumococcal) or pertussis (whooping cough), they only need to change one small bit. That makes them easier to make and is why we only need to get them once or twice to keep us safe.

Vaccines for viral infections, like the flu, are a little trickier. Unlike bacteria, viruses don’t have DNA, they have RNA. And unlike DNA, when RNA reproduces, it doesn’t make an exact copy. It changes or mutates a tiny bit. That means there can be more than one variety of the same virus. Which means that the scientists need to create a vaccine than can protect us against more than one, slightly different versions of the same virus.

That’s why we need to get a flu shot every year. The scientists are constantly looking at which versions of the flu are most likely to make us sick and update the vaccines to match. Are flu shots perfect, no? But they could absolutely mean the difference between life and death.
After you get a flu shot, it can take two weeks for your body to develop antibodies to protect you against the flu. Make sure you’re extra careful for those two weeks, wearing a mask, socially distancing, and washing your hands a lot.

Flu shots are even more important this year because of COVID-19. You could get both illnesses at the same time. Which would make you even sicker than if you had only one. If you get both the flu and COVID-19, you’re much more likely to end up in the hospital.

Protect yourself. And protect your loved ones. Let’s #KnockOutTheFluPA!

[marydit]

As a former medical provider I was mandated to get a flu shot or lose my job. Almost immediately the skin on my arm blistered from the injection site to my wrist following days I developed SEVERE angioedema dangerous levels of HTN and the skin peeled from my face those symptoms lasted for MANY MANY months. That is the LAST vaccination I will every get and I can NO LONGER recommend them either.