Influenza is here

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harllee

Give me a museum and I'll fill it. (Picasso) Give me a forum ...
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Oct 11, 2017
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Chapel Hill, NC
Influenza has started in my area. A friend who is a college professor came down with flu like symptoms a few days ago. He figured he had breakthrough Covid (he was fully vaccinated for Covid) since several students in his class had tested positive. He went to an urgent care and told his story and he was advised to be tested for both Covid and flu since they were seeing cases of both. My friend tested negative for Covid (Yah!) but positive for Influenza B (boo). Friend as pretty sick. Of course he had not been vaccinated for flu this year.

Are flu vaccines even available yet? Local CVS and Walgreens do not have any flu vaccines yet. Even if flu vaccine is available isn't the recommendation to wait to get the flu vaccine in October?
 
Wow. It's not even September yet!
 
Flu vaccines are available here. I haven't had mine yet but we got the email from work about when they'd be coming to each site to give them. They are required at my job (as is the COVID vaccine now).


We're dreading the next few months. Once school starts next week we expect urgent care volume to explode, and we've already been seeing record numbers. COVID will skyrocket as soon as school is open and flu will be back this year. We skipped flu season last year thanks to virtual learning and COVID shut downs but no such luck this year. I'd love to see another hard shut down but I doubt it will happen.
 
Seeing it in the FL Panhandle as well.

In the last 3 weeks DD and DS both had flu/COVID symptoms. Both tested negative for COVID, but it knocked them back for several days. The doc said that have had confirmed flu-B cases in last few weeks
 
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harllee said:
Influenza has started in my area. A friend who is a college professor came down with flu like symptoms a few days ago. He figured he had breakthrough Covid (he was fully vaccinated for Covid) since several students in his class had tested positive. He went to an urgent care and told his story and he was advised to be tested for both Covid and flu since they were seeing cases of both. My friend tested negative for Covid (Yah!) but positive for Influenza B (boo). Friend as pretty sick. Of course he had not been vaccinated for flu this year.

Are flu vaccines even available yet? Local CVS and Walgreens do not have any flu vaccines yet. Even if flu vaccine is available isn't the recommendation to wait to get the flu vaccine in October?
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I took this from the CDC website (see my link above), but I do wonder if it applies if the flu is making an early appearance:

September and October are generally good times to be vaccinated. Ideally, everyone should be vaccinated by the end of October. Adults, especially those older than 65, should not get vaccinated early (in July or August) because protection in this group may decrease over time. Children can get vaccinated as soon as vaccine becomes available—even if this is in July or August. Some children need two doses. For those children it is recommended to get the first dose as soon as vaccine is available, because the second needs to be given at least 4 weeks after the first. Early vaccination can also be considered for people who are in the third trimester of pregnancy, because this can help protect their infants during the first months of life (when they are too young to be vaccinated).
 
They’re recommending earlier flu vaccines this year. Flu vaccine is widely available here in PA. I’m planning to get mine tomorrow.
 
EastWest Gal said:
They’re recommending earlier flu vaccines this year. Flu vaccine is widely available here in PA. I’m planning to get mine tomorrow.
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Well, that seals the deal then. I'm getting mine early. Thanks EastWest Gal.
 
Flu vaccines are available at CVS here in the SF Bay Area. My insurance begins paying for them in September, so I will head on down to CVS this week and get mine.

When younger, I was fairly haphazard about getting vaccinated for flu. Some years I'd get it, but most years I wouldn't. Not sure what I was thinking but mostly, I wasn't thinking. Now that I'm getting older, I figure it's time to be less cavalier about the whole thing, and start behaving.
 
Three years ago DH and I both had a terrible case of flu in late February. We had been vaccinated the first week of October, doctor told me that my flu vaccine had probably lost it effectiveness and he said it is best to get the flu vaccine that last week of October. So for this year is the thinking to get the vaccine in early September? But will the vaccine effectiveness run out too soon? Can you get a flu vaccine booster around February?
 
Not really a significant factor in NC yet, GA evidently along with AZ and FL. One case is anecdotal. But we’ll get our flu shots earlier than normal this year, along with a Covid booster.

https://www.cdc.gov/flu/weekly/usmap.htm
 

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disneysteve said:
We're dreading the next few months. Once school starts next week we expect urgent care volume to explode, and we've already been seeing record numbers. COVID will skyrocket as soon as school is open and flu will be back this year. We skipped flu season last year thanks to virtual learning and COVID shut downs but no such luck this year. I'd love to see another hard shut down but I doubt it will happen.
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This.

I don't know what incentive we have to let the school open for physical attendence. Delta is 3x more transmissible, half of the incubation time, and vaccines are not blocking them.

Just take a look at the recent new case and covid death trend. There is no peak in sight. We still don't have vaccines for kids younger than 12 and we are sending them back to school.

While vaccinations make the symptoms milder, they also allow infected people walking around thinking they don't have COVID and spread more virus when the delta's viral load between vaccinated and unvaccinated are indistinguishable.

It appears we can't adapt, and we refuse to learn from last year's lesson. That plus the fact winter is coming. If that is not the perfect storm, I don't know what is.

I feel sorry for healthcare workers who are already in consistent shortage before the COVID waves. It costs so much time, effort, and money to develope their expertise and experience, and we are just wasting them away like cheap labor.

The strange thing is people are still planning traveling for the holiday season like the transmission is not important as long as we are vaccinated. More transmission means higher chance for the virus to develope immunity resistance. It is only the matter of time.

Sent from my Moto G (5) Plus using Early Retirement Forum mobile app
 
Early Bird Gets the Flu: What Should Be Done About Waning Intraseasonal Immunity Against Seasonal Influenza?

https://academic.oup.com/cid/article/68/7/1235/5086704

"These studies all reach the same conclusion: VE declines after vaccination and does so perhaps more rapidly than previously thought, particularly for A/H3N2 and B subtypes. Many factors affect influenza VE, including age, prior vaccination, prior infection, antigentic drift, and decline of HA/NA titers. However, waning intraseasonal immunity appears to be a real phenomenon and if an individual was vaccinated in August—when advertising campaigns for the vaccine begin—he or she may be susceptible to the influenza virus by January or February, months with maximal infection rates."

VE = Vaccine Effectiveness, I believe.
 
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harllee said:
Three years ago DH and I both had a terrible case of flu in late February. We had been vaccinated the first week of October, doctor told me that my flu vaccine had probably lost it effectiveness and he said it is best to get the flu vaccine that last week of October. So for this year is the thinking to get the vaccine in early September? But will the vaccine effectiveness run out too soon? Can you get a flu vaccine booster around February?
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Absolutely, just go in and ask for a flu shot. Probably will have to pay for it, but can shop around since insurance won't pay for 2 shots.

Maybe this is why they have the stronger dose one for old folks. My doc gave me that one last year without my asking, guess I qualified :eek:
 
Got my flu shot at CVS today. Smooth as silk. The tech said they’ve been inundated since the Pzifer vaccine was approved.
 
Fielding said:
Early Bird Gets the Flu: What Should Be Done About Waning Intraseasonal Immunity Against Seasonal Influenza?


"These studies all reach the same conclusion: VE declines after vaccination and does so perhaps more rapidly than previously thought,
VE = Vaccine Effectiveness, I believe.
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Interesting, I was aware of the concept but this is a nice article. From a public health perspective the problem is that only half the population gets vaccinated so they want to start pushing the vaccine as soon as possible hoping to get as many folks as possible. From an individual perspective I always waited until late October or even November to be closer to actual "flu: season. The hospitals are under some pressure from CMS to get staff vaccinated. They hospital started reminding people in September and getting insistent some time in November.
 
EastWest Gal said:
They’re recommending earlier flu vaccines this year. Flu vaccine is widely available here in PA. I’m planning to get mine tomorrow.
Click to expand...

Oy vey! Including both the seasonal flu shot and the COVID booster shot I'll get later this year, I'm on track for getting at least six vaccination shots in 2021. That's five more than I usually get in a year. I hope my immune system is up to the task! :ermm:
 
grasshopper said:
Geography lesson New Mexico is east of Arizona, minimal flu in AZ.
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Darn. Maybe New Mexico left the country again? :D It seems to happen quite often according to many people in the other 49 states

While helping his daughter relocate from Florida to New Mexico, Santa Fean Reagan Burkholder took on the task of shipping some large boxes. He carted them to a UPS franchise store, where the clerk warned him that shipping would be very expensive. “Why?” he asked. “UPS considers the shipment to be international,” the clerk said.
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RetMD21 said:
... ...They hospital started reminding people in September and getting insistent some time in November.
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SIL's hospital requires flu vax by November. She usually gets hers in October. We always got ours when they came out in August as we're traveling int'l in early September so want some protection. We'll wait until end of Sept this year to coincide with our Jan/Feb peak.
 
Got a flu jab 3 days ago at Walgreens (Arizona). No line or wait at all. This is early for me, usually take the flu shot in late Sept. I'll consider another flu jab in Feb if it ends up being a bad year. I anticipate wanting the Covid booster as soon as released for the general population. I had a pretty strong adverse reaction to the second covid shot and no way would I want a flu jab and a covid booster on the same day or close together. Flu shots are always non-events for me though.
 
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