You’ve probably seen the television commercials featuring Dr. Judy Monroe, commissioner of the Indiana Department of Health.
It’s not too late, she says, to get a flu vaccine.
There are lots of doubters out there. They figure if they’ve made it this far without the vaccine, they can surely make it the rest of the way.
Monroe and other public health experts across the country disagree. During a speech this week to a public health summit in Atlanta, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius noted that the H1N1 flu remained a dangerous disease.
“The one thing we know for certain about the flu is that it’s unpredictable,” she said. “The level of H1N1 disease has declined over the past couple of months, but there’s no guarantee that trend will continue. So we need to continue to watch for an uptick in disease. And we need to continue to encourage Americans to get vaccinated, especially health care workers and those who are at high risk of complications.”
We know all of the excuses.
You probably won’t get the flu, and if you do, it probably won’t be much more than a minor inconvenience with a fever and a day or two in bed.
But that’s the problem with this virus. It’s hard to predict who will avoid it altogether and who will become deathly ill.
The best way to protect yourself and your family is to get the vaccine.
It’s true we’ve been lucky so far. The flu outbreak has been far less severe than the experts predicted. But there’s no guarantee it will stay that way.
