Dr. Anne Pham-Huy, a pediatric infectious disease specialist
at CHEO
who chairs Immunize Canada, spends a lot of time talking with her patients and their families about vaccines. She often hears misconceptions about influenza and the vaccine that protects against it.
At a time when there are urgent pleas for people to get vaccinated — especially following the
recent deaths of three young children in Ottawa and Eastern Ontario
— Pham-Huy says it is important to dispel some of those misconceptions.
It’s “just the flu”:
Flu can be serious, even deadly, especially in the elderly, the very young and those at high risk, but also in otherwise healthy people. “It can definitely be a severe disease, as we have seen. Some parents will say it’s just influenza, but it can affect healthy children. It is worse in children under five or those with medical conditions, but it potentially impacts anyone,” said Pham-Huy. Classic influenza, she said, “feels like you have been hit by a bus” and can lead to serious complications.
You can get the flu from the flu shot:
Pham-Huy said she often hears that from patients, and emphasizes that it is not true. “The injectable flu vaccine is made of inactivated virus. It is 100 per cent impossible to get flu from the flu shot.”
It is not a perfect match so there is no sense getting it:
Pham-Huy says the
influenza vaccine protects
against three strains of flu — two influenza A and one influenza B. It is a bit of a mismatch with one of the influenza A strains, which means the vaccine won’t be 100 per cent effective against it, but it will still offer protection even against the mismatched strain.
It is too late to get vaccinated because the flu is out there:
It is not too late, said Pham-Huy. Although it generally takes two weeks to be fully protected, there is
still time to get vaccinated and be protected
during the busy holiday period when people are gathering in groups. “There are still benefits.”
Influenza is not the “stomach flu”. Families sometimes confuse the two, said Pham-Huy and then believe they got the flu after having the flu shot. What is sometimes called “stomach flu” is a gastrointestinal bug that can also be highly contagious.
Only the elderly need to get it:
In fact, children under five are also at high risk for flu-related complications as well as people with immune compromise or other conditions that put them at higher risk. But the three flu-related deaths in Eastern Ontario were in children over the age of five,
a group representing a large proportion of flu cases this season
. Even healthy people can have serious outcomes from the flu, said Pham-Huy.
If the vaccine doesn’t act as a shield, it isn’t working:
Pham-Huy said the flu vaccine is just another tool to prevent the spread of influenza and severe outcomes for those who get it — “but a pretty good tool”. Even if you get infected after the vaccine, you will have a lower viral load, she said, which will reduce the extent of your illness and the amount of virus you can spread to others. People should also follow public health advice to wash their hands frequently, mask if they are feeling unwell, rest when they begin to feel achy and unwell, and drink lots of water.
