61 votes
Accepted

Is it advisable for a healthy male in his early 40s to take the influenza vaccine?

In general, the benefit of flu shots is to the general population. Taking the cited value of 40%-60% from the CDC, we can say that it might be a coin toss for you personally to be protected from ...
StrConDexWisIntCha's user avatar
41 votes

Is it advisable for a healthy male in his early 40s to take the influenza vaccine?

Tackling your points in turn, in inverted order: flu is an irritant but nowhere near deadly You are probably confusing the flu (influenza) with the common cold, which is colloquially often called “...
Konrad Rudolph's user avatar
17 votes

Is it advisable for a healthy male in his early 40s to take the influenza vaccine?

Influenza deaths are not specifically tracked in those over the age of 18 but they can be estimated from death certificates. CDC estimates that from 2010-2011 to 2013-2014, influenza-associated ...
Graham Chiu's user avatar
  • 13.2k
14 votes

Is it advisable for a healthy male in his early 40s to take the influenza vaccine?

Influenza vaccines do not have satisfactory effective rates of preventing flu. Flu vaccination reduces the risk of flu illness by between 40% and 60% Vaccines aren't meant to stop diseases by making ...
Alexander's user avatar
  • 249
12 votes

Is it advisable for a healthy male in his early 40s to take the influenza vaccine?

Other answers have explained why being vaccinated is generally a good idea, and I fully support the ones that do. That said, the article you've linked to does indeed present some very scary points, ...
ymbirtt's user avatar
  • 221
11 votes
Accepted

Why does the flu only happen in winter?

This is a really interesting question, because it really isn't as easy as people being a bit more susceptible in the winter. There's no definitive answer yet. Influenza Seasonality: Underlying Causes ...
YviDe's user avatar
  • 6,982
9 votes
Accepted

Flu vaccine paradox

The paradox you describe is resolved if you think about the influenza vaccine that is approved as a procedure for making an annual vaccine. It is the procedure, repeated year-after-year, that has been ...
Bryan Krause's user avatar
  • 13.8k
9 votes

What determines whether an influenza virus causes the flu or a cold?

Is Influenza the disease simply a shorthand for a disease caused by an Influenza virus that happens to clinically present as worse than a cold? Pretty much. You have to bear in mind that until the ...
Charles E. Grant's user avatar
7 votes
Accepted

Is Omicron now confirmed less lethal than influenza?

Short answer: unclear. It strongly depends on where you are in the world, your vaccination status, sex/gender, age, co-morbidities and your access to medical facilities. If you take the case of the ...
bob1's user avatar
  • 3,101
6 votes
Accepted

How do we know that the Spanish flu was an influenza?

Because we know its genomic sequence. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2720273/: Using fixed and frozen lung tissue of 1918 influenza victims, the complete genomic sequence of the 1918 ...
Franck Dernoncourt's user avatar
5 votes
Accepted

Does efficacy of the flu vaccine change if received while sick with the common-cold?

No, it doesn't Vaccines contain the same antigens (or parts of antigens) that cause diseases. For example, measles vaccine contains measles virus. But the antigens in vaccines are either killed, or ...
Narusan's user avatar
  • 6,772
5 votes

Why are two influenza vaccinations required for people under a certain age?

In 2015-16, The Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices issued a report on Prevention and Control of Influenza with Vaccines that recommended that all children (under nine years old) should get ...
Taylor's user avatar
  • 958
5 votes
Accepted

Difference between common cold and flu?

Symptoms, in short: Common cold: blocked nose, yellow/green mucus, scratchy throat lasting for 7-14 days (usually no headache, fever or fatigue), year round Hay fever (allergy to pollens): runny ...
Jan's user avatar
  • 15.8k
5 votes

Difference between common cold and flu?

In general a cold (usually rhinovirus), Influenza, or even a bacterial infection can have quite similar symptoms. If contracted through airborne particles, they primarily affect the respiratory system....
Ben Cannon's user avatar
4 votes
Accepted

Is it safe to get a flu shot when living with an elderly person?

There are two types of flu vaccine - inactivated influenza vaccine (which uses 'killed' influenza virus) and live-attenuated vaccine (which uses a more mild virus that should be asymptomatic). ...
Fomite's user avatar
  • 2,433
4 votes
Accepted

What are the earliest symptoms that can tell you it's HPS (Hantavirus Pulmonary Disease) or Flu?

In short: You cannot reliably differentiate between Hantavirus pulmonary syndrome and flu from symptoms alone. Facts About Hantaviruses (CDC.gov): Usually, people do not have a runny nose, sore ...
Jan's user avatar
  • 15.8k
4 votes
Accepted

Protection against Flu - in 1957?

Probably the flu vaccine. The first flu vaccine was developed in 1937, it only protected against one strain of the virus (we now vaccinate against three or four), but by 1942, another strain was ...
YviDe's user avatar
  • 6,982
4 votes
Accepted

Type of Flu Shot for Person in Late 30s - Which Standard Dose Provides Most Protection?

Your pharmacist or doctor should be able to decide which one is the best fit for you. Factors that are considered in recommendations include age, allergies (egg or mercury), and your medical history ...
shnisaka's user avatar
  • 176
4 votes

Is it advisable for a healthy male in his early 40s to take the influenza vaccine?

A few more points, in addition to the good answers you already have and just addressing: Does it make sense for a healthy male in his early 40s to take the influenza vaccine [...]? Short answer: ...
cbeleites unhappy with SX's user avatar
4 votes

Is there a simple plot comparing covid lethality to flu as a function of age?

Marc Bevand presents this graph of IFR versus age for both COVID-19 and flu: The sources of data are documented on this github page. There is a summary of the sources in the README file. ...
unutbu's user avatar
  • 397
3 votes

Is the 2017-2018 flu vaccine a "good match" for circulating influenza viruses?

The research into last year's flu season puts the blame on egg-based vaccine production. Reference: https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2018/2/1/16960758/flu-vaccine-effectiveness Researchers ...
user1258361's user avatar
3 votes

Should everyone take an annula flu vaccine?

The CDC recommends: Vaccination to prevent influenza is particularly important for persons who are at increased risk for severe complications from influenza, or at higher risk for influenza-related ...
Nicow's user avatar
  • 309
3 votes
Accepted

Yearly flu and cold got worse after Mononucleosis

It's possible in the same way that "anything is possible" (limiting ourselves to those things that are actually and potentially possible, i.e. a human can't sprout wings and fly; that's impossible.) ...
anongoodnurse's user avatar
3 votes
Accepted

Why would anyone choose a trivalent flu shot when there are thimerosal-free quadrivalent ones available?

My understanding is that quadrivalent flu shots are designed to build immunity to 4 flu virus strains, while trivalent flu shots are designed to build immunity to 3 flu virus strains. Is this accurate?...
YviDe's user avatar
  • 6,982
3 votes

Is it possible to get a secondary infection following a flu shot

To your questions: Is it possible to get a secondary infection following a flu shot? Can a flu shot entail a risk of secondary infection like a real flu? The Centers for Disease Control and ...
Benjamin A.'s user avatar
3 votes

Do humidifiers help cure the flu?

There is a mixed, but largely unconvincing evidence that increased moisture within the nose would help to prevent or cure flu or common cold. Common colds: Relief for a stuffy nose, cough and sore ...
Jan's user avatar
  • 15.8k
3 votes

How likely is the seasonal flu shot to protect you from a flu pandemics?

Based on the most recent large-scale and high quality Cochrane review on more than 80,000 healthy adults from 52 clinical trials aged 16 to 65 years, including pregnant women, over a single influenza ...
maaniB's user avatar
  • 461
3 votes
Accepted

Why it's said a coronavirus vaccine wont be ready for using in 12-18 months when for the H1N1 2009 outbreak there were vaccines available in 6 months?

Sorry this is a cut and paste answer from https://pharma.elsevier.com/pharma-rd/approaches-for-creating-a-covid-19-vaccine/ Before the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, no one had ever ...
Graham Chiu's user avatar
  • 13.2k
3 votes

Why it's said a coronavirus vaccine wont be ready for using in 12-18 months when for the H1N1 2009 outbreak there were vaccines available in 6 months?

There's an entire industry built around producing new influenza vaccines every year. If there's an outbreak of swine flu, H1N1, or any other disease in the Influenza A family, production of a new ...
Mark's user avatar
  • 2,013
3 votes
Accepted

Was it a lab accident or something else that re-released H1N1 in 1977?

We have a more plausible reason for the reappearance in 1977 of H1N1. The thesis is that a live attenuated version of H1N1 (LAIV) was used by Chinese scientists who innoculated several 1000s military ...
Graham Chiu's user avatar
  • 13.2k

Only top scored, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible