Yearly flu shots

[macuu222]

64 here. Have a year to go before Medicare kicks in. My Aetna insurance (Alaskacare) from Alaska doesn't cover preventitive medical charges of any kind except for breast cancer screening. Although they just made an exception recently for the coronavirus tests.

[terracore]

I'm not sure I'm getting a flu shot this year. If the covid responses are effective we should have the least amount of influenza in recent history, right?

Interesting experiment.

[HereOnThePrimalEdge]

From Ryan Finnerty at HPR:

Queen's Health System CEO Jill Hoggard Green says that Hawaii is in for a "devastating fall and winter" if we don't get at least 90% vaccination for the annual flu. The normal rate is around 40%.
https://twitter.com/rfinnerty1/status/13...6841859072

No details, but I would guess that if both flu & COVID are prevalent in our population, it will be difficult to know which you have, and carrier spread more likely, plus some people will get both.  A one-two punch.

[TomK]

"I'm not sure I'm getting a flu shot this year. If the covid responses are effective we should have the least amount of influenza in recent history, right?"

That assumes COVID responses are effective. At this point, I don't think they are. I'm getting the 'flu shot simply because it will reduce my chances of becoming ill. Anti-vaxxers may have a different opinion, but I don't listen to them because they don't make sense and are generally scientifically illiterate. I would say more but am being as PC as I can. Plus I don't want to become ill if all the hospital beds are used up.

[randomq]

I guess the flu shot is OK, if you don't have access to healing crystals. Just don't wear a cancer causing mask or stand next to any 5G towers and you'll be fine! /s

[macuu222]

Our Aetna insurance has made a temporary exception for covering the flu vaccine during the pandemic so we're going today to get ours. CDC highly recommends it this year with the pandemic. It won't stop from catching covid-19....but it will help the hospitals from filling up with flu related problems.

https://www.cdc.gov/flu/prevent/vaccine-benefits.htm

[ChunksterK]

Not trying to hijack the thread here, but I have a question about the timing of flu shots in Hawaii as opposed to their availability. FWIW, I got an email from Kaiser yesterday informing me that they are now giving them free at their clinics.

At least one doctor and a couple of other health professionals have told me that Hawaii has a delayed flu season compared to the mainland and that I should put off my flu shot until October or November because the immunity provided by the vaccination begins to wane after a few months. This makes sense, and I have noticed from news reports that we do tend to have a late season. The pandemic, however, has thrown everything into disarray, and previous "givens" are not necessarily true any more. Anyone have any supportable information in this regard? Thanks.