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The virus and flu season first breaks out In the Southern Hemisphere. CDC and WHO look at the strains that break out and affects the Southern Hemisphere after which these strains break out in the Northern Hemisphere. Australia and South America are the origin of these strains of flu and viruses as they move to the Northern Hemisphere. The vaccine is them prepared around August based on the new strains of virus. It is then first given to health professionals in Early October and the rest of the public by the end of October. 

So no, the vaccine is not based on last year’s Strain. 

FM
Last edited by Former Member
cain posted:

No source for the article?

AnywY that is fine...keep taking 'em if you feel it works.

 

Will post it. 

I know, it’s a personal choice and I noticed that our Guyanese community is rightfully or wrongfully not receptive towards flu shots but any medical practicioner will tell you that it is of major benefit if you are over 50 and I am not taking any chances. 

FM

What Australia's Flu Season Tells Us About Our Own

The news is good from the Southern Hemisphere, but not so good that you can skip your flu shot

 
 
 
A woman with the flu, a green scarf is wrapped around her neck and a thermometer is in her mouth. She is holding a cup of hot tea.

GETTY IMAGES

 

En espaÃąol | While August’s mostly sunny skies and warm temperatures are still to be enjoyed on our shores, the Southern Hemisphere is in the throes of winter — and flu — season, something that teams of U.S. scientists from places like the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) are closely monitoring.

The U.S. flu season tends to mirror Australia’s in particular, experts say, both in its severity and in which strains of virus are making the rounds of schools, train stations and nursing homes. So far, the news from Down Under is actually quite good.

"The flu season for this year, for 2018, in Australia has been very mild,” says Kanta Subbarao, a virologist and physician in Melbourne who is director of the World Health Organization (WHO) Collaborating Center for Reference and Research on Influenza. Part of the reason for that, she says, is that the strain known as H1N1 has predominated. “It's quite a contrast from last year, when we had a very severe flu season, with H3N2 predominating,” she notes. 

The same was true of our own most recent flu season, with H3N2 — which tends to be less deterred by flu vaccine — contributing to the 179 influenza-associated pediatric deaths and record-breaking hospitalizations, mostly of older Americans.


But if experts are optimistic about our chances of avoiding a nasty season here, they're cautiously so. Influenza, they say, is notoriously unpredictable, given its tendency to shift and mutate. In fact, another reason epidemiologists track flu so widely and watch it so closely — reporting and sharing lab results on patients at key World Health Organization sites across the globe — stems from the fear that a flu mutation could turn into something we have no existing means to fight. “Pandemics are caused when a completely novel virus emerges. And so we're always on the watch for anything that's completely new and different from anything that's circulated before,” Subbarao explains. “Because then the entire population is susceptible."

The worldwide spread of a new flu virus could be as simple as “one sick person getting on a plane,” says William Schaffner, M.D., an infectious diseases specialist at Vanderbilt University Medical Center and professor of preventive medicine and infectious diseases. â€œInfluenza is a respiratory infection — when we acquire it from someone else, we literally breathe it in from them. If someone is within three to six feet of you, they can inhale what you’ve just exhaled.”

On the rare chance that a flu strain has dangerously mutated, the WHO's worldwide surveillance system — which has evolved over the last 65 years â€” would also help in the rush to create a vaccine to fight it, as global health agencies did in a matter of weeks during 2009’s swine flu pandemic.

More often, though, the international tracking system is employed in a more routine way, for things like the formulation of a country's yearly flu vaccine, which changes based on what strains are considered likely to predominate — a task that experts note involves both reams of data and educated guesswork.

Flu vaccine effectiveness reported to the WHO from around the world, for instance, gives the CDC an indication of how a similar formulation might work here, “if circulating strains ... remain the same,” says a CDC spokesperson. That information helps the agency come up with its recommendation for the year's flu vaccine formula, which is also based on how well last year's vaccine worked.

From there, the work becomes hyperlocal: As in, it's up to you show up at your pharmacy or doctor's office to get your shot, which you can do as early as late September. Each year, flu causes some 200,000 extra hospitalizations, with excess deaths in the thousands, Schaffner says. And even if getting the vaccine doesn’t prevent you from getting the flu, it can minimize its severity and help you avoid a hospital stay. “Although we can’t prevent influenza in each and every person using the vaccine, we can shift the odds in your favor,” Schaffner says.

FM
Mitwah posted:
cain posted:

No source for the article?

AnywY that is fine...keep taking 'em if you feel it works.

I take echinacea and it works for me and my family. 

I also use Oil of Oregano and sometimes mix then together. That oil is quite harsh...burns like hell but good.

Thanks for the info yugi but I will stay away from vaccines as long as possible.

cain
Last edited by cain
yuji22 posted:
cain posted:

No source for the article?

AnywY that is fine...keep taking 'em if you feel it works.

 

Will post it. 

I know, it’s a personal choice and I noticed that our Guyanese community is rightfully or wrongfully not receptive towards flu shots but any medical practicioner will tell you that it is of major benefit if you are over 50 and I am not taking any chances. 

The flu starts in Australia and from that strain they create the vaccine  for North America, it's never 100%, but once you are over 50 it is recommended . I have been taking it for over 5 years and it helps a lot, before that the flu would put me away for a week or so, now I will get a little cough.

Yugi, the flu season starts from middle November to end of February, it is too early for the vaccine, because the vaccine is effective for two months, I take mine end of November and that would hold me through to February.

 Mid November and December is the worst time, people are up and about Christmas shopping, office parties, family dinners and New Years eve gala, so wash you hand as often as possible.

K

Thanks. I took it last year and was not sick even once. It was a surprise since I was skeptic prior to that but my doctor recommended that I took because of my age (pass 50).

My elderly parents take the shots every year and hardly ever get sick. My wife was a skeptic until she got really ill with the flu last year. She decided to take it this year. 

I am an anti germ fanatic so I carry hand sanitizers and the home and car are squeaky clean. 

FM
Last edited by Former Member

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