The last eight years have seen
relatively mild cases of the flu. Here's a few stats that might be
helpful...
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| 1918 Flu pandemic |
An
influenza
pandemic is an epidemic of an influenza virus that spreads on a
worldwide scale and infects a large proportion of the world
population. In contrast to the regular seasonal epidemics of
influenza, these pandemics occur irregularly—there have been about
9 influenza pandemics during the last 300 years. Pandemics can cause
high levels of mortality, with the 1918 Spanish influenza pandemic
being the worst in recorded history; this pandemic was estimated to
be responsible for the deaths of approximately 50–100 million
people. There have been about three influenza pandemics in each
century for the last 300 years, the most recent one being the 2009
flu pandemic.
You should get a flu vaccine before
flu begins spreading in your community. It takes about two weeks
after vaccination for antibodies to develop in the body that protect
against flu, so make plans to get vaccinated early in fall, before
flu season begins. CDC recommends that people get a flu vaccine by
the end of October, if possible. Getting vaccinated later, however,
can still be beneficial and vaccination should continue to be offered
throughout the flu season, even into January or later.
This fall of 2017, the composition of
U.S. flu vaccines has been reviewed and updated as needed to match
currently circulating flu viruses. Flu vaccines protect against the
three or four viruses (depending on which type of vaccine you get
shot up with) that research suggests might be most common. For
2017-2018, three-component vaccines are recommended to contain:
Quadrivalent (four-component) vaccines, which protect against a
second lineage of B viruses, are recommended to be produced using the
same viruses recommended for the trivalent vaccines, as well as a
B/Phuket/3073/2013-like (B/Yamagata lineage) virus
As of mid September, the incidents of flu in the US remained very low.
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