November 21, 2024 • 14 mins
When it comes to influenza, what you don't know can hurt you. Learn some of the most common misconceptions about the flu (and flu vaccines), plus the truth behind them, in today's episode of BrainStuff, based on this article: https://science.howstuffworks.com/life/cellular-microscopic/10-flu-misconceptions.htm
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to brain Stuff, a production of iHeartRadio, Hey brain
Stuff Lauren Vogelbaum here. Influenza is such a common part
of our lives that it's easy to forget how dangerous
this viral infection can be. The reason it comes back
year after year is that the flu virus isn't a monolith.
(00:23):
It's constantly evolving and developing different strains. So even if
your immune system foughted off last year, your body probably
won't recognize the new strains going around this year, and
therefore won't fight it off before it makes you sick.
Every year, about a billion people around the world get
the flu, some five to ten percent of adults and
(00:46):
twenty to thirty percent of children. The virus attacks your
respiratory system, including the nose, throat, and lungs. The symptoms
include fever, coughing, painfully sore throat, muscle aches, headaches, and
extreme tea. Although most people recover in anywhere from a
few days to a couple weeks, However, there are some
(01:08):
three to five millions severe cases every year in which
a flu patient can also develop severe dehydration, sepsis, and
organ failure. Also, it weakens your body, making you more
vulnerable to secondary infections. Overall, about a million people die
every year due to influenza. It's also really expensive, not
(01:32):
that that's anywhere near as important as a human life,
but in the US alone, we spend over ten billion
dollars a year in flu related medical expenses, and we
lose out on an additional sixteen billion dollars in potential
earnings while we're sick. All of this is especially wild
considering that the flu is highly preventable. One of the
(01:56):
kindest and most helpful things you can do for your
fellow humans is to stay home if you're sick, and
if you have to go out, mask up and keep
your hands washed to avoid spreading the infection. But beyond that,
every year, teams of researchers around the globe work together
to watch strains of the flu as they develop, and
(02:16):
then make an educated guess about the strains most likely
to cause a problem in the coming year. Every individual
country reviews that data and then decides which strains to
create that year's vaccines to fight specifically against. The Centers
for Disease Control and Prevention or CDC recommends that all
Americans ages six months in older get the flu vaccine
(02:39):
every year. Unfortunately, there's a lot of misinformation out there
about the seriousness of the flu and the safety and
effectiveness of flu vaccines, which can prevent people from taking
simple precautions to prevent getting sick and help stop the spread.
So today, let's talk through some of those misconceptions. First up,
(03:02):
there's the idea that getting the flu isn't any different
than getting a bad cold, But that's not true. Colds
can be serious too, but some strains of the flu
have killed millions of people, such as the pandemic of
nineteen eighteen, which killed somewhere between twenty and fifty million
people worldwide, more than the number who died in World
(03:23):
War One. Many flu related deaths actually occur a week
or two after a person comes down with the flu,
when they develop a secondary infection, such as bacterial pneumonia.
In other cases, the flu aggravates an existing chronic illness,
like congestive heart failure or chronic pulmonary heart disease. People
(03:44):
with asthma may experience potentially fatal attacks when they come
down with the flu, so yes, it is more serious
than the common cold. Next up, there's the idea that
going outside in cold weather will make you more likely
to catch the flu, especially if your hair is wet
or you're not wearing a hat or a coat, or
(04:04):
even that you're more likely to get the flu if
you sit by a drafty window. It is true that
the peak months for flu infections are in the winter,
when it's colder outside and the air is drier, and
it's probably true that cold weather can dampen your immune
system a bit. Researchers think that because we get less
(04:24):
sun in the winter, our bodies may be low on
vitamin D, which is essential to immune system function. That cold,
dry air may also make it easier for the flu
virus to get in through your nose, because that air
dries out our mucous membranes and constricts their blood vessels there,
So the virus isn't stopped by mucus or white blood cells.
(04:48):
But this myth seems to be a case of correlation
versus causation. The flu, after all, isn't blocked by a
coat or a hat. It's transmitted through tiny droplets that
a sick person breathes out or coughs out or sneezes
out that then hang in the air and can be
inhaled by someone else. So experts think that the reason
(05:10):
for the uptick and illness in the winter is that
people spend more time indoors in close quarters with each other,
so if one person is sick, it's more likely that
other people will be exposed. It's technically staying in, not
going out in the cold that makes us more susceptible
to the flu in winter. Then there's the idea that
(05:31):
if you haven't caught the flu by December in the
northern hemisphere anyway, you're gonna avoid it that year. This
is a remarkably persistent belief, but there's really no truth
to it. The timing of flu outbreaks is unpredictable from
year to year, but data show that February has been
the peak month about half the time, with January and
March being the runners up. So even if you haven't
(05:54):
gotten sick by the end of the year, it's absolutely
still worth getting vaccine to help keep you healthy in
the new year. Let's talk about that vaccine. One of
the most pervasive myths about the flu is that the
vaccine doesn't work, And okay, it doesn't always work any
given years, flu vaccine will be effective in preventing a
(06:15):
recipient from getting the flu about sixty percent of the time.
How well it works depends upon your age and your health.
Young healthy people are most likely to get the desired results.
Another factor is how well this year's vaccine matches the
flu strain that emerges as a print. But even if
(06:36):
you get a flu shot and still get the flu,
your precaution didn't go entirely to waste. The vaccine can
help to protect you against some of the diseases harsher complications. Furthermore,
the flu vaccine absolutely cannot give you the flu. The
types of flu vaccine that are injected use what's called
(06:57):
inactivated viruses. We say inactive instead of dead, because there's
scientific argument about whether viruses can ever really be considered
alive in the first place. But yes, the viruses that
go into vaccines have been chemically inactivated. The process leaves
just enough proteins in the outer coating of the virus
intact that it tricks your immune system into thinking that
(07:20):
the virus is a threat. That causes your body to
produce white blood cells that are primed to attack any
subsequent viral invader that has those same telltale proteins. In
its coating. Meanwhile, the nasal spray types of flu vaccine,
like flu Mist, which is sometimes given to kids, do
contain active flu viruses, but they've been weakened and what's
(07:44):
called cold adapted, meaning that the viruses can only live
in the relatively cool temperatures found in the nose. They
can't survive in the heat of the rest of your body.
It works because white blood cells fight off the virus
in the nose and then transmit information about it to
the rest of the body, but which itself has stayed safe.
(08:07):
That said, the flu vaccine can sometimes cause side effects.
You might experience a bit of swelling or redness at
the side of an injection, or a low grade fever, headache,
or a bit of a throat scratch and sniffle. These
are all signs that your immune system is reacting to
the vaccine as intended. It's on high alert, attempting to
(08:28):
prevent infection from what it sees as a threat, and
therefore producing these annoying symptoms. But okay, how long does
the vaccine keep you safe? Another misconception out there is
that if you get a flu shot to early in
the season, it'll wear off before spring has sprung. This
(08:49):
one germinated from a seed of truth. Health authorities used
to be concerned about the possibility of this, but as
of the early two thousands, research has shown that the
immune that you gain from the vaccine will generally last
until the flu season ends in the spring. In some cases,
a person's immunity may last for as long as a year,
(09:10):
so experts urge everyone to get their flu shots as
soon as possible so that we're protected throughout the entire
flu season. That's not to say that you don't need
to get vaccinated every year. The body's immunity does indeed
decline over time, and as we said early on in
this episode, flu viruses don't just stay the same year
(09:30):
after year. They mutate and evolve very quickly in order
to survive. Unlike plants and animals, including humans, the only
way a virus can reproduce itself is by invading a
host cell and injecting its genetic material into that cell.
That material then gives the cell instructions to make more
copies of the virus, which then kills the cell and
(09:52):
spreads to other cells. But post organisms like the human
body don't go along with this. Willingly, our immune system
learns to recognize those distinctive proteins out a particular virus's
outer coding and attack it. Thus, in order to overcome
that obstacle, viruses continually have to reinvent themselves and become
(10:13):
essentially new attackers that your body won't recognize. This can
and does happen in less than a year, and that's
why we have to get an annual vaccination to protect
against these new threats. The flu vaccine and vaccines in general,
are very safe. They are profusely studied, and healthcare professionals
(10:33):
wouldn't recommend them if they were more dangerous than the
diseases they protect against. In that vein, let's talk about
the myth that vaccines like the flu vaccine can cause autism.
This is absolutely not true, and it stems from a
scientifically bad article that somehow mistakedly made it through the
(10:55):
publishing process to appear in the esteemed British medical journal
The Lancet in nineteen ninety eight. In this article, the
authors claimed to have found links between a childhood vaccination
for measles, bumps and rubella two a loss of developmental
skills in children. This prompted a lot of further research
(11:16):
and review. The scientists have since proven that there is
no link between vaccines and autism, and furthermore, researchers and
journalists uncovered the fact that the authors of that Landset
paper deliberately falsified facts and picked and shows data in
order to come up with their result because they were
(11:37):
hoping to make a lot of money selling pre autism
test kits to scared parents. The authors of that paper
are no longer allowed to practice medicine because of this
deliberate fraud. The lead author, by the way, was one
Andrew Wakefield, and he is still out there trying to
fraudulently scare people out of their money. So watch out
(11:59):
for anything that Andrew Wakefield is connected to. Some people
have also raised questions about thy marisol, which is a
preservative containing mercury that started being used in some vaccines
and other products back in the nineteen thirties. Because the
seasonal flu vaccine is produced in large quantities for annual
immunization campaigns, some multi dose files contain this preservative to
(12:23):
protect against contamination once the containers are opened. According to
the CDC, there is no scientific evidence that thy marasol
causes any harmed people except for minor reactions such as
redness and swelling at the injection site. But irregardless, there's
no hazard to children because only adults get any vaccines
(12:45):
containing the preservative. Out of an abundance of caution, the
US Food and Drug Administration eliminated the use of this
preservative in medications given to children back in two thousand
and one. Our understanding of health and the human body
is updating all the time, but again, vaccines are made
to be as safe as possible. One important caveat here
(13:10):
there are some people who shouldn't get a flu shot
without first consulting a healthcare provider. This includes people who
are severely allergic to chicken eggs because egg protein is
used in some vaccine formulations. Also, anyone with a family
history of gian Bar syndrome, which is a paralytic illness,
should talk to their provider about the extremely small increased risk.
(13:34):
And if you already have a moderate severe illness with
a fever, you should wait to get healthy before getting
any vaccine so that your immune system is only dealing
with one thing at a time. We live in an
amazing era wherein we know so much more about our
bodies and the microbes that cause disease that anyone even
(13:55):
dreamed of more than two hundred years ago. Because of vaccines,
there are so many terrible diseases that we no longer
have to suffer from, or that we can at least
extremely reduce our chance of getting So get out to
a healthcare provider for a flu shot and talk to
them about it if you have any other concerns. Today's
(14:21):
episode is based on the article ten Misconceptions about the
flu on HowStuffWorks dot Com, written by Patrick J. Hider.
Brainstuff is a production of by Heart Radio in partnership
with how Stuffworks dot Com and is produced by Tyler Klang.
Four more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows
Welcome to brain Stuff, a production of iHeartRadio, Hey brain
Stuff Lauren Vogelbaum here. Influenza is such a common part
of our lives that it's easy to forget how dangerous
this viral infection can be. The reason it comes back
year after year is that the flu virus isn't a monolith.
(00:23):
It's constantly evolving and developing different strains. So even if
your immune system foughted off last year, your body probably
won't recognize the new strains going around this year, and
therefore won't fight it off before it makes you sick.
Every year, about a billion people around the world get
the flu, some five to ten percent of adults and
(00:46):
twenty to thirty percent of children. The virus attacks your
respiratory system, including the nose, throat, and lungs. The symptoms
include fever, coughing, painfully sore throat, muscle aches, headaches, and
extreme tea. Although most people recover in anywhere from a
few days to a couple weeks, However, there are some
(01:08):
three to five millions severe cases every year in which
a flu patient can also develop severe dehydration, sepsis, and
organ failure. Also, it weakens your body, making you more
vulnerable to secondary infections. Overall, about a million people die
every year due to influenza. It's also really expensive, not
(01:32):
that that's anywhere near as important as a human life,
but in the US alone, we spend over ten billion
dollars a year in flu related medical expenses, and we
lose out on an additional sixteen billion dollars in potential
earnings while we're sick. All of this is especially wild
considering that the flu is highly preventable. One of the
(01:56):
kindest and most helpful things you can do for your
fellow humans is to stay home if you're sick, and
if you have to go out, mask up and keep
your hands washed to avoid spreading the infection. But beyond that,
every year, teams of researchers around the globe work together
to watch strains of the flu as they develop, and
(02:16):
then make an educated guess about the strains most likely
to cause a problem in the coming year. Every individual
country reviews that data and then decides which strains to
create that year's vaccines to fight specifically against. The Centers
for Disease Control and Prevention or CDC recommends that all
Americans ages six months in older get the flu vaccine
(02:39):
every year. Unfortunately, there's a lot of misinformation out there
about the seriousness of the flu and the safety and
effectiveness of flu vaccines, which can prevent people from taking
simple precautions to prevent getting sick and help stop the spread.
So today, let's talk through some of those misconceptions. First up,
(03:02):
there's the idea that getting the flu isn't any different
than getting a bad cold, But that's not true. Colds
can be serious too, but some strains of the flu
have killed millions of people, such as the pandemic of
nineteen eighteen, which killed somewhere between twenty and fifty million
people worldwide, more than the number who died in World
(03:23):
War One. Many flu related deaths actually occur a week
or two after a person comes down with the flu,
when they develop a secondary infection, such as bacterial pneumonia.
In other cases, the flu aggravates an existing chronic illness,
like congestive heart failure or chronic pulmonary heart disease. People
(03:44):
with asthma may experience potentially fatal attacks when they come
down with the flu, so yes, it is more serious
than the common cold. Next up, there's the idea that
going outside in cold weather will make you more likely
to catch the flu, especially if your hair is wet
or you're not wearing a hat or a coat, or
(04:04):
even that you're more likely to get the flu if
you sit by a drafty window. It is true that
the peak months for flu infections are in the winter,
when it's colder outside and the air is drier, and
it's probably true that cold weather can dampen your immune
system a bit. Researchers think that because we get less
(04:24):
sun in the winter, our bodies may be low on
vitamin D, which is essential to immune system function. That cold,
dry air may also make it easier for the flu
virus to get in through your nose, because that air
dries out our mucous membranes and constricts their blood vessels there,
So the virus isn't stopped by mucus or white blood cells.
(04:48):
But this myth seems to be a case of correlation
versus causation. The flu, after all, isn't blocked by a
coat or a hat. It's transmitted through tiny droplets that
a sick person breathes out or coughs out or sneezes
out that then hang in the air and can be
inhaled by someone else. So experts think that the reason
(05:10):
for the uptick and illness in the winter is that
people spend more time indoors in close quarters with each other,
so if one person is sick, it's more likely that
other people will be exposed. It's technically staying in, not
going out in the cold that makes us more susceptible
to the flu in winter. Then there's the idea that
(05:31):
if you haven't caught the flu by December in the
northern hemisphere anyway, you're gonna avoid it that year. This
is a remarkably persistent belief, but there's really no truth
to it. The timing of flu outbreaks is unpredictable from
year to year, but data show that February has been
the peak month about half the time, with January and
March being the runners up. So even if you haven't
(05:54):
gotten sick by the end of the year, it's absolutely
still worth getting vaccine to help keep you healthy in
the new year. Let's talk about that vaccine. One of
the most pervasive myths about the flu is that the
vaccine doesn't work, And okay, it doesn't always work any
given years, flu vaccine will be effective in preventing a
(06:15):
recipient from getting the flu about sixty percent of the time.
How well it works depends upon your age and your health.
Young healthy people are most likely to get the desired results.
Another factor is how well this year's vaccine matches the
flu strain that emerges as a print. But even if
(06:36):
you get a flu shot and still get the flu,
your precaution didn't go entirely to waste. The vaccine can
help to protect you against some of the diseases harsher complications. Furthermore,
the flu vaccine absolutely cannot give you the flu. The
types of flu vaccine that are injected use what's called
(06:57):
inactivated viruses. We say inactive instead of dead, because there's
scientific argument about whether viruses can ever really be considered
alive in the first place. But yes, the viruses that
go into vaccines have been chemically inactivated. The process leaves
just enough proteins in the outer coating of the virus
intact that it tricks your immune system into thinking that
(07:20):
the virus is a threat. That causes your body to
produce white blood cells that are primed to attack any
subsequent viral invader that has those same telltale proteins. In
its coating. Meanwhile, the nasal spray types of flu vaccine,
like flu Mist, which is sometimes given to kids, do
contain active flu viruses, but they've been weakened and what's
(07:44):
called cold adapted, meaning that the viruses can only live
in the relatively cool temperatures found in the nose. They
can't survive in the heat of the rest of your body.
It works because white blood cells fight off the virus
in the nose and then transmit information about it to
the rest of the body, but which itself has stayed safe.
(08:07):
That said, the flu vaccine can sometimes cause side effects.
You might experience a bit of swelling or redness at
the side of an injection, or a low grade fever, headache,
or a bit of a throat scratch and sniffle. These
are all signs that your immune system is reacting to
the vaccine as intended. It's on high alert, attempting to
(08:28):
prevent infection from what it sees as a threat, and
therefore producing these annoying symptoms. But okay, how long does
the vaccine keep you safe? Another misconception out there is
that if you get a flu shot to early in
the season, it'll wear off before spring has sprung. This
(08:49):
one germinated from a seed of truth. Health authorities used
to be concerned about the possibility of this, but as
of the early two thousands, research has shown that the
immune that you gain from the vaccine will generally last
until the flu season ends in the spring. In some cases,
a person's immunity may last for as long as a year,
(09:10):
so experts urge everyone to get their flu shots as
soon as possible so that we're protected throughout the entire
flu season. That's not to say that you don't need
to get vaccinated every year. The body's immunity does indeed
decline over time, and as we said early on in
this episode, flu viruses don't just stay the same year
(09:30):
after year. They mutate and evolve very quickly in order
to survive. Unlike plants and animals, including humans, the only
way a virus can reproduce itself is by invading a
host cell and injecting its genetic material into that cell.
That material then gives the cell instructions to make more
copies of the virus, which then kills the cell and
(09:52):
spreads to other cells. But post organisms like the human
body don't go along with this. Willingly, our immune system
learns to recognize those distinctive proteins out a particular virus's
outer coding and attack it. Thus, in order to overcome
that obstacle, viruses continually have to reinvent themselves and become
(10:13):
essentially new attackers that your body won't recognize. This can
and does happen in less than a year, and that's
why we have to get an annual vaccination to protect
against these new threats. The flu vaccine and vaccines in general,
are very safe. They are profusely studied, and healthcare professionals
(10:33):
wouldn't recommend them if they were more dangerous than the
diseases they protect against. In that vein, let's talk about
the myth that vaccines like the flu vaccine can cause autism.
This is absolutely not true, and it stems from a
scientifically bad article that somehow mistakedly made it through the
(10:55):
publishing process to appear in the esteemed British medical journal
The Lancet in nineteen ninety eight. In this article, the
authors claimed to have found links between a childhood vaccination
for measles, bumps and rubella two a loss of developmental
skills in children. This prompted a lot of further research
(11:16):
and review. The scientists have since proven that there is
no link between vaccines and autism, and furthermore, researchers and
journalists uncovered the fact that the authors of that Landset
paper deliberately falsified facts and picked and shows data in
order to come up with their result because they were
(11:37):
hoping to make a lot of money selling pre autism
test kits to scared parents. The authors of that paper
are no longer allowed to practice medicine because of this
deliberate fraud. The lead author, by the way, was one
Andrew Wakefield, and he is still out there trying to
fraudulently scare people out of their money. So watch out
(11:59):
for anything that Andrew Wakefield is connected to. Some people
have also raised questions about thy marisol, which is a
preservative containing mercury that started being used in some vaccines
and other products back in the nineteen thirties. Because the
seasonal flu vaccine is produced in large quantities for annual
immunization campaigns, some multi dose files contain this preservative to
(12:23):
protect against contamination once the containers are opened. According to
the CDC, there is no scientific evidence that thy marasol
causes any harmed people except for minor reactions such as
redness and swelling at the injection site. But irregardless, there's
no hazard to children because only adults get any vaccines
(12:45):
containing the preservative. Out of an abundance of caution, the
US Food and Drug Administration eliminated the use of this
preservative in medications given to children back in two thousand
and one. Our understanding of health and the human body
is updating all the time, but again, vaccines are made
to be as safe as possible. One important caveat here
(13:10):
there are some people who shouldn't get a flu shot
without first consulting a healthcare provider. This includes people who
are severely allergic to chicken eggs because egg protein is
used in some vaccine formulations. Also, anyone with a family
history of gian Bar syndrome, which is a paralytic illness,
should talk to their provider about the extremely small increased risk.
(13:34):
And if you already have a moderate severe illness with
a fever, you should wait to get healthy before getting
any vaccine so that your immune system is only dealing
with one thing at a time. We live in an
amazing era wherein we know so much more about our
bodies and the microbes that cause disease that anyone even
(13:55):
dreamed of more than two hundred years ago. Because of vaccines,
there are so many terrible diseases that we no longer
have to suffer from, or that we can at least
extremely reduce our chance of getting So get out to
a healthcare provider for a flu shot and talk to
them about it if you have any other concerns. Today's
(14:21):
episode is based on the article ten Misconceptions about the
flu on HowStuffWorks dot Com, written by Patrick J. Hider.
Brainstuff is a production of by Heart Radio in partnership
with how Stuffworks dot Com and is produced by Tyler Klang.
Four more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows
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