Get a Flu Shot

Stick a needle in your arm. For my sake. Usually it’s the left shoulder, but I don’t really care as long as long as the flu vaccine enters your bloodstream, because keeping the number of flu carriers low helps all of us.

As of Nov. 24, 9,508 people have gotten flu shots at UHS, 3,650 of them students. The number is significantly higher than in the recent past, but that still leaves nearly half of the student body at risk. Some may have gotten flu shots at home over Thanksgiving, but there are surely thousands of students who plan to take their chances.

Why hasn’t everyone gotten his or her vaccine? Some are afraid of needles, though the gauge on the flu vaccine needle is small, especially when compared with the needles used to give blood. Some people think that they’ll get the flu from the vaccine, though it’s a myth. The only harmful thing the vaccine does is cause some soreness where the shot was given, caused by the body creating antibodies.

Often people are confused about the severity of getting the flu because the term is thrown around to describe a bad cold. The reality is more sobering: Flu symptoms can last weeks and are generally much more severe and incapacitating than common colds.

Of course, while famous epidemics have killed more people than world wars, there’s little chance that getting vaccinated will save your life. Complications are common only in the elderly, small children, and people with chronic medical conditions like asthma or diabetes.

However, even though young people are not at risk for flu complications, college students are particularly likely to spread disease. They live together in close quarters and eat buffet-style, which makes it easier for someone sneezing over the rice pilaf to get everyone else sick. College students encourage each other to share shot glasses at parties or engage in other kinds of “intimacy” that may be conducive to the spread of disease.

Probably the biggest reason students stay away from vaccines is that they assume they won’t get the disease, either because they’re “careful” or because they don’t usually get it. Given that people can infect others with the flu starting the day before symptoms appear and up to five days after that, simply keeping away from those who look sick is not a viable option to avoid the flu. And there’s no evidence that certain people are genetically less susceptible to the flu.

But the reason I want you to get a flu shot isn’t that it helps you, though it clearly does. I want you to get it because it helps me. Since the only way to get the flu is from direct or indirect contact with another person who is infected, each new student who is vaccinated will decrease the chances of infection for the entire community. On a large enough scale, even vaccinated people benefit from others getting the shot, because it limits the number of human vessels the flu can use as a base to mutate into new forms. Some economists have argued that, under some conditions, each flu shot reduces the number of people at risk for infection by 1.5. In the extreme case, we could collectively push the flu to the brink of extinction through vaccination.

Any benefit, however, is predicated on annual inoculation. Annual flu shots are necessary because the flu mutates much more quickly than other viruses like the measles or polio. Part of the reasons those diseases are now so rare or nearly extinct is that, in the U.S., infants are vaccinated against them while still in the hospital, keeping them inoculated for life.

This just isn’t possible with the flu. Each year, the vaccine consists of several strains of virus that were active the last year, but new mutations crop up all the time. That’s why it’s possible to get the flu even with the vaccine.

All of this may change in the near future: A proposed universal flu vaccine based on the M2e genetic region believed to be common to all flu strains passed a critical test this fall. That means one day people will be able to get a vaccine that will work for life. But even if complications do not arise, a universal vaccine may still be five years away.

Until then, it’s vital that we continue regular vaccinations. Though it may not send a Harvard student to the hospital, getting the flu could impact studying for finals or cause a serious thesis setback. Employers try to get their workers vaccinated because there are huge productivity benefits given the small cost of the vaccine. For most college students, the benefits remain and the cost is effectively zero.

The flu shot may require about ten minutes of a student’s time, if you factor in walking to UHS. But given the number of YouTube hits this month, we all know how much that time is worth.


Adam R. Gold ’11, a Crimson editorial writer, lives in Adams House. His column appears on alternate Mondays.