Most people get their flu shot at the wrong time of year.
It’s an easy mistake to make. Flu shots start showing up in the United States in late August and early September, and when you see that, it feels like you’re behind if you haven’t booked yours. But for most healthy adults, late October into early November is the better window. That gives the vaccine time to build up protection before flu season actually arrives, and it means the coverage lasts through the whole season instead of fading out partway.
There’s one group that should go early, and that’s seniors and anyone who’s immunocompromised. If you’re in that category, get it as soon as it’s available. The risk is higher and the protection matters more.
For younger, healthy people, I’d offer a different reason to get vaccinated. Think about who you’re around that it could benefit. A newborn grandchild. A parent in their eighties. A friend going through treatment. The flu shot isn’t only about keeping you out of bed for a week. It’s about not carrying something home to someone who can’t fight it off as easily as you can, and who could face more serious consequences if they did.
I want to say something about safety too, because I hear a lot of questions about it. The flu vaccine has been around for decades. Its safety record is well established and well studied. Like any medication, a small percentage of people will have side effects. That’s true of anything you take, and the right way to think about it is the same way you’d think about any other treatment. What’s the risk, what’s the benefit, and how do those compare for you specifically.
What concerns me is how much of the information people bring in comes from sources with no medical grounding. Vaccines save lives. If you have questions, bring them to a professional who’s capable of answering them.
While you’re in, it’s worth asking about a few other things. The flu shot can be given alongside most other vaccines, and we routinely do it at the same time as a COVID vaccine for anyone who wants both. If you’re over 65, the pneumonia vaccine is worth a conversation with your pharmacist or doctor. If you’re over 50, ask about shingles. The research on shingles prevention is showing benefits that reach further than shingles itself, lowering the risk of other conditions as well.
I’ll leave you with something that happened a few years back.
I had a patient who’d been getting the flu shot for years without a second thought. Then the COVID vaccines arrived and the whole conversation changed, and he came in skeptical for the first time.
We talked it through. His spouse had health conditions. We walked through what could happen if he brought the virus home. We talked about the possibility of his spouse ending up in hospital, and what it would mean if there was an outbreak on the ward and he wasn’t vaccinated. He was older himself, so there was his own risk on top of it.
By the end of the conversation, he decided to get the shot.
That December, his spouse was admitted to hospital for something unrelated. The hospital was in an outbreak at the time. The only reason he was allowed in to visit was that he’d had his flu vaccine. He wouldn’t have been in the room otherwise.
That’s not the reason I bring it up with people. But it’s the kind of thing you don’t see coming, and it’s worth thinking about before you decide.
If you have questions about any of this, come talk to us. That conversation is part of the job.
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