Too Late To Get A Flu Shot? When You Should Get Vaccinated – Forbes

October, which was a good time to get it, the best time to get vaccinated is as soon as you can after October. (Photo by Noam Galai/Getty Images) Getty Images

It may be too late to dress up like Barbie or Ken for Halloween. It may be too late to dress up like Barbie or Ken for Thanksgiving dinner, too. But as long as its still either the fall or winter season, it is definitely not too late to get the flu shot. As long as you are somewhere in the October through March timeframe, you probably want to get vaccinated against influenza as soon as you can.

Thats because the influenza season in the Northern Hemisphere can extend all the way from as early as October to as late as May the following calendar year. In fact, until youve gotten well into the New Year, chances are you and everyone around you havent even seen the worst of the flu season yet. Flu activity is typically highest from December through February with peak influenza virus activity most commonly occurring in February. Thats why its good idea to always secure your protection well in advance of Valentines Day.

Now, flu activity can follow very different patterns each season. In the four decades from the 1982-1983 flu season through the 2021-2022 flu season, the peak of the flu season has been in February a total of 17 times. December has been the next most common peak month at seven times. January and March tied for third place at six times apiece. And October, November and April have been the peak months only once each, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Theres a saying among epidemiologists that if youve seen one flu season, youve seen just one flu season. Every year can be different from previous years. Unless you have a DeLorean that serves as a time machine or some other way of traveling to and from the future, its impossible to predict exactly what this current flu season will look like. You cannot be sure when peak flu activity will occur, how bad things will be or whether this will be the season when there is a surge in cases in the later spring.

If you havent yet been vaccinated, its a good idea to get the flu vaccine as soon as possible. Keep in the mind that the flu vaccine isnt like a trench coat and doesnt start protecting you the moment you get it. Your immune system has to first see the weakened or inactivated flu particles from the vaccine, essentially say, WTF is this? This doesnt belong in my body! and then mount an immune response against them, which can take up to two weeks.

This two-week lag time to protection is a big reason why its important to get the flu vaccine now without further delay. This will help protect you in time for the last two weeks of December, which may be filled with interactions with other people, objects and surfaces, especially if you celebrate Christmas, Kwanzaa, New Years Eve, New Years Day and the annual unofficial holiday of going to stores to return all the presents that you didnt want but somehow received.

Late September to mid-October is typically the best time to get vaccinated against the flu to make sure you are protected before flu activity really starts to increase, as demonstrated by computer modeling studies published by our PHICOR Team in the scientific journals Vaccine, the American Journal of Managed Care and Medical Care. It is is possible to get vaccinated a bit too early, such as in August, since the protection offered by the flu vaccine may start waning after six months, leaving you less protected the following May when the flu may still be around.

Keep in mind that while the flu vaccine can offer good protection against the flu, it wont offer you 100% protection. Instead, its protection can vary from 30% to 60% depending on how well the flu virus strains put in the vaccines in the leadup to flu season end up matching the strains that actually circulate that season. So just because you got the flu shot already doesnt mean that you should stop washing your hands frequently and thoroughly, begin hugging and kissing people who may be coughing, sneezing, feeling run down or hot (hot temperature-wise, that is) and abandon all other infection prevention measures. Otherwise, your New Years Eve may turn out to be a Flu Years Eve.

Of course, reducing your chances of getting infected is not the only benefit of the flu shot. Even if you do end up getting infected, being vaccinated can significantly reduce the severity of your symptoms and your chances of getting hospitalized and dying. Most commonly, the flu will result in four to seven days of fevers, chills, coughing, a sore throat, a runny or stuffy nose, muscle or body aches, headaches, fatigue, vomiting, diarrhea or other not very pleasant symptoms. They can be so unpleasant that you end up missing school or work.

Things can get even worse, though, especially if you have a weaker immune system. Each year from 2010 through 2022, somewhere between 9.4 million and 41 million people have gotten sick from the flu, between 100,000 and 710,000 people have been hospitalized and between 4,900 and 52,000 people have died. Catching the flu is not the same as catching the common cold. The flu could leave you a lot more sick with some potentially terrible consequences.

Finally, even if you think youve had the flu already this year, it is still a good idea to get the flu shot. Many different microbes can cause flu-like illnesses such as respiratory syncytial viruses (RSV) and adenoviruses. So, unless you actually got tested for the flu, you cannot be sure if youve actually had the flu, meaning that its probably still worth a shot.

I am a writer, journalist, professor, systems modeler, computational, AI, and digital health expert, medical doctor, avocado-eater, and entrepreneur, not always in that order. Currently, I am a Professor of Health Policy and Management at the City University of New York (CUNY) School of Public Health, Executive Director of PHICOR (@PHICORteam) and Center for Advanced Technology and Communication in Health (CATCH), and founder and CEO of Symsilico. My previous positions include serving as Professor By Courtesy at the Johns Hopkins Carey Business School, Executive Director of the Global Obesity Prevention Center (GOPC) at Johns Hopkins University, Associate Professor of International Health at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Associate Professor of Medicine and Biomedical Informatics at the University of Pittsburgh, and Senior Manager at Quintiles Transnational, working in biotechnology equity research at Montgomery Securities, and co-founding a biotechnology/bioinformatics company. My work has included developing computer approaches, models, and tools to help health and healthcare decision makers in all continents (except for Antarctica). This has included serving as the Principal Investigator of over $60 million in research grants from a wide variety of sponsors such as the National Institutes of Health (NIH), Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), National Science Foundation (NSF), the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), UNICEF, USAID, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and the Global Fund. I have authored over 250 scientific publications and three books. In addition to covering health, healthcare, and science for Forbes, I maintain a blog "A Funny Bone to Pick" for Psychology Today, a Substack entitled "Minded by Science"and have written articles forThe New York Times, Time, The Guardian, The HuffPost, STAT, the MIT Technology Review and others. My work and expertise have appeared in leading media outlets such as The New York Times, ABC, USA Today, Good Morning America, Tamron Hall Show, BBC, The Los Angeles Times, Newsweek, CBS News, Businessweek, U.S. News and World Report, Bloomberg News, Reuters, National Public Radio (NPR), National Geographic, MSN, and PBS. Follow me on Twitter (@bruce_y_lee) but dont ask me if I know martial arts.

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Too Late To Get A Flu Shot? When You Should Get Vaccinated - Forbes