It’s become a very common word in almost daily conversations: vaccine. They are a nearly painless way for Americans to sidestep diseases that can cause serious illness, especially in older people or those with certain underlying health conditions.
The flu shot is reformulated every year to protect against the three or four strains of influenza that are expected to be in widest circulation. The match isn’t always perfect because it takes about six months to produce the vaccine. However, each year the shot is likely to offer at least some protection against influenza.
This is often sufficient to keep high-risk individuals out of the hospital and clear of flu-related complications such as pneumonia. Influenza carries a particular risk for those aged 65 and older, raising the risk of heart attack by three to five times and stroke by two or three times in the first two weeks following infection. High-dose vaccines, which are routinely offered to elderly patients, offer even better protection against serious disease.
While it’s true that older Americans are especially vulnerable to serious outcomes from influenza, guidelines from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) call for everyone aged six months and older to get a flu shot every year “with rare exceptions.” These include allergies to ingredients in the vaccine or a previous history of Guillain-Barré Syndrome.
The annual campaign to convince Americans to get the flu shot may get most of the public’s attention, but fall is also the season when students entering school or college are either required or encouraged to bring their childhood vaccinations up to date, depending on state law or school policy.
These are shots that protect against childhood illnesses that once wreaked havoc on young lives as well as the more recent vaccine for bacterial meningitis, which is required for most incoming college students. It may be hard to believe that most of these routine vaccines have been available for less than 75 years.
Many older Americans can remember crowding into schools in the early 1960s to swallow Albert Sabin’s oral polio vaccine, which was administered on a sugar cube. This supplanted Jonas Salk’s injected vaccine, which in 1955 finally turned the tide against the fearsome disease, which was infecting 25,000 to 50,000 people each year and paralyzing 15,000.
Since1979, no naturally occurring cases of polio have originated in the U.S., although the virus has recently been detected in sewage samples in the New York metro area.
Polio is just one of the devastating diseases that once left millions of children dead or disabled. The CDC website includes 13 other “diseases you almost forgot,” including tetanus, diphtheria, rubella, measles, chickenpox and Hepatitis A and B, that have been largely controlled by vaccines. None of these shots were available before the 1940s. Others weren’t introduced until the 1980s or 1990s.
The development and widespread use of vaccines has had a breathtaking impact on human existence. U.S. life expectancy nearly doubled between 1920, when it plummeted as a result of the Spanish Flu, to 2020 when it reached nearly 80 years. Pasteurized milk, penicillin and other antibiotics, plus strides in sanitation and technology, all played a huge part in making this possible. But many medical historians put mankind’s ability to protect itself against smallpox—through vaccination—at the top of the list.
It was a British doctor, Edward Jenner, who created the first successful smallpox vaccine in 1796, improving on variolation, an earlier method to control the disease that was practiced in India and China. Nearly 200 years later, on May 8, 1980, the world was declared free of the scourge of smallpox.
It remains to be seen whether humanity can eradicate other infectious diseases with vaccines, but we can hopefully gain the upper hand. The CDC lists 26 vaccines available in the U.S., ranging from the familiar flu shot to specialized vaccines, such as rabies and anthrax, and exotic vaccines—cholera, yellow fever—that a traveler might require.
Whether you need a COVID-19 booster, the current flu shot or another routine vaccine, you can get it at your local ReadyClinic. For more information, visit www.readyclinic.org.