How to Survive Cold and Flu Season

You can’t power prevent catch a cold or flubut you can significantly reduce your chances and make it less likely that you will have a serious case if you get sick. Well-established advice to keep you healthy also protects others by reducing the spread of these illnesses.

Get your flu shot

“The best way to reduce the risk of seasonal flu and its potentially serious complications is to get vaccinated every year. » According to the CDC.

Many healthcare professionals, including infectious disease specialist Steven Gordon, MD, and infectious disease clinical pharmacist Kaitlyn Rivard, PharmD, both at the Cleveland Clinic, say that best time to get vaccinated This is in September or October, when new annual versions of the vaccines are usually available in North America. But don’t worry if you missed this window, because the next best time is “now.”

Elena Diskin and Lisa Sollot, two respiratory disease specialists at the Virginia Department of Health, and Christy Gray, director of the immunization division, all agree that there is still time to get an annual flu shot. “The season runs from October to the end of April,” they wrote in an email, adding that “we typically see the greatest flu activity in January and February.” So yes, it’s still worth getting your flu shot if you haven’t yet.

Flu vaccines cannot give you the flu

Although it is possible to feel unwell after getting a flu shot, you cannot get the flu. In public health information about flu vaccines Last updated in 2024, the CDC confirms that “flu vaccines cannot cause influenza. Flu vaccines administered with a needle (i.e., flu vaccines) are made either with inactivated (killed) viruses or with a single protein from an influenza virus.” nasal spray vaccineintended for people ages 2 to 49 and which you may be able to administer at home, “contains live attenuated (weakened) viruses so that they do not cause illness,” according to the CDC.

However, after receiving a vaccine, you may need to wait up to two weeks for it to take full effect. This means that if you were exposed to the flu virus just before or up to two weeks after getting the vaccine, you could get sick, but it would not be due to the vaccine.

Flu vaccines are very effective in preventing serious illness

The flu vaccine changes each year depending on which strains of the virus experts think will be prevalent, and while it’s not foolproof, it’s very effective at preventing serious illness. During the 2024-2025 season, for example, flu vaccines were 56 percent effectivewhich is higher than it has been in almost 15 years.

“Vaccine effectiveness is measured by comparing the frequency of health problems (e.g., symptomatic illness, hospitalizations, death) among vaccinated and unvaccinated people in the real world,” explain Diskin, Solot and Gray of the Virginia Department of Health. Efficiency is different from efficiencywhich measures the results of controlled trials.

“In plain language, [vaccine effectiveness] describes how much less likely a vaccinated person is to get sick than an unvaccinated person, based on real-world data,” says Sai Paritala, an assistant professor at the University of Nebraska Medical Center College of Public Health and a former epidemiologist.