It’s not unusual at this time of year to hear sniffles, sore throats, coughing and sneezing.
It’s flu season again, and like every year, we’ve been encouraged to take all the necessary precautions to protect against this illness, ranging from the basics like hand-washing to getting ourselves immunized. Yet it seems like Alberta Health Services, along with Alberta Health, are delivering a mixed message.
On the one hand, we’ve been urged ad nauseum to get our flu shots. Everyone should get vaccinated, they have said. But now, we’re told not to bother trying to get immunized because they had nowhere near enough flu shots to go around in the first place.
There were only enough doses for about three in 10 Albertans, even with the recent influx of 65,000 shots, which Alberta Health Minister Fred Horne says were “the last shipment on the planet.
Now that the doses have run out, we’ve also been told not to worry about it, because as Alberta’s Chief Medical Officer of Health Dr. James Talbot says, “the flu is a disease most people can handle on their own.”
Mixed messages aside, perhaps it’s the strain of the flu this year that has everybody on edge.
The H1N1 strain was described as pandemic in 2009 when 72 Albertans died from the disease. The reported total of eight so far this year does indeed pale in comparison to that, and is in line with death rates from other years when more run-of-the-mill flu strains are predominant.
The fact is that humans have been getting sick as long as there have been humans. And all of our ancestors managed to survive long enough to procreate resulting in us at the end of our respective genealogical lines.
We would do well to keep this all in perspective — yes, it’s unpleasant to have the flu. And it’s always tragic when people die due to infection.
But there is little happening this year that we haven’t seen before. The sky didn’t come crashing in around us then, and it’s not likely to this year, either.
Keep washing your hands, keep covering your cough with your elbows not your hands, and stay away from large groups of people if you’re showing symptoms of influenza.
Come April, we’ll probably wonder what all the fuss was about.
