Anyone else getting a flu shot ?

[Hangfire]

Mama and I are going to the Homeland pharmacy to get our yearly flu shot this morning.....the now retired doc I used to go to told me once that folks tend to get them too early and then don't have good protection after the first of the year / through the flu season and to get them right around Halloween.

We've been getting them for years and so far (knock on wood) neither one of us has come down with the flu but then I know folks that never get one and have never come down with it......just a roll of the dice I guess.

Three years ago I did get one of the stronger senior doses for old farts like me and it made me sicker than a dog so the following year I went back to the regular dose and haven't had any problems.

 

[Aku]

No, not getting one this year.

 

[SlugSlinger]

Nope. Same technology used in the COVID jab being used in the flu shot. mRNA.

I guess if one is ok with the covid vac the flu shot is fine. Just don’t take them close together. See next post.

Moderna says mRNA flu shot generates better immune response in study than currently available vaccine​

Meg Tirrell

CNN — none
Moderna said Wednesday that its experimental mRNA-based seasonal flu vaccine generated a stronger immune response against four strains of the flu virus than a currently marketed vaccine in a Phase 3 study, paving the way for the company to discuss a path to approval with regulators.

The experimental shot, dubbed mRNA-1010, was compared with a currently approved seasonal flu vaccine from GSK called Fluarix. The results are from an interim analysis and were disclosed in a company news release Wednesday morning.

The announcement doesn’t come in time to affect this year’s flu season as the vaccine still needs to go through the regulatory approval process.

Moderna is racing Pfizer to bring mRNA technology to seasonal flu vaccines in a bid to improve how well they can target circulating strains. The companies also have plans to combine Covid-19 mRNA shots with those for flu and RSV in the years ahead if studies show that they’re safe and effective.

In hopeful sign for the US, flu vaccine shows strong protection against hospitalization in South America, CDC report shows
Also Wednesday, Moderna said it expects a decision from the US Food and Drug Administration on its mRNA vaccine for RSV in adults 60 and older by April. Pfizer and GSK received FDA approval for their adult RSV vaccines, which use a different technology, in May.

“Our mRNA platform is working,” Moderna Chief Executive Officer Stephane Bancel said in the news release. “With today’s positive phase 3 flu results, along with previous results in Covid and RSV, we are now three for three on advancing respiratory disease programs to positive phase 3 data.”

It hasn’t been a straight path to this point for Moderna’s flu program; a previous version of the experimental shot generated a strong immune response against A strains of the virus but not against B strains. Moderna reformulated the vaccine, and that led to the latest results.

A major question for mRNA flu shots is their tolerability, given the side effect profile of the shots for Covid, which can cause pain at the injection site, muscle aches, fatigue and other reactions. Moderna said the safety findings were similar in this study to previous ones, which found muscle pain, headache, fatigue, pain and swelling as the most common reactions.

The results focused on the immune response generated by the experimental vaccine rather than how well it protects against disease from flu. Seasonal flu vaccines are generally approved based on the immune response they generate, since that’s a faster way to measure their likely effect.

Moderna said Wednesday that a separate phase 3 study didn’t generate enough cases to provide efficacy data, and the company decided to stop that study in light of the new Phase 3 data.

The currently available seasonal flu vaccines use older technology than mRNA; the most common approach is to grow either killed or weakened flu virus in chicken eggs, a process that can be more time-consuming.

Just like for the mRNA Covid-19 vaccines, mRNA flu vaccines deliver genetic instructions for the body to make portions of the flu virus, which the immune system then learns to recognize and can fight when it sees the real thing.

The hope is that seasonal mRNA flu vaccines can be designed and manufactured more quickly than shots based on older technology. That’s important because the flu virus mutates quickly, and matching the strains as closely to the start of flu season as possible could improve efficacy.

 

[SlugSlinger]

Covid shots may slightly increase risk of stroke in older adults, particularly when administered with certain flu vaccines​

CNN — none
Vaccines for Covid-19 and influenza may slightly increase the risk of strokes caused by blood clots in the brains of seniors, particularly when the two vaccines are given at the same time and when they are given to adults who are age 85 and older, according to a new study.

The safety signal was detected by experts at the US Food and Drug Administration who analyzed data from Medicare claims.

It is the second study to find an elevated risk of stroke for seniors after Covid-19 and flu vaccinations given together. The US Centers for Disease Control and FDA issued a public communication in January explaining that one of their near real-time vaccine safety monitoring studies — called the Vaccine Safety Datalink — had picked up a small and uncertain risk of stroke for older adults who received a dose of Pfizer’s bivalent Covid-19 vaccine and a high-dose or adjuvanted flu shot on the same day. That study triggered the FDA’s broader look at strokes after vaccination noted in the medical records of seniors on Medicare.

That said, the risk identified in the FDA’s study appears to be very small — roughly 3 strokes or transient ischemic attacks for every 100,000 doses given — and the study found it may be primarily driven by the high-dose or adjuvanted flu vaccines, which are specially designed to rev up the immune system so it mounts a stronger response to the shot.

When to get the new Covid-19 vaccine to maximize your protection
In additional analysis of the Medicare claims data, the FDA researchers found a very slightly increased risk of stroke in adults ages 65 and older who’d only gotten a high dose flu shot. In absolute terms, the extra risk from high-dose flu shots amounted to 1-2 strokes for every 100,000 doses.

“The absolute risk is miniscule,” said Dr. Steve Nissen, a cardiologist and researcher at the Cleveland Clinic in Ohio. “I mean it is trivial in comparison to the risk for people over 85 of dying from Covid.”

At least five other recent studies — many launched to try to tease out this link, have not found any additional risk of stroke after vaccination for Covid-19, influenza or both.

“Available data do not provide clear and consistent evidence of a safety problem for ischemic stroke with bivalent mRNA Covid-19 vaccines when given alone or given simultaneously with influenza vaccines,” said Dr. Tom Shimabukuro, director of the Immunization Safety Office at the CDC in a public presentation of the data on Wednesday to the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices.

Researchers say they are continuing to probe the possible link, but in the meantime, they say everyone should still get vaccinated since any tiny increase in risk of a stroke after vaccination is dwarfed by the increased risk of stroke or other serious outcomes following either a flu or Covid-19 infection.




Jamie Gumbrecht
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'Body aches, fever': Doctor distinguishes difference between Covid and flu
01:49 - Source: CNN
“The risk of serious disease associated with both influenza and Covid for the population at highest risk, which is of course, older persons, is so much greater than the potential increased risk associated with a vaccine,” said Dr. William Schaffner, an infectious disease expert at Vanderbilt University.

“That’s a hard equation for the average person to do,” Schaffner said.

Spread out your shots?​

Schaffner said people who are worried could consider getting each shot at different times rather than together.

“That’s a reasonable thing to do,” he said.

Schaffner, who is in his mid-80s, said he got both his Covid and flu vaccines at the same time, in the same arm, and had very little reaction afterwards.

A few weeks ago, however, Dr. Peter Marks, head of FDA’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research, said he was planning to get his Covid-19 vaccine first, followed by his influenza vaccine about two weeks later.

“If you want to minimize the chance of interactions and minimize confusing the side effects from one with another, you wait about two weeks between the vaccines,” Marks said on an FDA stakeholder call in September.

Other experts said they hoped the information wouldn’t confuse people or deter them from getting their vaccines, since the benefits of getting them still greatly outweigh the risks.

“The bottom line is that these are small signals. We’re not entirely sure whether they are valid, and they certainly do not lead themselves to any change in the recommendations for people getting either Covid or influenza vaccines at the present time,” Schaffner said.

Respiratory virus season threatens to be a challenge again. Getting vaccinated now can help
For the study, FDA investigators looked at the medical claims of more than 5.3 million adults ages 65 and older who were enrolled in Medicare and received a bivalent Covid-19 vaccine made by Pfizer or Moderna. They saw no increased risk of stroke in the overall group after Covid-19 vaccination.

When they looked at adults ages 85 and older, they found an elevated risk of strokes caused by blood clots in those who’d had Pfizer vaccines, but not in those who got Moderna shots.

Seniors age 65 and older who got a bivalent vaccine and high-dose or adjuvanted flu shot at the same time also had an increased risk of blood clots in their brains.

The study is observational, meaning it can only show associations, it can’t prove cause and effect. It was also posted as a preprintahead of peer review by outside experts and publication in a medical journal.

Study sees link to seizures in young kids​

A separate FDA investigation of more than 4 million records from three large commercial insurance databases, found a very small and tenuous link between seizures in children between the ages of 2 and 5 and Covid-19 vaccination. Children this age appeared to be slightly more likely to have seizures after Covid-19 vaccination compared with background seizure rates in the general population in 2020 — a year when infectious diseases were lower in kids because of masks and social distancing.

The signal disappeared, however, when researchers compared it with background rates of seizures reported in US children in 2022, a year when infections in kids rebounded.

That study was also posted as a preprint.

The study authors said their findings should be interpreted with caution, since most were associated with fevers, which are common in kids. Vaccination can also cause kids to run fevers.

They said they hoped their findings would be investigated in a more robust epidemiological study.

About 4% of children experience seizures triggered by fevers, according to the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke.

Dr. Phillip Yang, a cardiologist at Stanford Health Care, said the findings didn’t look particularly concerning.

“It’s not unusual after Covid vaccine that we have little bit of a fever that could trigger a seizure, and kids who are more susceptible to it. So again, it’s not a surprising finding,” Yang said.

 

[Mr.Glock]

Nope. Never have and never have had the flu.

 

[dancer4life]

The wife and I use to get the flu shot every year until Covid hit. I hated and fought not to have to get the Covid vaccine but in order to do my job I had to. Since then we haven’t had any desire to get any shots.
But if the boss (wife) tells me we are starting our flu shots back up this year, well then I will get one.
Happy wife, Happy life. LOL!

 

[bigred1]

Yeah, I wait until after Halloween to get my flu shot too.

 

[kwaynem]

I don’t trust either one of their shots

 

[XYZ]

I heard that the flu vaccine will increase your wives’ and your sex drive. They did studies and everything.

 

[swampratt]

Wife got a flu shot 1 time and she will never do that again.

Never got one myself .
I have had the flu a few times and I survived it.