{"id":20058,"date":"2020-10-14T09:00:20","date_gmt":"2020-10-14T16:00:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/?p=20058"},"modified":"2020-10-13T11:20:26","modified_gmt":"2020-10-13T18:20:26","slug":"student-editors-letter-the-flu-shot-in-the-covid-19-era","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/2020\/10\/14\/student-editors-letter-the-flu-shot-in-the-covid-19-era\/","title":{"rendered":"Student Editor\u2019s Letter: The flu shot in the COVID-19 era"},"content":{"rendered":"

In Grade 10, my family heeded the advice of our doctor and we all got the annual flu shot. Now, I was raised a centrist on the matter of flu shots. The pros were obvious; so were the cons. Some years we got the shot, some years we didn\u2019t.<\/p>\n

The last thing I want to do this year is be part of the handful of people who overwhelm the healthcare system because they have coughs, fevers, and other symptoms that cover both the flu and COVID-19.<\/p>\n

If you have symptoms, get a test. That\u2019s my belief; yours might be different. When it comes to flu shots, there\u2019s a good chance our beliefs are different, as most people have a strong opinion either way, while I\u2019m still a centrist. Of note in this little mid-week tale is that within a few days of getting that shot back in Grade 10, I had more than just a bit of a sore arm. I got sicker that year than I had ever been in my life. I was laid out in bed for a week drinking warm lemon water and eating plain crackers. And sometimes that happens. Flu shots, by their very makeup, are a gamble.<\/p>\n

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Camosun College’s empty Lansdowne campus (photo by Greg Pratt\/Nexus<\/em>).<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Sitting here in a cozy abode with a hot cuppa on a windy fall morning, it\u2019s easy to opine about what the obvious thing to do might be. And maybe I just think about it a little too much.<\/p>\n

But I don\u2019t know, because, like most people at Camosun, my contacts have been few over the last six months. And by that I mean I\u2019ve had close contact with almost no one, maybe a handful of people over that half-year time period, and, more often than not, masks were involved.<\/p>\n

If you\u2019re waiting for the dice to roll and land on my steadfast opinion, I\u2019m sorry to disappoint, because I\u2019m not going to think I have the ability to dishonour the medical profession by offering a slanted opinion or, worse, slanted facts.<\/p>\n

There is much more to think about this year when it comes to getting a flu shot; there\u2019s a good chance my immune system is weaker than it has been in past years because of the various measures we\u2019re taking to keep COVID-19 away, but there\u2019s also a good chance the hand-washing and physical distancing and mask-wearing will help cancel that out. There\u2019s a good chance the flu shot could have some unfavourable side effects; there\u2019s a good chance the flu shot could work like a hot damn. Really, there\u2019s a good chance it\u2019s a toss-up year to year, an educated guess based off the strains of last year. There\u2019s also a good chance we all need to chill and do what we think is right. And you know what? There\u2019s a very good chance that we need to acknowledge that it might not be.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In Grade 10, my family heeded the advice of our doctor and we all got the annual flu shot. Now, I was raised a centrist on the matter of flu shots. The pros were obvious; so were the cons. Some years we got the shot, some years we didn\u2019t. The last thing I want to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":19836,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20058","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-webexclusive","category-views"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20058","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20058"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20058\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20059,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20058\/revisions\/20059"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19836"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20058"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20058"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20058"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}