Holidays are great for sharing germs. There's lots of hugging and kissing, not to mention sharing the cranberry sauce ladle and huddling close together to watch a football game.
That's why I was alarmed when my brother-in-law emailed the family on Tuesday to let us know that one of his children had "flu-like" symptoms. He suggested all of us planning to come for Thanksgiving to go get a flu shot if we hadn't already.
But, I wondered, is there enough time between now and Turkey Day for flu immunity to kick in? I put the question to Dr. William Schaffner, who heads up preventive medicine at Vanderbilt University.
"Afraid not," Schaffner told me. "It takes 10 days to 2 weeks to get full protection from a flu shot." He says immunity just starts to kick-in after 48 hours. "The inadvertent gifts of the holidays are the respiratory diseases," Schaffner said.
Bummer. I rushed out to Safeway this afternoon anyway, and it took me about 5 minutes to get my shot. I wish I'd gotten one earlier, but I'm probably not the only one waiting until the last minute.
In fact, it seems we Americans have an " epidemic of ambivalence" when it comes to flu shots - even after the big H1N1 scare.
An article just published in the today says that we not only put off getting shots, we tend to mistrust a completely effective vaccine.
The researchers found that despite a huge public education campaign and a world-wide H1N1 scare only about 20 percent of adults were vaccinated against pandemic influenza last year.
Meanwhile, we'll be washing our hands a lot this weekend, and following these other tips to stop the spread of flu, too.
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