It can be awfully tough to sort out fact from rumor about the flu. Elodie Ghedin of NYU’s Center for Genomics and Systems Biology and the College of Global Public Health is an expert on the flu.
She recently coauthored a paper in Nature Genetics about how minor flu strains—those not usually targeted by vaccines—may play a bigger role in flu transmission than previously thought.
She explains how the flu works, its wacky history, and why the flu shot is so important.
MYTH #1: I HAVE A RUNNY NOSE AND A FEVER. I MUST HAVE THE FLU
If there’s one thing that drives Ghedin nuts, it’s when people complain that they got the flu shot and then came down with the flu anyway. Most of the time, she says, this simply isn’t true. You might feel crummy, but that’s probably because you caught something else.
Lots of viruses come with “flu-like” symptoms (aches, fever, runny nose, sneezing), but most people only get the flu—influenza—once or twice a decade.
Remember a time when you weren’t just sniffly and sore, but bedridden, “totally debilitated, and completely knocked out? That might have been the flu,” Ghedin says. “But in general, it’s not usually the flu that you have.”
And the only way to be 100 percent sure is to have a sample taken, usually from your nose, and sent to a lab for testing.
Next, learn what Ghedin has to say about the flu vaccine making you sick.
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