It’s apparently time for everyone to get their influenza vaccine. The medical experts–whoever they are, don’t agree but the overwhelming push from the public sector can’t be stopped.

Medical experts know that the influenza season doesn’t arrive until late December or even until the new year. Yet most of my patients disregard the advice to wait and receive their vaccine as soon as the drug stores, community centers, and people at the mall make them available.

Unfortunately, it may be last year’s vaccine but apparently no one says much about that. So, rather than going to your physician’s office where medicine is being practiced in twenty-first century terms, people are scampering to other “medical sources” to get the jump on protection.

Physicians do recognize that there are populations at increased risk that shouldn’t wait until December. These would include young children with congenital lung problems and the elderly, especially those that have smoked their way into chronic lung disease.

So here we go with another influenza season. Let’s hope that the onslaught is a mild one and that as few die as possible.

If you want a great read, consider The Great Influenza: The Epic Story of the Deadliest Plague in History by John M. Barry. This is an outstanding book on the influenza of 1918 that killed over a third of the world’s population. Why? Because no one listened to the medical experts.