From 2016 to 2017, 5.3 million lives were saved due to the flu vaccine, according to the US Center for Disease Control and Prevention.

Flu shots, along with any other vaccine, have been controversial ever since the “anti-vax” idea spread across the internet several years ago. Many believe they don’t work or cause damage to their bodies, but without the flu shot vaccine, most Americans would be at a much greater risk for being very ill or even dead.

Flu vaccines stop people from getting sick by helping our immune systems create antibodies against the flu virus. The immense amount of human life we would lose if most people didn’t vaccinate would be devastating against every person’s way of life.

“It’s normal for your body to spike a fever after you get the flu shot. Sometimes a lot of people, feel crummy, they feel weak, they might even get a little bit of a fever, but that’s a natural response to the vaccine,” said substitute nurse, Marisa Guglielmi. Some students believe that the flu shot makes them get sick. But it’s just your body creating antibodies to fight off the real flu when and if you contract it.

With the idea in student’s heads that the flu-shot gives them the flu, many don’t get the vaccine.

If more people did not get a flu shot, places like schools and any other building with a  tightly packed number of people, are at huge risk because of all the spread of germs. In Triton, the stairwells are where students and teachers are together the most. With people right side by side breathing the same air. This where sicknesses like the flu can get passed around. Since students use the same computers and then touch their faces, they are more susceptible to getting sick.

Flu vaccines along, with every other vaccine, are surrounded by controversy. Many believe falsely, that if parents vaccinate their children it will cause autism. The doctor who came up with this theory redacted his statement but some people caught onto the theory and didn’t let it go. More studies have been done and have proven that vaccines do not cause autism.

The flu shot is especially important this year because doctors predicted that the flu virus is going to be severe.

“I got the flu shot, but I wish I didn’t. Every year I get a flu shot and I have never gotten sick because of it. But this year hours after getting the shot, I my body ached, I got a fever, I had chills,” said senior Emily Howe. 

Howe is one of the students who doesn’t realise that when you get the vaccine that it’s normal to have a reaction like she did. 

Other students such as Sophia Mailhoit have better reasons for not getting vaccinated.

When Mailhoit was about nine years old, a nurse gave her the flu vaccine, but the nurse who very obviously not trained well, moved the needle resulting in the needle breaking off into Mailhoits arm. She only got half the vaccine injected so once the needle was pulled out, she got another full dose of the vaccine. That same day, Mailhoit went home and felt sick. She ended up getting the flu from the shot and had to stay home from school for two weeks until she was better. 

But now that Mailhoit doesn’t get the vaccine, she is not allowed into the hospital to see her newborn cousin.

“It’s just upsetting to know that my family will be able to celebrate this new family members arrival and I won’t be able to,” said Mailhoit.