Facts about the flu

As you already know if you’re on the couch with a sore throat, a runny nose and a fever, influenza is a breathing illness that usually occurs in the winter.

The three types of influenza that normally affect people fall into three categories: Types A, B and C.

Type A, normally spread through animals, is the most common influenza and usually causes the most serious epidemics.

Type B outbreaks also can cause epidemics, but the disease it produces generally is milder.

Type C viruses, on the other hand, never have been connected with a large epidemic.

Both H1N1 (swine flu) and H3N2, which now has people heading to hospitals in many regions across the country, are Type A influenzas.

H1N1 is extremely contagious and produces many symptoms that appear two to three days after infection. This strain of flu affects younger people.

H1N1, which was isolated in Canadian pigs 12 years ago, first appeared in 1918. Many of those infected with the illness, which was then known as “the Spanish flu,” died from it because there was no vaccine available at the time.

The flu reappeared in headlines in the 1970s, when an outbreak of it in the U.S. military led to a national national immunization program south of the border.

H1N1 appeared in Mexico in 2009 and spread quickly. Alarmed health officials braced pandemic.

H3N2 is posing a bigger problem in parts of Canada right now.

Unlike H1N1, this strain of flu targets elderly people, whose immune systems are relatively weak and less able to rebound from influenza. Because older people are at serious risk of developing pneumonia and other serious conditions, H3N2 is a major concern at long-term health care facilities.

Getting the flu shot

The influenza virus is killed by your antibodies, which are cells that have been trained to seek and destroy viruses. The flu shot acts like pre-battle training for your bodies.

The flu shot has pieces of the influenza virus. Those pieces are dead but nonetheless introduce your body to the virus, allowing your body to build up the antibodies necessary to fight it further down the road.

There are many different types of the influenza viruses so the flu shot usually includes dead pieces of several kinds of flu. That way your antibodies are prepared to do battle with a number of flu strains.

Since flu viruses are constantly mutating, most doctors recommend getting the flu shot every year. Those in weakened states of health, including infants and the elderly, are most strongly encouraged to do so.

This year, the flu shot protects against H3N2 as well as H1N1.