Almost 5,000 vaccinated at FluFest

This year’s vaccines included immunization against the H1N1 virus strain, commonly known as swine flu, Finnie said.

“State and federal health officials are predicting that last year’s H1N1 strain will probably be one of the dominant flu strains this year, and that it will probably occur at the typical time for the flu, which is from January through March,” she explained.

Vaccines were offered as either a shot or a nasal spray, known as FluMist, to students, faculty, staff and their dependents at clinics on Oct. 6, 7 and 12. UHS sees roughly 180 cases of flu in a typical year, Finnie said.

UHS has not yet seen any cases of H1N1 flu this year. Last fall, UHS had identified 683 cases of flu-like illness by mid-December and administered 2,271 vaccines against H1N1 at clinics held in November and December.

Molecular biology professor Adel Mahmoud, who is a former president of Merck Vaccines, said it is “absolutely” important that students receive annual vaccinations, citing two major reasons.

“One is that we live in close proximity to each other — we live in classrooms, and we live in dorms, so that the accessibility of us to each other makes us [more] susceptible to transmission ... than if we were segregated,” Mahmoud said. “Number two, the H1N1 pandemic flu that appeared last year seemed to have affected two segments of the population: the young and the pregnant women. And [students] fall into that [former] category. The response would be that we should vaccinate everyone.”

Like Mahmoud, Hilary Bernstein ’14 said she thought it was important for students to get vaccinated. While she had never caught the flu or received a flu vaccination before the first clinic on Oct. 6, she decided that it would be best to be vaccinated because she lives close to many other students.

She elected to receive the FluMist spray rather than the injectable vaccine.

“The mist was quick and it was easy,” she said. “Just two sniffs and I was done.”

Vivian Qu ’14 said that she would have gotten a vaccine had it not been for her class schedule. Nonetheless, she said, “I think getting vaccinations during this season is really important. Everyone around me is getting sick.”

Mahmoud countered the idea held by some that vaccines are ineffective, or even harmful.

The accusations of the anti-vaccine movement are unfounded and unscientific, he argued, further noting that today’s better health conditions may give some a false sense of security.

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“If you were living at a time when the United States had more than half a million cases of measles, and some of your relatives got sick, or one or two of them died, you would not take the position that vaccines are [useless],” he explained. “In some ways the anti-vaccine movement is taking advantage of the fact that because we managed to reduce the burden of disease tremendously today ... it’s not obvious what vaccines are doing for us.”

Noting a recent outbreak of mumps among unvaccinated youth in Brooklyn, New York, he warned that dismissing or trivializing the distribution of vaccinations can hurt the community at large.

“Sometimes the concept of prevention doesn’t really sink in our psyche well,” he said. “Prevention isn’t an ultimate solution. Prevention is a constant pressure on an infectious agent so that it doesn’t appear. And that goes for all vaccines. You shake that pressure and they come back again.”

Flu vaccines are still available at UHS by appointment, Finnie said.